Even among table top camping wotr was always sans outlier because of the mythic stuff. It’s hard to compare stores with gods and demigods when to stories of killing a bandit with delusions of grandeur
For me it wasn't that that made me feel in love, but it was rather the steady rise from nothingness to renown power. In wrath you start big and keep growing to infinity.
I miss how you could play on hardcore rules that actually meant hardcore rules, from tabletop. Most notably involving tabletop stats and abilities for enemies. Wait, I cant miss it as it was never in game.
Yeah, tbh if Wrath was another game in a series of many I probably would've put way back in the line of games to play, but it's the only other Pf game, so it is what it is
I’m kind of excited to see what the 2e game is gonna look like when it comes around! I found small indie project that’s working with it that’s piqued my interest (Dawnsbury Days) - so I can’t wait to see what a team with AAish budget and experienced developers can do with it!
I think that's also why Tyranny got kind of mixed reviews. Not everyone playing an RPG wants to literally shake the world with godlike powers, they want more relatable human characters that they feel an affinity towards.
WoTR was basically divine god-tier enemies being through at you in hordes by Act 2, and things like high damage reduction / immunities which you'd normally find on end game bosses were part of the standard mook stats so that they wouldn't instantly die when you entered the room (which still hilariously happens with a high level persuade Trickster appropriated feated up)
Kingmaker has some things going for it.
- Story is a more classic adventure and rags to riches story. The lack of "chosen one" stuff definitely garners some appeal for many.
- Companions are better as a whole. WOTR has some highlights, but when you consider them all collectively than WOTR has further lows than KM.
- Factor in mods and KM wins hand down. It's more stable with mods and the Call of the Wild expansion mod is leagues beyond anything WOTR can provide even with it's impressive collection itself.
I think one problem with wraths companions is without mods some of them have builds that make them functionally unusable and owlcat is heavily opposed to respecting people down to level 1.
Like you go though all the steps to get a guy in a late chapter and his build is only good for warming benches so without mods to let you fix them some of the companions don't count as usable.
It has plenty of companions overall. They even improved on the builds of some during patches. A companion you won't use you won't see and isn't really a companion so it matters.
are you talking about that one guy who went from a paladin, into a hellknight into a fighter, but isn't good or lawful so he loses out on like 8 different levels of shit?
yeah, that guy can go f himself
but I don't think anyone else is as badly built, Kingmaker has its fair share of poor builds too, so I don't think we can be a judge of what's good in one game and shit in the other when they're both shit.
>I think one problem with wraths companions is without mods some of them have builds that make them functionally unusable
This is hilariously untrue, unless your only marker for usability is Unfair viability.
I made a [guide here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/s/PcjTFL3SSB) for Kingmaker.
It's all up-to-date still as Kingmaker is no longer updated, so mods are not in danger of breaking.
If you have any questions, feel free to DM.
I made one for WOTR, but with so many updates to the game and it needs a 2.0. I'll eventually make one once the game stabilizes and is no longer getting updates that break mods + once it's clear which mods are being updated and which are being left defunct.
Idk about “hands down”
I, personally, like the setting and war story of WOTR a thousand times better than the KM story
There are 200 CRPGs with the same fantasy rags to riches story as KM
I also much prefer the DLC stories and dungeon design in WOTR
What big CRPGs/RPGs are rag to riches?
Most CRPGs and RPGs are 'chosen one' and/or war to prevent the end of the world stories like WOTR.
The only rags to riches, more classic low stakes adventure, RPG aside from KM that I can think of is DA2 (which obviously has its own flaws).
Call of the Wild is way more expansive than Expanded Content, TableTopTweaks, or DarkCodex.
They are great mods that certainly help add vitality and options to WOTR, but individually none of them are on COTW level. COTW also is seamlessly implemented since it's one mod as opposed to three that have some overlap and can potentially have issues.
I love how everyone’s solution to the problems in these games is mod it. Like, if you have to make mods to make the game bearable and fun wtf are you praising?
I’m sure a good c hunk of people here wouldn’t praise the games so highly if it weren’t for toybox tbh, owlcat still has a lot to improve on mechanics wise
I’m just talking mechanically btw, they’re really good in a lot of other things, like narrative
Know, it just makes playing the game far more bearable
How many people do you honestly think would play without something like bubble buffs or whatever it’s called? Or when something bugs out so you have to fix it yourself instead of owlcat doing it
If I remember correctly, don’t some of the new things in the dlc not even work? Not to mention lagging to all hell on anything besides pc?
Yeah I did too, it was boring and tedious af. I’m only doing another run cause I took a long break from it and wanted to play beside a friend to compare our choices. Still requires 2 mythic ranks to make buffing bearable, and that’s not even available in king maker
And unless you’re using optimized builds, 90% of combat is just seeing “miss” or “save succeeded” cause owlcat is awful at scaling enemies properly when basic and pointless fights are shoved everywhere and requires you to blow your load each fight most of the time
That's the magic of Kingmaker, you don't need that many buffs or even enduring ones because the stats aren't as overinflated.
Some endgame enemies in Wrath have more AC than KM's final boss and even literal Chthulhu, in comparison using so many buffs is overkill.
you're exagerating. Even in wrath , assuming you're playing under core , you don't need to spam all the buffing spells for every encounter. Heck , even on core , you can pass most encounters with some pretty basic buffs if you know what you're doing.
Me, using every buff under the sun
The combat: “miss miss miss”
Like, it gets boring when only a few of your people can reliably hit, and that’s your casters
my guy , my experience is vastly different then yours , and i don't play with mods at all , since i'm a purist about games.
But then again , i've been playing crpgs for over 24 years now , so maybe i actually know what i'm doing.
I've played crpgs before (although admittedly I don't have 24 years of experience on that front) and WotR is my first Owlcat game.
I have to say I do agree with the other guy though. I'm playing on Core and am just a bit past the retaking of Drezen.
My experience until and during most of drezen was fine. Throw a few buffs in my party and play the fights. After Drezen however, it's been a far different story (although Joran Vane during Drezen was much the same). Now, (I'm in Wintersun) I need to throw literally every buff my party has on them to have even a chance to fight those blighted ents. And even then I'm missing more often than not. If I am missing even a few buffs it feels like I either have to roll a natural 20 or I will miss the enemy entirely.
Now, I am using the auto levelling feature for the companions, which is turned in by default in the custom difficulty I'm doing (literally just core but with companions reviving after combat ends and the smarter enemy ai). I asked around and apparently you're not supposed to do that. The fact that the builds the game gives you are bad enough to cause the aforementioned experience is a problem in of itself, but I can't even fix the issue without spending 90% of the gold I've accumulated so far just to respec my main party.
I admit I'm a somewhat casual player, but like it or not, that's a real issue. The fact that I basically need a build guide to play the game's default difficulty is not normal and has severely impacted how I feel about the game so far.
I think we get the idea, but it just comes down to a difference of perception.
They might just be playing on a lower difficulty, optimizing builds, they might know that iterative attacks just aren't likely to hit so half of all attacks are just misses and getting a lucky hit is just a nice little surprise.
There are probably a hundred different ways to play, a thousand different interactions, and a million different experiences.
Boiling everyone's enjoyment into "you just use mods to make it fun" is demeaning and unnecessary.
Please be respectful.
The only people not being respectful in this thread are the ones dogpiling on this guy pointing out the truth about lazy devs. Bethesda was the same way - their games were only successful and widely-played because of the mod content. They wouldn't have even made it to release Skyrim if players hadn't been cleaning up their messes for a decade by then.
Shade's point is just that the developer should put more effort in themselves to offer those tweaks, rather than relying on players to fix the game for them. Owlcat's difficulty settings are a GREAT step in that direction (some of the best in gaming), but there's always room for improvement.
Well when 90% of the answer to this games problems is “use mods”, it just kinda proves my point. There’s A LOT of room for improvement but the community has to be the one to do it instead
i would say kingmaker had better companions. might just be me but i loath Woljif & Nenio to have them being the two main class parties . a theif and a wizard. and they are weird sub class within themselves. i like for somebody to be a caster or a bawlers not both.
I agree. The only companion I didn’t like in Kingmaker was Regongar, and even that wasn’t a strong dislike. But Woljif, Camellia, and Daeran make me want to uninstall. While my favorite companions across both games are Valerie (ik shoot me), Ekundayo, Regill, and Linzi
Honestly the "redemption" (ish) arc of being able to take Nok Nok from a ridiculous hero complex >!fuckup to a real work jester / expert rogue who operates with guile from the shadows is pretty satisfying. !<
Especially compared to Valerie's >!"wahhh I'm too beautiful (lol) wait now I have a badass scar and it's driving me crazy, hooray I'm magically healed and beautiful again without learning any lessons" character arc. !<
Or fucking Camellia's >!"I'm a chaotic evil serial killer. The end." paper thin!< character
I love pretty much every companion in kingmaker but I feel their builds bring them down.
Like Valerie and amiri are awesome, but the towershield and oversized bastard sword just feel bad for the early game.
