Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous vs BG3

High five! I didn’t have courage to boot up WofR though, so don’t have an opinion on this one.

It's a good game.

It is kinda overbloated though, and falls short on visuals. I have no idea how they managed to make the same armors from kingmaker at the same time more 3D and worse looking. All the curves and the angles from the waist down are wrong.

Anyway, still a good game, but i wouldn't play it again.

P.S. When i say visuals, i don't mean graphics fidelity, i mean artistic direction.

GM4Him, thanks for the report on PF:WOTR. That game is already on my list of games that I will most definitely buy and play at some point (probably when all expansions are out and there's a nice discounted bundle), but your comment still increases my interest for this game.

Now, as much as I can be critical of a number things in BG3, and those are things that are fully in Larian's hands, I feel compelled to point that 11 and 16 sound, fundamentally, more like pluses that PF 1E has over D&D 5E, in your opinion. So it's not really something Larian could do anything about.

Which is absolutely fine. This is the General section of the forum after all, not Suggestions & Feedback. Ultimately, the popularity of the IPs will greatly influence the sales. While the intrinsic merits of the respective rulesets the games are based on will lead various players to prefer one game's gameplay (character progression and combat especially) over the other.

On the hand, I guess, every other point you listed constitutes a valid piece of feedback. I'm not sure how much Nicou and Salo sift through this forums section in search for things that could perhaps, potentially be feedback (as opposed to collecting well-formatted feedback items posted in the Feedback section). Nor whether it's worth you posting those in Suggestions & Feedback section, given how unlikely it is to make any difference at this point. Mostly, I just wanted to separate your "16 reasons why WOTR > BG3" into those reasons that are based on the different source materials and those that Larian could do something about.

17. More expression on avatar faces. Some are mean, some mischievous, some innocent, etc.
18. The ability to redo ANY custom characters including appearance and stats if you don't like the way they're turning out.
19. Party movement controls are easy to use and pathing is WAY better.
20. UI is overall easy and easy to understand. There are a few items that took me some time to understand, but lots of hotbar slots for those who like hotbars. However, Spells have their own menu, Special Abilities have their own menu, and items have their own menu, and they are all easy to find and use.
21. Multiple weapon sets for easy switch between weapons you equip.
22. I mentioned animal companions that can actually have weapons and equipment, but I didn't mention just how many options you have to choose from. SO many more options.
23. Druid wild shape options are also more varied.
24. LOTS more variety of enemies to face.
25. Random encounters - not just fighting random encounters but other random events that make the world feel more alive.
26. Auto-leveling options for NPCs you don't want to choose level up options for.
27. Items that have value - meaning potions and scrolls are valuable because you actually run out of spell slots and such and need the items to complete quests. Also, items have unique abilities that make you want to keep them around and maybe switch between them to fight different monsters. Hammer deals more damage against undead, sword against chaotic monsters, dagger causes Constitution damage, another weapon causes disease...
28. Stealth makes sense. No sight cones, etc.
29. ALL skills have value and importance.
30. You can set characters to None for custom characters voice options. Thus, if you don't like any voices, you don't need to have them.
31. Characters don't make faces that go against their character personality. My evil characters don't smile like they're friends with everyone.
32. No crazy shove or throw mechanics where enemies shove you 30+ feet off cliffs or into lava for 1-hit KOs.

All that said, next I'll post all the ways BG3 is better than WotR. If I think of any other pluses WotR has over BG3, I'll also post those, but I think I got most of them.

2/22. Animal companions are implemented very badly. They're just too strong. Do you want a tank for unfair? Forget multiclassing, a horse is enough (it is one of the weakest pets).
I'm not even kidding, I finished the game that way. It wasn't even too difficult. Most of the characters were far from being optimal.

4. I wouldn't call the need to spend gold on crusade a good mechanic. Honestly, all this mechanic is removable because all it does is waste the player's time.
The crusade mechanics are completely disconnected from the rest of the game, if in some patch they decided to remove it, the game would only benefit.
At the moment, this is an extremely lame version of homm5, and if you didn't have to deal with it all the time, Act 3 wouldn't be that bad.

