One year after release, Wrath of the Righteous has received its big enhanced update. We take another look at the exceptional role-playing game and explain what makes it so great.
150 hours. That”s how much time I spent in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous over a year ago, testing this role-playing giant for you. 150 glorious hours. Not a single one of them have I regretted. Hour after hour I spent evolving my boozy battle singer Jarne Jarnson into a chaotic force for good. I felled thousands of demons, broke hundreds of hearts, summoned the Fat Bear dozens of times. In the meantime, my tricky commander was even so powerful and magnificent that the mere sight of him made enemies burst.
But as attached as I am to this character, at some point it was time to let him rest. What I did not let rest, however, was Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Because I just can”t get away from this fantastic role-playing game. The next batch of heroes is already waiting for me to lead them into the fifth crusade. What awaits me this time? It”s harder to guess than you think. But it will probably be even harder for the enemies to classify which opponents they are facing. A glittering angel? A diabolical seducer? A walking swarm?
In Wrath of the Righteous so much is possible, and if you have so far kept your hands off this sometimes intimidating role-playing game, then now is the time to change that! Because Wrath of the Righteous is one of the best role-playing games of all time and has reached its peak thanks to the Enhanced Edition released a few weeks ago.
For me, this Ultimate Edition is the perfect excuse to once again embark on my journey to Worldwound and perhaps tell you one last time why it”s worth taking on this intimidating challenge.
Table of Contents
Why you should play Wrath of the Righteous
Before I go into the details of the Enhanced Edition, I need to clarify a few things. Namely, it is important for every single person out there to understand what makes Wrath of the Righteous a must-play for fans of challenging role-playing games
Here”s a quick rundown of what you can actually expect in WotR:
- An epic fantasy scenario revolving around an eons-old war between angels and demons.
- A huge scope with well over a hundred hours of gameplay.
- Multi-layered characters and companions in a story that only at first glance paints everything in black and white.
- A freely explorable world, with dozens of optional quests and discoveries.
- An extremely deep, but also incredibly complex rules system.
- A challenging combat system with many setting options and the ability to switch between pausable real-time and turn-based combat.
- A lot of fantastically written dialogue, but some of it is unvoiced and therefore requires some reading.
At first glance, this all sounds like a typical oldschool RPG, like Baldur”s Gate offered decades ago and most recently brought into the modern era by titles like Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland 3 or Divinity: Original Sin. But Wrath of the Righteous is still something very special.
One of its strengths is precisely that it actually feels more like Baldur”s Gate to me than the “modern” competition. Much more than Baldur”s Gate 3. But even if you have no nostalgic feelings for the legendary RPG series, Wrath of the Righteous will grab you very quickly and won”t let go. At least if you have a thing for classic fantasy and are not afraid to read for minutes on end.
Thought Bigger
Because Wrath of the Righteous just thinks everything bigger. No other role-playing game has ever offered such an extensive character system that lets you develop all your characters completely freely in any direction. If you have a hero concept in your head, there”s bound to be a way to realise it. As the story progresses, you will regularly be surprised at how cleverly this game integrates your hero or heroine into its story. How well your race or your back story comes into play. Above all, however, the legendary powers provide sometimes drastic deviations in the later course of the story.
It simply makes a huge difference here whether you, as a lich, carry a party of undead with you or whether you try to do without epic powers completely and instead become a living legend. Owlcat has thought of everything and caters to every hero and villain fantasy you can think of.
And it integrates all of this coherently into its epochal crusade story, which incidentally has more goosebump moments in store than almost any other oldschool RPG. If that”s not enough, you can devote yourself to the strategic aspect of Wrath of the Righteous as a crusade master and recruit units, conquer and expand army bases, make all kinds of strategic decisions and fight turn-based battles in the style of Heroes of Might and Magic.
All this comes at a price. You have to learn the systems if you want the best experience. But even if that doesn”t suit you at all, you can adjust the difficulty and complexity so granularly that everyone should be able to find a way to the finals in the end. It doesn”t matter whether you make the enemies so weak that a breath of your barbarian blows them away or so brutally strong that you sometimes believe that this game has been sent from hell itself to subjugate you personally. No matter whether you adjust every little detail of your party yourself or simply let the game competently level up all your characters.
Enhanced = Significantly more rounded
Even the predecessor to Wrath of the Righteous was considered a great role-playing game, but it was also known for its rough edges. Be it bugs, balance problems or a few awkward design decisions here and there. WotR is very similar, at least that was the case at release. Originally, I even had to deduct points from the score, but after a number of patches they were added back.
The Enhanced Edition is now a special case. Even more than with Kingmaker, it polishes off the so characteristic corners of the role-playing game and makes the overall gameplay feel much more rounded. When I start a new adventure now, the whole game actually feels a corner more finished and professional than it did a year ago.
What the Enhanced Edition improves
The reason for this are numerous additions as well as optimisations that primarily make our lives a little easier. A few of these quality-of-life additions stand out in particular:
- The search function in the inventory: Your party”s backpacks will eventually overflow with all the items you loot in the course of the story. Up to now, you could only keep them in order by using a sorting function. Now it is also possible to search for items directly via a search bar. Very helpful, especially as the game also recognises keywords!
- Pet companions by owner: In the portrait bar with all your companions, pet companions are now displayed as a small bar directly by their owners and no longer as their own portrait, which resulted in frequent clicking through the bar. You can still zoom in on the pet by clicking directly on it.
