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

Eh, at this point it wouldn't be a proper thread about any NOT_LARIAN_GAME without Brainer jumping in every few replies with the most scathing comments, disparaging the title for not living up to his extremely harsh standards.

These games have a lot of problems and they are quite serious, so it is justified.
And if it does not bother someone, it is his business.

Yeah, sure. Whatever floats your boat.
It's just amusing to see that same super-harsh standards aren't applied to other titles that have just as many problems, if not arguably worse ones.

There are several aspects of DOS 1, 2 and (admittedly, to a lesser degree SO FAR) BG3 that annoy me just as much if not MORE than anything wrong with Kingmaker or Wrath of the Righteous.
Not to mention there's also plenty of foregone conclusions about "TERRIBLE THINGS" the two Owlcat games do and "shouldn't do" that I simply disagree with.

Case in point: for all its shortcoming, I'll take a flawed Kingdom management over a game not even ATTEMPTING to give some sense of scale to its own central adventure.

Your will, but for me if one of the game's main features is half finished and boring then that's a big downside.
I don't even mention the combat system, but rather the dubious encounters project, because I wrote about it a dozen pages ago.
If you do not mind, your choice.

I'm one of those Durance haters. Sorry.
I'm also one of the few people who thinks Chris Avallone is highly overrated as a writer, and that his writing is boring and pedantic and ridiculously over the top. And that is pretty much how I see Durance as a character. Just plain annoying.

But overall I've loved most of the companions from the two PoE games. Same for the Pathfinder games.

Are we talking about the same game? Seriously. I'm not understanding how you can call it "half finished and boring."

And what's wrong with the combat system?

You know what? Never mind. It's obviously just your opinion versus mine on the matter. Let's not get into all the reasons why you hate the combat.

I mean, I don't like RWTP at all, but it has turn-based alternative that I do like, and the fact that I can bounce between the two for combats that are obviously going to be easy to win without much thought is nice.

Example. Kingmaker. Zombies outside the Stag Lord's Fort. Turn-based was grinding me down. Switched to RTWP so my characters could wipe out hordes of zombies in a few seconds - because they weren't tough and I didn't need to cast spells and such, made what COULD have been a tedious Turn-Based event into a 20 second at best breeze.

And in Wrath, defending the inn against the cultists and demons in Turn-Based mode was right up my alley. Lots of enemies, but they were coming from all directions and killing crusaders and such left and right. I could easily speed up the rounds by hitting Spacebar, and I enjoyed the longer Turn-Based fight even though it was bigger because there was a bit of strategy involved.

I even tried it in RTWP, and though I didn't do as well, it sure was crazy and fast-paced. I enjoyed it a lot.

I don't know. I haven't beaten either game yet, so maybe later I'll understand where you're coming from. But seriously, I'm enjoying both Pathfinder games a lot. As Tuco said, there are SO many things they did right that BG3 has not done right.

Ugh! If only BG3 did half of the things Pathfinder and Solasta have done right, it would take an already amazing game and blast it through the roof.

Day/night
Party of 6
Weather
Implementing legit rules that make sense with the game instead of strange Shove = 50 feet+ rules and such
Rest mechanics that make sense and have meaning and impact

That said, I don't like:

Random encounters in either Kingmaker or WOTR. They're just frustrating and annoying. Either they're too easy or too hard, and overall just uninteresting

Still too much item management. It's WAY better than BG3, but there's still too much picking up food, moss, spoons, plates, etc. that you sell anyway as junk. It's kinda pointless. Just drop more gold.

There's more. I mean, neither game is perfect by far, but overall I like them both.

Everybody has their priorities. As someone who both supported Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous on Kickstarter, took part in a both alpha and beta for the former. I have clocked over 1000 hours in Kingmaker and I enjoyed it (especially with closer to pnp fixes mods) a lot more more than Larain's D:OS2. However with release of WoTR in its bugged state, it's clear for me that Owlcat is happy to not only release game with broken mechanics, misleading descriptions, but continue to ignore those issues. For me, who enjoys the discovery of playing different classes and trying out things for myself, finding out after 70 hours that a 12th level class or mythic choice is bugged, just shows a complete lack of respect for a costumer. This literally happened on my first play-through of WoTR, when my bloodrager started dispelling his own buffs with Aeon abillties. Or persistent metamagic was useless for half of spells. And the list could continue for 20 page document. The mod attempting to fix those issues has a really long change list.

For people who enjoy copying online builds or just play for story not mechanics that might not be an issue, but it was for me, especially since it happened second time.

