Got back into Wrath after completing Baldur’s gate 3 and this absolutely slaps harder than BG3. The Pathfinder system is far superior to DnD 5E and the sheer scale of the story is incredible.
The Evil Lich path is the best Evil Path I’ve ever played. Dark Urge is like loony toons in front of how evil I can be as a Lich which is also the best Undead/Necromancer playthrough I’ve ever had in any game. And you can be even MORE evil in other Mythic Paths like Swarm.
The mythic paths is the best system in a CRPG ever. The game feels wildly different depending on your Mythic Path. I’ve not played all of them yet but the amount itself is very good.
The combat is very good. I still have no idea how it ultimately works and while I like the feeling of uncertainty and freshness, many people might not like it. It’s definitely far more complicated than 5E. The sheer amounts of Classes, Subclasses and abilities is also unparalleled. The easy switch between Turn based and realtime combat is pretty good when fighting hordes of trash mobs. I prefer Turn based myself but Realtime is very useful time to time.
You can definitely make mistakes with character creation and it’s also more ‘difficult’ to respec characters compared to BG3 since they can only be respecced from the level they met you at.
The story is amazing. Imo it’s better than the story of Baldur’s gate 3. The characters are not as developed as Origin Characters in BG3 however which is somewhat of a downside. Also there is no full VA so reading is required and the writing is pretty good imo so it won’t bore you.
The game definitely has pacing problems at multiple points through out the story. Enemy padding also gets really really bad by the end.
If you liked Baldur’s gate 3 or any other CRPG, play this because it’s superior.
I can’t quite pin it down, but maybe the BG3 characters felt a bit “glossy” compared to Owlcat’s? Or perhaps it’s a side effect of voice acting making complex conversations drag, and lose a lot of the descriptive depth that text allows - not that they did a bad job of it!
I didn’t really like any of the characters in WotR or BG3, but in WotR they felt more interesting - ah! Part of it was definitely that all the BG3 characters were like a parody of inappropriate backstories, “You would know me as Fuckslayer the Legendary Badass, Level 1”, “I’m actually an Archmage, but I got knocked out in a cutscene and all my XP fell out of my pockets”.
BG3 Origin Characters feel more like a bunch of people playing DnD. Pathfinder characters are more like real people in Golarion with actual experiences and you get different companions at different levels signifying this fact.
Although I definitely prefer Astarion over all characters in Wrath I just love him so much. Although I don’t think a century old Vampire or a literal legendary Wizard or a Cleric of Shar should start at Level 1.
Or a noble scion runaway. Or a person with years of experience fighting in the Blood War.
On the other hand, the same applies to an experienced paladin, or experienced scouts/combatants of the people who have been forced to live in dangerous underground, or a noble scion with a history of serial killings, etc.
I think the in game explanation is that the
kinda reset everyone
Yeah, it is, at least for Gale, but, given that they don’t really feature much in terms of adverse effects, I don’t find it particularly believable that all their social and combat skills in general are gone as well.
Also, Jaheira was dealing with epic stuff in BG2: ToB. It doesn’t make much sense that she is back to being sub-10 in level.
Or the Bhaalspawn never broke Baron Ployer’s curse and she got level drained before somebody else fixed it.
I think the BG3 companions and their storylines are extremely standard but are elevated to greatness by the visuals and amazing voice acting. In contrast, while having much lower production values, some WotR companions are about really interesting and fresh feeling themes, or at the very least are funny as hell. Some of them are dogshit, though.