6. TB is tragic in pathfinder mainly because the fight was created for the RTWP.
Enemies AI is almost non-existent, and they almost always attack the first character they see. Of course, unless they show up in the middle of the fight, then no matter where your main character is standing, they will chase him even if they were to catch AoO from all characters on the map.
Fortunately, their next game is fully TB which means that maybe this time this mode will be fun.

7. Most of the fights in the game are all about buffing, then order your party to move.
This way you can win about 80% of all fights in the game, even on Unfair.
The remaining 20% are fights where the eniemies have high AC that you need to use short buffs.

11. Really? How is the game balanced? The Owlcat wouldn't be able to balance it even if their lives depended on it.
There are tons of archetypes that are extremely unbalanced, some are competently broken, some are totally useless and some still don't work properly.
The stats are so bloat that the goblins of bg3 don't seem like a big deviation from the rules.
If this is a problem in one game, it should be in the other as well.
Most spells are virtually useless for this reason, unless you use questionable interaction with expanded arsenal (which still doesn't work properly, by the way)

19. In RTWP mode, if the characters have no clear path to the opponent, they will circle around and catch all AoOs.
Often times, any obstacle in the way of the pathing will stop working. The characters will just circle around. This happens more than it should, unfortunately.
The best example will be the Nienio recruitment. The character on the horse is not able to avoid the bonfire and reach the archers on his own.

24. A large variety of enemies? Compared to what? In act 1 you fight a babau then you meet the same only "boosted" throughout entire the game.
Honestly, we should compare the opponents only from Act 1 to BG3, it turns out that they do not differ much in the number of unique enemies.

25. Random encounters are the biggest crap in this game.
From the middle of act 2, a random encounter, in most cases, ends with either the death of one character or the complete annihilation of your party.
Most bosses are easier than any encounter in act 3. Hope I never see them in bg3

27. You shouldn't run out of spells in the main game because you can rest as much as you want (within reason).
In most large locations, the corruption either doesn't work (Shield Maze, Drezen) or you have a lot of items to undo it (Gray Garrison, Ivory Labyrinth).
Most of the items that require DC are largely useless because in practice they have a 5% chance of working.

17/31. I don't understand this point, the game literally has no facial expressions. I wouldn't call it any advantage, and certainly not something that is better than bg3.

32. The game has a lot of broken mechanics. For example: double stacksAC from two different classes (shouldn't work like that) or pets.
Most of this is due to poor implementation by Owlcat.
One more example of protective luck + fortune + cacke allows you to cheese the game without any problems (in this case it's not entirely Owlcat's fault).

If I have time, I will refer to the rest of the points.

I agree on everything you said, and ESPECIALLY on the crusade. What were they thinking. It has to be the most unfun thing I have seen in any video game. Instead of having to play a fun CRPG, I have to play a separate side game which is terribly unbalanced and removed from anything else. Act 3 is already dragging on for too long, crusade made me straight up drop the WotR entierly for months.
I know it can be disabled, but I feel kinda bad to play on a custom difficulty.

Things BG3 is better than WotR at:

1. Story. This is big for me. WotR story is okay, but it's definitely not as engaging and doesn't hook me like BG3.
2. Characters. Another big one. I know many will disagree, but there aren't many characters in either Pathfinder game that I enjoy like BG3s characters. Even Nadira the pink haired tiefling, Sazza the goblin, and Mayrina the idiot girl with Ethel are more interesting than most characters in Pathfinder games. Don't get me wrong, Pathfinder characters are okay, but frankly I enjoy a mostly custom party rather than a party of Pathfinder origin characters. Not so in BG3.
3. Graphics. OMG. BG3 blows them all away.
4. Fully voiced and cinematic scenes. This does help the wow and enjoyment factor. Especially when there is a lot of story content, having scenes acted and voices REALLY makes the game more fun. Sometimes when I have a lot of reading moments in WotR I start to glaze over.
5. Camera is better than WotR. I can actually almost have drive cam mode in BG3. I wish the camera was more like Neverwinter Online or FF14 so I could zoom in real close and tilt up and all, but it's definitely better than WotR and Solasta. Because I can manipulate the camera to be pretty close to drive mode, I feel more immersed in the environment.
6. D&D 5e. It's SO much simpler than Pathfinder and so much easier to level up, understand, etc.
7. No Kingdom/Crusade management. I must say, I am not a big fan of either. They're okay, but they are my least favorite parts of both Pathfinder games.

