I honestly think this game is being over-praised. It is mistakenly considered a cool RPG game (God forbid, game of the year), worthy of the admiration of a multi-million dollar audience. A game that can ignite the memory of her in the heart for years to come. Sometimes it seems to me that they are ready to put it on the same level with a game like The Witcher 3.
Later in the article I will describe in detail what is bad in the game, that in the game, on the contrary, I succeeded. I will give detailed examples of both its weaknesses and its strengths.
So that all this does not look like the chatter and grumble of an “old fan” (the author has passed the first game and the second from the Owl cat games studio), I will remove everything that concerns the reasoning under the spoiler. In the main body of the article, I will leave the main arguments, the key part of the thoughts and the compilation of these in the form of conclusions.
I took the review seriously. So, let’s begin.
Involving the player in the world of the game
In Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, you don’t feel the protagonist you created at the start as the protagonist of the story. After all, everything happens as if parallel to your desires.
From the very beginning, epic events begin to occur around the hero, to which the game brought you down without warning. And, therefore, their significance for you is insignificant. After all, you are just looking at them. Look from the back (for the game) side of the screen. You don’t feel the scale and importance of the characters that appear. There are so many of them in the course of the development of the plot and they are so quickly “merged” that you stop believing in what is happening after another 5 minute of the game. There is not even such an important progression of the “toughness” of your character in the course of the story. Already from the moment of the creation of the hero, you are plunged into an event, equal to which then may not occur.
Moreover, as the story progresses, you can never say for sure whether you can now kill this semi-divine entity or not? Indeed, at any moment to your aid, without warning, some goddess or other semi-divine entity may jump up. The player is just right to sympathize not with his character, but with the enemies. Do you think I’m kidding or embellishing?
Alas, no. From the outset, Owl cat games has been trying to grab our attention on an epic scale. In front of our eyes, within 7-10 minutes, extremely significant, or rather even epic, things are happening. Here the game begins, the appearance of a wounded hero (you and me) in the city for the first time, on a stretcher.
The lives of nameless vagrants are important!
Everyone runs around a stretcher with a still nameless character (you don’t even have to introduce yourself), who, by the way, can even send his saviors in three letters without consequences. This happens (if the player does not slow down) in 2-3 minutes. Then we are, as it were, saved from the wound, and we can run around the square of the city center. Poke with the mouse in 2 events, each for 30 seconds of duration, do not have time to go to eat for free (in my case) and face an invasion of demons. Moreover, of apocalyptic proportions.
Feel the difference between the two screenshots. There is 1 minute difference between them.
See the local, practically, supreme evil with your own eyes. See how the dragon, revered by the local elite, is destroyed with two blows, unrequitedly, like a pitiful supporting actor (and after all, I almost believed that the dragon is a cool character). To be able to scratch her offender, and then fall into a hole tens of meters deep right in the middle of the city, formed from just one blow of this Villain (with a capital letter). Yes, after this blow, the khan almost comes to the city.
Once again, this is all the seed. All this lasts about 7-10 minutes.
Don’t do that
Why did I place such an emphasis on this, exclusively plot point? In a game that has board roots, which means that it is primarily about cubes? Because it’s kind of still an RPG with a storyline for dozens of hours!
Well, let’s say that only the very start of this game is lost. Maybe this is a minor flaw. A spot for 10 minutes of time on the body in 100 – 150 hours of general travel can only be called a birthmark. Spit and forget! But, as luck would have it, the studio further stretches this very spot over the whole plot with all its might. Over and over again in front of us (the players), the developer will roll out huge and powerful cannons that … the whole game will simply stand. Will annoy the player, not giving the opportunity to believe in what is happening. Feel yourself a part of it. As a result, the player simply floats through the plot, looking at it from the side.