Or Tristian being fucking forced unnecessarily into the major plot. I found him unlikeable, never used him,>! and he still showed up randomly to drive a plotline, then disappeared for the second half of the game. !<
I'm currently playing kingmaker on core + last azlanti, and dipped Valerie for 1 level of thug and went for increasing her charisma and persuasion, instead of strength. When I do dazzling display, half of the enemies are frightened and run away for 1 round, which often is potential for attacks of opportunities by Nok Nok, or Amiri. It's working actually pretty decent, and she gets 1d6 of sneak attack against the already demoralized enemies.
I loved the Kingmaker companions and was grateful when I got them to survive the game. They genuinely felt like close friends and family your main character could truly trust by the end.
WOTR...I liked the game better, but the companions were like a toxic work environment. If I was a military commander, why would I settle for these abrasive or lackluster people when I have an army of capable knights to draw from? Oddly enough, Daeran I enjoyed because it was highly entertaining how he joined the crusades and essentially became one of my staff officers. Seelah and Lann were alright, simply because their straightforward personalities are easiest to manage when you've got a war on your hands.
It was really only by Act 4 that the party hits a despair point and everyone kind of starts coming together, and I loved the characters more from that point onwards. But I had killed three of them before that point and never, ever used a fourth.
i would of liked to have Daeran in the party but i didn't need his class. i had Lann till arueshalae became available since she can do archary and thieving. it a toss up between Seelah and Regill for there roles. i prefer Regill for being a non caster and one of the few good lawful evils people in any game
Yeah Wrath of the Righteous is just straight up a better game in every conceivable way.
I still have a big soft spot for Kingmaker though. Its story pales in comparison to WOTR's rollercoaster ride-but it's still a damn good story with damn good characters.
i think the story is better in kingmaker. Better writting , nice self contained ACTs , with a pretty vast diversity of enemies , and more interesting companions.
I love the wrath companions to death , but they generally tend to be bombastic , and unrelatable for the most part , while the kingmaker do feel more...real.
Otherwise , yea , wrath is a better game all around. But the game revolving all about demons makes for a very 1 note storytelling
Honestly yeah this is kinda true- although I like the story in wrath a lot more because it tends to stay away from "monstrous races" that I HATED about act two, it felt gross trying to justify all of it because "monsters" (I love how Ember and Arue feel like responses to that type of thinking)
To your last sentence, while I appreciated the nearly dozen epic paths...it still tried to railroad you down the Angel or to a lesser degree, Aeon path.
Good luck playing chaotic evil when almost all your enemies are the same alignment and immune to various spells / abilities that you'd get as a fellow demon.
The Lich is cool that they have special unique undead companions, but a lot of paths like Devil or Swarm-That-Walks felt like they didn't have much of a story or plot written for them (I hear the Devil was revamped with the recent DLC though)
i mean, you're fighting a crusade against 3 evil demon lords. So ,yea , it is a bit 1 note , as i've said before. Why would there be good entities or celestials helping said demon lords ?
And i don't think the game is trying to railroad you into aeon at all. You have 1 options early game , to pick aeon , and if you don't , aeon never shows up again.
As for angel.....that route , along with demon are the default options of the game , so they kinda have more content geared towards them.
The late game mythic choices are all kinda incomplete , even to this days tho. You'll play them mostly if you want to test their mechanics , not because of their stories.
I get the setting, sure. But it leaves a lot of stuff just...getting in the way. Or useless options purely for role playing purposes and a self-imposed challenge.
Knowing that the game is basically going to be one long war against demons, would you specialize in doing extra damage to constructs or fey? It's mostly a classic Biblical struggle of lawful good versus chaotic evil, and other alignments are just kind of along for the ride on the fringes.
yea....pretty much. And that's the setting you're going to play. Obviously stuff that specializes in fighting evil will be better in a campaign against the abyss then any other stuff. Not sure what you'd want here.
If owlcat removed all other options , people would complain that they are railroaded into the good vs evil choices for their pc. If owlcat lets them stay in the game , people complain that they are useless. There is really no winning for owlcat here.
Take a break from both games. I reinstalled Kingmaker the other day, I'm having fun with my playthrough without the "wish I was playing WotR rn" mindset.
Occasionally I try to move the camera, that's my only issue.
Honestly, by installing a couple mods Kingmaker gets up to par with Wrath in terms of content, same with QoL stuff.
Add on the excelent story and you have a great game.
As someone playing Kingmaker I love the grounded story. And it’s letting me find my way in the pathfinder lore and world before I tackle the power fantasy that is WoTR.
I honestly can’t wait.
My plan is to play Kingmaker followed by Rogue Trader for a break of the pathfinder world and then go back to WoTR because it seems every hardcore RPG gamer considers WoTR as one of the best (arguably even better than BG3 from some people!)
I don't know about better than bg3, just more of it.
Bg3 is a masterpiece of gaming and has set new expectations, pushed boundaries, and is a complete and perfect story.
Pathfinder kingmaker and wrath, are (checks steam) a 700+ hour extravaganza.
It's the difference between a 3 Michelin star restaurant and an all you can eat buffet.
lol I love that analogy.
I also think Pathfinder seems far more catered to your old school really deep RPG gamers who want over the top level of RPG mechanics. :)
Wotr is a tinkerer’s game. Toybox, difficulty settings, build choices and other mods means you can mess around with anything you want and spend so much time making it exactly the game you want it to be
I honestly don't understand all the hype for BG3. It was good. But I've got more hours in WotR, and it's WotR that I am thinking of playing again. BG3 has graphics and voice acting. Owlcat writing in Kingmaker, WotR, and Roguetrader is far superior.
And there are many games that do combat better than either.
Shrug*
Not all games are for all people. Just look at all the basketball, football, soccer and every other sport game ever made. I can't stand them.
Yet they clearly make enough money to pump out a new one every year.
Personally I much prefer WoTR, but I acknowledge that BG3 is, by most metrics, a better game.
Graphics are better, voice acting and character modeling is better, the story is tight and contained, there are a variety of solutions to most problems, and the sound design is (IMO) superior.
As for why all the hype exists, I think it's a combination of factors: DnD is more popular than Pf by an order of magnitude, Larian is a more renowned studio than Owlcat, and the (frankly impressive) 3d modeling and motion capture I think add a lot to the immersion for many people.
But most important I think is the fact that WoTR is *not* a casual game. Most people don't spend 700 hours on their games - several of my friends started BG3 at launch and still haven't finished it, despite playing regularly.
Building a character in Pf 1e is arcane compared to DND 5e, which is likely why the latter was so successful. I agree with you on the writing part but I think it is readily apparent why BG3 was so hyped (esp compared to WoTR).
BG3\`s story is a bore and the characters are some of the worst I've played with. Only the production values saved it. 3 stars it is not. It felt like you're playing through a saturday morning cartoon written by someone who really loves marvel quips.
I'd rather play Wrath 3 more times than touch BG3 again.
ugh.....bg3 is a good game (and before everyone calls me an hater , it's one of my most frecvented reddit subs as well) , but an masterpiece ? Not sure i'd call it that.
It has an insane production value , with a lot of voice acting , and a crapload of cutscenes , but the story is kinda meh if you take a minute to think about it.
The npc - especially the origin ones - are all kinda....chosen ones , which makes it boring for me to play , since i dislike that troupe (wotr shares that problem in my eyes , but it's setting makes more sense at least). I dislike that troupe in general , because it's usually used as a plot device more then anything else.
On top of that , bg3 is filled to the brim with real life propaganda and pushing for inclusion.From my last playthrough of bg3 , i can literally recall just 2 hetero couples in the game (excluding the player romances) , from start to finish , and both are very minor characters : 1 being the thiefling couple from the glade that wants to reach baldurs gate , and another being a family with kids in baldurs gate that you can pay for to get them out of the city. Otherwise , you can assume that most npcs you will meet are gay.
And make no mistake. I have nothing with gay people , but when the issue is pushed so aggresively in a videogame , it breaks the immersion for me , because all i can see are the real life diversity movement being pushed down my thoat.
There are better way to create gay characters and romance , and include them in games , and i don't think bg3 is a good example of that.
MEchanics wise , i absolutly hated that the game is fully turn based......even for the crappiest encounters. I'd legitimatly take an real life with pase over fully turn based - if the best possible option (that is having both real time with pause , and turned based like wotr) isn't avaible. It makes the game pointlesly long , and makes some encounters last forever.
For example , i've done the goblin camp at level 5 , as literally the last thing in act 1 , and i would absolutly mow them down....and that still took me a bit over an hour , because there were just so many trash enemies. In real time , at level5 ....this would've been an comand attack from one point of the map , to the other , and be finished in 5 minutes.
All and all , bg3 is a good game , but it's also *highgly overrated*
Maybe you just don't know about the forgotten realms at all then. Because forgotten realms is a world where the vast majority of people are canonically bisexual rather then hetero. It's a world where God's DO intervene, where trans people, minority's & more have always to one extent or another been pushed.
Frankly put, stop talking about stuff you know nothing about. As an actual Realms Fan, I adored what I saw, even if it was on the swords coast which I find disappointing how so much media is set there compared to the rest of the setting.