I'll provide more later.

I will say, it took me a bit to fully get into the crusade. However, once I understood how it worked, I enjoy it. Definitely not my favorite part, but I have to disagree with you. It's most definitely NOT a separate side game, terribly unbalanced, or removed from anything else. You HAVE to get good at it to progress. Enemies start to spawn in the map to invade your territory. If you try to take your main party along a path where an enemy army is, you have to fight a sometimes difficult encounter.

I have 1 major general and 2 leaders. I was booking up my main army and starting to feel pretty dang invincible when BAM! I fought an enemy army that took out some of my best troops because it's general did bolts of lightning that wiped whole units out each turn. I still won the battle, and some troops survived, but I had to retreat a bit to buy more troops. Hard? Yes. But it was a challenge, not unbalanced. And it didn't take long to recoup losses.

Again, not my favorite part of the game, but it is a main part of the full game, decently balanced once you get how it works, and definitely not removed from everything else.

8. Exploration. Definitely more fun in BG3. I feel like a lot of Pathfinder exploration is like Solasta. It's kinda like "keep checking your map to see how much you've cleared and what loot you missed. Oh! Missed a lot. Backtrack a sec. Pick it up. All clear!". One of the things I love about BG3 is I do feel I'm actually exploring places. If I miss stuff, I miss stuff. It's more realistic in that regard. The fact that they DO have lots of trash items makes finding real items harder. You have to REALLY search places, not just blast through. It can get a bit tedious at times, but it certainly isn't so linear. BG3 is definitely more immersive in this area. You can go pretty much everywhere on the whole map, and I actually enjoy fully mapping out everything.
9. Verticality. It can be frustrating at times, and I want things like a GOOD Fly spell such as Solasta has, and maybe an auto-jump outside combat, but I love that I have places to climb and ledges and the ability to fall, etc. With Pathfinder, it's all about following the set paths. They have moments where you can use a Mobility or Athletics check to "climb" somewhere, but it's like teleporting to another location. You don't even get a climb animation. You can't shove or fall off precarious places... Yeah. As much as I think shove and throw need a rework to tame them down, I enjoy the ability to toss or shove enemies off high places or even just having high ground strategy. Yes. I love high ground ever since they switched it to the bonus rather than advantage.

Crusade is practically nothing interesting. The fights are extremely simple, even though the units that the player has access to are extremely unbalanced. Some like shield bearers are practically useless where the hedge knights are extremely broken.

The fight you are talking about is literally one in the game and you can still do it easily without any losses. The rest is very easy as long as you have healing (any general can unlock it).
If you have a mage general, you don't even need an army. Most fights in Act 3 are completed in 2-3 rounds.

The worst thing you can do in the game is to choose a fighter-general and the weakest units. Then I admit you might have a bit of a problem, but it takes deliberate masochism, and the content is definitely not good enough that you want to make the game harder.

I for one love crusade management in WotR, it scratches a very particular itch for me. I'll even go out of my way to engage with it, chasing down enemy units, levelling up my generals and armies, etc. It's not my favorite part either, but I will happily spend just a chunk of time doing nothing but managing the crusade when I want a break from the main campaign. While I disagree with some of GMs points, I'm not gonna try and argue against them because stuff like story and character is quite subjective-I actually think that the BG3 story is outright bad and far less engaging at this point than WotR was by the end of its act 1, but I know that that some stories work better for some people. The first seasons of Game of Thrones are definitely not for me, but I'm not gonna argue with anyone who enjoys them. And I had a friend who thought that the last season was good and a return to form for the series. I just felt the need to particularly defend the crusade management as something that's enjoyable and not fundamentally negative.

