Wrath of the Righteous: The Video Game

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Spoiler: Camellia

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Yes, that's correct. The way I see it, Camellia's arc is a foil to other, more redeemable characters like Wenduag, Arueshalae and Daeren. You have success with them and think Camellia will benefit from similar assistance, but by the end of it you realize all you were doing was enabling her. The fact that you CAN be successful in redeeming other party members makes her end result all the more tragic, because your companion has to WANT to change, and if they don't want to, all your Mythic Power isn't going to. It's a great, game-wide exploration of what redemption MEANS.

[DeTess]

Spoiler: spoilers regarding Early Sunset, the Azata adviser and man of wealth and taste

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I just got to the point in act 4 where you can call early sunset out on the fact that he acts neither particularly good nor particularly chaotic. And while I got a decent enough guess at the nature of his game, I really wouldn't have been able to guess his name. Him revealing himself to be no one less than Mephystoles, the number 2 of hell, came as quite the shock XD

[Tome]

Spoiler: spoilers regarding Early Sunset, the Azata adviser and man of wealth and taste

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I just got to the point in act 4 where you can call early sunset out on the fact that he acts neither particularly good nor particularly chaotic. And while I got a decent enough guess at the nature of his game, I really wouldn't have been able to guess his name. Him revealing himself to be no one less than Mephystoles, the number 2 of hell, came as quite the shock XD

Spoiler

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And when/if you fight him, he goes down like a chump. Disappointingly so, for someone on the same level as the demon lords.

But hey, he gave enough xp to level up twice

[tonberrian]

Ugh, ran into a game breaking bug in act 4. Index Out of Bounds when entering the mage tower's second floor, which is on a necessary quest. So I'm stuck.

[Chen]

Spoiler

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And when/if you fight him, he goes down like a chump. Disappointingly so, for someone on the same level as the demon lords.

But hey, he gave enough xp to level up twice

Spoiler

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I think the latest patch a few hours ago fixed this. He definitely just fell over when I fought him last week though

Ugh, ran into a game breaking bug in act 4. Index Out of Bounds when entering the mage tower's second floor, which is on a necessary quest. So I'm stuck.

This just got introduced in the latest patch and they posted on Reddit a fix was incoming soon.

[Anteros]

I think this is the buggiest game I've ever played. I always thought Bethesda titles were bad, but they just crash to desktop. You don't lose whole save files or find yourself unable to progress.

[Anteros]

Anyone know if there's anything else at the Artisan's tower you visit with Greybor during his quest? The game bugged out again and thinks I never went there.

[Starbuck_II]

I think this is the buggiest game I've ever played. I always thought Bethesda titles were bad, but they just crash to desktop. You don't lose whole save files or find yourself unable to progress.

Atari's Temple of Elemental Evil had bad bugs like that.
It was mostly linked to Autosave but a few of regular saves bugged out too (any save in 2nd city had that chance).

Beyond that, both ToEE and this are very fun even though very buggy.

[Anteros]

I'll say this for the devs, they're good at writing detestable characters. It's rare in an RPG to look at a potential party member and think, "No, I don't care if they could join me and lead to further quests...they need to be put down." That's happened multiple times already for me.

Anyway, I decided to do everything possible before finishing act 3, so I did every available quest before talking to the quest NPC...and now I have to wait a month for the queen to arrive. So I'm just spending a month of skipping days. Whoo.

[Rynjin]

It's really on Camellia and Nenio I've fantasized about murdering. Woljif gets put on the bench because he's annoying, but not as annoying as those two.

[Anteros]

It's really on Camellia and Nenio I've fantasized about murdering. Woljif gets put on the bench because he's annoying, but not as annoying as those two.

Woljif doesn't bother me. I actually like him a little bit. I don't have voices turned on though since so much of the voice acting is terrible. I respecced him fully into wizard instead of rogue, so he's a lot more useful. Nenio is unbearable.

I can't imagine actually keeping

Spoiler

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Camelia

or Wendaug around as a good aligned character. They both need to be put down. Hard.

[Rynjin]

It's one of the scenarios where keeping voices turned off is probably good if you want to like the character because the way Woljif's voice actor says the word "chief" is so perfectly engineered to grind my nerves it's really impressive, and I mean that sincerely. He is clearly TRYING to needle you with his abjectly false sincerity and sheer slimy car saelsman-like "charm" and it works.

He sounds exactly like a cheesy grifter archetype should sound.

And I can't STAND him. Really the biggest compliment I can give the voice actor, I really hope he goes places after this.

[Anteros]

It's one of the scenarios where keeping voices turned off is probably good if you want to like the character because the way Woljif's voice actor says the word "chief" is so perfectly engineered to grind my nerves it's really impressive, and I mean that sincerely. He is clearly TRYING to needle you with his abjectly false sincerity and sheer slimy car saelsman-like "charm" and it works.