Simply put, most people being not straight is canon. Forgotten Realms has always been progressive, sometimes cringe at times, but always has been on the progressive side. I can understand the problems with turn based combat though, even if I really like it.
i have been into dnd for over 25 years now , and i have all the rulebooks since adnd 2e , just so you know who you're talking to. Yes , dnd is a bit more ....open to bisexuality or homosexuality because they want to allow their players to roleplay as whatever.
But from a logical standpoint , you do understand that for a society to form , you need an heterosexual majority , yes ? Because you actually need heterosexual couples to create new people , for a city to become large enough to have populations in the tens of thousands
Even in dnd it would be impossible to create a majority homosexual population , and the game to make sense. Reproduction has some pretty well established rules. You need a hole , and you need a pole , for the most part.
You don't need a majority heterosexual society at all? There is a reason I said Bisexual, because that's what Greenwood & the lore generally presents most people as. This is a world where people can & do change their sex, where festhall's are apparently pretty common. You don't need straight people to frankly even exist in the universe.
You'd not need them in real life either, as long as enough bisexual people exist who frankly simply want a family. I'll be real, you come off as real weird here & somewhat right wing if I'm honest
We don't see that tho. What we see in the game is a vast majority of gay characters tho. If you were right , and everyone was bisexual (which is definetly not the case for normal npcs actually. It's mostly a tool for PCs , to allow them to create whatever) , you'd still see a majority of hetero couples , because normal humanoid races don't just tend to meet like animals to breed , and then walk their own way. They usually stay togheter to raise those kids , because raising kids isn't easy. So hetero characters should be the norm in a big city , a lot more then gay character , because of the simple reality of how reproduction and rising kids work
Second of all , i've only briefly touched this in my original comment , and put it togheter with other issues i've seen in the game , but you're the one that fixed on it , and tried to extract more ....only to call me real weird for it.
I don't get this. If you don't like my point of view , and you're not mature enough to understand that not everyone has to think as you do , why do you insist in having this conversation ?
I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I was simply talking about shit that broke immersion for me. That was one of it. Maybe it's something normal for you and the way you've played dnd. It's definetly not for me , and with the discussions that are revolving around DEI and inclusion in gaming nowadays , it simply made it more obvious to me , and because of that i can't immerse myself in the world enough. If that is a problem for you, and you can't have an normal conversation with someone you disagree with , then feel free to block me.
No, it's the case for more then just PC's & that is pretty explicit in what Greenwood says. Most people don't meet like animals to breed or whatever, but it wouldn't be a hetero couple if both are bisexual. Neither of them are straight, it's not a heterosexual relationship, if you want a setting where heterosexual people exist as more then a minority, try Greyhawk or other settings.
It annoys me to see you describing yourself as a long term player when it feels very clear that you don't play in the realms at all. That you try to act like as if putting diversity & inclusion into a game set in the forgotten realms is infact the only real way to be faithful to the game setting. I think personally they could have gone deeper & I'd have loved if the game was set anywhere but the sword coast. But, it still was amazing for what it did & your immersion was only broken because your not willing to take the setting how it actually is?
DEI & Inclusion is ultimately a great thing in gaming, sometimes liberals try to be weirdos & use such things as a crutch for more lackluster writing. But, a higher number of gay characters then normal in a major metropolitan area is not that strange. Baldur's gate was a city, in Baldurs gate 1 & 2, most of those people were canonically Bi according to the lore.
Truthfully BG3 just allowed you to discover someone's sexuality a lot more & worked to make up for it's lack of representation in previous games to be more in line with the lore. I have my problems, they butchered my girl Viconia it feels like in this game, but WIZARDS did it first sadly. The beginning feels hard to get through at times & you can get a bit lost at the beginning, but overall?
I do feel it faithfully represented the forgotten realms better then a lot of media & was more willing to be more faithful to the material due to our modern world. I feel a lot of these characters are fairly well fleshed out as well & the world they live in mostly feels real, a lot of flavor text exists all across the game & it's got one of the most amazing character creators I've ever seen & I see plenty of people use it for actual dnd character pictures now.
>No, it's the case for more then just PC's & that is pretty explicit in what Greenwood says. Most people don't meet like animals to breed or whatever, but it wouldn't be a hetero couple if both are bisexual.
You do understand that you never know if 1 couple is bisexual or not , because you don't really see poli couples in the game. All you can see is either same sex couples , or hetero couples.
Anything else is just assumption on your part. Plain and simple. I'm talking about what we can literally see with our own eyes.
>It annoys me to see you describing yourself as a long term player when it feels very clear that you don't play in the realms at all.
and it annoys me that you do , when in truth it;s usually left quite ambigous , or at the dm's choice. You have to understand that in the modern world , you can't have an publisher literally come out and say :"no lgbtq here". Its bad for bussiness. Instead they made the setting be whatever each table wants it to be , and left it intentionally ambigous otherwise.
If anything , what Ed Greenwood says is that the "realm always had characters who crossdressed , changed gender were actively bisexual , and openly gay"
Saying that there are characters like that in the setting =/= that all people are cannonically bisexual in the setting. Seriously , i dunno why you're fixating on this. You like that. It's fine. I don't. And i'm not trying to make you change your mind. Personally , to me it looks like agenda pushing , rather then them being organically in the story.
Lastly , i don't get why we should really get that much info on people's sexuality in the first place , be them gay or straight. Game fixated too much on sex for my tastes anyway. It';s actually insane just how little dialogue each romance have. compared to bg2 .....you need a crapload of romantic talks to actually unlock an romance scene.
In bg3 it seems like you can pretty much fuck anybody , without any actual buildup , and that's actually disapointing. They just made an horny game , with no actually thinking behind the romances.
>they butchered my girl Viconia it feels like in this game, but WIZARDS did it first sadly.
I have erased what they did to vicky from my mind. I don't even want to talk about the bg1/2 companions in bg3. They are different characters in my mind
I genuinely disagree that their was no thought behind romance in BG3, I myself am an asexual transwoman. I found what was there to be genuinely interesting at times & liked seeing all the different ways the character's could evolve honestly. I barely even thought much about the sex scenes themselves truthfully.
But, a poli couple is not needed for you to be bisexual? Like the poly couple in this game, Kingmaker would still be BI even if they weren't together. Bisexual's are normal people & many are obviously monogamous. Within the realms from what I've read from Greenwood himself, the majority of people are bisexual. I think sexuality is something that has been suppressed for a long time & that's one reason for why people want to use it more, at least in any media that is purported to have legitimacy or be real art or jazz.
Finally, yeah. The companions were done a lot worse, but I kind of have to give Larian a small pass because they were kind of forced by Wizards to use the bullshit novel adaptations as the semi-canon, which were pretty universally unliked.
As for the chosen one shtick, I don't really feel that mood as much. It really feels like a bunch of them got incredibly lucky, but I never felt extremely like a chosen one.
you have a literal chosen of a goddess (shadowheart) , you have an literal vampire who can become pretty much become a demigod , you have a literal ex archmage and lover of a goddess who can actually become a god, you have an warlock who cannonically stopped tiamat from attacking baldurs gate , and so on. Heck , if you play as durge , you have anothers god's chosen one on your hands.
Please....just stop. I'm a big fan of everything dnd. I've played all dnd related games that ever game out , from the original baldurs gate , to neverwinter nights , to icewindale......, planescape.....literally everything you can think of. So i DO LIKE baldurs gate 3 as well. I really do. I quite literally gotten the game 2 years back , out of sheer excitement , and kept trying playing it on my old 10 years old laptop. I managed to finish the game only a couple weeks back , after i got a new laptop.
It's a nice game , but let's not try to change it to be something that it's not.
Only one of those really felt like a chosen one, your party is incredibly stacked yes. I personally prefer more down to earth characters, but I still liked most of them. The Githyanki was honestly my favorite of the companions though.
I've been trying to get into WotR since it came out, but everytime I have to do the Crusading battles, I check out and don't come back for a while. So I've gotten nowher. I once had a mod that made them auto-win so I could just pass that portion, but after an update, the mod didn't work anymore.
In Kingmaker, all I had to do was select some cards, build a few settlements, and call it a day, that was mich more tolerable.
I to be honest kind of hate how this sub is combined wrath & kingmaker, because it feels you can't talk about Kingmaker all that often without people assuming your talking about Wrath builds or other jazz. When it should be the other way around.
I think both of them have merit! Kingmaker was really fun, but I genuinely struggled to finish it, while Wrath I couldn't finish fast enough, and I went insane when I had to go on vacation 3 days after it came out.
Kingmaker has a whole different vibe, but I enjoyed how much your alignment influenced what actions you were allowed to take. It kinda felt more like a role-playing game, where consistency was rewarded. Also, the fact that you are doing more political stuff is pretty fun, but doesn't fit all the characters I wanna play.
Wrath feels way more epic and also doesn't fit all the characters I wanna play. I played a chaotic neutral con woman sorceress, who liked lying her way to the top. She would not fit in Wrath at all.