On the other hand, while I have some issues with BG3, I at least see an attempt to ensure that stuff they put in the game works. That just can't be said about Owlcat.

GM4Him, if I may, out of curiousity - how far are you in WOTR right now and what mode (TB/RTWP) do you usually go for? Outside of some specifics I don't find Act 1 too bad but Act 2/3 can potentially change perspective a lot.
I 'd also say familiarity with the systems helps a lot in enjoying it too while it can be an absolute hell for someone who is not familiar - like me, for example.

I was not supposed to do it, but whatever. I will only write about WotR because it has quite similar problems with Kingmaker.

In the case of Owlcat, if something has not been implemented in accordance with the rules, you will never know without your own tests or the Internet.
The descriptions were literally copied from the manual.

Owlcat is an example of a DM who loves to bully a group.
It is not that the fights are difficult, but that they are extremely focused on punishing the player.
I understand that mythic path adds a lot of power to the character, the problem is that some are just much better and the rest get good stuff only in the 4th act.
The game loves to throw enemies at the player who can easily stunlock the entire team for eternity (because DC is absurd). Of course, there is no way to defend against the majority (at least to the level you encounter them).

The game starts doing it with Leaper Smile but against worms although you can defend yourself with Unbreakable Heart, unfortunately the same cannot be said for most.
I already wrote about the random encounter a few pages ago. It's no fun when you start a fight being fully surrounded with enemies that have initiative. As soon as you complete Leaper Smile the game starts to throw more and more absurd random encounters at you. The jump in difficulty is like fighting a wounded Kobold and a gang of trolls.
Of course, you don't have any buffs then, which means every attack will most likely hit and yours won't. This ends up with at least 1-2 delicate characters being killed in the first turn.
While Nabasu in Act 2 stating Hold Person Mass was annoying, Act 3 goes all the way and I don't believe that any of the developers tested them and said they are okay.

The crusade system is just boring and completely disconnected from the rest of the game and unintuitive. The units are unbalanced and the fight itself is a boring copy of HoMM5.
If you choose general mage in the beginning congratulations you just won a crusade, if not then you will struggle with it a few months longer. This is their second game and they have learned nothing at all. If, instead of creating a nonsensical system for anyone, they focused on the game, the end result would be better.

The rest system does not matter in the slightest if you wanted to, you could rest for almost every fight. Of course you don't because after each such rest you would have to spend 5 minutes buffing. Most fights don't even last a minute.
Whoever has more buffs wins. The corruption mechanic alone does nothing, I have never managed to hit even the first level.
To make it funnier in some main missions it doesn't even exist. In practice, you can spend several months in Shield Maze or Drezen Castle. It's not much different from BG3.

If other things are important to you, it doesn't bother me, but I personally don't care much about the day cycle or the weather.
What is important to me is the plot and whether the game is enjoyable.

I don't hate pathfinder. I spent over 200 hours in WotR and if the game ended with a siege of Drezen, I would give this game 10/10.
Unfortunately, however, it takes too long and becomes too annoying with each act.
I managed to finish the game once, then the furthest I got was 4 act, where after reaching the city I had had enough.

Man, I feel this so much. Literally completed it yesterday for the second time and it's sooo climactic.
Yet after I completed it there's a bad thought gnawing at me; up until the siege it kinda was the introductory part of the game and here the game actually begins... with a lot more routine. The fact that it took me about a day of real time (and tehre were some occasional reloads) to get to that point... I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not. My full playthrough of available BG3 content clocked out at about 40 hours (same with the reloads) and I felt that BG3 was a much more intense experience in these 40 hours while I know that I'll spend a lot more time on Act 3 crusade routine in WOTR at the same mark. Yet I still can't bring myself to call WOTR a bad game because I clearly still care enough that I didn't drop it.

Still in Act 1. TB is my main play style. I only use RTWP if I'm sure it's a super trash mobs fight that I can win without much chance of taking too much damage. I think AI scripts tend to be stupid, and 9 times out of 10, letting the AI control my characters even for a moment tends to get them killed.

Like defending the inn. As soon as an enemy died, my PCs were roaming like idiots for several seconds, not sure what to do with themselves. I really like TB. It's slower, but FAR more intelligent and strategic.

As for familiarity, Pathfinder was a learning curve to be sure. I'd forgotten one of the things I didn't like about 3.5e. All those options for character creation and leveling up. Ugh. Too many options. That's why I like 5e so much. Simple IS better.

But whatever, I'm enjoying the heck out of both games on Normal. Absolutely hated Kingmaker on Challenging. Normal, yes. Love it. Liked it so much I suddenly wanted WOTR whereas before, on Challenging, I swore I never would.

