This game was a really good time, and I attach as many asterisks to this statement as there are character build options in this game.
There are a lot of options in this game.
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is a CRPG where your character finds themselves caught up in a desperate crusade against demons invading through a massive wound in the world itself. Suddenly developing mythic powers, you are quickly thrust into the position of the Knight-Commander of the newest and hopefully final crusade. A CRPG in the tradition of the original Baldur's Gate games, you manage your party, their gear, their leveling, all done through a modified version of the Pathfinder Tabletop RPG's first edition rule set. This has positives... and negatives.
Somewhere right in the middle is that there are. So. Many. Options. A ridiculous number of options. Maybe too many options! There are twelve races to pick from, and a staggering twenty-plus classes, to say nothing of the number of archetypes to those classes, and prestige classes! God help anyone who then tries to count all of the feats or spells in the game. You can do a lot of wild character builds in this game (I didn't) but it also means that so many options to pick from can overload you. Worse, you might make a character who can't keep up with the enemies because you picked options that don't work well together. Now multiply this by all of the party members who you also need to keep track of. There is an auto-build option to handle level-ups, but if you make a single change, you lose the option for auto-build. I also can't vouch for how good the auto-build options are. I imagine they'd make the game difficult, because the fights in this and its predecessor can be hard.
Let's get this out of the way, I had a good time with this game, but I cheated pretty blatantly. I do not care about "legit" wins in a single player RPG, especially one like this. My primary goal is a smooth, enjoyable role-playing experience. To that end, I cranked down the difficulty sliders--credit where it's due, there's a lot of little tweaks to fully customize the difficulty. You can reduce the damage enemies do, and even fully turn off their ability to score critical hits. But there are some fights that are still going to be really, really frustrating. I even used character guides online to help build the party members to be good without having to take levels outside of their starting classes. There's also an option to toggle between a real-time with pause and turn-based mode that even uses initiative rolls like in the tabletop game, which is really neat. I'll say that I basically stayed in the turn-based mode the entire time.
You might think that using character guides and adjusting the difficulty options like that isn't cheating, so I'll get to the more outright bit of cheating: I made liberal use of the Toy Box mod. The Toy Box is basically a supermod for the whole game that lets you perform a ton of adjustments to the game. Some of them are quality of life enhancements, and some are more like the "Kill All Enemies" button. That's a real thing and I used it from time to time. Not to end every fight, but sometimes when I was tired and frustrated and wanted to just get through things I found myself using it. Mostly if I had to reload a save to get through a fight I already did. More consistently though, I used to basically skip the Crusade mode, or ensure I got relevant items for the ending I was pursuing.
In addition to managing your party and exploring areas, you're also in charge of the Fifth Mendevian Crusade against the Worldwound from which demons emerge to threaten the world. This involves managing your armies which have their own little grid-based, turn-based combat system, managing outposts/fortresses and their buildings, and handling all sorts of other political business that comes with it. Now, you can adjust all kinds of difficulty options for this mode too, including setting it to auto so you don't have to engage with it at all... as long as you aren't trying to get the secret ending, which I was. So I used the Toy Box mod to basically cheat my way through the Crusade mode stuff while still doing the necessary things to get the secret ending. I had no interest in the Crusade mode; I was much more interested in the role-play experience.
Now, with all of that said and all of those caveats laid out: When I was engaging with the role-playing and adventure, I was having a lot of fun. It was a blast to grab my party and venture out to explore an area. You start in the city of Kenabres in the midst of a demon invasion, and adventure through the city to strike at the demons and recruit allies for a counterattack. After that, the world map opens up and you find more and more areas to explore. There's enemies to fight, treasure to find, side quests to do... it's all a lot of fun.
The party members are fun too! My personal favorite is Arueshalae, one of the last to join. She's a succubus who, after an encounter with the Goddess of Dreams, is trying to find redemption and abandon her demonic nature. It's a game-long struggle for her, and she's adorable. And a romance option. Yes, I absolutely went for it, especially since I was playing an Aasimar (basically half-angel) Paladin. The scene where she finally ascends beyond her demonic nature and can engage in romance without fear of hurting you is maybe one of the best in the entire game. She's also a very, very good party member to take adventuring, because her stats are great. Another standout was Ember, an absolute cinammon roll of an elf girl who is convinced that everyone, even the demons, is capable of doing good and finding redemption. She's also potentially a devastating blaster-caster. A surprise favorite of mine, not that I used him much, was Regill. He's a tyrannical, ultra-authoritarian Hell Knight Gnome. Despite being introduced ordering wounded to be executed so they don't slow his forces down as they proceed in a fighting retreat, he ended up being a lot of fun and devastating in fights.