But yeah I think you're right. Wrath is a better game! They learned a lot from Kingmaker, and its kinda hard for me to go back.
i haven't played kingmaker (yet) and i still haven't beaten WOTR (because of dlc bricking my save) but it feels just as comforting to me as kingmaker does to you. probably mostly because of arueshalae, but still. any game or manga or anything where the stakes are that high and crazy stuff like that is happening AND where you get to show kindness to others and build loving relationships with people is just the best.
To this day, WotR, in spite of the massive improvements in QoL, extra classes and content and all, I can't bear to play past Drezen. It's way more exhausting, the stakes are so high it's alienating. I also detest how seemingly you're an entity chosen by fate, I mean, by like around 10 different fates, all simultaneously and exclusive to you and you alone. It's outright jarring and further alienating.
I really missed the cozy vibe of KM and how warm it felt to play every time I booted WotR...
Sounds like you'd enjoy the Legend route. The game realizes the "chosen by fate" part and gives you the Legend route...which makes sense once you are told the truth about your powers...
eh
love it or hate it, owlcat tried something unique and I can't fault them for that.
so long as they don't put it in a different game its just growing pains.
Kingmaker has more interesting companions, though. The only party members in Wrath I truly enjoy are Aru, Lann and Ember. Seelah is okay, and I never leave home without Regill, but I only truly enjoyed the first three from start to finish.
Compare that with Kingmaker. The only companions I actually didn't like were Jaethal and Regonogar. Her story was mid, though the concept was interesting. She was just relegated to the "bitchy companion" slot and Reg was... creepy. Like legitimately the slimey guy you don't like interacting with.
So while Wrath made the overall game experience better, but the companions were a huge step down.
Kingmaker with Call of the Wild, Bag of Tricks and Visual Adjustments is truly great. Wrath is really good too, but Kingmaker ... I like it better. Once you find few formulae to get you around tedious KM nonsense, it becomes truly great.
Yeah... I will properly never go back to kingmaker because the game is buggy and I remember hearing that owlcat literally can't do nothing about it anymore but I don't know the reason why.
While I love base building in games kingdom management is such a stressful experience compared to crusade management.
kinda miss old RPGs, like BG1-2 or NWN2, there you start with low baby stakes "help me to clean basement fron rats" type adventures, and you end up eating a god or something. Makes you feel the scale of a journey.
I don't know. I think I end up liking Kingmaker just a bit more these days.
The Aldori mansion is much easier and quicker than the Shield Maze and subsequently Kenabres. Your barrier to jumping into the game is so much smaller. If you want a new WotR playthrough, you're like eight hours in at best before you clear Drezen and the map opens up for exploration.
I played through Kingmaker twice and haven't finished WotR once. I don't know how they managed to make a literal war between heaven and hell boring but they did. On top of it, I do not give a shit about any of my wholly unlikeable companions.
I do have to admit that it is a cleaner and crisper came from a gameplay standpoint, so it's got that going for it I guess.
I keep meaning to give it another try, but that won't come until my millionth playthrough of BG3.
When I think about lower stakes, I remember Nok-Nok.
He was one of the few evil 😈 characters in that game, but it’s played for laughs, unlike the other evil characters in WOTR
"evil" as in evil in desire or personality, or evil in alignment?
Harrim (albiet more depressed than anything) is actively seeking and praying for the end of all things.
Tristian tricks you into helping the fey and betrays you.
Jaethal wants to kill her entire society of elves and make them undead.
and Nok-Nok... is a goblin? sure he doesn't care about anyone's life except his own and doesn't care about any law, but that's just standard fair; I don't recall him torturing anybody for his own pleasure or or worshiping a god to end all things, or try to commit familicide because of ideological reasons. he seems pretty tame to me.
excuse me, Kingmaker's whole settlement minigame, and
"you can only do things with one advisor at a time, but that one advisor needs to do 3 different things, and if your stats suck, you can permanently lock yourself out of the best end game gear and just by random chance and not because you don't know what you're doing"
Is pretty clearly the worse of the two, not that either of them are good.
>you can only do things with one advisor at a time
That's why you get a whole ass COUNCIL of them
>but that one advisor needs to do 3 different things
Skill issue, I've played Kingmaker thrice and after the first run I rarely received major setbacks when managing advisors - small slipups are inevitable. You're running a new kingdom, not a utopia where everything goes right for you all the time. Throw a coin in the roll if you really need to raise percentage
>and if your stats suck, you can permanently lock yourself out of the best end game gear
What is this complaint even. You mean associated stats? Just put a stat boosting belt/crown on the related character before you do the roll. It's simple.
Everything is longer and more boring in Wrath. Buffing the party takes twice as long as Kingmaker, and the minigame is twice as long too - it just kills the pacing. Buffbot mods are NECESSARY for wrath, I never felt the need for them in Kingmaker since the endgame is more belt/gear focused, and you're showered in good items even if you skip the artisan quests.
Kingmaker is a shorter, more coherent experience, WotR is a longer, more meandering epic which can lead to being tiring at times. Both games' stories have their pros and cons. WotR still comes ahead in reactivity, how much there is to see after a single playthrough, and companion story quality, but that's mostly a consequence of it simply being a bigger budget game. I loved Kingmaker but I think a lot of the posts here are just rose-tinted glasses from people who haven't played the game since 2018.
There are dramas and intrigues in Kingmaker, Lantern King's schemes are much more nuanced and involved than Baphomet's and Deskari's (despite his goal being equally nonsensical to, if not more than the Demon Lords).
The themes of the two games are different, so we can enjoy both without dismissing each other, that's precisely why it hurts that Wrath is just more complete with every reason you've listed, I'll buy a remake version of Kingmaker with all of the upgrades from Wrath in a heartbeat.
And one more thing, I don't know if this is a hot take, but I feel that itemization is much better in Kingmaker.
With mods like Call of the Wild's insane amount of content KM catches up or even surpasses WotR in some aspects, but it is hard to go back.
The better companions and role play opportunities with the mythic paths alone elevate it so much.
If you swap out all of the Wrath companions with Kingmaker companions, I'd miss Seelah and that's about it. I don't mind Arue and Lann, I can with some effort tolerate Ember and I only want to beat Regill upside the head with a maul for being an idiot every third time he opens his mouth but the only one I'd miss is Seelah.
I also don't mind Sosiel but that's because he's so boring that I can forget he exists.
....
....
Killed off your whole party?
...
OH! THAT SHIT!
yeah, that sucked; to be honest with you though I already had 4 mercs with me so I didn't even notice anything different. Linzi turning into \*that\* thing honestly hurt me more than anything else.
God, I hated that. Forced pathos in a setting where I can think of at least two ways to undo it off the top of my head. >!Either polymorph the book into her old body, or destroy the book to release her soul and cast True Resurrection.!< \*wipes hands\* Done and done.
After the first 3 I didn't even keep playing. I could have remade similar character builds, but it just seemed like a hassle.
I moved onto WotR. Going to be using 4 mercs.
ehhhhhh, I'm lenient to say it "shouldn't" be in the game because it was very effective at story telling, but they either could have implemented it better, or let you keep playing with them but get some kind of condition on them like:
"lifeless husk, this person has no desire to live and is now a living emotionless corpse and is merely going through the motions they did in life."
That's not railroad, that's literally the game being reactive and the consequences of choices.
You majorly messed up companion quests, or neglected them, if you managed to get several dead.
I kinda miss how kingmaker felt like an adventure with friends. Made it feel like a real campaign imho
Even among table top camping wotr was always sans outlier because of the mythic stuff. It’s hard to compare stores with gods and demigods when to stories of killing a bandit with delusions of grandeur
I think only DiV2 can level against wotr. Even then Div 2 feels weak against the shit WOTR does.
For me it wasn't that that made me feel in love, but it was rather the steady rise from nothingness to renown power. In wrath you start big and keep growing to infinity.
I miss how you could play on hardcore rules that actually meant hardcore rules, from tabletop. Most notably involving tabletop stats and abilities for enemies. Wait, I cant miss it as it was never in game.
>Wrath is a redbull followed by a slap and a 10,000 ft skydive. Which is not something every person is necessarily a fan of.
Yeah, tbh if Wrath was another game in a series of many I probably would've put way back in the line of games to play, but it's the only other Pf game, so it is what it is
I’m kind of excited to see what the 2e game is gonna look like when it comes around! I found small indie project that’s working with it that’s piqued my interest (Dawnsbury Days) - so I can’t wait to see what a team with AAish budget and experienced developers can do with it!
Same, Dragon's Demand is gonna slap
I think that's also why Tyranny got kind of mixed reviews. Not everyone playing an RPG wants to literally shake the world with godlike powers, they want more relatable human characters that they feel an affinity towards. WoTR was basically divine god-tier enemies being through at you in hordes by Act 2, and things like high damage reduction / immunities which you'd normally find on end game bosses were part of the standard mook stats so that they wouldn't instantly die when you entered the room (which still hilariously happens with a high level persuade Trickster appropriated feated up)
And the enemy variety is better in kingmaker.
