Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, Part 4

[Vaeliorin]

Was playing around with an Azata Hunter, and it turns out just from bonus feats you end up with all but 2 teamwork feats in the game if you take Life-Bonding Friendship.  So it's pretty easy to give your entire party every single teamwork feat.  Also had a +57 trip check without any buffs, so that's pretty nice.

The question is do I want 24 hour geniekind (elemental barrage shenanigans) or 24 hour Transformation (animal companion shenanigans) with my brown fur transmuter (+2 spell levels from arcanist, +1 from varisian tattoo, +2 from spell specialization lets you do 24 hour duration with a single round/level spell)

[Agiel]

On 3/22/2022 at 7:04 AM, majestic said:

I guess there are a few things in this game I'm not really going to try out. Being terrible to Ember or Aru are the top entries I guess, but romancing the cat-girl spider thing is a serious top contender too. I read a reddit thread about this romance, and someone called it "extremely well written", and once again, I think it's time to let the world burn. That romance reads like it was written by E. L. James. Fifty Shades of Wenduag, and you're playing her Christian Grey.

Including the creepy stalking. Not sure about the horse sized male organ, but the money aspect works out all right as well. 

On the other side I was thankfully forewarned to refuse a quest from Lann as a female character, as otherwise it was very easy to inadvertently stumble into his romance path.

[xzar_monty]

On 4/2/2022 at 3:33 AM, Agiel said:

On the other side I was thankfully forewarned to refuse a quest from Lann as a female character, as otherwise it was very easy to inadvertently stumble into his romance path.

I think it's quite interesting to note how none of the characters in the game feel like anyone you'd ever want to get close to, in a romantic sense. Peculiar writing from Owlcat, in other words. Everyone in P:K was awfully written, as a person, and this continues in WotR, although the results are not as extreme.

Given the forum we're in, I think it's reasonable to contrast this with the writing in, say, Deadfire. Characters like Eder and Maia are fairly "whole" or "round" (to borrow a term from literature studies), they've got subtlety written into them, and having romance-related talks with them isn't overly cringy. Xoti is extreme, she goes over the top, but compared to just about everyone in WotR, Xoti is the paragon of normality.

[uuuhhii]

1 hour ago, xzar_monty said:

I think it's quite interesting to note how none of the characters in the game feel like anyone you'd ever want to get close to, in a romantic sense. Peculiar writing from Owlcat, in other words. Everyone in P:K was awfully written, as a person, and this continues in WotR, although the results are not as extreme.

Given the forum we're in, I think it's reasonable to contrast this with the writing in, say, Deadfire. Characters like Eder and Maia are fairly "whole" or "round" (to borrow a term from literature studies), they've got subtlety written into them, and having romance-related talks with them isn't overly cringy. Xoti is extreme, she goes over the top, but compared to just about everyone in WotR, Xoti is the paragon of normality.

actually appreciate how owlcat put romance that are ridiculous for fantasy especially for pathfinder standard in kingmaker

poly and valerie romance are obviously not going to have the most mass appeal

[bugarup]

My Lich, who did everything in Chapter 5 except Enigma and is now just stalling, romanced Daeran until D's personal Great Old One made us an offer we could not refuse. Later that month pappy Lich demanded we kill our love interest as a part of Bone Supremacy ritual and as we were to go "Um. About that...", he pulled poor Daeran out of afterlife just to kill him again. All in all, I think it was definitely a good romance.

[Gorth]

Just continuing from past thread...

 

[kanisatha]

Still haven't started playing this game, but just saw in Steam that the DLC has a 30-something percent "like" rating. Is it that awful?

[xzar_monty]

Somewhere in the Abyss, I found myself doing something that I have never done in any of these games before: in many a battle, I toned the difficulty all the way down to "Story" level. This was not simply because the battles were too hard (although some of them definitely were, on my previous difficulty level of "Core"), but also because so many of them were so tediously designed. Essentially, you start a fight, you notice its design and take note of what's expected of you, and then you reload your save in order to apply a good strategy to the fight. This gets very tiring. Things can get extremely difficult very quickly if you don't have the exact right strategy to start with, and it's often quite hard to change it midway through the battle.

@kanisatha: I haven't purchased it, so I cannot say. However, the game itself has turned into something that has almost certainly turned me off the DLCs (see above).

[majestic]

My Unfair playthrough stalled because I'm in Enigma and I have a very hard time forcing myself to care enough to finish it. I tried to play a little today, then ran into a group of enemies that accidentially critted the one character I have without Last Stand - and I just quit. I've got plenty of resurrection scrolls and spell slots, an accidential death isn't the end of the world at this stage of the game of course, but it didn't just kill the character, but also whatever remained of my motivation to soldier on.

I wish I could just ignore the quest, because on Unfair these companion quests outside of your core party are super tedious because one has to waste time running around with characters that are mostly useless (Greybor at least debuffs his quarry before running away in fear the moment the fight starts in earnest, but the same can't be said for having to drag that Woljif weasle with you, or Nenio now in Enigma - although Nenio is technically Unfair viable, she's just not a good fit for my party setup) for fighting the endless waves of super powerful trash mobs that the game throws at you, but no, Enigma just can't ignore it because of course it is the only way* to get anoter certain piece of loot for a certain secret ending.

Enigma is even worse because not only the combat wastes your time, but it has an endless amount of tedious puzzles. Screw this quest.

*Not true for the Trickster and Demon mythic paths, but certainly for my Angel.

Edited April 12, 2022 by majestic

[xzar_monty]

I just got back from the Abyss, and I must say I am either taking a break from the game or stopping it altogether. The story is not very well-written at all. Also, as I already described above, the fighting gets very tedious. Oh well.

BG2, PoE and Deadfire remain the classics of this genre. This one isn't anywhere near that level.

