Having started gaming in earnest on a PlayStation 1, hunkering down in front of a PC for several years to catch up on the complex joys of the Infinity Engine CRPGs, and then drifting back to consoles to better separate work from play, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is one of those awkward console ports I’m just glad exists. With even more systems to manage than the already dense Pathfinder: Kingmaker, I was curious to see how this massive and complex CRPG would play with a gamepad. Having played the PC release earlier this year, it won’t come as a surprise to hear that the experience is objectively less intuitive than playing with a mouse and keyboard but those looking for an epic role-playing adventure they can play from the comfort of their couch shouldn’t pass this up.
Defeat the demon hordes for Golarion (or yourself)!
Now Pathfinder: Kingmaker had an insanely detailed setting with reams of lore and, unsurprisingly, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is no different. If you’re unfamiliar with the tabletop setting, you’ll want to dig into the extensive codex entries to better understand the background lore, the geography, the talk of the celestial and abyssal realms, and the history of the many factions you’ll interact with. Set in the northern region of Mendev, your protagonist is rescued from outside the fortified walls of Kenabres – a city of Crusaders that have spent a century fighting back abyssal demons emerging from the “Worldwound” – a breach into the material realm. Just as your hero recovers from a peculiar wound, the demon lord Deskari leads an assault on the city, slays its dragon guardian, hurls aside a wardstone that should’ve kept the demons at bay, and shatters the very earth, plunging your protagonist into the caves below.
It is, admittedly, a more high-stakes and action-packed opening than that of its predecessor but it makes for a poor first impression. The prologue and early chapters are designed to introduce you to the basic party and combat mechanics, the implications of player choice, the new “mythic” power paths, and leading the Crusade – but it’s a lengthy and often linear slog that keeps you underground or indoors for hours – including tackling a literal maze-like gauntlet – with few opportunities to utilise non-combat skills. Thankfully, the experience improves once you’re let loose on the world to gather allies for your crusade – both individuals for your party and factions for your army – and there’s still a strong focus on secondary stories with multiple solutions and outcomes, as well as substantial companions quests scattered across all acts – including the potential for some romance. The aforementioned mythic powers lead to some significant plot moments but I didn’t find the narrative quite as compelling as Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which seemed to have a better balance of battles, politicking, and management elements.
Can a gamepad handle all this depth?!
Every great CRPG ensures character-creation is a significant event and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is happy to overwhelm you with a process you could spend hours tweaking. Even as someone familiar with the evolving D&D ruleset, many licensed D&D games, and the Starfinder tabletop game, the character creation options are complex to the point of paralysing. The upside is that you’re bound to find a class or sub-variant that fits your exact tastes, like a spellcasting rogue, beast-taming bard, or mutagen-chugging fighter. Mercifully – assuming you’re willing to read – there are exhaustive tooltips to guide you. You can plan ahead for each new level, check feat dependencies, and quickly assess the impact of attribute scores, traits, and abilities. If this makes you nervous, just remember character creation and optimal progression are less significant on the lower difficulties, while the companions you can recruit – at least if you follow their automatic upgrade path – are designed to give you access to a wide range of skills to use in every situation.
Once you’ve settled on a hero – or given into despair and picked a pre-generated one – you’ll find many of the basics are identical to Pathfinder: Kingmaker and, indeed, any recent CRPG using D&D or D&D-inspired rulesets. You still explore sizeable environments from an isometric viewpoint, use skill and alignment checks constantly, fiddle in a half-dozen discrete menus, and – essential for console players – switch easily between turn-based combat or real-time-with-pause (RTWP). Turn-based combat remains a great alternative and offers a little more precision when using a thumbstick-driven mouse cursor but the shift to turn-by-turn combat based on initiative rolls has its ups and downs. There are times you’ll manage to pick off a powerful creature just before it releases a devastating charged attack, but sometimes you’ll regret not being able to just rush in and lock down a group of clustered magic users. Regardless of the mode you pick, detailed tooltips and status descriptions provide everything you need to prioritise targets, adapt, and survive. The basic AI for your party also holds up on easy and normal difficulties and, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, there are seven presets or you can customise discrete difficulty settings to your liking. Whether you’re looking for tough, tactical combat or a choose-your-own-adventure narrative, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous has you covered.
Now although you can reduce the difficulty, there’s no reducing the complexity! Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is so much more than just dialogue choices, tactical party combat, and character progression. Early in your journey, you get a taste of the “mythic” powers that allow you to obtain incredible powers in combat and influence others in dialogue. How you evolve these powers – towards good or evil – has a big impact on your playthrough and ending. Swiftly placed at the head of the fifth crusade, you’ll also be responsible for improving the facilities at your crusader fort, bolstering your armies with new factions and gear, and dispatching armies to battle demon hordes on the overworld map. These simplified turn-based battles play out in a grid-based arena, with army components functioning like chess pieces, and they save you from having to backtrack across the map repeatedly to deal with it yourself. Also new is the need to manage corruption levels when exploring the demonic wastelands – in addition to the usual fatigue and ration considerations. It’s a lot of complexity but never unmanageable and I’m not sure it’s even possible to doom your entire playthrough as you could in Pathfinder: Kingmaker.
At least it’s (mostly) stable at launch!
Some good news – for both those on last-gen hardware and those playing it backwards compatible on current-gen consoles – is that Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous has launched in a much, much better state than the Pathfinder: Kingmaker port. Well, at least if you’re considering stability. The 3D backdrops are once again varied and attractive, comparable to the PC release and they come close to the artistic flair of the Infinity Engine classics. In-game cutscenes still feel rudimentary but they’re backed up by another fantastic soundtrack and dialogue with more voiced lines – though I still don’t understand why some trivial encounters seem to qualify for full voice acting while more significant events do not. Perhaps most importantly, it doesn’t crash every 20 minutes at random, I’ve encountered no game-breaking scripting issues, and only a few visual or audio bugs. Undoubtedly more post-launch patches will come, but this is a major improvement over its predecessor. There is bad news however. Lengthy initial loads and quick-load times are a real problem when running into lethal trouble is so easy. Even the quick-saves take 3-5 seconds, the menus can feel laggy, and there’s a notably inconsistent framerate during any large battle or rapid camera pan. Some interface oddities also return, like the need to hold and release a trigger to open submenus or select a specific hero – something that’s easy to get wrong with a thumbstick – or items like potions not stacking in the hotbar.
Another glorious if clunky CRPG console port
Wrapping up, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is an epic, lengthy, and often overwhelming CRPG that never feels quite at home on consoles but needs to be there. The plodding start and Crusade structure don’t quite capture the sense of adventuring into the unknown that Pathfinder: Kingmaker nailed, but if you enjoyed that port and want a similar experience from the comfort of your couch, don’t let some gamepad gripes and load times put you off, especially if you’re going to be playing it backwards compatible on a current-gen console. With dozens of classes and sub-classes, tons of player-choice and skill checks, exploration and tactical battles, and a highly customisable difficulty – it’s a comprehensive role-playing experience like no other on consoles.
Developer: Owlcat Games
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, macOS, Microsoft Windows, Mac operating systems
Publishers: Owlcat Games, Paizo, META Publishing, Prime Matter, Postmeta Games Limited
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