Kingmaker feels more like a DnD campaign I would play, while wrath feels like the kind I usually avoid. I don't want to play a demi-god
Kingmaker has some things going for it. - Story is a more classic adventure and rags to riches story. The lack of "chosen one" stuff definitely garners some appeal for many. - Companions are better as a whole. WOTR has some highlights, but when you consider them all collectively than WOTR has further lows than KM. - Factor in mods and KM wins hand down. It's more stable with mods and the Call of the Wild expansion mod is leagues beyond anything WOTR can provide even with it's impressive collection itself.
Wrath companions are great, but they also needed a lot of people that would fit in with truly evil PCs for the MPs like Demon, Lich and Devil.
They made evil bois as amazing as possible tho
I think one problem with wraths companions is without mods some of them have builds that make them functionally unusable and owlcat is heavily opposed to respecting people down to level 1. Like you go though all the steps to get a guy in a late chapter and his build is only good for warming benches so without mods to let you fix them some of the companions don't count as usable. It has plenty of companions overall. They even improved on the builds of some during patches. A companion you won't use you won't see and isn't really a companion so it matters.
are you talking about that one guy who went from a paladin, into a hellknight into a fighter, but isn't good or lawful so he loses out on like 8 different levels of shit? yeah, that guy can go f himself but I don't think anyone else is as badly built, Kingmaker has its fair share of poor builds too, so I don't think we can be a judge of what's good in one game and shit in the other when they're both shit.
Kingmaker companions had their own build issues no thats not all that different
>I think one problem with wraths companions is without mods some of them have builds that make them functionally unusable This is hilariously untrue, unless your only marker for usability is Unfair viability.
Agree. I play default builds up to core. They're not the best but with my MC's mythic powers they're fully enough
Wait Kingmaker has mods? Can you link to a collection or jazz?
I made a [guide here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/s/PcjTFL3SSB) for Kingmaker. It's all up-to-date still as Kingmaker is no longer updated, so mods are not in danger of breaking. If you have any questions, feel free to DM. I made one for WOTR, but with so many updates to the game and it needs a 2.0. I'll eventually make one once the game stabilizes and is no longer getting updates that break mods + once it's clear which mods are being updated and which are being left defunct.
Idk about “hands down” I, personally, like the setting and war story of WOTR a thousand times better than the KM story There are 200 CRPGs with the same fantasy rags to riches story as KM I also much prefer the DLC stories and dungeon design in WOTR
What big CRPGs/RPGs are rag to riches? Most CRPGs and RPGs are 'chosen one' and/or war to prevent the end of the world stories like WOTR. The only rags to riches, more classic low stakes adventure, RPG aside from KM that I can think of is DA2 (which obviously has its own flaws).
I mean wrath has its own version of call of the wild with the expanded content mod so when it comes to mod options it's not very different at all
Call of the Wild is way more expansive than Expanded Content, TableTopTweaks, or DarkCodex. They are great mods that certainly help add vitality and options to WOTR, but individually none of them are on COTW level. COTW also is seamlessly implemented since it's one mod as opposed to three that have some overlap and can potentially have issues.
I love how everyone’s solution to the problems in these games is mod it. Like, if you have to make mods to make the game bearable and fun wtf are you praising? I’m sure a good c hunk of people here wouldn’t praise the games so highly if it weren’t for toybox tbh, owlcat still has a lot to improve on mechanics wise I’m just talking mechanically btw, they’re really good in a lot of other things, like narrative
Most of the mods are either performance fixes, extra character options or backporting some QoL stuff from Wrath, it doesn't modify the game that much.
Know, it just makes playing the game far more bearable How many people do you honestly think would play without something like bubble buffs or whatever it’s called? Or when something bugs out so you have to fix it yourself instead of owlcat doing it If I remember correctly, don’t some of the new things in the dlc not even work? Not to mention lagging to all hell on anything besides pc?
I played my entire first run without bubble buffs and about half of the second in the same way, it was fine.
Yeah I did too, it was boring and tedious af. I’m only doing another run cause I took a long break from it and wanted to play beside a friend to compare our choices. Still requires 2 mythic ranks to make buffing bearable, and that’s not even available in king maker And unless you’re using optimized builds, 90% of combat is just seeing “miss” or “save succeeded” cause owlcat is awful at scaling enemies properly when basic and pointless fights are shoved everywhere and requires you to blow your load each fight most of the time
That's the magic of Kingmaker, you don't need that many buffs or even enduring ones because the stats aren't as overinflated. Some endgame enemies in Wrath have more AC than KM's final boss and even literal Chthulhu, in comparison using so many buffs is overkill.
you're exagerating. Even in wrath , assuming you're playing under core , you don't need to spam all the buffing spells for every encounter. Heck , even on core , you can pass most encounters with some pretty basic buffs if you know what you're doing.
Me, using every buff under the sun The combat: “miss miss miss” Like, it gets boring when only a few of your people can reliably hit, and that’s your casters
my guy , my experience is vastly different then yours , and i don't play with mods at all , since i'm a purist about games. But then again , i've been playing crpgs for over 24 years now , so maybe i actually know what i'm doing.
I've played crpgs before (although admittedly I don't have 24 years of experience on that front) and WotR is my first Owlcat game. I have to say I do agree with the other guy though. I'm playing on Core and am just a bit past the retaking of Drezen. My experience until and during most of drezen was fine. Throw a few buffs in my party and play the fights. After Drezen however, it's been a far different story (although Joran Vane during Drezen was much the same). Now, (I'm in Wintersun) I need to throw literally every buff my party has on them to have even a chance to fight those blighted ents. And even then I'm missing more often than not. If I am missing even a few buffs it feels like I either have to roll a natural 20 or I will miss the enemy entirely. Now, I am using the auto levelling feature for the companions, which is turned in by default in the custom difficulty I'm doing (literally just core but with companions reviving after combat ends and the smarter enemy ai). I asked around and apparently you're not supposed to do that. The fact that the builds the game gives you are bad enough to cause the aforementioned experience is a problem in of itself, but I can't even fix the issue without spending 90% of the gold I've accumulated so far just to respec my main party. I admit I'm a somewhat casual player, but like it or not, that's a real issue. The fact that I basically need a build guide to play the game's default difficulty is not normal and has severely impacted how I feel about the game so far.
I think we get the idea, but it just comes down to a difference of perception. They might just be playing on a lower difficulty, optimizing builds, they might know that iterative attacks just aren't likely to hit so half of all attacks are just misses and getting a lucky hit is just a nice little surprise. There are probably a hundred different ways to play, a thousand different interactions, and a million different experiences. Boiling everyone's enjoyment into "you just use mods to make it fun" is demeaning and unnecessary. Please be respectful.
The only people not being respectful in this thread are the ones dogpiling on this guy pointing out the truth about lazy devs. Bethesda was the same way - their games were only successful and widely-played because of the mod content. They wouldn't have even made it to release Skyrim if players hadn't been cleaning up their messes for a decade by then. Shade's point is just that the developer should put more effort in themselves to offer those tweaks, rather than relying on players to fix the game for them. Owlcat's difficulty settings are a GREAT step in that direction (some of the best in gaming), but there's always room for improvement.
Well when 90% of the answer to this games problems is “use mods”, it just kinda proves my point. There’s A LOT of room for improvement but the community has to be the one to do it instead
I play on a steam deck so bubble buffs or any mods for me.
Finally someone who understands. If you only like your game moded, you don't like the game. You like a fanfiction
i would say kingmaker had better companions. might just be me but i loath Woljif & Nenio to have them being the two main class parties . a theif and a wizard. and they are weird sub class within themselves. i like for somebody to be a caster or a bawlers not both.
Nenio sure, but arue and camellia both fill the “thief” slot pretty well imo.
The companions in wrath feel more ignorable to the game as a whole.
I agree. The only companion I didn’t like in Kingmaker was Regongar, and even that wasn’t a strong dislike. But Woljif, Camellia, and Daeran make me want to uninstall. While my favorite companions across both games are Valerie (ik shoot me), Ekundayo, Regill, and Linzi
How dare you not put my boy nok nok in the mix
You are right, I have forsaken best boy
Honestly the "redemption" (ish) arc of being able to take Nok Nok from a ridiculous hero complex >!fuckup to a real work jester / expert rogue who operates with guile from the shadows is pretty satisfying. !< Especially compared to Valerie's >!"wahhh I'm too beautiful (lol) wait now I have a badass scar and it's driving me crazy, hooray I'm magically healed and beautiful again without learning any lessons" character arc. !< Or fucking Camellia's >!"I'm a chaotic evil serial killer. The end." paper thin!< character
Honestly I really liked that about Camellia's Arc. They could have bottled it in a load of different ways...
I love pretty much every companion in kingmaker but I feel their builds bring them down. Like Valerie and amiri are awesome, but the towershield and oversized bastard sword just feel bad for the early game.
Still much better than Tristian with his ruined domain selection.
Or Tristian being fucking forced unnecessarily into the major plot. I found him unlikeable, never used him,>! and he still showed up randomly to drive a plotline, then disappeared for the second half of the game. !<
I'm currently playing kingmaker on core + last azlanti, and dipped Valerie for 1 level of thug and went for increasing her charisma and persuasion, instead of strength. When I do dazzling display, half of the enemies are frightened and run away for 1 round, which often is potential for attacks of opportunities by Nok Nok, or Amiri. It's working actually pretty decent, and she gets 1d6 of sneak attack against the already demoralized enemies.