Every party member has their own dedicated side-quests to go with them, and I found myself liking pretty much all of them. Even if I didn't really gel with the party member as a character or a party member to use, I found myself really invested in the big moments of the side-quests, like confronting a demonic grandfather, or rescuing a party member's tribe from becoming tools of a demon. The big weakspot for the party members, and I think for the game in general, is the voice acting. It's just... not the best. I don't really get the pitchforks out for so-called "Marvel dialogue" the way some people do, but there is one party member who literally says "Well... that happened," if they fail a skill check. I suppose the best way to describe it is that the voice actors are trying a little too hard. Honestly, I think the various demon characters (and one absolute bro of an angel) are better when it comes to voice direction.
I mentioned earlier that there's maybe too many options, but if you either know what you're doing or are using a guide, you can end up feeling really powerful, as befitting a story where you gain Mythic Power. There's several Mythic Paths you can take your character down, such as Angel, Demon, and Trickster. I went with the Angel path, and good lord was it fun to wield heavenly power against demons. I eventually ended up with a power where whenever an enemy tried and failed to damage me, they'd be blinded and basically be unable to hit anything. I made my character a very tanky paladin, so they were missing a lot. Party members also get Mythic abilities, so you can have fun things like your archers causing not-insignificant amounts of splash damage to any enemies near any foe they killed. Honestly, when I one day do another playthrough, I'll probably slide some of the difficulty sliders back up. I might even refrain from using guides.
The story also gives you plenty of epic moments to feel like a hero. From retaking cities from demons to throwing down with the demon lords behind the invasion, you get some epic fights. Your Mythic Power also gives you some truly awesome moments in cutscenes, such as raining down heavenly fire on an army of demons, or nuking a particularly foul demon's lair to purify it. There's a couple frustrating moments, namely being railroaded into being banished/sent on a mission to the Abyss the demons are from, but for the most part the plot is... fine.
See, this is something CRPGs as a genre really struggle with. I like the story in Wrath of the Righteous... but it's not really about something. The very nature of these games make it hard for the writing to committing to a definitive message or theme. It's hard to build your story towards that when you want the player to have the freedomly to randomly go murder hobo. The closest thing to a theme this game has is probably power, but it doesn't have anything to say about power beyond "Boy, there sure are lots of things to say about power!" The clearest indicator of this is that at one point no less than the Goddess of Justice tells you that you should give up your Mythic Power, and rely on your own abilities as a mortal to defeat the demons. Your party members have a variety of thoughts on this and the source of your power, but none of them really leave you or get really upset if you keep your power or give it up. There's actually I think only a handful of Mythic Paths where you actually risk losing party members because of your power! The game occasionally shows the effects a prolonged conflict can have on people, but neither that nor its thoughts on power every coalesce into a definitive statement. It's all just sort of there.
There's a lot of game and writing in Wrath of the Righteous. Honestly, again, maybe too much. Even turning the difficulty down and using mods, it still took me about 125 hours for just one playthrough. There are so many options and paths to take in this game, I shudder to think how long it would take to experience them all, to say nothing of the character building options and how you can explore that. There is a sort of rogue-like mode in one of the DLCs that might help if you just want to play around with builds, plus the ability to recruit custom NPC party members you can build however you'd like.
I really enjoyed my time with Wrath of the Righteous, and it honestly has me thinking about going back and doing a second playthrough of the previous game, Kingmaker. I'd recommend this to anyone who liked those old CRPGs like Baldur's Gate, or even newer ones like Pillars of Eternity. It's not a game for the faint of heart though. Originally I was going to say you really shouldn't make this your first CRPG if you want to try the genre out but, eh... I think if you're willing to give it a shot, there's no harm in trying it out.
But just know: When the loading screen tips advise you to save often, they are not joking around.
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