Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, Part VII

[majestic]

11 minutes ago, uuuhhii said:

is the puzzle not terrible by owlcat standard or just not terrible

Wrath of the Righteous sets the gold standard for terrible puzzles, even for Owlcat.

[Phomopsis Cane]

55 minutes ago, majestic said:

Wrath of the Righteous sets the gold standard for terrible puzzles, even for Owlcat.

Agreed, though Kingmaker does take some beating in terms of terrible puzzling!

[Gromnir]

8 hours ago, majestic said:

Could probably still work if you just stacked all the enchantments bonuses in the world, but not sure.

having done just that, stacking azata attribute and mind effecting boosts as well as all the enchantment/illusion gear in the game w/o resorting to expanded arsenal quirks, am less ambivalent than @majesticabout viability. am assuming azata kineticists remain kinda op. is more than a couple skald/bard builds we used for every hard and unfair boss battle, but regardless, an enchanter/illusionist is more than viable on any difficulty even without the expanded arsenal schtick. aside: is not to0 much undead in the game, but we nevertheless take the undead in addition to the functional requisite fey bloodline. sepentine might make more sense, but undead is typical our choice. (edit: you do not need play as a sorcerer caster to make an op azata enchanter work, but am highly recommending at least one level o' crossblood sorc if you choose to go wizard or whatnot.)

furthermore, am gonna suggest that folks reflexive using unfair as a yardstick for mythic powha is misleading. @majestic is no doubt keen aware that the most difficult unfair content is early game and before you acquire mythic path specific powhaz, particularly ambush encounters pre mythic. insofar as late game, any mythic path has at least a few op builds.  angle and lich (and only merged spell book angel and lich is arguable broken op) is not making the most challenging early content any easier, and by late game the angel and lich relative advantages decrease substantially. late game aeon and demon has a few builds we would place on par with merged spellbook angel or lich.

the main advantage o' lich and angel for unfair runs is they do not require you to follow an uncompromising build path or discover every bit o' build-specific loot needed to achieve requisite ab or dcs. angel and lich has spells and abilities which ignore sr or obviate the chore o' generating improbable dcs. play angel and you don't need to consider adding a court poet companion to buff your caster, or adding the madness domain to sosiel. merged spellbook angel and lich make the game far more simple, and there is a mid portion o' the game where they is undeniably op.  even so, every mythic provides possibility o' op builds capable o' roll-stomping unfair late game, and no mythic makes early game easier. 

as an aside, and for any who hasn't played the game in awhile,  am suspecting a few folks is gonna be surprised by a recentish playful darkness change--like ulbrig, playful darkness is now equipped with a swarmbane clasp.

HA! Good Fun!

ps we did go with a merged spell book angel build for the inevitable excess dlc  but less 'cause it were so powerful (although it certainly was a powerful choice) but 'cause encounters were simplified by having a functional immortal character able to one-button wipe the screen o' opponents w/o any o' the rock-paper-scissor considerations which is ordinary the cornerstone o' overcoming difficult d&d/pathfinder opponents. 

Edited February 1 by Gromnir

[Sven_]

On 2/1/2024 at 12:51 PM, majestic said:

Wrath of the Righteous sets the gold standard for terrible puzzles, even for Owlcat.

Tbh, a lot of their content feels like there's barely any iteration or polish done in general. Stuff that sounds good on paper (rotating the camera in the demon city) seems locked early. Even if all the fed ex /errand job quests there eventually have you traversing that city, witness repeat loading bars and get you to rotating the camera over and over. (That was also the point where I finally called it quits. Bought the game upon release, took THREE timeouts to return to the save and continue. 80+ hours overall. But the grind didn't seem worth it anymore).

It's a "more is more" approach all over the shop. Including the same, same combat, of which there's a ton of it -- I always like to joke that if Owlcat had made Baldur's Gate, the empty wilderness would be no more. Instead, you couldn't walk five feet before walking into a nother copypaste mob to murderhobo. As much as I like the better parts of their (Pathfinder) games: To me they're like the CRPG factory line producers: Churning out huge ass campaigns longer than any Baldur's Gates combined, DLC and Enhanced at an unheard of rate likely for reason. Maybe it's part of their business model though: keep on pumping, or go bust.

I swear if they ever went with a "less is more approach", they'd be in for a masterpiece. And it makes me squirm that games said to err on the "shorter" side are immediately flagged for "sale candidate" by some, whereas devs going with the bloat approach never get any flak for it.

 

Edited May 5 by Sven_

[InsaneCommander]

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

3 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

 

I wonder what iteration of Playful Darkness will show up to **** up the party?

[xzar_monty]

On 5/5/2024 at 1:19 PM, Sven_ said:

It's a "more is more" approach all over the shop. Including the same, same combat, of which there's a ton of it -- I always like to joke that if Owlcat had made Baldur's Gate, the empty wilderness would be no more. Instead, you couldn't walk five feet before walking into a nother copypaste mob to murderhobo.

I've been thinking about this in purely mathematical terms. For instance, if the amount of combat in P:K and WotR was cut by half, I'm certain the game would be twice as good. If the amount of combat was dropped to 25% of what it is now, I think the game might well be four times as good as it is now (assuming they really thought about what to leave in). But if the combat was cut by 90%, I don't think the game would be ten times as good as it is now.