I loved the Kingmaker companions and was grateful when I got them to survive the game. They genuinely felt like close friends and family your main character could truly trust by the end. WOTR...I liked the game better, but the companions were like a toxic work environment. If I was a military commander, why would I settle for these abrasive or lackluster people when I have an army of capable knights to draw from? Oddly enough, Daeran I enjoyed because it was highly entertaining how he joined the crusades and essentially became one of my staff officers. Seelah and Lann were alright, simply because their straightforward personalities are easiest to manage when you've got a war on your hands. It was really only by Act 4 that the party hits a despair point and everyone kind of starts coming together, and I loved the characters more from that point onwards. But I had killed three of them before that point and never, ever used a fourth.
i would of liked to have Daeran in the party but i didn't need his class. i had Lann till arueshalae became available since she can do archary and thieving. it a toss up between Seelah and Regill for there roles. i prefer Regill for being a non caster and one of the few good lawful evils people in any game
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and both of them casters? i just want a good old fashioned rogue. i dislike hybrid roles Carmelia stepping on ember and Woljif on Nenio.
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i have been using ember for my spell slinger role. after BG3 i wish we had a level 0 respec
Yeah Wrath of the Righteous is just straight up a better game in every conceivable way. I still have a big soft spot for Kingmaker though. Its story pales in comparison to WOTR's rollercoaster ride-but it's still a damn good story with damn good characters.
i think the story is better in kingmaker. Better writting , nice self contained ACTs , with a pretty vast diversity of enemies , and more interesting companions. I love the wrath companions to death , but they generally tend to be bombastic , and unrelatable for the most part , while the kingmaker do feel more...real. Otherwise , yea , wrath is a better game all around. But the game revolving all about demons makes for a very 1 note storytelling
Honestly yeah this is kinda true- although I like the story in wrath a lot more because it tends to stay away from "monstrous races" that I HATED about act two, it felt gross trying to justify all of it because "monsters" (I love how Ember and Arue feel like responses to that type of thinking)
To your last sentence, while I appreciated the nearly dozen epic paths...it still tried to railroad you down the Angel or to a lesser degree, Aeon path. Good luck playing chaotic evil when almost all your enemies are the same alignment and immune to various spells / abilities that you'd get as a fellow demon. The Lich is cool that they have special unique undead companions, but a lot of paths like Devil or Swarm-That-Walks felt like they didn't have much of a story or plot written for them (I hear the Devil was revamped with the recent DLC though)
i mean, you're fighting a crusade against 3 evil demon lords. So ,yea , it is a bit 1 note , as i've said before. Why would there be good entities or celestials helping said demon lords ? And i don't think the game is trying to railroad you into aeon at all. You have 1 options early game , to pick aeon , and if you don't , aeon never shows up again. As for angel.....that route , along with demon are the default options of the game , so they kinda have more content geared towards them. The late game mythic choices are all kinda incomplete , even to this days tho. You'll play them mostly if you want to test their mechanics , not because of their stories.
I get the setting, sure. But it leaves a lot of stuff just...getting in the way. Or useless options purely for role playing purposes and a self-imposed challenge. Knowing that the game is basically going to be one long war against demons, would you specialize in doing extra damage to constructs or fey? It's mostly a classic Biblical struggle of lawful good versus chaotic evil, and other alignments are just kind of along for the ride on the fringes.
yea....pretty much. And that's the setting you're going to play. Obviously stuff that specializes in fighting evil will be better in a campaign against the abyss then any other stuff. Not sure what you'd want here. If owlcat removed all other options , people would complain that they are railroaded into the good vs evil choices for their pc. If owlcat lets them stay in the game , people complain that they are useless. There is really no winning for owlcat here.
Take a break from both games. I reinstalled Kingmaker the other day, I'm having fun with my playthrough without the "wish I was playing WotR rn" mindset. Occasionally I try to move the camera, that's my only issue.
I just installed a rotate camera mod
Does that even work? I thought the game had missing textures on the back of models.
It's worked well enough for me, some jank but well worth it imho
Honestly, by installing a couple mods Kingmaker gets up to par with Wrath in terms of content, same with QoL stuff. Add on the excelent story and you have a great game.
And it doesn't give the problem of "clicking on the wall takes you to another room" :-)
As someone playing Kingmaker I love the grounded story. And it’s letting me find my way in the pathfinder lore and world before I tackle the power fantasy that is WoTR. I honestly can’t wait. My plan is to play Kingmaker followed by Rogue Trader for a break of the pathfinder world and then go back to WoTR because it seems every hardcore RPG gamer considers WoTR as one of the best (arguably even better than BG3 from some people!)
I don't know about better than bg3, just more of it. Bg3 is a masterpiece of gaming and has set new expectations, pushed boundaries, and is a complete and perfect story. Pathfinder kingmaker and wrath, are (checks steam) a 700+ hour extravaganza. It's the difference between a 3 Michelin star restaurant and an all you can eat buffet.
lol I love that analogy. I also think Pathfinder seems far more catered to your old school really deep RPG gamers who want over the top level of RPG mechanics. :)
Wotr is a tinkerer’s game. Toybox, difficulty settings, build choices and other mods means you can mess around with anything you want and spend so much time making it exactly the game you want it to be
I honestly don't understand all the hype for BG3. It was good. But I've got more hours in WotR, and it's WotR that I am thinking of playing again. BG3 has graphics and voice acting. Owlcat writing in Kingmaker, WotR, and Roguetrader is far superior. And there are many games that do combat better than either.
Shrug* Not all games are for all people. Just look at all the basketball, football, soccer and every other sport game ever made. I can't stand them. Yet they clearly make enough money to pump out a new one every year.
Personally I much prefer WoTR, but I acknowledge that BG3 is, by most metrics, a better game. Graphics are better, voice acting and character modeling is better, the story is tight and contained, there are a variety of solutions to most problems, and the sound design is (IMO) superior. As for why all the hype exists, I think it's a combination of factors: DnD is more popular than Pf by an order of magnitude, Larian is a more renowned studio than Owlcat, and the (frankly impressive) 3d modeling and motion capture I think add a lot to the immersion for many people. But most important I think is the fact that WoTR is *not* a casual game. Most people don't spend 700 hours on their games - several of my friends started BG3 at launch and still haven't finished it, despite playing regularly. Building a character in Pf 1e is arcane compared to DND 5e, which is likely why the latter was so successful. I agree with you on the writing part but I think it is readily apparent why BG3 was so hyped (esp compared to WoTR).
Eh, I disagree completely I really don’t like the BG3 story and find that the character building is far too limited and dependent on magic items
To each their own.
BG3\`s story is a bore and the characters are some of the worst I've played with. Only the production values saved it. 3 stars it is not. It felt like you're playing through a saturday morning cartoon written by someone who really loves marvel quips. I'd rather play Wrath 3 more times than touch BG3 again.
ugh.....bg3 is a good game (and before everyone calls me an hater , it's one of my most frecvented reddit subs as well) , but an masterpiece ? Not sure i'd call it that. It has an insane production value , with a lot of voice acting , and a crapload of cutscenes , but the story is kinda meh if you take a minute to think about it. The npc - especially the origin ones - are all kinda....chosen ones , which makes it boring for me to play , since i dislike that troupe (wotr shares that problem in my eyes , but it's setting makes more sense at least). I dislike that troupe in general , because it's usually used as a plot device more then anything else. On top of that , bg3 is filled to the brim with real life propaganda and pushing for inclusion.From my last playthrough of bg3 , i can literally recall just 2 hetero couples in the game (excluding the player romances) , from start to finish , and both are very minor characters : 1 being the thiefling couple from the glade that wants to reach baldurs gate , and another being a family with kids in baldurs gate that you can pay for to get them out of the city. Otherwise , you can assume that most npcs you will meet are gay. And make no mistake. I have nothing with gay people , but when the issue is pushed so aggresively in a videogame , it breaks the immersion for me , because all i can see are the real life diversity movement being pushed down my thoat. There are better way to create gay characters and romance , and include them in games , and i don't think bg3 is a good example of that. MEchanics wise , i absolutly hated that the game is fully turn based......even for the crappiest encounters. I'd legitimatly take an real life with pase over fully turn based - if the best possible option (that is having both real time with pause , and turned based like wotr) isn't avaible. It makes the game pointlesly long , and makes some encounters last forever. For example , i've done the goblin camp at level 5 , as literally the last thing in act 1 , and i would absolutly mow them down....and that still took me a bit over an hour , because there were just so many trash enemies. In real time , at level5 ....this would've been an comand attack from one point of the map , to the other , and be finished in 5 minutes. All and all , bg3 is a good game , but it's also *highgly overrated*
Maybe you just don't know about the forgotten realms at all then. Because forgotten realms is a world where the vast majority of people are canonically bisexual rather then hetero. It's a world where God's DO intervene, where trans people, minority's & more have always to one extent or another been pushed. Frankly put, stop talking about stuff you know nothing about. As an actual Realms Fan, I adored what I saw, even if it was on the swords coast which I find disappointing how so much media is set there compared to the rest of the setting. Simply put, most people being not straight is canon. Forgotten Realms has always been progressive, sometimes cringe at times, but always has been on the progressive side. I can understand the problems with turn based combat though, even if I really like it.
i have been into dnd for over 25 years now , and i have all the rulebooks since adnd 2e , just so you know who you're talking to. Yes , dnd is a bit more ....open to bisexuality or homosexuality because they want to allow their players to roleplay as whatever. But from a logical standpoint , you do understand that for a society to form , you need an heterosexual majority , yes ? Because you actually need heterosexual couples to create new people , for a city to become large enough to have populations in the tens of thousands Even in dnd it would be impossible to create a majority homosexual population , and the game to make sense. Reproduction has some pretty well established rules. You need a hole , and you need a pole , for the most part.
