Baldur's Gate 3 Vs. Pathfinder: WotR

[Music] what's going on everybody morm here this time bringing you a video contrasting balers Gate 3 and Pathfinder Wrath of the righteous balers Gate 3 being probably the largest release a crpg has seen possibly ever it actually broke steam's top 10 most played games period especially on the isometric side of things at the very least but with all that attention brings a lot of people into the genre that might be more unfamiliar with it there are of course a ton of other games in that genre one of my personal favorites being Pathfinder Wrath of the righteous and as a channel that covers the genre pretty extensively a lot of people have asked me to talk about my personal favorite game in the genre Wrath of the righteous compared to balers Gate 3 which is an especially interesting video to make because while balers Gate 3 wins the production value contest hands down when you dig into the minutia of individual systems and mechanics I think that conversation becomes a lot more interesting because I do think there are a lot of things Wrath of the righteous does incredibly well that balers Gate 3 actually drops the ball on so naturally let's actually dive into this a little bit so as I've already mentioned right out of the gate when it comes to production value balers Gate 3 blows Wrath of the righteous out of the water it is not even close Wrath of the righteous is not fully voice acted it takes a sort of half and half approach where the main dialogue if you will is but a lot of the side stuff is not it also lacks a lot of that cinematic quality that bg3 has so in that regard it really is no contest but that is a very surface level comparison so let's dig a Little Deeper mechanically speaking balers Gate 3 uses fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons and Wrath of the righteous uses Pathfinder 1e somewhat ironically both of these are technically a little bit behind the most current versions at this point as fifth edition has started working on their new 1 D and D thing which is more like a 5.5 edition if you will almost whereas Pathfinder has sort of revamped their whole thing and gone on to Second Edition which released while Wrath of the righteous was in production so on the side of balers Gate 3 in Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition it's important to note that in both cases here to be honest changes have been made to adapt them to a video game so it's not necessarily a one for one we see a lot of that in both games but in the case of fifth edition I do think that that is a system and a rule set that really lends itself to Mass Appeal as we've seen because it absolutely has that both in the tabletop version and the game itself and this is because fifth edition focuses much more on role playing than it does mechanical crunch that is to say it's pretty rules light while also allowing you the freedom to be the person you want to be and approach things how you want to approach them while at the same time being just mechanically interesting enough to keep keep people engaged however once you get past that initial learning curve and you potentially expose yourself to other tabletop rule sets fifth edition is very simple by comparison and in many ways that is its main strength to be honest because it allows you to do what the game is about which is role playing however with a lot of that Simplicity comes a lack of Choice by comparison so outside of your subclass choice and a few other things depending on like the feat you take it's really hard to say mess up a character in balers Gate 3 or fifth edition in general because as long as you're kind of following that template unless you're deliberately trying to mess your character up it's kind of hard to do and as a result this means that a lot of characters can wind up feeling a bit syy no matter what you wind up doing and that's where Pathfinder 1e comes in though I would be remiss not to mention here that Pathfinder first edition is an expanded version of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Edition it's a little more complicated than that the creators behind Pathfinder 1 actually used to run a magazine for Dungeons and Dragons before becoming their own thing there's a lot of history there but ultimately it might not come as a surprise then that Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 was my personal favorite addition of Dungeons and Dragons Pathfinder 1e took that expanded upon it and in my opinion made it even better which is why Pathfinder 1e is such a really fun system for someone like myself who enjoys a more complicated system now for those who know at all both 3.5 and Pathfinder 1e are very very heavy on the math sometimes you'll hear people refer to Pathfinder as mathf finder especially when they're talking about onee as a bit of a joke because it is a very mechanically focused system there is a lot of math involved obviously now the nice thing about a video game is that it does most of that math for you as long as you understand how it works which is where a game like Wrath of the righteous comes in I don't necessarily need to number crunch every time I make an attack because because the game is going to do that for me all I need to know is how the numbers add together to maximize a roll which lets me get to the satisfying part that much faster so to give a little bit of numbers comparison here just to really hone in on the fact that Pathfinder 1ie through all of its mechanical complexity winds up giving you a ton of more options and the easiest example of that is the sheer number of classes Wrath of the righteous has about 30 base classes you can choose from on top of The Prestige classes which are classes that you can multiclass into that are also kind of their