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

Oof. Just encountered what amounts to a game-halting bug trying to load in to the seige on Drezen after the war council meeting.

Continuously crashing with Unity handler popping up, at around 89% loading out of the commander tent. And here I thought I'd saw a mention of Drezen loading fixes in today's patch update... definitely crashed my mood for the day, dealing with that and trying multiple ways to remedy the issue only for none to work out.

I do find that kind of multiclassing incredibly intimidating. I was never able to grasp full benefits of each level up to successfully plan out my builds - be it DND 3.5, or Pathfinder.

This is where I flip the table and walk off saying "From now on...Class-less only!"

It's funny that we're getting class based systems with so many fiddly homebrews added that peoples head swim, at this point they might as well just go all the way to a classless system.

I don't mind a bit of multiclassing, to be honest, although I agree that splashing in 5 or 6 classes gets exhausting.

5e limits this to some extent by placing level up rewards deeper into the class:


ASI/Feat are awarded every four CLASS levels (not character levels).
Multi-attack requires 5 class levels (no BaB stacking for multiple attacks).
Higher level spells require you to stick with a class (although spell slots do not).

Pathfinder does this a little bit, but a lot more stuff is front loaded (1 level of monk gives wis/cha to AC + a free feat for the most egregious example).

Lol. I will say this about Pathfinder, the learning curve is harder. So though I do like it, I find it harder than BG3 to figure things out. I leveled up, got X ability or spell, Where is X ability or spell? How do I use it properly?

Then there is the UI. As janky as BG3 UI is, Pathfinder's confuses me more. Half the time I can't figure out why 1 minute I can do something and the next I can't.

Still on the fence, so I've decided to check some gameplay footage to at least have a taste of the writing and the gameplay.

Turns out I am still as allergic to artificially-sweeted cardboard as I was when I had stoically suffered through Dragon Age: Inquisition for some reason. It's that flavor of tryhard, but with the over-verbose and clearly originally Russian (the punctuation and the sentence structure betray it all) text on top of it all. Guess there's no accounting for taste. So, a big nope there.

And the gameplay is just Kingmaker, but... worse? In a way that instead of getting more concise and to the point, it's mechanically even more redundant with even more subclasses that nobody cared to balance. What's the point of hundreds of features if many of them either don't work because of bugs or don't work because they don't function within the game's difficulty and encounter design? Another big nope.

Guess NWN2 remains the 3.5 fix for me still.

The fence you say? Suuure. Consider me suprised...not.

At least you didn´t have to actually play the game to feed your confirmation bias. That´s some bucks you saved.

We just have to wait for the new and refreshing "reasons" (again) about why you are not going to buy (again) a game that you were never meant to play nor buy in the first place. You surely spend a lot of time finding reasons to dislike more a game you already loathed in the first place, without even playing it. TBH I do not really care if you like or if you buy the game, I just find it puzzling.

Sure did.

I don't buy the on the fence thing, especially after your response to my previous post. At the very least, we're actually brutally honest about how WotR isn't really for everyone and does have significant problems, compared to how most of the BG3 community appears to be handling their own game with kid's gloves in comparison.

Though even for all its faults, its highs for me are still higher than BG3's highs in the current state of both games, though Larian has 1-2 years to surprise everyone.

I tend to give all CRPGs a try, despite their faults. Just have been burned more than once at this point (Solasta, to name the latest example).

I have to say, after playing with Core, it's not as hard to me as people have made it out to be. At the same time though, I have the power of beta foresight, and I've been watching my DM going in blind and getting destroyed with a much less optimized party setup. It's... Undeniably overtuned without significant min-max. Like it gives me the impression that it's balanced for the assumption that you're going to be going in to each boss fight almost fully buffed to the max at the very minimum.

A couple enemies really need a balance pass. Especially the swarms in chapter 2, and the plagued tigers or somesuch with +22 bonus to hit because fuck you that's why. They have counters but they're so specific that it's only really one step removed from telling someone to just high ground stealth ambush in BG3. It's probably worse here because they chose to adapt the one AP involving enemies with across the board resistances or immunities to damn near everything early on. I've been hitting delay button a lot and waiting for enemies to come to me too, because walking up to them with only one attack while giving them their full attack is a whole lot worse than the other way around.

On the other hand, the enemy AI is now starting to threaten my back line much more often. Maybe they just made the AI dumber in chapter 1 or something.

Yeah, Solasta =/ I still have hopes about the title. It is a very solid D&D5e tabletop simulator, with an engine easy to mod and somewhat complete and faithful to the original material, with an interesting crafting and camping system...but the main campaign was not very engaging for me. Short, simple, the dialogues and NPCs are merely an excuse to send you to another dungeon, that, by the way, are Final fantasy linear dungeons, even tho the game has a very cool 3d environment they do not use it to the fullest. I am not sure if introducing more classes (druid and barbarian) is going to improve the gameplay if they do not give something interesting to do with the new features.

I still have one hope: the community and fanmade campaigns. The first Neverwinter ended up with a very active community that made great campaigns to play and the successive DLCs were much better. It would be a pity if a good engine for D&D5e with an interesting editor is going to waste.
I too have high hopes for the BG3 editor, andthe modding community to improve some of the things that I do not find very palatable about how the BG3 game is made ( the fire surfaces, the hp bloat, the lack of feat, and multiclass options, etc).


That said, the good thing is we live in a good year for CRPGs. Even if some are not for all people, we have great titles for the genre in the making or already made, like bg3, Solasta, Black geyser, knights of the chalice 2, Wasteland 3, etc.
And the good thing is that you can play all or none, you do not really have to choose more than how much your wallet allow =D

I expected those games were going to come at the same time, but luckily it seems we had (and will have) enough time between them to try them all.