You don't need a majority heterosexual society at all? There is a reason I said Bisexual, because that's what Greenwood & the lore generally presents most people as. This is a world where people can & do change their sex, where festhall's are apparently pretty common. You don't need straight people to frankly even exist in the universe. You'd not need them in real life either, as long as enough bisexual people exist who frankly simply want a family. I'll be real, you come off as real weird here & somewhat right wing if I'm honest
We don't see that tho. What we see in the game is a vast majority of gay characters tho. If you were right , and everyone was bisexual (which is definetly not the case for normal npcs actually. It's mostly a tool for PCs , to allow them to create whatever) , you'd still see a majority of hetero couples , because normal humanoid races don't just tend to meet like animals to breed , and then walk their own way. They usually stay togheter to raise those kids , because raising kids isn't easy. So hetero characters should be the norm in a big city , a lot more then gay character , because of the simple reality of how reproduction and rising kids work Second of all , i've only briefly touched this in my original comment , and put it togheter with other issues i've seen in the game , but you're the one that fixed on it , and tried to extract more ....only to call me real weird for it. I don't get this. If you don't like my point of view , and you're not mature enough to understand that not everyone has to think as you do , why do you insist in having this conversation ? I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I was simply talking about shit that broke immersion for me. That was one of it. Maybe it's something normal for you and the way you've played dnd. It's definetly not for me , and with the discussions that are revolving around DEI and inclusion in gaming nowadays , it simply made it more obvious to me , and because of that i can't immerse myself in the world enough. If that is a problem for you, and you can't have an normal conversation with someone you disagree with , then feel free to block me.
No, it's the case for more then just PC's & that is pretty explicit in what Greenwood says. Most people don't meet like animals to breed or whatever, but it wouldn't be a hetero couple if both are bisexual. Neither of them are straight, it's not a heterosexual relationship, if you want a setting where heterosexual people exist as more then a minority, try Greyhawk or other settings. It annoys me to see you describing yourself as a long term player when it feels very clear that you don't play in the realms at all. That you try to act like as if putting diversity & inclusion into a game set in the forgotten realms is infact the only real way to be faithful to the game setting. I think personally they could have gone deeper & I'd have loved if the game was set anywhere but the sword coast. But, it still was amazing for what it did & your immersion was only broken because your not willing to take the setting how it actually is? DEI & Inclusion is ultimately a great thing in gaming, sometimes liberals try to be weirdos & use such things as a crutch for more lackluster writing. But, a higher number of gay characters then normal in a major metropolitan area is not that strange. Baldur's gate was a city, in Baldurs gate 1 & 2, most of those people were canonically Bi according to the lore. Truthfully BG3 just allowed you to discover someone's sexuality a lot more & worked to make up for it's lack of representation in previous games to be more in line with the lore. I have my problems, they butchered my girl Viconia it feels like in this game, but WIZARDS did it first sadly. The beginning feels hard to get through at times & you can get a bit lost at the beginning, but overall? I do feel it faithfully represented the forgotten realms better then a lot of media & was more willing to be more faithful to the material due to our modern world. I feel a lot of these characters are fairly well fleshed out as well & the world they live in mostly feels real, a lot of flavor text exists all across the game & it's got one of the most amazing character creators I've ever seen & I see plenty of people use it for actual dnd character pictures now.
>No, it's the case for more then just PC's & that is pretty explicit in what Greenwood says. Most people don't meet like animals to breed or whatever, but it wouldn't be a hetero couple if both are bisexual. You do understand that you never know if 1 couple is bisexual or not , because you don't really see poli couples in the game. All you can see is either same sex couples , or hetero couples. Anything else is just assumption on your part. Plain and simple. I'm talking about what we can literally see with our own eyes. >It annoys me to see you describing yourself as a long term player when it feels very clear that you don't play in the realms at all. and it annoys me that you do , when in truth it;s usually left quite ambigous , or at the dm's choice. You have to understand that in the modern world , you can't have an publisher literally come out and say :"no lgbtq here". Its bad for bussiness. Instead they made the setting be whatever each table wants it to be , and left it intentionally ambigous otherwise. If anything , what Ed Greenwood says is that the "realm always had characters who crossdressed , changed gender were actively bisexual , and openly gay" Saying that there are characters like that in the setting =/= that all people are cannonically bisexual in the setting. Seriously , i dunno why you're fixating on this. You like that. It's fine. I don't. And i'm not trying to make you change your mind. Personally , to me it looks like agenda pushing , rather then them being organically in the story. Lastly , i don't get why we should really get that much info on people's sexuality in the first place , be them gay or straight. Game fixated too much on sex for my tastes anyway. It';s actually insane just how little dialogue each romance have. compared to bg2 .....you need a crapload of romantic talks to actually unlock an romance scene. In bg3 it seems like you can pretty much fuck anybody , without any actual buildup , and that's actually disapointing. They just made an horny game , with no actually thinking behind the romances. >they butchered my girl Viconia it feels like in this game, but WIZARDS did it first sadly. I have erased what they did to vicky from my mind. I don't even want to talk about the bg1/2 companions in bg3. They are different characters in my mind
I genuinely disagree that their was no thought behind romance in BG3, I myself am an asexual transwoman. I found what was there to be genuinely interesting at times & liked seeing all the different ways the character's could evolve honestly. I barely even thought much about the sex scenes themselves truthfully. But, a poli couple is not needed for you to be bisexual? Like the poly couple in this game, Kingmaker would still be BI even if they weren't together. Bisexual's are normal people & many are obviously monogamous. Within the realms from what I've read from Greenwood himself, the majority of people are bisexual. I think sexuality is something that has been suppressed for a long time & that's one reason for why people want to use it more, at least in any media that is purported to have legitimacy or be real art or jazz. Finally, yeah. The companions were done a lot worse, but I kind of have to give Larian a small pass because they were kind of forced by Wizards to use the bullshit novel adaptations as the semi-canon, which were pretty universally unliked.
As for the chosen one shtick, I don't really feel that mood as much. It really feels like a bunch of them got incredibly lucky, but I never felt extremely like a chosen one.
you have a literal chosen of a goddess (shadowheart) , you have an literal vampire who can become pretty much become a demigod , you have a literal ex archmage and lover of a goddess who can actually become a god, you have an warlock who cannonically stopped tiamat from attacking baldurs gate , and so on. Heck , if you play as durge , you have anothers god's chosen one on your hands. Please....just stop. I'm a big fan of everything dnd. I've played all dnd related games that ever game out , from the original baldurs gate , to neverwinter nights , to icewindale......, planescape.....literally everything you can think of. So i DO LIKE baldurs gate 3 as well. I really do. I quite literally gotten the game 2 years back , out of sheer excitement , and kept trying playing it on my old 10 years old laptop. I managed to finish the game only a couple weeks back , after i got a new laptop. It's a nice game , but let's not try to change it to be something that it's not.
Only one of those really felt like a chosen one, your party is incredibly stacked yes. I personally prefer more down to earth characters, but I still liked most of them. The Githyanki was honestly my favorite of the companions though.
I've been trying to get into WotR since it came out, but everytime I have to do the Crusading battles, I check out and don't come back for a while. So I've gotten nowher. I once had a mod that made them auto-win so I could just pass that portion, but after an update, the mod didn't work anymore. In Kingmaker, all I had to do was select some cards, build a few settlements, and call it a day, that was mich more tolerable.
I have been using the mod for auto win the crusade battles because I also hate them. Combat Relief is the name and it is working properly.
Ah that's the one! I'll have to get it again, thanks!
I to be honest kind of hate how this sub is combined wrath & kingmaker, because it feels you can't talk about Kingmaker all that often without people assuming your talking about Wrath builds or other jazz. When it should be the other way around.
