Comment on Neverwinter Nights 2 Gets Enhanced Edition, Due July 15th | RPGFan
Coelacanth@feddit.nu 3 days agoGood to know again, thank you! I played through Kingmaker last winter and your description is pretty spot on. There were parts of it that were great, parts of which that were not, and parts of it that were downright awful. And particularly the latter parts really soured me on it, and made me super reluctant to play Wrath of the Righteous. If that is Owlcat’s idea of high level play I don’t really want an epic adventure from them.
I’ve played Divinity 1&2 and BG3, but I’m less high on Larian than everyone else these days. They’re fine games and fun to play but Larian’s style of writing isn’t my jam and I also think BG3 has a lot of problems that get kind of glossed over.
I missed Pillars 1, so I guess that is on some sort of to-do list. I played about half of Pillars 2 but got bored and never picked it back up.
PSA: If you play ANY of the Pathfinder CRPGs? Get blind fight ASAP. And make sure every arcane caster has a few charges of Glitterdust at any moment.
I had Blind Fight on every single party member and that final bit of the game was still a hellish slog that made actively detest Owlcat.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
Wrath is better in basically every possible way.
Some of that has to do with being incredibly open from the first 30 seconds that the main enemies are demons/devils (rather than teasing out it is the fae) and that demons/devils are much more straightforward enemies.
Part of it is also that you get a… kind of really unfair power boost early on. Mythic Levels are not Epic Levels from 3e and you actually get them really early on (your first around character level 5 or 6) and they are kind of ridiculous. Stuff like getting a ridiculous number of extra spells per day, having all killing blows and crits with ranged weapons do AOE damage, doing AOE damage on the first melee miss of any round, etc. It gets REAL stupid and that is even before you start getting the really fun stuff like turning into a Lich or Dragon. Which helps a lot since a LOT of encounters are the “you do one of these per tabletop session” kind. And your entire party get the “only kind of ridonkulous” version, not just the PC.
And the encounter design in general is a lot better. I find that enemies care a lot less about AOOs and will just sprint past your frontline to beat on your archers. But there are also far fewer “Cool. You need to push through twenty endless respawning midboss enemies to get the summoner” fights. I totally don’t fucking hate that house at the end of time at all.
It is also worth remembering that Kingmaker is in rights hell and Owlcat and that publisher are not on good terms in the slightest. So they couldn’t even really go back and patch Kingmaker (whereas they did a LOT to improve Wrath post release). Which kind of shows with some of the Wrath tooltips bordering on apologizing for Kingmaker (stuff like getting rid of supplies for resting).
Kingmaker is one of those games that are “if you ever think you MIGHT play it, just play it first… but turn off fail states for kingdom management and read a guide”. Whereas Wrath is a genuinely amazing CRPG and has an argument for being the all time best.
Coelacanth@feddit.nu 3 days ago
Hearing the bit about rights hell and patches makes me feel a lot better. House at the End of Time followed by that final broken capital area was just some of the least fun gameplay I’ve experienced in a CRPG. And I was there back in the day getting one-shot by Gibberlings in BG1! I’m not as big a fan of the epicly mythic type of narratives and settings as I am of more grounded stories, but if it makes the combat more fun and better balanced I might stomach it.
And if the game is genuinely that amazing I might bump it a bit on my priority list. I already bought it on sale last year, but the Kingmaker slog (what is it, 200 hours or so?) kind of wore me out on western CRPGs for a bit.