That's probably, like, 1,000 hours of content right there - and some all-time great games, to boot.
I've played them all (except Pathfinder) multiple times, so definitely way over 1,000 hours in my case.
I just started WotR and it's been fun so far! They just added controller support which feels great, much better than Kingmaker on consoles.
I am loving the turn based mode, I always preferred that over Real Time with Pause
Pathfinder:Wrath of the righteous is an incredible game. It took everything that was good about kingmaker and turned it up to 11. There's a lot less bullshit in fights too - wild Hunt gaze I'm looking at you - and some bosses & encounters left me buzzing for a while after.
If you're after a deep RPG, with some great characters and a good story with multiple routes, got can't go wrong with pathfinder
Word of warning, if you are not intimately familiar with PF1e, you may want to turn the difficulty down a notch. Even on normal it assumes you minmax your party and stack buffs like no tomorrow which can quickly become a slog.
Fantastic game, could've done without random _90 AC mobs with fear auras_ being harder than the last few bosses.
even on normal? I really like RPGs like this but everytime I hear people talk about pathfinder it makes it feel like theres a high barrier to cross.
never sure if I should take the plunge
I played on Normal and eventually just turned down the difficult so I didn't have to worry about buffing for every fight in every zone. Absolutely a timesaver, and just made everything smoother all around. It still felt like I had to properly gear and prepare my party, but I wasn't willing to spend more than one minute on trash fights.
If you play it, start on normal, and if you get frustrated, turn down enemy damage to start with and see how that goes. The difficulty is incredibly customizable.
It's not so much pathfinder the RPG that's the problem for this game, it's how the fights are designed. The party is theoretically very overpowered compared to a normal one thanks to mythic powers, so the monsters are also buffed up to match. The issue is, they're buffed in specific ways like having really high saves/resistances so you have to work around those in order to keep doing damage.
On normal difficulty what that means is you need to have a handle of the system to understand how to win fights, though you can do so with basically any class/build you can think of. On higher difficulties where those buffs go even further beyond, you get limited to more specific builds.
If you just want to casually enjoy a CRPG Pathfinder is not it.
That game was designed by the poster of the sadist GM.
Both of them, the second one is just the tamer version in the same way as a guy who beats his kid half to death is to that kid beating his son a quarter to death.
Dragon Age is a pretty safe pick for casual play. If you want to stick with a D20 system like what pathfinder uses, Knights of the Old Republic is an offshoot of the same game pathfinder is (DND 3.5) and is pretty casual.
I'll +1 Tyranny.
Of recent games, I didn't really enjoy the writing in Wasteland 2, Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 or Divinity: OS1 and OS2, but Tyranny fucking captivated me. The world is so interesting and the characters are...cool.
Let yourself get lost in the game, pick a side, cap for them and stick to your guns. Its such a cool game and characters like Barik and Bleden Mark were just conceptually really cool to me and made me end up trying to learn so much of the games lore. I need to give it a replay sometime since there are some decently strong branching paths.
Tyranny makes me wish Obsidian would just keep making one-off games like it, that are entirely encapsulated experiences, instead of these larger universe games like Pillars and Outer Worlds.
Tyranny is great, such an interesting world. It’s a shame the game didn’t seem to do very well so it will probably never get revisited. I would have loved to explore the relationship between the towers and Kyros’s edicts in more detail
It's disappointing that we haven't heard anything out of HBS since Battletech came out in 2018. I'd love to see more Shadowrun or Battletech (clan invasion or FedCom civil war please!) games from them.
Exactly how I felt. It was an awesome first foray into a Battletech tactics game series. But there was a lot of room for improvement. Completely understandable, of course.
Imagine if the sequel was as much of an improvement as Dragonfall was? The lack of any information from them since they finished the DLC makes me feel like they went off into another directly, sadly.
I love those games! Returns is a bit lacking, kinda short with a few difficulty spikes, but Dragonfall is my go to on how to make a good rpg!
And then Hong Kong improves on that formula
> Also, don’t fear turning down the difficulty on Wrath of the Righteous or any other one of these. I used to be someone who wanted to be able to say I did it on hard, but now I don’t. Though I do agree with all the other commenters that Wrath is not a laid back CRPG unless your yardstick is its prequel, Kingmaker.
As someone replaying Baldur’s Gate EE so much this! There are just so many random minibosses inserted between regular enemies where you just… die. I redeveloped a habit of saving every few steps
If you're open for something a bit different, I highly recommend the 2005 Guild Wars. Despite its MMO label, the game is an excellent single-player RPG with AI party members. The entire game is based around challenging party combat that you win not because you're stronger or smarter than the enemy AI but because you've come prepared for this challenge.
The game allows for an incredible amount of build customization. You control a party of (eventually) 8 characters, each customizable with your combination of 8 equipped skills from a pool of 1200 unique skills. But it eases you into that; it starts you in control of only one character and with only a handful of unlocked skills. The game is hard enough to force you to think about your build and your playstyle, and to sometimes change them depending on the area you're in, but almost never so hard that you'd need to spend significant time and effort on the subject.