Again - if neither Kingmaker/WotR nor Solasta actually showed promise for being amazing while ending up a stinking pile of letdown (more like a single little puddle of letdown in Solasta's case), I wouldn't have been nearly as vitriolic about them. There are plain mediocre things (Sword Coast Legends is an example) and there are those that try to shoot for the stars and have an engine failure half-way through. Heck, if BG3 ends up being the same, I'd likely give it the same treatment (knock on wood).


- Day/night just being cosmetic and not doing anything is not particularly appealing. Sure, you can have nocturnal enemies and the like, but if every NPC just stays awake and nothing changes during the night in their behaviour, then what's the point? It's fine when the urban areas are just a backdrop, like in the Pathfinder games, but Larian try to make them interactive and detailed.
- Would slow bigger fights to a crawl and make for fewer varying party compositions. 4 is probably the sweet spot for turn-based, 5 is already a bit too many.
- Again, what exactly does it do in Pathfinder games except get in the way? I don't remember a single instance in at least Kingmaker where a storm or a snowfall are actually meaningful for anything except combat penalties that mostly affect you, the player. Plus, there're likely to be D:OS-like regions with ambient weather that is there as a puzzle/threat element that was designed to be there rather than randomly slapped onto an otherwise unremarkable area.
- As was stated above, Owlcat aren't above making up crap and not adhering to the rules either. Though I do agree that the Shove is at Dark Messiah's kick levels of outta control.
- Can't relate to WotR here, but in Kingmaker rest is an issue only until you get your barony. Afterwards it's mostly just akin to PoE where you have a hard limit on how many sets of supplies you can carry (carry weight-related rather than a numerical cap), and even then it's practically gone once you get a few bags of holding, so nothing really stops you from rest-spamming to a degree. The rules for armor and ambushing mostly lead to the player reloading rather than dealing with it, in my experience, it's too much of a hassle otherwise. In BG3 there are already hints of rest potentially being dangerous (like how ), so I'd imagine there'll be more of those. And even then, the only adaptation that's ever really done rest right and made it have impact is NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer, where you are punished for resting too much for story-related reasons and are encouraged to pace your rests.

Gotcha. I'm curious to see what you'll think of later acts and especially crusade.
Personally I just can't play TB in WOTR. As much as I love TB I tried and it just takes too long in this game (and still feels like more or less an after-thought). Tavern fight can take up to hour if not more as every NPC makes a move; trying to imagine how long it would take me to do the later acts is not a pleasant thought - I just don't have so much free time to slog through the game.

Huh. But the fight lasted maybe 30 minutes. Speed up animations moves the round pretty quick.

I don't know. We'll see. People out here now have me quite apprehensive.

Hmm... In general I like both WotR and KM - but there are a few things I am not too fond off. Here's my two cent to the pile:

Positive things:

* Well written evil companions. The good companions are "meh" in general, but very much acceptable.
* I really like the insane amount of character customization when it comes to class levels... I am probably really bad at it and any min-maxer would probably cringe away at most of my builds - but I think it is fun anyways.
* I love the skill check system compared to regular 5e. Failing a skill check is almost impossible if it is one of the skills that your character is going for and that certainly gives the feeling of the character actually being good at what they do.
* I like the dialogue choices. And no, I am not referring to "I don't like you, die!" - but rather the decision making you get to do at certain points that will affect the story later on. (who to side with, whenever to send reinforcement, which target to go to first etc)
* A relatively well working TB *and* RTWP system.
* Companion banter. <3
* Gorgeous character portraits.
* Amazing music.
* More often than not, beautiful maps.
* Fun easter eggs and treasures hidden on pretty much all maps. c:

Less positive things:

* I absolutely hate spell DC. I am really salty about picking up dispell spells, only to have the DC of spells that I'd like to dispell be absolutely sky-high and sometimes even impossible to dispell (even with a nat20 + mods). I've spent more than 2 irl days on a specific map with 3+ "bosses" (a tree, a really boring demon with a nasty poison debuff and a bear) + whatever I'll find within the actual encampment. ... I've never had to spam long rest this much on a map before and it is, least said, starting to get really boring. >.<
* Companion conversations (aka, the kind where you and your companion talk to each other with dialogue options) are very few and far between. It feels weird to talk with my companions after a big event and all they have to say about it is the very same things as before. :']
* Crusader/Kingdom management is not really fun. I am in the "please no"-camp for these activities. It is *extremely* immersion breaking and it feels very tiresome. I mean, sure, it is fun to see some actual map progress and feel like your reach is expanding... But micromanaging decisions every other day is just "ugh". And lets not even get started on being called back to HQ *just* as you went to explore a bit.
* Big combat maps are not fun. See, I have no issue with let's say the Market Square in act 1. There is loads of fun stuff to find and loads of important RP opportunities. But stuff like the encampment I am at now? Or the kobold encampment in KM? Not fun. It feels like I am just stuck EXP grinding; same mobs over and over, occasional "boss", then more trash mobs.
* Random encounter system - please no.
* Armor is flat out ugly. :'] Not as bad as DoS2 rogue armor, but still bad.
* "Alright tough encounter ahead, let's buff up guys..."