He sounds exactly like a cheesy grifter archetype should sound.

And I can't STAND him. Really the biggest compliment I can give the voice actor, I really hope he goes places after this.

It's overacted, just like the rest of the voices. It had to be a conscious decision because it's rampant throughout the game. I suppose it adds character in a "beating you over the head with it" type of way, but I couldn't take anyone seriously. The characters are all so much more bearable since I turned the voices off. Just like everything else in the game, it's bug-riddled so they get turned back on constantly though.

[Rynjin]

I'll be honest, I think you've been overly harsh about the voices this whole time. Yes, it's overacted: and it should be. It's cheesy AF and most of it is extremely fun because of it. I couldn't imagine the game would be improved by the performances being stuffy and reserved. This isn't Dragon Age, where the grimdark is part of the appeal, it's a game about an army of literal demons being fought off by a ragtag group of nobodies who turn into demigods. No nuance or subtlety mars the plot, so why should it be present in the acting?

[BloodSquirrel]

I just beat the game last night.

On the one hand, this is legitimately one of the best games I've ever played. It's the first CRPG I've played since the Baldur's Gate series that matched or even exceeded the same sense of scale and epic adventure. The combat system is hands-down the best party-based combat system I've ever seen. It's a legitimate improvement over Baldur's Gate's implementation of a D&D style ruleset on pretty much every front, without being "streamlined" or watered down. The ability to switch between RTWP and Turn-based, and have both work well, should be the new standard for CRPGs. The writing is maybe not quite as good as Pillars of Eternity, but it's a clear number two in recent CRPGs. The game had me completely absorbed to the point of literally staying up until sunrise playing it.

On the other hand, this game really needs some MAJOR patches.

I'm sure pretty much everybody knows about the crashes, corrupted saves, literal cannot-complete-the-game quest scripting bugs, performance issues, etc. I avoided the worst of the bugs, but I still wound up with a bunch of uncompleted quests by the time I finished because something broke along the way.

The most annoying for me was not being able to complete The Secrets of Creation quest because the Bone Hills never appeared on my map. That one really stung, because it felt like it was supposed to be a major part of the narrative. And I really liked those puzzles. Lann's quest bugged out for me.

Even aside from the actual bugs, though, some of the quests wind up failing when they don't need to because of untelegraphed act/section-ending events, a lot of content seems to be hidden behind failed perception rolls (and areas that are simply not obviously accessible on the map- it's really easy to miss one of those "click here to jump across this gap" spots).

And while they've improved a bit since Kingmaker, the devs really have no excuse for how many unnecessary loading screens you have to go through. There's no reason that the Crusade Management menu should need a loading screen. It's a ****ing menu. In fact, the entire world map, crusade management, player traveling, fort-building, and everything else that isn't your part walking around in a game zone should be part of one interface mode. If a game like Civilization can manage to work out a UI that combines everything that it needs without switching into different modes, then so should this game, where there's much less going on on the strategic level. And FFS, let me zoom out a bit more. With the way they've got the pathways set up it's almost impossible to figure out how to get from A to B zoomed in as much as you are.

The Crusade stuff in general is a bit weak. I liked it enough as a distraction/minigame, but it's wildly unbalanced to the point where most of it feels pointless since one high-level general and a stack of archers can no-sell any demon army, and trying to actually use tactics or whatever is just a boring waste of time.

[BloodSquirrel]

I'll be honest, I think you've been overly harsh about the voices this whole time. Yes, it's overacted: and it should be. It's cheesy AF and most of it is extremely fun because of it. I couldn't imagine the game would be improved by the performances being stuffy and reserved. This isn't Dragon Age, where the grimdark is part of the appeal, it's a game about an army of literal demons being fought off by a ragtag group of nobodies who turn into demigods. No nuance or subtlety mars the plot, so why should it be present in the acting?

I don't think that's entirely fair. This isn't Divinity: Original Sin. There is more going on that "lol, demon army".

The bigger issue is that reserved, nuanced performances don't fit the format of the game itself. That works in film where you can see the actor's body language and visual cues, and where you have tight control over the scene and context. It doesn't work when you've only got audio and still portraits, and when the dialog has to fit into branching conversations at non-deterministic points in the story. Both the voice acting and the writing itself needs to be a bit on the broad side in order to get the point across in this kind of game.

I mean, there was one point late in the game when I was in Arueshalae's dream, and she decided to dream about us being in a cottage together, sitting at a table. Problem was- I was in gold dragon form at the moment, and the game logic wasn't sophisticated enough to make sure it used my human form. It looked so ridiculous that I literally laughed out loud.