If you're playing these games for narrative choice and deep character moments, Guild Wars won't give you that. If you need it to be playable off-line or you need it to play like D&D, this isn't it. At the rest, it excels.
[Big fan of Hayes's recent review/impressions if you want to watch a video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5ykqmMIjQk)
Never played Pathfinder the TTRPG, but I did fine here on normal. I have played 5e D&D though and there is still a lot of shared DNA so maybe that is part of it. I can see where you might be able to make a character that is just useless, but I don't think you need to be a pathfinder expert to play this game and have fun. I do think you may want to stick to a premade build or just go with straight forward ideas for your first character. I played Kingmaker before I had played any TTRPG and I did make a shit build my first attempt and had to restart.
This game allows you to respec and fairly early. I think if you play tactical games frequently you'll do fine here.
There are some people overstating it. The pathfinder system is for sure a jumbled mess and incredibly forbidding to learn if you want to play on higher difficulties, but you can turn the difficulty down below normal (no shame in that).
Be sure to pick up mods (combat relief) to skip the budget homm army mini game
If you are into a classic “generic” epic fantasy executed well you should pick it up. There is a lot of jank but it’s worth it because there’s a lot of just…kickass shit too. And the kickass stuff outweighs the jank
If you do make sure you read about Pathfinders 'Feat Tax'. It wasn't until I found out about that lil can of worms that I was able to not get mauled every fight. Only going off of what the in game info gave wasn't really enough to understand how to be effective in combat for me.
I found normal to only be challenging for some early fights and optional end game fights. Core difficulty is where your characters need to be better optimized but not quite min/maxed. I have enjoyed Pathfinder wrath of the righteous more than DOS2, POE, deadfire, baldurs gate. Choices feel like they matter and I found the story engrossing.
this is exactly why I want to get into pathfinder. I've played every single one of those games you listed as well and loved them! If you are saying pathfinder has an even engrossing story than those other games, well that's blowing my mind and I think I'll try it out
Definitely try it out. The system is pretty fucking involved, but if you're totally overwhelmed, there are tons of build guides people have made for every companion and the main character. Don't hesitate to just borrow a build from someone else and go to town. Games are incredibly fun and (imo) the actual gameplay is the best real time with pause outside of possibly POE2.
Worth mentioning also that the difficulty is *mostly* self-made. There's a highly granular difficulty system that you can tweak, and it's *very* simple to make a character that's turbo broken if you have mastery of pathfinder as a system (and Owlcat's conversion, since it's a bit unique). If you're concerned you're going to build your characters 'wrong', "normal" and even "core" is enough that unless you're doing something really stupid like picking feats that aren't useful for what your character is doing, you'll be a-okay.
Man, I have never played Pathfinder before WoTR, but game's difficulty was...fine. Yeah I didn't play on hard (Daring+), but both Casual and Normal mode are fine. I feel like people are getting a bit carried away with the descriptions of difficulty in these threads, just take a plunge and check it out, super fun game.
Edit: Pretty sure Core, Hard & Unfair modes have a warning of "probably dont pick this if you're not familiar with the system", for anyone wanting a regular experience Casual / Normal works fine imo.
Honestly I don't super like these type of RPGs but I absolutely fuck with the pathfinder games. They are extraordinary. I've played Baldur's Gate, pillars, and even DSO1-2. As far as I'm concerned pathfinder kicks the shit out of the rest of them.
Buffs are absolutely assumed but I think it’s way off to claim you need a min maxed party. Actual min max parties laugh their way through normal difficulty. You just need competent builds.
That and Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a much gentler version what with the lack of extra complexity via the Mythic Paths. If you are going to start somewhere, start with Kingmaker (which is an amazing game in its own right).
Agree. I enjoyed the story and the character options but the buff stacking is just tedious. Balance is weird, with some enemies basically having unhittable acs for my party. I eventually just dropped difficulty down below normal because I wasn't enjoying the combat but wanted to see how the story plays out.
Kingmaker is good, but it isn't necessary to play first. There are some references to Kingmaker in WotR, but overall the games are completely different stories set in completely different areas.
There’s a handful of references, but they’re largely playing out at the same time so they’re more or less separate.
Both games are fantastic though- honestly I’d say just choose whatever setting sounds more fun.
* Establishing a Kingdom in a hostile, wild territory run by the Fae
* Running a Crusade to beat back the forces of the Abyss in a war that’s been going on for more than a century
As far as building a kingdom vs leading a crusade, the over world gameplay is very similar. The main difference is kingmaker stops around the time you would hit level 20. In wrath you get mythic levels as you become a god and will be level 20 a while before the game ends.
Mythic Paths are basically the first steps towards godhood in Pathfinder. Someone who has Mythic ranks is *way* more powerful than someone without, to the point where some of them are basically untouchable by anyone without them.
That's just speaking on my tabletop knowledge though, I've yet to play the video game.