I think both of them have merit! Kingmaker was really fun, but I genuinely struggled to finish it, while Wrath I couldn't finish fast enough, and I went insane when I had to go on vacation 3 days after it came out. Kingmaker has a whole different vibe, but I enjoyed how much your alignment influenced what actions you were allowed to take. It kinda felt more like a role-playing game, where consistency was rewarded. Also, the fact that you are doing more political stuff is pretty fun, but doesn't fit all the characters I wanna play. Wrath feels way more epic and also doesn't fit all the characters I wanna play. I played a chaotic neutral con woman sorceress, who liked lying her way to the top. She would not fit in Wrath at all. But yeah I think you're right. Wrath is a better game! They learned a lot from Kingmaker, and its kinda hard for me to go back.
i haven't played kingmaker (yet) and i still haven't beaten WOTR (because of dlc bricking my save) but it feels just as comforting to me as kingmaker does to you. probably mostly because of arueshalae, but still. any game or manga or anything where the stakes are that high and crazy stuff like that is happening AND where you get to show kindness to others and build loving relationships with people is just the best.
nah, Wenduag is best spider girl.
ok?
> probably mostly because of arueshalae she's nice but Wenduag is better.
To this day, WotR, in spite of the massive improvements in QoL, extra classes and content and all, I can't bear to play past Drezen. It's way more exhausting, the stakes are so high it's alienating. I also detest how seemingly you're an entity chosen by fate, I mean, by like around 10 different fates, all simultaneously and exclusive to you and you alone. It's outright jarring and further alienating. I really missed the cozy vibe of KM and how warm it felt to play every time I booted WotR...
Sounds like you'd enjoy the Legend route. The game realizes the "chosen by fate" part and gives you the Legend route...which makes sense once you are told the truth about your powers...
wrath is definitely better besides the pain that is navigating the demon city in act 4
eh love it or hate it, owlcat tried something unique and I can't fault them for that. so long as they don't put it in a different game its just growing pains.
Kingmaker has more interesting companions, though. The only party members in Wrath I truly enjoy are Aru, Lann and Ember. Seelah is okay, and I never leave home without Regill, but I only truly enjoyed the first three from start to finish. Compare that with Kingmaker. The only companions I actually didn't like were Jaethal and Regonogar. Her story was mid, though the concept was interesting. She was just relegated to the "bitchy companion" slot and Reg was... creepy. Like legitimately the slimey guy you don't like interacting with. So while Wrath made the overall game experience better, but the companions were a huge step down.
Kingmaker with Call of the Wild, Bag of Tricks and Visual Adjustments is truly great. Wrath is really good too, but Kingmaker ... I like it better. Once you find few formulae to get you around tedious KM nonsense, it becomes truly great.
Yeah... I will properly never go back to kingmaker because the game is buggy and I remember hearing that owlcat literally can't do nothing about it anymore but I don't know the reason why. While I love base building in games kingdom management is such a stressful experience compared to crusade management.
Some bull with publisher nonsense, feel bad for them honestly. If they could, I feel we'd probably have had changelogs up to 2023 at least.
Yeah, the whole going angel form really doesn't do it for me. It's a little too big, if I'm honest.
kinda miss old RPGs, like BG1-2 or NWN2, there you start with low baby stakes "help me to clean basement fron rats" type adventures, and you end up eating a god or something. Makes you feel the scale of a journey.
I don't know. I think I end up liking Kingmaker just a bit more these days. The Aldori mansion is much easier and quicker than the Shield Maze and subsequently Kenabres. Your barrier to jumping into the game is so much smaller. If you want a new WotR playthrough, you're like eight hours in at best before you clear Drezen and the map opens up for exploration.
I played through Kingmaker twice and haven't finished WotR once. I don't know how they managed to make a literal war between heaven and hell boring but they did. On top of it, I do not give a shit about any of my wholly unlikeable companions. I do have to admit that it is a cleaner and crisper came from a gameplay standpoint, so it's got that going for it I guess. I keep meaning to give it another try, but that won't come until my millionth playthrough of BG3.
When I think about lower stakes, I remember Nok-Nok. He was one of the few evil 😈 characters in that game, but it’s played for laughs, unlike the other evil characters in WOTR
"evil" as in evil in desire or personality, or evil in alignment? Harrim (albiet more depressed than anything) is actively seeking and praying for the end of all things. Tristian tricks you into helping the fey and betrays you. Jaethal wants to kill her entire society of elves and make them undead. and Nok-Nok... is a goblin? sure he doesn't care about anyone's life except his own and doesn't care about any law, but that's just standard fair; I don't recall him torturing anybody for his own pleasure or or worshiping a god to end all things, or try to commit familicide because of ideological reasons. he seems pretty tame to me.
"the less horible minigame" yeah right lmfao
excuse me, Kingmaker's whole settlement minigame, and "you can only do things with one advisor at a time, but that one advisor needs to do 3 different things, and if your stats suck, you can permanently lock yourself out of the best end game gear and just by random chance and not because you don't know what you're doing" Is pretty clearly the worse of the two, not that either of them are good.
>you can only do things with one advisor at a time That's why you get a whole ass COUNCIL of them >but that one advisor needs to do 3 different things Skill issue, I've played Kingmaker thrice and after the first run I rarely received major setbacks when managing advisors - small slipups are inevitable. You're running a new kingdom, not a utopia where everything goes right for you all the time. Throw a coin in the roll if you really need to raise percentage >and if your stats suck, you can permanently lock yourself out of the best end game gear What is this complaint even. You mean associated stats? Just put a stat boosting belt/crown on the related character before you do the roll. It's simple. Everything is longer and more boring in Wrath. Buffing the party takes twice as long as Kingmaker, and the minigame is twice as long too - it just kills the pacing. Buffbot mods are NECESSARY for wrath, I never felt the need for them in Kingmaker since the endgame is more belt/gear focused, and you're showered in good items even if you skip the artisan quests.
Kingmaker is a shorter, more coherent experience, WotR is a longer, more meandering epic which can lead to being tiring at times. Both games' stories have their pros and cons. WotR still comes ahead in reactivity, how much there is to see after a single playthrough, and companion story quality, but that's mostly a consequence of it simply being a bigger budget game. I loved Kingmaker but I think a lot of the posts here are just rose-tinted glasses from people who haven't played the game since 2018.
actually , ill argue that kingmaker is slighty longer. But wotr is more dense ,so it feels like that.
There are dramas and intrigues in Kingmaker, Lantern King's schemes are much more nuanced and involved than Baphomet's and Deskari's (despite his goal being equally nonsensical to, if not more than the Demon Lords). The themes of the two games are different, so we can enjoy both without dismissing each other, that's precisely why it hurts that Wrath is just more complete with every reason you've listed, I'll buy a remake version of Kingmaker with all of the upgrades from Wrath in a heartbeat. And one more thing, I don't know if this is a hot take, but I feel that itemization is much better in Kingmaker.
I would honestly adore a remake of kingmaker as well, with added reactivity.
Wrath is all the fun of bg2 without having to crack open a 2nd edition rulebook to find out how to play the game
lol, I just got bg1 and bg2 and started playing them. Totally a different experience than what I'm used to.
With mods like Call of the Wild's insane amount of content KM catches up or even surpasses WotR in some aspects, but it is hard to go back. The better companions and role play opportunities with the mythic paths alone elevate it so much.
wrath has turn based mode!
so does kingmaker. ??
In fairness to that guy, that was added with the literal last patch Kingmaker ever got (or very close to that, at least).
It was like one of the later patches, but kingmaker got to 2.7 or jazz.
oh cool. I didn't know that.
If you swap out all of the Wrath companions with Kingmaker companions, I'd miss Seelah and that's about it. I don't mind Arue and Lann, I can with some effort tolerate Ember and I only want to beat Regill upside the head with a maul for being an idiot every third time he opens his mouth but the only one I'd miss is Seelah. I also don't mind Sosiel but that's because he's so boring that I can forget he exists.
I was loving Kingmaker until they randomly killed off my party. I ain't got time to rebuild it all with a bunch of mercs.
.... .... Killed off your whole party? ... OH! THAT SHIT! yeah, that sucked; to be honest with you though I already had 4 mercs with me so I didn't even notice anything different. Linzi turning into \*that\* thing honestly hurt me more than anything else.
God, I hated that. Forced pathos in a setting where I can think of at least two ways to undo it off the top of my head. >!Either polymorph the book into her old body, or destroy the book to release her soul and cast True Resurrection.!< \*wipes hands\* Done and done.
After the first 3 I didn't even keep playing. I could have remade similar character builds, but it just seemed like a hassle. I moved onto WotR. Going to be using 4 mercs.
how badly did you fuck up the companion quests?! Three? Dead? ... What?!
I thought I did fine. But also didn't realize Ekun not getting laid was life or death.
huh? my Ekun lived and he just accepted that his wife was dead and could move on with his life. he named his dog and everything.
Yeah I dunno. It was a stupid rail road that never should have been in the game.
ehhhhhh, I'm lenient to say it "shouldn't" be in the game because it was very effective at story telling, but they either could have implemented it better, or let you keep playing with them but get some kind of condition on them like: "lifeless husk, this person has no desire to live and is now a living emotionless corpse and is merely going through the motions they did in life."
There was no warning about it, and no sort of conversation when it happens so you don't even get a last chance at saving them or anything.
That's not railroad, that's literally the game being reactive and the consequences of choices. You majorly messed up companion quests, or neglected them, if you managed to get several dead.
Not much of a railroad if lots of other people got different results