And so my first playthrough and the adventures of John Moblus the death knight come to an end.
Areelu is the worst final boss in history. The RPG equivalent of Jinpachi. Literally a slot machine DPS race, not to mention her arena being essentially a narrow hallway for maximum clashing rocks, prismatic spray and firestorm efficiency. Phase 1 is pretty easy provided you don't get geeked immediately by her spamming sunburst but phase 2 is literally impossible on core because you get literally stunlocked every milisecond. Second time I had to turn down the difficulty. If you beat her legit on core with RTWP please tell me how, because this is fucking bedlam.
All in all though, in my opinion after 20 years, BG2 has finally been matched at the very least. Wrathfinder could've even surpassed BG2 because it does a number of things better but the overall lack of polish and lacklustre act 5 still hold it back. Tbf BG2 also sputtered out towards the end but at the very least Jon Irenicus was not complete cancer. Ending slides were weak too and not even voiced. I guess they're saving the big finale for that DLC campaign they said they'd do.
Crusade mode is fine in the beginning but in the mid to late game suffers from EXTREME numbers bloat. Magic is also completely fucking OP. A wizard general can clear armies by himself. HoMM3 was never balanced but compared to this it could step dance of a knife's edge. I do like though how crusade mode is intertwined with regular adventure mode for example by providing artifacts. Objectively good game design.
Difficulty wise it is a lot more even than Kingmaker. I played both on core and Wrathfinder does not really have any extreme difficulty spikes, with maybe the exception of Blackwater. Maybe I just went there too early idk. Also beat both without any buildfagging whatsoever, though I will concede that I would've probably had an easier time if I did. Though the only times I had to turn down the difficulty were with Khorramzade and Areelu, the only two enemies in the game that actively cheat. I managed to beat Deskari, Chivarro, Minagho etc. and other optional hard fights well enough aside from that. In the early game though the game has a bad habit of throwing stat and level drain at you when you have no way of dealing with it reliably. Brimoraks are also right bastards before you get access to fire resistance. The game gets easier as you progress in levels but that sort of difficulty curve is normal for cRPGs.
Casters are still weaksauce, which I will chalk up to the absence of defensive spells like protection from magical weapons and the like. The devs know this. They had Zacharius, a lich, resort to making himself huge like xbox and beating you to death with his stick instead of using timestop and other nasty shit like Kangaxx because the ruleset simply does not support that stuff. The only dangerous casters are those that cheat, i.e. the Gallus at threshold who can fart out 22 cones of cold a second, Khorramzade who just ignores your immunities and Areelu who is the biggest spam fest I've ever seen.
At all levels, martial enemies are way more dangerous, mostly because they can crit you for about 300 and take you out immediately. Last stand is an essential mythic ability for that very reason. I think on future playthroughs I will turn crits off though as to make combat less swingy. BG had helmets for that specific reason after all.
Went lich on this one and tbh it was a bit underwhelming. You don't become a lich as much as you buy a lot of things for your husbando so that he can hand you your power. Having a mentor is cool and thematically appropriate but I expected to like acquire dark knowledge and then turn myself into a lich with Zacharius' help but he does all of the work essentially. I just build him a nice house to live in. Your skeletal champion is a bit of a third wheel but if you make him a bard he can at least hold a couple a spells for you. I did like though how lich was not just the designated caster mythic path and there were lots of nice things for martial classes. My PC was a Gendarme and things like death weapon are pretty neat. Undead companions are pretty cool and immune to lots of bullshit but they only revive after a rest which is a bit of a curse in a game where you're incentivised to rest as little as possible. They also don't offer much narratively when compared to regular companions.
Writing's decidedly average and extremely wordy. Voice acting suffers from bad or no direction. The talent itself is there but they're given absolutely no guidance on delivery. Regill's VA however is a fucking pro and makes everyone else look even worse. His lines are like 30% quieter than everyone else's though which is weird. Deskari also sounds baller but he's barely in the game. Galfrey's VA can't do a british accent to save her life and no one told her, that poor woman. She also called Staunton "Stantion" which made me lol.
Skipped a couple of things on my first playthrough, like the secrets of creation quest because I like my first playthroughs blind and if I have to look it up then I'm not doing it. I will allow myself to metagame on subsequent playthroughs though. cRPGs are best when metagamed anyway. Thinking about going Deliverer Angel/Legend for my second go.
That's just a couple of thoughts. In total I like the game a lot. Some bumfuck slav studio has succeeded where Obsidian has been failing since its inception.