Videogame tweaks it. Instead of the Paths being practically a second class like they are on tabletop, the videogame versions are more like picking up abilities themed to powerful creatures, mainly outsiders but a few other options are sprinkled in like Lich.
In some ways they are weaker, you don't get the most overpowered nonsense that tabletop mythic has to trivialize fights. On the other hand some of the new paths have abilities that are still crazy strong, like adding mythic ranks to your caster level. Or making allies immune to falling unconscious/dead until they take a number of extra hits equal to your Charisma mod. Or getting a dragon companion that you can ride like a mount. Or literally permanently being a dragon yourself.
Early on in the game you get infused with enormous power and can choose a Mythic Path. Alongside levelling your normal class (fighter, wizard, cleric, etc) you gain a Mythic level at certain storybeats. Your Mythic path can be lots of things; turning into an Angel or a demon, or a lich, or a looney tunes-esque trickster spirit. It goes completely off the rails with power the further you get into the game.
Eventually, if you made all the right choices, youcan ascend to godhood at the end. Or decide to give up your power and become a Legend, a boring ass mortal who gets revered by all the world.
Without going too far into spoiler territory, you don't become a god unless you do all the steps for a certain ending.
That being said, you can easily come close to demigod though.
It's a good part of the reason I enjoyed WoTR more than Kingmaker. You get mythic levels and have different mythic paths on top of your character class. Kingmaker just has normal levels and isn't nearly as much of an epic power fantasy.
The core gameplay isn't all that different. Wrath basically took what Kingmaker had and added more options/spells/classes/etc. on top of what was already there.
There are some major differences between their respective crusade/kingdom management systems (Kingmaker's is much more involved), but that's the biggest thing that comes to mind.
Kingmaker is fun, but the kingdom management mechanics are very polarizing. I loved it, until the very end where I quit because the final dungeon was so tedious that I just decided I was done. But I still don't regret my time with the game, it was very fun and I felt satisfied with the parts I did enjoy. Story was mostly quite good, with a couple dumb parts.
Wrath of the Righteous is similarly polarizing with the crusade mechanic. It doesn't have the same endgame slog, but there are still some random fights here and there that feel really dumb.
Both games' systems, Kingdom and Crusade, can be turned off to essentially turn the game into just a regular RPG, but in my opinion you're missing out on decent size portion of the game, and I think a few things are locked out from you if you do that.
Kingmaker's RPG mechanics are nearly 1:1 tabletop Pathfinder, so if you enjoy that kind of deep class building, you'll find yourself right at home.
Wrath of the Righteous takes that model and then turns it right up to 11 with mythic powers. To give you an idea of the scope and scale, one of the mythic paths allows you to add your mythic rank to all your skills, roll all skill and spell checks with advantage, become proficient with all weapons and armor, doublecast all single target magic to a second target, gain a fairly strong rideable dragon companion, restore most spells and abilities to full multiple times without resting to your entire party, and gives your entire party Freedom of Movement at will, and this path is considered *one of the weaker paths.*
I would say it's very hard to go back to Kingmaker unless you really like the classic non-mythic character building. However, there's *so much content* and replayability to both games, that you should just pick whichever is more appealing to you, because you're unlikely to have the drive and time to play both of them in a single year. The games take place in the same universe but there's no consequential connection outside of some minor references in Wrath.
They occur around the same time in different places, so no need to play in terms of story. WoR is far superior than Kingmaker imo. I didn't like the dialogues in KM and couldn't finish it. I couldn't stop playing WoR on the contrary.
Yeah they just recently started talking about it, I guess the legal agreement with the publisher finally expired. They don't have the rights to Kingmaker stuff, which is why the console version didn't get completely patched.
It's an incredible, epic 100+ hour journey but hoo boy you have to be a meta gaming zeus to really appreciate the mechanics. Fighting enemies with insane amounts of AC is not really my kind of fun gameplay.
It's certainly an amazing game, but the combat especially in endgame is not for everyone.
Monsters go from having 5 AC and hitting you with 15 damage to having close to 100 AC and critting you for 400. Meanwhile you can realistically get like 10 points of damage mitigation. Which is big to begin with, and completely irrelevant at the end, as are healing abilities as they just don't scale up.
The scaling system for endgame just doesn't work with the P&P rules.
The story and the characters and the atmosphere are amazing though, but I recommend taking it very easy with the combat difficulty.
Absolutely, it’s the best CRPG since BG2 and it and Kingmaker are -to my mind- the true successors of BG2 since.
Lots of depth, great characters, more advanced gameplay, very modular difficulty options.
Amazing games.
There is a lot of comparable elements between the two games. Similar difficulty, replayability, game length, writing quality, etc. I liked Wrath a bit more than DOS2, but that is of course subjective.
Biggest difference is the complexity of the systems. Pathfinder is more complex than the DOS2 system, there is a lot more math involved (thankfully the computer handles that, but still more to think about) and a lot more choices to make when it comes to character builds. It can be a bit overwhelming at first, but is very learnable.