own thing and we'll talk a little bit about level caps here later and while sure some class features are repeated across these 30 plus classes there's also a ton of unique things that then added with the game's big Power structure like the Mythic paths offers an insane amount of depth and complexity that fifth edition just simply cannot offer however while that certainly appeals to a hardcore veteran like myself it's not necessarily a great thing for everyone which is why I think it lacks that Mass Appeal that something like balers Gate 3 has in this respect I don't think there's really a right answer of Better or Worse simply different and in my personal case I prefer Pathfinder 1e which makes me more inclined to play Wrath of the righteous for its mechanics over balers Gate 3 however for all of the reasons and things I just went over balers Gate 3 does a fantastic job doing what it's trying to to do which is allowing people to roleplay and that kind of feeds into the difficulty conversation as well while some people especially those new to the genre are going to struggle with a game like balers Gate 3 to someone like myself who's used to playing much more difficult systems it's not a difficult game it is very easy to destroy that game on tactician if you know what you're doing whereas Pathfinder Wrath of the righteous I usually play on core which is about two steps below the max difficulty because playing on unfair every time is pain painfully tedious even for me again this is really just down to preference I do want to stress that both of these games have something unique to offer people in that regard balers Gate 3 has a much simpler easier to approach system that focuses on role playing and creating Your Own Story with what they've given you where the difficulty isn't such a big deal whereas Pathfinder 1e while it certainly has a story mode in things to make it easier for you there's a ton of focus on the big mechanic iCal crunch of that system that it's known for and while I've done my best to make that as accessible to as many people as possible through the many guides I have made for that game it is nonetheless a game that tends to appeal to people that are a little more familiar with the genre and systems as a whole because it's a much more difficult game to get into as a newcomer especially so while that will no doubt probably be the biggest part of this video let's move on to other things where balers Gate 3 really destroys Wrath of the righteous in terms of its production value and cinematic quality at the same time balers Gate 3 has a surprising lack of quality of life features that wrath of the righteous and in truth many other games in the genre have had for quite some time for instance I recently mentioned a few of these in and improvements I'd like to see Style video for balers Gate 3 where I talked about how accessing people's inventory and managing your companions is very tedious in that game whereas in Wrath of the righteous anytime you leave your main Hub area you can swamp out companions before you go easily manage your party while you are in the main Hub you can access everyone's inventory as it is a shared inventory the carry capacity is allocated for your entire party as opposed to individual members and there's all sorts of other just tiny quality of life things that wrath of the righteous has had though I will admit that balers Gate 3 is still a very recent release and it is not unlikely by any means that they will add some of this in in or potentially make patches to make it smoother Etc So In fairness some of that might change and Wrath of the righteous has had several years of patches and things to help out with this though some of these features were there straight away which is why I'm talking about them but to be clear these games are in different stages of postrelease but I do feel that wrath of the righteous really wins here so to speak in terms of just basic quality of life and functionality features which is surprising because balers Gate 3 using the Divinity I believe 4.0 now engine that laran uses internally has been around for quite some time and we see some of the same problems that their earlier games have had like divinity original sin 2 for instance that have yet to be cleaned up so whether or not we'll see any changes or fixes there remains to be seen But as it stands now I do think it would be nice if baldder Gate 3 would incorporate some of these quality of life features that a lot of other games in the genre have had and continue to use to give another really great example of this we can start talking about leveling balers Gate 3 goes up to level 12 on top of adding in ithd Powers as a sort of side progression in addition to your class Wrath of the righteous goes up to level 20 and introduces Mythic paths these allow you to ascend to a different state of being Beyond just a mortal one that also grants you Powers as a separate bit of side progression while at the same time you usually changing the story in drastic ways whereas balers Gate 3 approaches choices and the changes that can happen there in and more of a role-playing perspective via things like your class your race whether or not you've used any ilod powers so it's a little more of a broader net in that sense but where this gets especially interesting is that while both of these systems have made changes to adapt them to a video game in balers Gate 3 these choices or changes have been hidden behind some of the UI you don't really know what you're getting at what level unless you are familiar with fifth edition DND D and even if you are you might not know the exact iteration of something you're getting because laran might have changed it whereas in Wrath of the righteous at any time you can bring up a screen that