That's an extreme example, but it's a good demonstration of why you need to loosen up your writing and voice acting a bit. Trying for too serious a tone doesn't work when that kind of thing can happen.

[Anteros]

Yes, it's overacted: and it should be. It's cheesy AF and most of it is extremely fun because of it.

This is something I'll simply never agree with. Some of the voices in general cross over from overacting to objectively bad like Camelia and Seelah's. Like someone else said, ultimately the game does want you to take it seriously at times. That's hard to do with the voices. Like when you discover Camelia's secret and it's supposed to be this shocking revelation, but her voice actor is providing the most wooden experience since the invention of trees.

Granted, some of the voice acting is good. Arueshalae, Galfrey, Staunton, Daeran, several of the others. The problem is that the bad is so "holy **** that's bad" that I can't sit through them to get to the good.

Even aside from the actual bugs, though, some of the quests wind up failing when they don't need to because of untelegraphed act/section-ending events, a lot of content seems to be hidden behind failed perception rolls (and areas that are simply not obviously accessible on the map- it's really easy to miss one of those "click here to jump across this gap" spots).

And while they've improved a bit since Kingmaker, the devs really have no excuse for how many unnecessary loading screens you have to go through. There's no reason that the Crusade Management menu should need a loading screen. It's a ****ing menu. In fact, the entire world map, crusade management, player traveling, fort-building, and everything else that isn't your part walking around in a game zone should be part of one interface mode. If a game like Civilization can manage to work out a UI that combines everything that it needs without switching into different modes, then so should this game, where there's much less going on on the strategic level. And FFS, let me zoom out a bit more. With the way they've got the pathways set up it's almost impossible to figure out how to get from A to B zoomed in as much as you are.

The Crusade stuff in general is a bit weak. I liked it enough as a distraction/minigame, but it's wildly unbalanced to the point where most of it feels pointless since one high-level general and a stack of archers can no-sell any demon army, and trying to actually use tactics or whatever is just a boring waste of time.

You could actually lock yourself out of the main quest by failing perception checks at one point in Kingmaker. Not sure if they fixed it. Terrible design.

And yes, I totally agree about the loading screens. I just had to wait a month for the queen to arrive, so I spent an entire month of game time popping in and out of the crusade manager. Holy **** was that tedious. I probably spent a solid 30-40 minutes on loading screens alone, and that's on an SSD.

The crusade stuff is just like the Kingdom stuff from the last game. Great in theory, but only half-heartedly implemented. It clearly wasn't play tested at all.

[BloodSquirrel]

You could actually lock yourself out of the main quest by failing perception checks at one point in Kingmaker. Not sure if they fixed it. Terrible design.

I DNF'd Kingmaker because of a game-ending timed event that didn't bother to tell me it was a game-ending time event (And getting to the right location would have taken so long that I'd have to have gone back way too far in my saves).

I do need to go back and play it again one day.

[Chen]

The most annoying for me was not being able to complete The Secrets of Creation quest because the Bone Hills never appeared on my map. That one really stung, because it felt like it was supposed to be a major part of the narrative. And I really liked those puzzles. Lann's quest bugged out for me.

Bone Hills are either an army perception check or Hulrun tells you about the place when you meet him in Iz.

[Rynjin]

This is something I'll simply never agree with. Some of the voices in general cross over from overacting to objectively bad like Camelia and Seelah's. Like someone else said, ultimately the game does want you to take it seriously at times. That's hard to do with the voices. Like when you discover Camelia's secret and it's supposed to be this shocking revelation, but her voice actor is providing the most wooden experience since the invention of trees.

Granted, some of the voice acting is good. Arueshalae, Galfrey, Staunton, Daeran, several of the others. The problem is that the bad is so "holy **** that's bad" that I can't sit through them to get to the good.

Yeah, there are a few that are genuinely bad; Minagho is a real standout "Holy ****, what Walgreen's did you pull this chick from" performance, but I think most are at least passable.

[Anteros]

As a side note. I just found playful darkness. 70ac. So that's a thing. Still beat him on the second try, but I had to (accidentally) cheese him with a combination of the "everyone gets smite evil against this enemy" ability and the creeping doom spell. I actually only summoned the swarms to tank and buy me time, but they ended up soloing him.

As a side note to the side note. The frame drops in this area are atrocious. I'm genuinely not sure if I can keep playing the game if it stays this bad.


Anyone else have Finnean making endless copies of himself? Every time I change him to something different the old weapon remains. It's cluttering up my inventory, but I'm scared to get rid of them in case it breaks his quest.