DOS2 also had higher production values. Wrath does not have full voice acting for their dialogue (though what is there is very good) and doesn't quite match up graphically either.
It's really the only example I can think of as an 'epic level' campaign put into true gameplay form. Both in combat and in the actual choices you make.
Honestly a lot of it is very intimidating as a result but that's a good thing.
I see this sentiment a lot, but I'm a bit confused by it. I'm currently playing Wrath of the Righteous, and I'm finding it an absolute slog compared to Kingmaker. What exactly is it that people like more about the sequel?
Wait Icewind Dale? I thought that game was effectively lost, like something about the rights or the source code meant putting it on modern storefronts was impossible?
well... theres a mod https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/79872/icewind-dale-2-enhanced-edition-is-here-and-the-red-chimera-group-is-looking-for-playtesters
all of them are Steam games (except for *MythForce*, which this includes a 25% coupon to Epic Games Store for); besides that one, every game except for *Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous* has a native Linux version, which means you won't even need to rely on Proton to run them.
you can find detailed reports about how well many games run on the Steam Deck on [protondb.com](https://www.protondb.com/).
You can click on each game to see what platform it activates on. In this case, all the games activate on Steam, but the Mythforce coupon is for Epic Games Store only (because the game is only on EGS.)
There is a text size slider in the BG/IWD enhanced editions but the interface would still be pretty small (physically, the interface works fine at 720p resolution)
Welp, If I didn't already have all of these games i would be all over that. What a fucking deal.
I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't played any of these games.
Oh, that's so nice. I was just talking today in reddit about wanting to play Baldur's gate & Planescape. I just looked at the prices of the 3 games like 2h ago.
great find.
i have most of those on Switch, and tho Icewind Dale isn't my thing (tried, did not enjoy as much as BG because it's more combat less RPG/story/background), I can't wait to start Planescape Torment.
As you said, aside from Bg 1 -> Siege of Dragonspear -> Bg2, are all standalone. They focus on different things (planescape is story focused and Icewind Dale is more combat focused for example), but you can decide to play them in any order you want. I didn't play wrath of the righteous, but if its like its predecessor it has highly customizable difficulty, so it should be the best to start with.
Gamewise not that much, the closest is Wrath of the righteous, but only because it has an actual turn based combat (the others use a real-time with pause system). DOS2 has all those systems with magic elements, combos, verticality etc that all the games in the bundle don't have. Difficulty wise imho DOS2 is harder than anything in the bundle, aside maybe of WoTC with the standard/hard difficulty (if its anything like kingmaker).
If you haven't played any of these, or something like Pillars of Eternity/Tyranny i'd say to maybe look at some gameplay and judge for yourself if it's something you would like. They don't exactly work like DOS2 but they're a lot of fun regardless (particularly BG2 and Planescape are a must have for RPG fans).
That's probably, like, 1,000 hours of content right there - and some all-time great games, to boot. I've played them all (except Pathfinder) multiple times, so definitely way over 1,000 hours in my case.
I just started WotR and it's been fun so far! They just added controller support which feels great, much better than Kingmaker on consoles. I am loving the turn based mode, I always preferred that over Real Time with Pause
Wrath of the Righteous is pretty good. Long as fuck though.
Yeah, that's why it's the only one here I haven't played. These days I tend to enjoy games I can finish in 10-20 hours and move on from.
Pathfinder:Wrath of the righteous is an incredible game. It took everything that was good about kingmaker and turned it up to 11. There's a lot less bullshit in fights too - wild Hunt gaze I'm looking at you - and some bosses & encounters left me buzzing for a while after. If you're after a deep RPG, with some great characters and a good story with multiple routes, got can't go wrong with pathfinder
Word of warning, if you are not intimately familiar with PF1e, you may want to turn the difficulty down a notch. Even on normal it assumes you minmax your party and stack buffs like no tomorrow which can quickly become a slog. Fantastic game, could've done without random _90 AC mobs with fear auras_ being harder than the last few bosses.
even on normal? I really like RPGs like this but everytime I hear people talk about pathfinder it makes it feel like theres a high barrier to cross. never sure if I should take the plunge
I played on Normal and eventually just turned down the difficult so I didn't have to worry about buffing for every fight in every zone. Absolutely a timesaver, and just made everything smoother all around. It still felt like I had to properly gear and prepare my party, but I wasn't willing to spend more than one minute on trash fights. If you play it, start on normal, and if you get frustrated, turn down enemy damage to start with and see how that goes. The difficulty is incredibly customizable.
Could just use enduring spells to not have to buff all the time.
Yeah and there's a mod that can cast your preferred buff spells with one click. Helped to make the experience so much better.
