![]() The tutorials in Wrath of the Righteous are optional, but extremely good if you're unfamiliar with the Pathfinder tabletop game (Image credit: Future) All this crusade management plays out on the same map that your adventuring party uses to move, and you can swap back and forth between the two modes at will. Most of the time, it means moving armies around the map and spending a separate set of Crusade-specific resources to hire troops or build structures in the areas you control. Sometimes, that involves making dialogue choices and going on side quests. You'll spend much of that time managing the resources and troops of the Fifth Crusade, the in-game war effort against a demonic horde. It’s a clear love letter to an idealized tabletop gaming experience, and quite pretty to look at - which is nice, since you’ll spend at least a dozen hours over the course of a game staring at the map screen. This takes the form of a colorful map laid out on a table, and covered with little figurines. Once you progress far enough, you’ll have the chance to leave Kenabres and start marching your merry band of crusaders on adventures around the surrounding territory. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous review: Crusade management Now that Wrath of the Righteous has shown me what it feels like to play a truly dynamic real-time/turn-based isometric RPG, I wish I never had to go back. However, in that game, you had to choose when starting a new game, and couldn’t switch back and forth on the fly. Obsidian offered a similar choice between real-time and turn-based combat in its 2018 isometric RPG Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. But when you face off against challenging opponents, which demand careful resource management or complicated strategies, you can switch over to turn-based mode and micromanage your characters’ actions. On Normal difficulty (which I played on for this review), you can pretty reliably sic your party on most enemies and watch the combat play out in real time, pausing occasionally to issue a specific order. But for some weird reason they came up with a new, barely there turn-based combat system for the armies, and it is tedious.I love this feature, because it lets you tailor how much you want to be involved in combat. The game already has a functional turn-based combat system that would work perfectly for large-scale unit combat. The crusader army management and in particular the army battles seem so half-baked, even more than the city-building mechanics in Kingmaker. Edit: after reaching the crusade portion, I have to knock this game down another point to 7. ![]() Fortunately, a reload game almost always fixes the issues, but there's always a frustrating moment of not knowing if you're missing something or if the game is just bugged. I would excuse such bugs in side-quests or random encounters, but these were in unavoidable story missions in the primary hub location. I had a main story mission bug out, with endless enemies spawning in but unable to actually attack my characters, and the "objective" enemies failing to show up. There are even some rather inexplicable bugs, like characters running through objects and tables, even in the main tavern hub. Some spells simply have no visual indicator that they've been cast, some spells simply failed to cast (I had a cleric cast channel energy 5 times in a row without actually healing anyone), weapon damage is not consistent with weapon descriptions. Unfortunately like its predecessor, Wrath of the Righteous is plagued by many bugs which knock it down from a 9 to an 8 for me. The excellent writing is on full display, with random books lying around with paragraphs of lore, humor, and clues. Over about 10 hours of gameplay I've been having a grand time exploring the new setting, combat, and diving into all of the lore. There are many improvements from Kingmaker, and the sheer amount of character options is mind-boggling. The characters just leap off the screen in a way that many CRPG NPCs do not. And, like its prequel, Wrath brings in engaging and fun characters with conflicting motivations. Wrath of the Righteous trades in Kingmaker's whimsical wilderness kingdom builder for a somber religious crusade, and the theme works its way into the environments, music, and artwork. ![]() Wrath of the Righteous trades in Kingmaker's whimsical wilderness kingdom builder for a somber religious A good successor to Kingmaker. ![]()
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