Chapel area has put me in a good mood. Large and complex set piece, with enough room to make the improved systems shine. Also decent enemy variety, despite sticking to two tribes.
So here a short review after 35 hours at level 8 (yes I spend A LOT of time in character creators)
The good:
Traps
Wrath has a pretty clever trap defusing system, which is the best way to handle traps in an isometric system I have ever seen. Makes stealth feel very valuable, as the defuse place is disconnected from the trap, and soemtimes the trap is in front of an enemy pack, and the defuse place is behind them.
Character options
A lot of new classes and feats, needs no large explanation
Religion reactivity
You get special dialogue options for your religion quite often, often tied to mechanical bonusses. Very cool when it happens.
Advanced game systems
I never used cure disease and weapon alignment in Kingmaker, in Wrath they are essential. A lot of gameplay systems which were neglected in Kingmaker are fledged out here
Bossfights
There are a few stinkers who go down without thought, but in general hard fights are better than in Kingmaker. In Kingmaker I never really had to adapt my strategy, apart from prebuffing differently. Here I entered the same fights with the same buffs running, and vastly different outcomes. The more complex characters with more spells and spell like activities mean you make more menaingfull choices during combat, and no longer just faceroll everything on haste and fifteen buffs. This however also means that the bossfights are balanced around you being on fifteen buffs as a baseline, in order to give you that decision room.
Loot
No longer are some weapon categories strangely neglected, and I like the approach to low level magical loot this game takes. +1d3 elemental damage or inflicting mean status effects only on a crit are pretty cool to make +1 equipment with some flavor.
Way better random encounters
Most of them are much weaker, and less frequent than in Kingmaker. Also they use special very small random encounter maps now, so less time wasted on exiting the random encounter map afterwards
The slightly better than KM:
Crusade
Wannabe HoMM is not really good, but it is a lot faster than the Kingdom builder. Also it is less disconnected from the actual rtwp gameplay, moments like the swarm are pretty good ways to link both together. Beats taking -3 to all kingdom stats for not investigating the next crisis fast enough.
Resting
Corruption is better than hauling heavy ass rations around. It can be annoying still, but if you run on long buffs you never really get even level 1 corruption, and it is a lot less annoying than managing carry weight. Also it is less easy to bypass than food, with a few magical bags you can easily haul 60+ rations in Kingmaker and return to rest spam after every encounter. Corruption makes resting sparcily stay a good practise throughout the game.
Companions
Companions got more polarising. The good ones are good, while Kingmaker was Nok Nok > rest Wrath has multiple characters which are fun to listen to for me. I find myself skipping their ESL walls of text much less often than in Kingmaker. The bad ones are however really bad, I want a good third of the companions I got drawn and quartered, a feeling I never had with any of the Kingmaker companions. This makes passages more painfull where the game forces unliked characters on you, but the companion quests of those you like are more fun. Overall an improvement as soon as you get a party of 5 doods you like.
The worse than Kingmaker:
Trash fights
Game was designed around being in RTWP in every fight that is not a miniboss. Playing Kingmaker in pure turn based is feasible, playing Wrath in pure TB is brain rot
The Woke
Game is aggressively cringe at times, I don't care much about culture war, but I think aspects of this will not age well
Content Drought
There is way less real designed game to this. To hide how few of the locations are visitable they now sprinkle locations onto the map where you can literally just gather a few cooking ingredients. Pathetic.
The Padding
With the lesser amount of meaningfull side locations at times it feels like the game is wasting your time. Not a pleasant feeling. Everything which you do not have to visit is on the quality level of post Vordakai side locations (single fight and loot), or a literal gathering spot.
This is everything that came to mind from the top of my head. A lot of improvements, but some steps back in fairly important areas. Three steps ahead, but a knee bruised in the process.
Overall I think this is better than Kingmaker, I wonder if this sentiment will hold up as I get further through the game.
So here a short review after 35 hours at level 8 (yes I spend A LOT of time in character creators)
The good:
Traps
Wrath has a pretty clever trap defusing system, which is the best way to handle traps in an isometric system I have ever seen. Makes stealth feel very valuable, as the defuse place is disconnected from the trap, and soemtimes the trap is in front of an enemy pack, and the defuse place is behind them.
Character options
A lot of new classes and feats, needs no large explanation
Religion reactivity
You get special dialogue options for your religion quite often, often tied to mechanical bonusses. Very cool when it happens.
Advanced game systems
I never used cure disease and weapon alignment in Kingmaker, in Wrath they are essential. A lot of gameplay systems which were neglected in Kingmaker are fledged out here
Bossfights
There are a few stinkers who go down without thought, but in general hard fights are better than in Kingmaker. In Kingmaker I never really had to adapt my strategy, apart from prebuffing differently. Here I entered the same fights with the same buffs running, and vastly different outcomes. The more complex characters with more spells and spell like activities mean you make more menaingfull choices during combat, and no longer just faceroll everything on haste and fifteen buffs. This however also means that the bossfights are balanced around you being on fifteen buffs as a baseline, in order to give you that decision room.
Loot
No longer are some weapon categories strangely neglected, and I like the approach to low level magical loot this game takes. +1d3 elemental damage or inflicting mean status effects only on a crit are pretty cool to make +1 equipment with some flavor.
Way better random encounters
Most of them are much weaker, and less frequent than in Kingmaker. Also they use special very small random encounter maps now, so less time wasted on exiting the random encounter map afterwards
The slightly better than KM:
Crusade
Wannabe HoMM is not really good, but it is a lot faster than the Kingdom builder. Also it is less disconnected from the actual rtwp gameplay, moments like the swarm are pretty good ways to link both together. Beats taking -3 to all kingdom stats for not investigating the next crisis fast enough.
Resting
Corruption is better than hauling heavy ass rations around. It can be annoying still, but if you run on long buffs you never really get even level 1 corruption, and it is a lot less annoying than managing carry weight. Also it is less easy to bypass than food, with a few magical bags you can easily haul 60+ rations in Kingmaker and return to rest spam after every encounter. Corruption makes resting sparcily stay a good practise throughout the game.
Companions
Companions got more polarising. The good ones are good, while Kingmaker was Nok Nok > rest Wrath has multiple characters which are fun to listen to for me. I find myself skipping their ESL walls of text much less often than in Kingmaker. The bad ones are however really bad, I want a good third of the companions I got drawn and quartered, a feeling I never had with any of the Kingmaker companions. This makes passages more painfull where the game forces unliked characters on you, but the companion quests of those you like are more fun. Overall an improvement as soon as you get a party of 5 doods you like.
The worse than Kingmaker:
Trash fights
Game was designed around being in RTWP in every fight that is not a miniboss. Playing Kingmaker in pure turn based is feasible, playing Wrath in pure TB is brain rot
The Woke
Game is aggressively cringe at times, I don't care much about culture war, but I think aspects of this will not age well
Content Drought
There is way less real designed game to this. To hide how few of the locations are visitable they now sprinkle locations onto the map where you can literally just gather a few cooking ingredients. Pathetic.
The Padding
With the lesser amount of meaningfull side locations at times it feels like the game is wasting your time. Not a pleasant feeling. Everything which you do not have to visit is on the quality level of post Vordakai side locations (single fight and loot), or a literal gathering spot.
This is everything that came to mind from the top of my head. A lot of improvements, but some steps back in fairly important areas. Three steps ahead, but a knee bruised in the process.
Overall I think this is better than Kingmaker, I wonder if this sentiment will hold up as I get further through the game.