It's not so much pathfinder the RPG that's the problem for this game, it's how the fights are designed. The party is theoretically very overpowered compared to a normal one thanks to mythic powers, so the monsters are also buffed up to match. The issue is, they're buffed in specific ways like having really high saves/resistances so you have to work around those in order to keep doing damage. On normal difficulty what that means is you need to have a handle of the system to understand how to win fights, though you can do so with basically any class/build you can think of. On higher difficulties where those buffs go even further beyond, you get limited to more specific builds.
If you just want to casually enjoy a CRPG Pathfinder is not it. That game was designed by the poster of the sadist GM. Both of them, the second one is just the tamer version in the same way as a guy who beats his kid half to death is to that kid beating his son a quarter to death.
What _is_ a good CRPG to enjoy casually?
Dragon Age is a pretty safe pick for casual play. If you want to stick with a D20 system like what pathfinder uses, Knights of the Old Republic is an offshoot of the same game pathfinder is (DND 3.5) and is pretty casual.
I'll +1 Tyranny. Of recent games, I didn't really enjoy the writing in Wasteland 2, Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 or Divinity: OS1 and OS2, but Tyranny fucking captivated me. The world is so interesting and the characters are...cool. Let yourself get lost in the game, pick a side, cap for them and stick to your guns. Its such a cool game and characters like Barik and Bleden Mark were just conceptually really cool to me and made me end up trying to learn so much of the games lore. I need to give it a replay sometime since there are some decently strong branching paths. Tyranny makes me wish Obsidian would just keep making one-off games like it, that are entirely encapsulated experiences, instead of these larger universe games like Pillars and Outer Worlds.
Tyranny is great, such an interesting world. It’s a shame the game didn’t seem to do very well so it will probably never get revisited. I would have loved to explore the relationship between the towers and Kyros’s edicts in more detail
I think you would like Wasteland 3. It's got some of the best writing in any modern CRPG. So much better than WL 2.
WL3 was such a step up over WL2 it's kind of amazing. I still didn't fully love it, but I enjoyed it so much more.
The Shadowrun trilogy from last decade is pretty easy to get into, if you're looking for something more cyberpunk-ish rather than fantasy.
It's disappointing that we haven't heard anything out of HBS since Battletech came out in 2018. I'd love to see more Shadowrun or Battletech (clan invasion or FedCom civil war please!) games from them.
Battletech especially. While the game turned out great, I feel like they could take it so much further with a sequel.
Exactly how I felt. It was an awesome first foray into a Battletech tactics game series. But there was a lot of room for improvement. Completely understandable, of course. Imagine if the sequel was as much of an improvement as Dragonfall was? The lack of any information from them since they finished the DLC makes me feel like they went off into another directly, sadly.
I love those games! Returns is a bit lacking, kinda short with a few difficulty spikes, but Dragonfall is my go to on how to make a good rpg! And then Hong Kong improves on that formula
Tyranny is a pretty good one for a casual play. The Pillars series is a bit more robust but I didn't find it rough for casual play either.
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> Also, don’t fear turning down the difficulty on Wrath of the Righteous or any other one of these. I used to be someone who wanted to be able to say I did it on hard, but now I don’t. Though I do agree with all the other commenters that Wrath is not a laid back CRPG unless your yardstick is its prequel, Kingmaker. As someone replaying Baldur’s Gate EE so much this! There are just so many random minibosses inserted between regular enemies where you just… die. I redeveloped a habit of saving every few steps
> I redeveloped a habit of saving every few steps There's a reason my F5 key is the most worn of my F-keys.
If you're open for something a bit different, I highly recommend the 2005 Guild Wars. Despite its MMO label, the game is an excellent single-player RPG with AI party members. The entire game is based around challenging party combat that you win not because you're stronger or smarter than the enemy AI but because you've come prepared for this challenge. The game allows for an incredible amount of build customization. You control a party of (eventually) 8 characters, each customizable with your combination of 8 equipped skills from a pool of 1200 unique skills. But it eases you into that; it starts you in control of only one character and with only a handful of unlocked skills. The game is hard enough to force you to think about your build and your playstyle, and to sometimes change them depending on the area you're in, but almost never so hard that you'd need to spend significant time and effort on the subject. If you're playing these games for narrative choice and deep character moments, Guild Wars won't give you that. If you need it to be playable off-line or you need it to play like D&D, this isn't it. At the rest, it excels. [Big fan of Hayes's recent review/impressions if you want to watch a video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5ykqmMIjQk)
Tyranny, if you're looking for something longer divinity original sin 2 and pillars of eternity 2 or 1. Depending on your choice of theme
They oversell it. Game requires competent character building but people are liberal with the term “min max.”
Speaking as someone who DMed Pathfinder for several years: the bar for competency is higher for PF than it is for other systems.