- Full Heal: You can now right-click and swallow as many healing potions as you want until you are fully healed. So gone are the days of 35 clicks digging through my wine cellar full of weak healing potions.
- Better Battle Log: You can now jump to the bottom of the text box on the right with a single click. But even better, damage numbers now spit out all the information. So it is broken down in detail which effect did which damage and which resistances reduced which source of damage exactly.
The Enhanced Edition”s new features
But it”s not just a few useful little upgrades that join the crusade with the Enhanced Edition. Owlcat has given Wrath of the Righteous some fine new features as a supplement, some of which would have been desirable earlier, but some of which are just nice trinkets.
Cosmetic changes
Personally, when choosing weapons or armour, I always prefer to pay attention to the look rather than the values. However, in an RPG as challenging as Pathfinder, I quickly become hero mush with it. This makes purely visual customisation options all the more important to me. Even if I see the characters from further away than in a third-person RPG.
In WotR there were at least a few small options for this, like the possibility to hide helmets and armour. Now, however, there is much more. I can basically display every piece of equipment and also change the colour of the clothes at any time. In addition, a new transmog system (via the illusion of a gold golem) allows me to swap the look of one armour with another. This way I can even wear armour for which I lack the prerequisites.
However, there is also something to complain about here. Prefabricated companions sometimes lose their unique clothes when adjusting the colour, and the transmog system would have benefited from a preview function.
The photo mode
This feature was announced first for the Enhanced Edition and yet it still seems quaint. You just don”t trust a game like Pathfinder with something like this. Yet WotR is a pretty game, with great effects, detailed characters and atmospheric environments. The photo mode makes it possible to take a much closer look at the world.
Owlcat has even taken the trouble to allow an astonishing number of setting options. You can choose a frame, change the weather, scale the colour, put stickers on it, show symbols and, and, and.
It takes a little getting used to and starts with a confusing filter, but if you want to let off some creative steam, you can do so even better now. Here you can see the photo mode in action:
New Story Content
The last major addition to the Enhanced Edition concerns some new story options. You shouldn”t expect anything major here, nor should you expect every character to benefit equally. While there are new unlockable crusade units for most legend paths from chapter 5 onwards, this is nice at best and not everyone will play the crusade in such detail.
Also in the “nice touch” category are extended epilogues for some companions and NPCs, as well as the possibility to get an interesting job offer as a demon. The biggest story addition is a new quest. However, you will only benefit from this if you follow the path of the True Legend – and in detail, this is also only about a small celebration of your soldiers.
That”s why Wrath of the Righteous is upgraded
The Enhanced Edition alone doesn”t actually bring enough content or new features that an upgrade would have been necessary. After all, it”s mostly about a few quality-of-life improvements, a likeable photo mode, and some new story content here and there. But the Enhanced Edition doesn”t really add much to the game and there are no new classes, big quests or even a new legend path either.
But while playing the current version, one thing still caught my eye: even if WotR didn”t become a better game than it was at release because of the Enhanced Edition alone, this game finally feels complete now.
Sure, many patches have killed bugs in particular, for which I originally devalued the game. But even if it had been released completely bug-free, you can feel a noticeable difference now. Minor changes have been made on so many fronts that perfectly iron out the last kinks in this massive RPG.
Milded the biggest criticism
A major criticism on my part at release was also that the crusade mode seemed very half-baked and kept hindering progress. However, with my new hero, I now really enjoy playing this mode! Owlcat has significantly improved the balance and playability and now I can hardly say that this mode was not needed.
It”s still not a brilliant achievement, after all, especially in the later stages there can still be some really nasty and indeed badly balanced fights. So those who have absolutely no desire for this distraction will continue to find little to do with it. Still, I have to admit that it just feels much better and just contributes a lot to making me feel like the leader of an army.
As there are now a few more options to make the mode easier or skip it altogether. In general, I now like the crusade much better than the kingdom management in Kingmaker. After all, there is much more noticeable interaction between my heroes” adventures and the strategic setup here. All in all, this ensures that the crusade mode, while still worthy of criticism, weighs nowhere near as heavily as it did in September 2021.
And what can I say. I added another 150 hours to the 150 hours from my first test last year. I now have over 300 hours on my Steam clock and I”m still having more fun than with any other role-playing game.
That”s why I can only repeat what I”ve been preaching for twelve months: finally play this role-playing game!
Editor”s verdict
I don”t even know what else to write here. After over 300 hours of Pathfinder, dozens of texts, three test articles and a fat bear fandom that will probably outlast me, probably everything has really been said about Wrath of the Righteous. So I just want to use these lines again to talk about what this game means to me personally.
No other test so far has both challenged me and made me so happy at the GlobalESportNews The time I put into this game during the testing stages was brutally exhausting – and yet I just couldn”t stop. I”m still playing this game and in no way has the testing marathon dimmed my current view of it. Because this role-playing game gives me something I miss far too often in games. For me, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is the perfect combination of pure passion and a remarkable vision. Because behind this game are simply people who live for roleplaying.
Who, like me, probably spend more time with their friends playing pen & paper than with anything else. And they want to pour this love for tabletop role-playing into a video game. In my opinion, they succeeded brilliantly and for me Wrath of the Righteous will always remain one of my very favourite role-playing games. And I”m very glad that it”s finally at a point where it”s rightly not only cracking the 90 rating but even climbing a bit further up.
And that probably says just about everything now … I think. We”ll see. Probably not.