will show you both everything you're going to get for your class at a given level including every other class and there's also a screen that will also show you what your Mythic path is going to attain at certain levels as well and then from there we can talk a little bit about the complex that comes with that there's all these classes they can be multiclass together we go all the way up to level 20 some of the Mythic paths will change this even further which means that on the leveling side of things there's just a lot more complexity to Pathfinder 1e than there is to fifth edition D andd and thus Wrath of the righteous has a lot more options but presented in a slightly less flashy fashion now on the balers Gate 3 side of that though we only go to level 12 as opposed to the more common 20 in terms of max levels which leaves you not exactly reaching the heights of possible power now on one hand I will say that that's very normal most video games especially with fifth edition have not gone to a particularly high level in that regard and this is mostly down to things like incorporating the Spells and whatnot becomes difficult without substantially reworking them or just leaving them out all together at which point you could argue what was the point of doing it to begin with because the things you would want to use at those levels just aren't in the game so there's a bit of a conversation to be had there but In fairness compared to games like Wrath of the righteous who do that and then some more and it makes people want those things but in the case of bg3 specifically I think a lot of it comes down to production value trying to implement that and maintaining the appearance and quality of it across the entire game as well would be difficult which is probably why Lan has repeatedly expressed hesitancy about doing so now as we start drawing dra this to a close on one hand I think it's safe to say that the difference between these two games is primarily role playing versus mechanical crunch balers Gate 3 is a game that focuses on role playing it's easy to get into it's got Mass Appeal it's also got high production values while also at the same time providing a very compelling narrative that really focuses on telling you the story of not just your own character and the main quest of course but the companions that surround you the origin characters how they feel how they react to things that kind of thing and ultimately those are things that the camera angle and things like that of Wrath of the righteous simply can't capture while I think Wrath of the righteous has great moments like that that are similar they are not conveyed in a way that is as easily accessible which means people aren't as inclined to see the other role playing options that are available in Wrath of the righteous of which there are many as it is a game that also features a lot of wide sweeping choice and consequence but it is a game that has much much more going on in terms of mechanics down to the number of classes the Mythic paths how those affect the story so it does have its own version of those things they are ultimately presented in a way that is not as immediately compelling as balers Gate 3 is and that combined with the higher barrier to entry to Wrath of the righteous that comes from learning a complicated rule set means that it is a game that primarily appeals to Veterans of either the genre or fans of Pathfinder W in particular and that's to say nothing of all the quality of life improvements that I think Wrath of the righteous has over balers Gate 3 but at the end of the day to sort of sum up this video while I think for a lot of people the choice is obvious because they look at Wrath of the righteous and they go this game looks a lot less interesting to me than balers Gate 3 does when you actually start digging into the specifics of it I think Wrath of the righteous still offers something compelling and a unique experience by comparison I think they are both really great games that appeal to different people frankly so while I do really enjoy both games much of my own personal preference still tends to lean towards Wrath of the righteous in many respects in spite of that though I do really love that my favorite genre in gaming has enough to offer both crowds people who want a more roleplaying relaxed focused experience or people who want a very deep mechanic complicated RPG like Wrath of the righteous can be and it's really cool to see crpgs as a genre thriving again as in my own very biased opinion I think they are some of the best of what video games have to offer so regardless of whichever way your own personal preferences swing on these particular games I do hope people try out and play both of them as they are both more than worth someone's time that though is pretty much going to do it for for this video I hope you enjoyed it let me know how you feel about these things down in the comment section below which of course means to like comment subscribe all that YouTube jazz but regardless of any of that truly just thank you so much for watching I really do appreciate it may you wander in wisdom and have an amazing [Music] day

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

Views: 211,723

Keywords: Mortym, Mortismal Gaming, Baldurs Gate, BG3, BG2, BG1, Baldur's Gate, Connections, baldur's gate 3 story, baldurs gate 3, bg3 story, baldurs gate 1 & 2 before 3, bg3 multiplayer, bg3 gameplay, bg3 release showcase, bg3 multiclassing, baldurs gate 3 multiclassing, bg3 classes, bg3 monk, bg3 monk guide, bg3 monk overview, bg3 class overview, bg3 best classes, baldurs gate 3 best classes, bg3 class rankings, bg3 class stats, bg3 vs pathfinder

Id: EbeDkaPNpzI

Length: 16min 29sec (989 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 24 2023