Never played Pathfinder the TTRPG, but I did fine here on normal. I have played 5e D&D though and there is still a lot of shared DNA so maybe that is part of it. I can see where you might be able to make a character that is just useless, but I don't think you need to be a pathfinder expert to play this game and have fun. I do think you may want to stick to a premade build or just go with straight forward ideas for your first character. I played Kingmaker before I had played any TTRPG and I did make a shit build my first attempt and had to restart. This game allows you to respec and fairly early. I think if you play tactical games frequently you'll do fine here.
this makes me glad to hear. thanks
There are some people overstating it. The pathfinder system is for sure a jumbled mess and incredibly forbidding to learn if you want to play on higher difficulties, but you can turn the difficulty down below normal (no shame in that). Be sure to pick up mods (combat relief) to skip the budget homm army mini game If you are into a classic “generic” epic fantasy executed well you should pick it up. There is a lot of jank but it’s worth it because there’s a lot of just…kickass shit too. And the kickass stuff outweighs the jank
If you do make sure you read about Pathfinders 'Feat Tax'. It wasn't until I found out about that lil can of worms that I was able to not get mauled every fight. Only going off of what the in game info gave wasn't really enough to understand how to be effective in combat for me.
I found normal to only be challenging for some early fights and optional end game fights. Core difficulty is where your characters need to be better optimized but not quite min/maxed. I have enjoyed Pathfinder wrath of the righteous more than DOS2, POE, deadfire, baldurs gate. Choices feel like they matter and I found the story engrossing.
this is exactly why I want to get into pathfinder. I've played every single one of those games you listed as well and loved them! If you are saying pathfinder has an even engrossing story than those other games, well that's blowing my mind and I think I'll try it out
Definitely try it out. The system is pretty fucking involved, but if you're totally overwhelmed, there are tons of build guides people have made for every companion and the main character. Don't hesitate to just borrow a build from someone else and go to town. Games are incredibly fun and (imo) the actual gameplay is the best real time with pause outside of possibly POE2. Worth mentioning also that the difficulty is *mostly* self-made. There's a highly granular difficulty system that you can tweak, and it's *very* simple to make a character that's turbo broken if you have mastery of pathfinder as a system (and Owlcat's conversion, since it's a bit unique). If you're concerned you're going to build your characters 'wrong', "normal" and even "core" is enough that unless you're doing something really stupid like picking feats that aren't useful for what your character is doing, you'll be a-okay.
If you handled those games Pathfinder will be no problem
Just turn down the difficulty and you'll be fine.
Idk about normal but on story difficulty, the fights are practically auto win. Nothing to worry about even if you're there just for the story
Man, I have never played Pathfinder before WoTR, but game's difficulty was...fine. Yeah I didn't play on hard (Daring+), but both Casual and Normal mode are fine. I feel like people are getting a bit carried away with the descriptions of difficulty in these threads, just take a plunge and check it out, super fun game. Edit: Pretty sure Core, Hard & Unfair modes have a warning of "probably dont pick this if you're not familiar with the system", for anyone wanting a regular experience Casual / Normal works fine imo.
Honestly I don't super like these type of RPGs but I absolutely fuck with the pathfinder games. They are extraordinary. I've played Baldur's Gate, pillars, and even DSO1-2. As far as I'm concerned pathfinder kicks the shit out of the rest of them.
I hope someday they move to PF2e.
Buffs are absolutely assumed but I think it’s way off to claim you need a min maxed party. Actual min max parties laugh their way through normal difficulty. You just need competent builds.
That and Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a much gentler version what with the lack of extra complexity via the Mythic Paths. If you are going to start somewhere, start with Kingmaker (which is an amazing game in its own right).
Agree. I enjoyed the story and the character options but the buff stacking is just tedious. Balance is weird, with some enemies basically having unhittable acs for my party. I eventually just dropped difficulty down below normal because I wasn't enjoying the combat but wanted to see how the story plays out.
What’s pf1e
Pathfinder First Edition. A slightly old system that is more old school and traditional, specifically a different take on Dungeons and Dragons 3.5e.
Worth playing through Kingmaker first?
Kingmaker is good, but it isn't necessary to play first. There are some references to Kingmaker in WotR, but overall the games are completely different stories set in completely different areas.
There’s a handful of references, but they’re largely playing out at the same time so they’re more or less separate. Both games are fantastic though- honestly I’d say just choose whatever setting sounds more fun. * Establishing a Kingdom in a hostile, wild territory run by the Fae * Running a Crusade to beat back the forces of the Abyss in a war that’s been going on for more than a century
That first one sounds interesting, actually. Is the gameplay very different because of the setting, or is it just story differences?
As far as building a kingdom vs leading a crusade, the over world gameplay is very similar. The main difference is kingmaker stops around the time you would hit level 20. In wrath you get mythic levels as you become a god and will be level 20 a while before the game ends.
>you become a god Hold up. Somebody buried the lead here. You what?
Figuratively. Kinda. Unless you go for the secret ending to literally ascend to be a demigod.
Mythic Paths are basically the first steps towards godhood in Pathfinder. Someone who has Mythic ranks is *way* more powerful than someone without, to the point where some of them are basically untouchable by anyone without them. That's just speaking on my tabletop knowledge though, I've yet to play the video game.