I think 5e has the same issue, one level of monk or barbarian also gives you Wis or Con to AC (Plus dex) by means of unarmored defense. And the way D&D5 is made, a 20AC plus armor is much more difficult to beat than in pathfinder 1e and 2e (you have more ways to improve your %to hit besides getting advantage)

And barbarians can use shields with unarmored defense, could pick the bear totem that halves any damage besides psychic, etc... so it is even worse.

Also, if we can talk about the common dip with one level of Warlock that gives you the best damaging cantrip on the game, eldritch blast (that improves with character level, not with class level so you can use it up to level 20 without penalties), and the hex curse at level one, one of the best ways to reliably add damage for 8 hours (if an enemy dies, you can pick another target to curse so basically you can do it all the time, since its a bonus action); and some other patron feature. I level of warlock has something that is useful for all classes. Yes, you heard well, all classes.

Since the last feat/ASI comes at level 19, not 20, there is a meme about why this is: So all classes could pick a level in Warlock.

Solasta's a good base for something that can go in a wildly different direction in the future. Hopefully WotC decides to bankroll them and have them adapt modules into video game format as a sort of competitor to the Pathfinder cRPGs - the main difference being they should go for an ultra tabletop-style experience and focus entirely on multiplayer functionality if they pursue this direction. This on top of a refined dungeon maker could result in something really special that quite frankly can't be replicated by anything else right now. BG3 could in theory, but it's obvious at this point that the single player design is holding back the multiplayer and vice-versa, along with the engine probably having its own set of limitations that people outside of Larian will struggle with, like how D:OS2's tools are largely neglected.

And if WotC doesn't, maybe Paizo should look into finding a studio that can do it for Pathfinder. It should light a fire under WotC's asses to stop funneling resources into projects like that recent Dark Alliance disaster that are only DnD in name only.

Coincidentally, Solasta is a Unity engine game. Unity recently acquired something called Parsec, which to my knowledge is a peer to peer multiplayer gaming app that lets people share the same app while passing the controls around, or something? I had heard offhand of people using it to try to play Solasta with multiplayer a month ago. I looked around on YouTube just now and found a video of a group utilizing it, and it looks really fun.


Maybe Unity is looking into some type of official integration with more freedom for individual players, precisely for games like Solasta? It could be really huge for cRPGs in the future.

And hats off to Owlcat for putting them in, wasn’t supposed to sound like a criticism.

I do think I would personally prefer fewer classes and thus a tighter dialogue, but that’s possibly just me.

The Mythic classes are a bit weird, so far I have only had the choice of Heaven and a dash of Aeon. I just haven’t encountered anything else. Presumably due to being chaotic-good and choosing a lot of “good” answers, but it just means my play through currently is a little cliche(?!). That said I’m still at the story point prior to Dresen (just did the swarm encounter).
So it sounds like there is still plenty of water to flow under said proverbial bridge of options.

You didn´t find Demon, Trickster and Azata choices playing chaotic? At least the Dialogues with demon choices are unmissable at chapter one
Don´t worry if you don´t find more mythic paths dialogues because the choice comes much later in the game (even tho in the first chapter appear 4-5 of the 10 possible). The first two-three chapters are to showcase the different paths so you can make a choice when the time comes.

Sorry, yes I encountered Demon as a counterpoint to Heaven.

Ah ok, more later, that’s good. The game doesn’t make it obvious (read: idiot proof) that you’re not locked in (though the tooltip perhaps kinda said that iiirc to be fair). So I was under the impression I that I was now already going down the Heaven rabbit hole.

It’s odd, I find myself liking this a lot more than Pillars of Eternity (1), which I only played so far and got a little bored with. However due to also managing armies (in a janky manner that feels very half baked), I do find myself needing to turn off, rather than push on.

I find there is too much time spent on the map, with army and character move speeds too slow. The encounters haven’t improved and the wandering skeleton merchant is useless to me most of the time as I never seem to have any money/need what he is selling. In fact I swore I somehow lost 12k!! Either that was a bug when I backed out of buying a mercenary, or someone is not just planting heads in my inventory!! (Stealing money would be quite neat).

But I do think it is the little things all adding up, the choices, and wondering when the next foxy surprise will hit, that is keeping me playing with a smile on my face.

People complain about Astarion and Shadowheart, but they’re no different to Count or Camellia, it’s just the cinematic approach of BG3 makes a little more in your face. I actually hope BG3 add some more subtle characters, because in WotR I’m a little on the fence about the companions so far, they’re all annoying in their own way, lol. Though Lan and Count have grown on me and Romance wise the only female I’ve been able to flirt with is the frigging queen!!! It’s a good thing I’m an elf and still older than she is he he.

Regarding the argument about there being too many classes to pick from and them being overwhelming, for somoene new to the system I can completely understand that being the case. I am loving the game, but the amount of options you need to go through are intense. I'm just following the reccomended builds for companions and only focusing on my MC. Something I think would help new players in that regard is a thing PoE2 implemented, which is that they state what position each class is meant to fill upfront. So you know which classes are meant to be support, damage dealing, tanking, etc. I feel like having that for WotR would be incredibly helpful as it would let players understand what each class is really meant for and it would kind of shrink down the options conceptually. Instead of having to parse all the classes individually, they're more able to think "do I want to deal damage in this way or another? Do I want to support my allies or buff my enemies?" The problem is never really about raw number of options, it's about how much information players need to parse out, and plainly stating what role each class is meant to fulfill (including the combinations hybrid classes present) would let new players more easily understand not just how to make their characters, but how to construct a party.

This comparison is ridiculous. Wrath of the righteous is written by and for children.

That's a rather strong statement.
I do find the writing is a little "run of the mill" for an rpg, but I wouldn't have stated it as inflammatory as you did.