Wintersun is not that difficult location. Just use delay poision and you shouldn't have any problems.

The bosses in this game are easier than most of the random mobs you meet in act 4, and that's no exaggeration.
As for spells, most literally do nothing in the later game unless you use the weird and goofy and obviously buggy interaction that the expanded arsenal with spell focus has.
It's just not worth worrying about.

Since we're still using this thread as a general other RPG discussion thread... Something I've been super stoked for was finally officially announced.



Steam/Switch/PS4/PS5.

I never got a chance to play this, as the most recent re-release was essentially trapped on the PSP. But I've heard over the years that Japanese gamers basically consider this game to be akin to what Planescape: Torment represents to cRPG enthusiasts, and still widely considered one of the best RPGs of all time across the ocean, from a time before JRPGs largely veered into inane teenage power of friendship plots. I will finally get to see if that assessment is well deserved this November.

Supposedly, the game's main draw on the narrative side is that it's largely political along with focusing on its human/mortal cast, rather than most other JRPGs focusing on the fantastical aspects. And there's three branching paths in the narrative influenced by decisions made earlier in the game (listed as Chaos, Neutral, and Law from what little research I've done on the game), and even smaller branches of each path that can dictate things like how a particular mission can play out, or if a character becomes recruitable or dies as a result of your decisions. There's so many branches that there's even a function to roll back your story progress with your party levels and items intact so you can experience everything without having to fully restart the game. It was apparently super ambitious for its time, and still considered super ambitious considering the current state of JRPGs today.

As suspected, no actual revamp of the graphics but just one of these questionable "anti-aliasing" filters.

There seems to be a lot more info here. It looks like they're putting a lot of effort into this remaster, considering I've seen people commenting about how it looks like the game's stats and character/class progression have been rebalanced.

https://www.square-enix-games.com/en_US/news/tactics-ogre-reborn

And you can recruit griffins and dragons into your party!

The visuals also don't look like the standard vaseline filter was applied. Maybe it just looks that way because the sprites of some of the characters seem to be quite brightly colored in contrast to the background.

The Nvidia leaks also mention that Matsuno's other masterpiece, Final Fantasy Tactics, was also going to receive a remaster. (FFT is far more widely known on our side of the oceans - though Tactics Ogre was considered far more influential in Japan, one example being that FFXIV's current success can be directly traced back to the existence of Tactics Ogre, as it is the primary reason the current producer wanted to join Square Enix in the hopes of developing a game together with Matsuno. Debates on whether FFT or TO is the superior game seem to mirror debates about whether Planescape: Torment or BG2 is the better game on our side of the gaming sphere. Sometimes they throw one of Matsuno's other games, Vagrant Story, into these arguments too, though it's not a SRPG.)

There were interviews over the years about how FFT was originally going to have a split path narrative with the option to follow Delita's story, but it had to be axed due to dev time and disc space concerns with all effort put into completing Ramza's route instead. I suspect that ever since Matsuno stepped back from working on FFXIV scenarios as a guest writer, he's been working on completing development for that path for the FFT remaster.

I'm also very interested in Diofield Chronicles.



A JRPG utilizing RTwP combat is almost unheard of, and even though I strongly prefer turn-based, I'm compelled to try this out just to see how it works. The console versions are supposed to be getting a demo on the 10th, but seeing as I am PC only, I wonder if there's anyone else here who will try it out and report back here with impressions?

So some people got a chance to preview Diofield Chronicles, which is supposed to have a demo later today or tomorrow. It looks like actual effort was put into this game, fairly surprising for Square Enix's new IPs. And it looks like there *IS* going to be a PC demo.

I don't particularly favor RTwP compared to turn-based, but it looks like an interesting mix of RTS and RTwP, quite rare for JRPGs. I might pick this up on that principle alone. That and the fact that nothing else really interests me between this month and TO: Reborn releasing in November.