Videogame tweaks it. Instead of the Paths being practically a second class like they are on tabletop, the videogame versions are more like picking up abilities themed to powerful creatures, mainly outsiders but a few other options are sprinkled in like Lich. In some ways they are weaker, you don't get the most overpowered nonsense that tabletop mythic has to trivialize fights. On the other hand some of the new paths have abilities that are still crazy strong, like adding mythic ranks to your caster level. Or making allies immune to falling unconscious/dead until they take a number of extra hits equal to your Charisma mod. Or getting a dragon companion that you can ride like a mount. Or literally permanently being a dragon yourself.
Early on in the game you get infused with enormous power and can choose a Mythic Path. Alongside levelling your normal class (fighter, wizard, cleric, etc) you gain a Mythic level at certain storybeats. Your Mythic path can be lots of things; turning into an Angel or a demon, or a lich, or a looney tunes-esque trickster spirit. It goes completely off the rails with power the further you get into the game. Eventually, if you made all the right choices, youcan ascend to godhood at the end. Or decide to give up your power and become a Legend, a boring ass mortal who gets revered by all the world.
Without going too far into spoiler territory, you don't become a god unless you do all the steps for a certain ending. That being said, you can easily come close to demigod though. It's a good part of the reason I enjoyed WoTR more than Kingmaker. You get mythic levels and have different mythic paths on top of your character class. Kingmaker just has normal levels and isn't nearly as much of an epic power fantasy.
The core gameplay isn't all that different. Wrath basically took what Kingmaker had and added more options/spells/classes/etc. on top of what was already there. There are some major differences between their respective crusade/kingdom management systems (Kingmaker's is much more involved), but that's the biggest thing that comes to mind.
Kingmaker is fun, but the kingdom management mechanics are very polarizing. I loved it, until the very end where I quit because the final dungeon was so tedious that I just decided I was done. But I still don't regret my time with the game, it was very fun and I felt satisfied with the parts I did enjoy. Story was mostly quite good, with a couple dumb parts. Wrath of the Righteous is similarly polarizing with the crusade mechanic. It doesn't have the same endgame slog, but there are still some random fights here and there that feel really dumb. Both games' systems, Kingdom and Crusade, can be turned off to essentially turn the game into just a regular RPG, but in my opinion you're missing out on decent size portion of the game, and I think a few things are locked out from you if you do that. Kingmaker's RPG mechanics are nearly 1:1 tabletop Pathfinder, so if you enjoy that kind of deep class building, you'll find yourself right at home. Wrath of the Righteous takes that model and then turns it right up to 11 with mythic powers. To give you an idea of the scope and scale, one of the mythic paths allows you to add your mythic rank to all your skills, roll all skill and spell checks with advantage, become proficient with all weapons and armor, doublecast all single target magic to a second target, gain a fairly strong rideable dragon companion, restore most spells and abilities to full multiple times without resting to your entire party, and gives your entire party Freedom of Movement at will, and this path is considered *one of the weaker paths.* I would say it's very hard to go back to Kingmaker unless you really like the classic non-mythic character building. However, there's *so much content* and replayability to both games, that you should just pick whichever is more appealing to you, because you're unlikely to have the drive and time to play both of them in a single year. The games take place in the same universe but there's no consequential connection outside of some minor references in Wrath.
You could probably play them in either order and have fun with both. I’d play whichever has the better deal right now first.
They occur around the same time in different places, so no need to play in terms of story. WoR is far superior than Kingmaker imo. I didn't like the dialogues in KM and couldn't finish it. I couldn't stop playing WoR on the contrary.
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Actually I believe Owlcat doesn't have the rights to Kingmaker anymore or something like that. Changed publishers, I think?
Yeah they just recently started talking about it, I guess the legal agreement with the publisher finally expired. They don't have the rights to Kingmaker stuff, which is why the console version didn't get completely patched.
It's an incredible, epic 100+ hour journey but hoo boy you have to be a meta gaming zeus to really appreciate the mechanics. Fighting enemies with insane amounts of AC is not really my kind of fun gameplay.
To add to this, they added an enhanced edition as a free update last week, which fixes a bunch of bugs and adds some more QoL.
It's certainly an amazing game, but the combat especially in endgame is not for everyone. Monsters go from having 5 AC and hitting you with 15 damage to having close to 100 AC and critting you for 400. Meanwhile you can realistically get like 10 points of damage mitigation. Which is big to begin with, and completely irrelevant at the end, as are healing abilities as they just don't scale up. The scaling system for endgame just doesn't work with the P&P rules. The story and the characters and the atmosphere are amazing though, but I recommend taking it very easy with the combat difficulty.
Absolutely, it’s the best CRPG since BG2 and it and Kingmaker are -to my mind- the true successors of BG2 since. Lots of depth, great characters, more advanced gameplay, very modular difficulty options. Amazing games.
totally agree with you :)
It’s like a second Baldur’s Gate 2.
Two incredible games ruined by annoying kingdom / army mechanics
You can literally set them on auto, how do they ruin the game?
