wrath of the righteous, unlike many premade pnp adventures, contemplated companion npcs who would join your party, albeit at a somewhat diminished level. the pnp ap contemplated romances with the companions and bisexual were arguable the default option. yeah, more than a few o' the companions in owlcat's wotr are unique to the crpg, but we would be surprised if paizo didn't have input on the choice o' romance preferences o' companions.
for those familiar with the wotr ap, the romance preferences o' companions being inclusive as 'posed to exclusive is predictable.
from our pov, companion romances in crpgs is always terrible. always. as long as such is kept optional and tangential, am not concerned. am finding weird how invested is people with not just the romances but the gender preferences. *shrug* optional and tangential, so who cares? is not as if owlcat invested a whole lotta effort into the writing aspect o' kingmaker, so is not as if adding romance options is some kinda resource sink.
whatever.
have spent some effort doing the army management. heroes o' might and magic is an obvious inspiration. the interface is less intuitive than we would want-- took us a few long minutes o' frustration trying to figure out how to split units. am understanding there is less o' quest on a timer aspect to army management than were the case o' kingdom building in owlcat's previous effort, but am not certain how that is gonna work in wotr? you gain resources based on a timer, so...
am too early into the army management stuff to offer some kinda definitive opinion. am a bit annoyed that our default tactic when fighting powerful melee units involves offering sacrificial single units to be destroyed while our archers decimate. have become extreme reliant on cleric and leader healing to restore unit strength before the end o' a battle, which feels like cheese. am having difficulty impacting morale to any degree. etc. will offer more meaningful feedback when we have more experience. we will note the combat and army management doesn't appear bugged to any significant degree. like it or hate it, army management is working as intended.
as we play more, we notice more bugs, and a few is irksome. having to toggle rapid shot is a pain to get the correct number o' attacks as we default to a single attack for our zen archer/sanctified slayer unless we do so. we took an animal companion as part o' our priestly domain, but the animal companion archetype did not carry over from animal companion generation to actual gameplay. maybe not a bug, but am having nowhere to purchase cold iron arrows/bolts early in chap 2, so archery value is diminished. skalds is busted every which way with the inability to apply keening spells or choose bard specific feats as well as archetypes defaulting to vanilla skald post character generation. pc slayers is similar busted when attempting to choose feats. mythic stuff is borked as often as not. can't get a second spirit for our spirit shaman companion, 'cause that option don't work. impossible domain is indeed appropriate named as is impossible for a cleric to add a third. etc.
nevertheless, the bugs is still fewer in number and severity than expected and the overall stability o' the game is excellent. loading times is satisfactory and nowhere near as bad as were kingmaker when it were released. is not a deep rpg experience so far, and our pre-knowledge o' the ap perhaps undercuts some o' the impact pivotal events, but am not thinking fans o' kingmaker were looking for depth so much as breadth. kingmaker offered a huge range o' character development and gameplay options and wotr expands the menu o' choices.
wotr is exceeding expectations so far.
as an aside, one o' the recent developer gameplay streams was a h00t.
we didn't watch anywhere near seven hours, but we wanted to.
HA! Good fun!