Edited April 12, 2022 by xzar_monty

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

6 hours ago, majestic said:

My Unfair playthrough stalled because I'm in Enigma and I have a very hard time forcing myself to care enough to finish it. I tried to play a little today, then ran into a group of enemies that accidentially critted the one character I have without Last Stand - and I just quit. I've got plenty of resurrection scrolls and spell slots, an accidential death isn't the end of the world at this stage of the game of course, but it didn't just kill the character, but also whatever remained of my motivation to soldier on.

I wish I could just ignore the quest, because on Unfair these companion quests outside of your core party are super tedious because one has to waste time running around with characters that are mostly useless (Greybor at least debuffs his quarry before running away in fear the moment the fight starts in earnest, but the same can't be said for having to drag that Woljif weasle with you, or Nenio now in Enigma - although Nenio is technically Unfair viable, she's just not a good fit for my party setup) for fighting the endless waves of super powerful trash mobs that the game throws at you, but no, Enigma just can't ignore it because of course it is the only way* to get anoter certain piece of loot for a certain secret ending.

Enigma is even worse because not only the combat wastes your time, but it has an endless amount of tedious puzzles. Screw this quest.

*Not true for the Trickster and Demon mythic paths, but certainly for my Angel.

It will be something if Wrath of the Righteous fixes your brain issues and let's you quit NuTrek.

I haven't played it in a while but after playing a bit of Deadfire, I've got to say in terms of aesthetics PathCat OwlFinder looks and sounds much worse. In Deadfire a lot of the equipment looks great in ways that it just doesn't in other games, PoE and Deadfire are the only times I want to equip padded armor for both stats and looks.

[ShadySands]

13 hours ago, kanisatha said:

Still haven't started playing this game, but just saw in Steam that the DLC has a 30-something percent "like" rating. Is it that awful?

I haven't played it yet. 

I keep restarting with new character ideas and rarely get past chapter 2. I also deleted all my other saves, not sure why I did that. I know you can just roll a new level 20 for the DLC but I haven't wanted to do that either.

[bugarup]

Finished with the Lich. Chapter 6 was short, boring and anticlimactic. Not sure if I ever finish with another character just for different set of ending slides because I wasn't invested in either world or characters that much. 

Oh, and when I finally braced myself for Enigma and stuffed masks into appropriate statues, then...nothing happened. I briefly thought about googling the issue or talking to Nenio, but then I thought...nah. 

I also got my Legend guy to Chapter 5 (Chapter 4 is nice and short if you just toybox-teleport everywhere!). Legend looks quite bonkers powerful, but eh, this late in game everyone is. 

 

[majestic]

20 hours ago, KP wants Blue Velvet said:

It will be something if Wrath of the Righteous fixes your brain issues and let's you quit NuTrek.

That's not how it works, finishing the game on Unfair isn't the same as not having finished it at all.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/owlcatgames/pathfinder-wrath-of-the-righteous/posts/3487115

We’ve also decided that we don’t want the 3rd DLC to be our last! Your adventures will continue with Season Pass 2, which will be available in Fall 2022. Season Pass 2 will consist of three new DLCs, bringing even more new content to the game. We will share more details later this year.

[uuuhhii]

owlcat dlc are actually pretty small and low impact by rpg standard

but at least dev can try to remove more bug than add new one in the accompanying patch

[kanisatha]

22 hours ago, KP wants Blue Velvet said:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/owlcatgames/pathfinder-wrath-of-the-righteous/posts/3487115

 

 

Yeah I just saw this on the Owlcat forum. My take is that under their current circumstances they are not in a position right now to transition to their next new game. But they have bills to pay and want to keep their people employed, so they're treading water by working on more DLCs for their current game until things (hopefully) get better. Seems like a good strategy to me.

But I wonder how the sanctions affect their ability to sell to customers in sanctioning countries.

Edited April 22, 2022 by kanisatha

[xzar_monty]

On 4/22/2022 at 5:44 PM, kanisatha said:

But I wonder how the sanctions affect their ability to sell to customers in sanctioning countries.

Boycotts are also something to consider. My sample of 1 has a 100% boycott rate: never going to buy anything by Owlcat anymore.

[kanisatha]

6 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Boycotts are also something to consider. My sample of 1 has a 100% boycott rate: never going to buy anything by Owlcat anymore.

Is that specifically directed at Owlcat (for some reason), or a 'Russia' thing? I'm genuinely curious to know. I myself am troubled by the prospect of sending my dollars to Russia, as miniscule an amount as it may be.

[xzar_monty]

26 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

Is that specifically directed at Owlcat (for some reason), or a 'Russia' thing? I'm genuinely curious to know. I myself am troubled by the prospect of sending my dollars to Russia, as miniscule an amount as it may be.

It's a Russia thing, nothing against Owlcat. But absolutely no money from me towards Russia ever again.

[ShadySands]

Judging by all the LGBTQ content they put in their games I can't imagine they toe the official Russian line. Obviously everyone can and should decide for themselves but I'll continue to support them until they do something I find objectionable.

Edited April 24, 2022 by ShadySands
Fighting my autocorrect

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

So how is the new DLC?

[ShadySands]

I heard it's super buggy and much harder than the base game. I'm waiting for some patches

[xzar_monty]

7 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

Judging by all the LGBTQ content they put in their games I can't imagine they toe the official Russian line. Obviously everyone can and should decide for themselves but I'll continue to support them until they do something I find objectional.

I agree, they probably don't. However, there is no way I will ever send any of my money into that economy no matter what. I can live without their future games, even if I have enjoyed the two I've purchased so far.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

@ShadySands

That's completely unsurprising.

Edited April 24, 2022 by KP wants Blue Velvet