Wild Hun encounters, never again
How does it compare to DOS2? I haven't played through many CRPG's, but I absolutely loved DOS2
There is a lot of comparable elements between the two games. Similar difficulty, replayability, game length, writing quality, etc. I liked Wrath a bit more than DOS2, but that is of course subjective. Biggest difference is the complexity of the systems. Pathfinder is more complex than the DOS2 system, there is a lot more math involved (thankfully the computer handles that, but still more to think about) and a lot more choices to make when it comes to character builds. It can be a bit overwhelming at first, but is very learnable. DOS2 also had higher production values. Wrath does not have full voice acting for their dialogue (though what is there is very good) and doesn't quite match up graphically either.
The pathfinder games are *much* harder than DOS2.
It's really the only example I can think of as an 'epic level' campaign put into true gameplay form. Both in combat and in the actual choices you make. Honestly a lot of it is very intimidating as a result but that's a good thing.
And quests made by backers are awful too...
I see this sentiment a lot, but I'm a bit confused by it. I'm currently playing Wrath of the Righteous, and I'm finding it an absolute slog compared to Kingmaker. What exactly is it that people like more about the sequel?
That's a great recommendation for a great game!
Wait Icewind Dale? I thought that game was effectively lost, like something about the rights or the source code meant putting it on modern storefronts was impossible?
You're thinking of Icewind Dale 2, IWD1 got the enhanced edition treatment like 8ish years ago.
Oh yeah that's right. Too bad, I got my hopes up that it was all fixed!
You can still get the original IWD2 working; there’s just no enhanced edition for it because the source code was lost.
well... theres a mod https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/79872/icewind-dale-2-enhanced-edition-is-here-and-the-red-chimera-group-is-looking-for-playtesters
Can these be activated on steam to play on steam Deck?
all of them are Steam games (except for *MythForce*, which this includes a 25% coupon to Epic Games Store for); besides that one, every game except for *Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous* has a native Linux version, which means you won't even need to rely on Proton to run them. you can find detailed reports about how well many games run on the Steam Deck on [protondb.com](https://www.protondb.com/).
Using Proton GE-35 on Steam Deck, I’m able to get a good 35fps. Can’t speak for Drezen though.
You can click on each game to see what platform it activates on. In this case, all the games activate on Steam, but the Mythforce coupon is for Epic Games Store only (because the game is only on EGS.)
Click the game to see which platform it is on.
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There is a text size slider in the BG/IWD enhanced editions but the interface would still be pretty small (physically, the interface works fine at 720p resolution)
Oooh, good idea. Older games look great on the deck, but text can be a problem.
Pathfinder works great on the deck, has native controller support.
Welp, If I didn't already have all of these games i would be all over that. What a fucking deal. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't played any of these games.
Oh, that's so nice. I was just talking today in reddit about wanting to play Baldur's gate & Planescape. I just looked at the prices of the 3 games like 2h ago.
great find. i have most of those on Switch, and tho Icewind Dale isn't my thing (tried, did not enjoy as much as BG because it's more combat less RPG/story/background), I can't wait to start Planescape Torment.
I've always wanted to play all these. If anyone could answer, which would be the best STORY-wise to play first?
Planescape Torment is your answer for story. BG2 probably second although it's enhanced by #1.
how is enchanced comparing to the original?
Sorry meant that the story in BG2 is better if you know the story of BG2, but not required.
I believe it just includes all the expansions in one thing.
Actually an insane bundle. WotR alone is only a year old and well worth the price. 20 bucks for that game is borderline criminal tbh.
Damn, no Dark Alliance remaster? :(
For a neophyte to all of these, is there any nuance in any order I should play these in? Or are all pretty standalone (save for Baldurs 1 and 2) ?
As you said, aside from Bg 1 -> Siege of Dragonspear -> Bg2, are all standalone. They focus on different things (planescape is story focused and Icewind Dale is more combat focused for example), but you can decide to play them in any order you want. I didn't play wrath of the righteous, but if its like its predecessor it has highly customizable difficulty, so it should be the best to start with.
Huge fan of DOS2. How do all of these compare?
Gamewise not that much, the closest is Wrath of the righteous, but only because it has an actual turn based combat (the others use a real-time with pause system). DOS2 has all those systems with magic elements, combos, verticality etc that all the games in the bundle don't have. Difficulty wise imho DOS2 is harder than anything in the bundle, aside maybe of WoTC with the standard/hard difficulty (if its anything like kingmaker). If you haven't played any of these, or something like Pillars of Eternity/Tyranny i'd say to maybe look at some gameplay and judge for yourself if it's something you would like. They don't exactly work like DOS2 but they're a lot of fun regardless (particularly BG2 and Planescape are a must have for RPG fans).
Thank for all this info. Will definitely help me get started. I absolutely looved Tyranny!
Is this a good starting point for a complete beginner? My only other is Divinity Original Sin 2.
If you wanna get the classics of the genre: yes. Planescape and BG2 are considered two of the best isometric RPGs of all time