[BloodSquirrel]

As a side note. I just found playful darkness. 70ac. So that's a thing. Still beat him on the second try, but I had to (accidentally) cheese him with a combination of the "everyone gets smite evil against this enemy" ability and the creeping doom spell. I actually only summoned the swarms to tank and buy me time, but they ended up soloing him.

As a side note to the side note. The frame drops in this area are atrocious. I'm genuinely not sure if I can keep playing the game if it stays this bad.


Anyone else have Finnean making endless copies of himself? Every time I change him to something different the old weapon remains. It's cluttering up my inventory, but I'm scared to get rid of them in case it breaks his quest.

Super-high ACs are a big thing in this game. I got by on touch attacks and automatic damage.

[BloodSquirrel]

Bone Hills are either an army perception check or Hulrun tells you about the place when you meet him in Iz.

I killed Hulrun early on, and I marched my army all around the area without it showing up.

[Spore]

Why are people angry at Nenio? I do not understand? Her character is unique, she dos not force herself onto you, but she IS involved in every other banter in the groups she is in. And she does not make the cultists look like comical idiots. They are canonically easily swayed idiots. Have people been paying attention during the prologue? There's like 3 instances where crusaders flee your side, or are convinced to come back to your side. They are dirt farmer promised glory. Of course a quick disguise can convince them you're a superior officer in the demon army.

[Anteros]

Why are people angry at Nenio? I do not understand? Her character is unique, she dos not force herself onto you, but she IS involved in every other banter in the groups she is in. And she does not make the cultists look like comical idiots. They are canonically easily swayed idiots. Have people been paying attention during the prologue? There's like 3 instances where crusaders flee your side, or are convinced to come back to your side. They are dirt farmer promised glory. Of course a quick disguise can convince them you're a superior officer in the demon army.

Her aesthetic clashes with the rest of the game, plus she's got the whole furry thing going on. Also, she basically has self inflicted alzheimers, which I already have to deal with enough in the real world. Also, when the game tries to be "funny" is usually when the writing is at its absolute worst, and she's part of a lot of those.

[Rynjin]

Her "lmao, I'm a jerk to everyone and I forget things I'm so QUIRKY" schtick gets old hella fast. After her "companion quest" at the start of act 3, where she gets drunk to "see how stupid people feel" and then chooses to forget she is drunk and becomes sober again instantly I never talked to her again.

Also her human form has the same haircut as my main character, so she can step off, I was wearing it first. *snaps*

[Anteros]

Well, apparently I missed out on a companion I wanted to recruit and

Spoiler

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Sosiel's brother dies

since I went to the arena before the fleshmarkets. You can't even get revenge on the arena owner. It's just "sorry I betrayed you for the 4th time now, but let's get back to business." This game man. If a real life DM pulled the kind of crap this game does, we would have had a talk a long time ago. It's like they basically expect you to play with one eye on the wikipedia page.

There are so many things in the game I'd be interested in replaying to see with the different paths and dialogue options...but there's absolutely no way I'd ever play through this buggy, unoptimized mess again. Especially now that I'm further in and it's starting to feel like fully half my game time is loading screens.

[BloodSquirrel]

Well, apparently I missed out on a companion I wanted to recruit and

Spoiler

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Sosiel's brother dies

since I went to the arena before the fleshmarkets. You can't even get revenge on the arena owner. It's just "sorry I betrayed you for the 4th time now, but let's get back to business." This game man. If a real life DM pulled the kind of crap this game does, we would have had a talk a long time ago. It's like they basically expect you to play with one eye on the wikipedia page.

There are so many things in the game I'd be interested in replaying to see with the different paths and dialogue options...but there's absolutely no way I'd ever play through this buggy, unoptimized mess again. Especially now that I'm further in and it's starting to feel like fully half my game time is loading screens.

The arena quest is overall the most obnoxiously rail-roady part of the game.

[Anteros]

The arena quest is overall the most obnoxiously rail-roady part of the game.

The whole abyss in general just feels really bad to play. From railroady plots, to performance issues, to standing around and waiting for areas to shift themselves properly so you can actually walk. I've got to hand it to the devs, they've really managed to make me feel like I've been transported to a plane of eternal torment. The whole section is just a slog that I've quickly run out of patience with.

I'm probably going to take a break for a bit and go back to the game in a few days/weeks when I forget how annoying this section is.

[Tome]

The whole abyss in general just feels really bad to play. From railroady plots, to performance issues, to standing around and waiting for areas to shift themselves properly so you can actually walk. I've got to hand it to the devs, they've really managed to make me feel like I've been transported to a plane of eternal torment. The whole section is just a slog that I've quickly run out of patience with.

I'm probably going to take a break for a bit and go back to the game in a few days/weeks when I forget how annoying this section is.

The shifting is based on camera rotation, not time. Learning that made it a little bit less frustrating.