Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is an isometric RPG developed by Owlcat Games and published by META publishing. There have been many attempts over the past few years for a game to live up to the legacy of Baldur's Gate 2 and Wrath of the Righteous might have come close to matching Bioware's masterpiece, were it not for an endless procession of bugs and glitches.
Wrath of the Righteous starts in the city of Kenabres in the world of Golarion. The city is within the vicinity of a location called the Worldwound, where the barrier to the Abyss is weak, allowing demons to enter the world. The main character arrives in Kenabres on the day its powerful wardstone fails, allowing a demon army to invade the city, with the demon lord Deskari at its head. Deskari tears open a hole in the ground, sending the protagonist falling into an underground maze. It's there that they learn the secrets of the First Crusade, which fought the demons in the past. The protagonist is granted incredible power and they must use it to start the Fifth Crusade and banish the demons from the land.
The gameplay of Wrath of the Righteous will be familiar to those who played its predecessor, Kingmaker. The player controls a party of up to six characters, as they explore dungeons, fight enemies, and engage NPCs. The popular turn-based mod from Kingmaker is now an official part of the game, allowing Wrath of the Righteous to play like the actual Pathfinder tabletop game. The rules of the game will be easy to pick up to those who have played similar RPGs, like Pillars of Eternity, or even Baldur's Gate 3.
The protagonist might be facing an army of demons, but they have special qualities of their own to help them fight back. The player character must choose a Mythic Path, which grants them a set of powerful abilities that exist alongside their class & race powers. These include concepts like the Angel, Gold Dragon, Devil, and Lich, all of which provide incredible powers. The Mythic Paths change how the story plays out, such as the Aeon (Lawful) path forcing the player to act as the judge to those who commit crimes in their army. There is a lot of scope for different story outcomes in Wrath of the Righteous and it adds a ton of replay value to what is already a massive game.
One new gameplay aspect in Wrath of the Righteous is a Might & Magic-style mass battle system. Once the player gets the Fifth Crusade up and running, the city-building mechanic from Kingmaker returns, but it's focused on supporting the army. The player can form armies and give them generals with special abilities so that they can face the demon horde in battle. These battles still need tweaking in terms of balance, but they're a lot of fun, and act as a nice segue into the smaller adventures of the main party.
Wrath of the Righteous is a better game than Kingmaker, too, because of linearity. The world and story of Kingmaker were too loose and didn't give the player a reason to come back. Wrath of the Righteous introduces the world to the player in small chunks and keeps giving them goals to follow, with cultists and demons always waiting in ambush. Taking the protagonist from a low-level weakling to a mighty commander is an invigorating journey, and slowly retaking the land from the demons and exploring the areas they were guarding is a fantastic gameplay loop.
There is one major problem with Wrath of the Righteous that sours the experience, and it's the bugs. There were few moments in Screen Rant's playthrough that didn't have some kind of gameplay or visual bug. These ranged from minor graphical glitches to not being able to escape from situations without a hard reset, to moves and powers simply not functioning, and some near-game-breaking situations that required a lot of save-scumming to get past. The glitches are a constant menace and they sour the experience of what is otherwise a fantastic game.
Wrath of the Righteous feels like playing an epic tabletop campaign. Owlcat Games did a fantastic job of adapting the Wrath of the Righteous Pathfinder campaign into a video game. The more focused story, streamlined gameplay, and epic scope make it a better entry point to the series than Kingmaker. There's an excellent game buried under its many technical faults, but those going in need to be aware that they'll have to endure a lot of annoying bugs and glitches on their quest.
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous will be released for PC and macOS on September 2, 2021, and is coming to PS4 and Xbox One on March 1, 2022. Screen Rant was provided with a digital code for the PC version of the game for the purposes of this review.