All of the aforementioned points make me really, really worried about how Rogue Trader will turn out. We need more good WH40K games out there. Ever since Relic dropped the ball with Dawn of War 3 and GW started just giving license away to whoever, one really has to pick and choose the better ones (the Gothic Armada ones, Mechanicus, Daemonhunters and Hired Gun definitely stand out. Gladius too, perhaps, although I was never a fan of the Slitherine stuff). An RPG, too, which would be a first for the setting, so if it still maintains Owlcat's pathological shortcomings in pacing, design, and writing, it would be a mournful occassion indeed...

They don't play on higher difficulties. Most of these complaints are rehashed and not personal, evidenced by the fact that everyone brings up buffs in their rhetoric, when at the game's default difficulty they're not remotely required for progression. You may need a specific buff here and there (the game hands you a See Invisibility scroll early on in one of these instances, just as an example) but prebuffing an entire list is something that's more for Core and above.

I have high hopes for Darktide as well, although that definitely scratches a different itch than Rogue Trader.

This remind me of the experience share debate in modern Pokémon. When people complain about the game being too easy, some say to disable the item that gives you party wide XP. The thing is, no, I do want to use all tools the game is giving me. Pathfinder as its core is flawed in that regard, since using all the tools means you have to use buffs, mounts, dips and as a whole a lot of meta gaming and it makes the game revolve around those strategies. This is why people have been complaining about jump to disengage, shove, potion throwing, circlet of fire, etc... in BG3.

This is ridiculous. Using all the tools in *any* game with buffs will include those buffs. That's the case in *every* Infinity Engine game, it's the case in Skyrim, it's the case in DOS1 and 2, it's the case in PoE1 and 2. I could keep going, but I really don't know what this post is meant to show. It's going to be the case in BG3 as well. The difference between buffs and jump to disengage, shove, potion pools, MMO styled set items, is that even when alone it doesn't cause any sort of problem, added together these things make for a distinct style of game. Which I'm sure you'll say WotR has going for it, but I'd like to reiterate that *all* of those games above I mentioned are, in fact, optimally played with buffs. There is not much difference between WotR's buff usage and, say, Icewind Dale's use of DUHM.

10. Dialogue options. Yes. There could be more. However, I like that the dialogue options are, for the most part, ones I could see my characters saying. And best of all, no alignment tags or mythic tags. What I mean is, if I think my half Drow cleric of Tyr would say something in a particular situation that isn't necessarily Tyrite or Lawful Good, big deal. In BG3, I can have him say what I think he would say with no alignment issues. In WotR, my paladin was being good and shifted to Neutral Good, losing his ability to do paladin spells or even level up as a paladin. Not cool. I don't like the game/devs telling me what is good or evil and shifting my alignment because I don't always agree with the devs on moral issues. Plus, negating dialogue options because you aren't a particular alignment is not cool. If I have a character who is pretending to be evil, let me say evil things... Or vice versa.

Ah Alignment by Owlcat, 50% of the lawful option in this game is to kill someone and about 90% match lawful evil.

...or they make it Chaotic Evil to attempt to get rid of trolls and goblins who are allegedly "peaceful".

Yes, they definitely weren't plaguing the main character's land a hot minute ago.

Speaking of land, having looked back at Kingmaker's plot, I finally realized how incredibly dumb its premise was. You can literally be a devil-worshipper or a necromancer or what have you, and you just get lands handed over to you because you forcefully evicted the previous lord. Yes, Aldori totally isn't getting screwed over by this here Neutral Evil fellow who came up with justfications to rob her manor and leave her guards to die, and who will *totally* support her in her schemes out of obligation (a plot point that gets hyped up a lot and in the end devolves to an ending card, similar to how...)


So, how exactly does the MC end up being the supreme commander of a crusade in WotR, again, no matter their class and alignment?