Can this game be played casually?

[LGalucard]

This game looks quite interesting thematically and aesthetically to me. However, the DnD stuff? Scares me! The closest i have played and its still miles away from this in terms of complexity is Divinity 2 (which i loved). I bought this game once and after fiddling with character creation without understanding anything i ended up returning it. Terms like "saving throws"and "dXxx" feel incredibly alien. I am way more use to this will do x to x damage. This has X% of success. The amount of mechanic going at once here are overwhelming and while i want to play it, every video makes me feel like it would be a chore. I also hear you need to buff your party with 10000 buffs every few mins?

So can one ignore all that and kinda get by on low difficulty and not feel like you are steamrolling all?

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by LGalucard:

This game looks quite interesting thematically and aesthetically to me. However, the DnD stuff? Scares me! The closest i have played and its still miles away from this in terms of complexity is Divinity 2 (which i loved). I bought this game once and after fiddling with character creation without understanding anything i ended up returning it. Terms like "saving throws"and "dXxx" feel incredibly alien. I am way more use to this will do x to x damage. This has X% of success. The amount of mechanic going at once here are overwhelming and while i want to play it, every video makes me feel like it would be a chore. I also hear you need to buff your party with 10000 buffs every few mins?

So can one ignore all that and kinda get by on low difficulty and not feel like you are steamrolling all?

In my opinion you can even go with normal difficulty and not feeling like you are steamrolling. Though it is a good idea to start low and increase it by time. I consider it very enjoyable.

I have had my issues as well. By time you get to understand more naturally, and that will increase your enjoyment of the game. Until then it is absolute legit to use pre generated builds, auto level up and so on.

Feel free to ask here at the forums whenever you are in need of advice. Pathfinders helping fellow Pathfinders.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by LGalucard:

Terms like "saving throws"and "dXxx" feel incredibly alien. I am way more use to this will do x to x damage. This has X% of success. The amount of mechanic going at once here are overwhelming and while i want to play it, every video makes me feel like it would be a chore. I also hear you need to buff your party with 10000 buffs every few mins?

Well, yeah, that stuff is kinda the point of the game, why the Pathfinder system is popular and why this game is so good. Also why it's so replayable since there are so many ways to skin a cat in it.

What difficulty did you beat DOS2 on if you don't mind me asking?

[Anaztazioch]

no, saddly.
Story mode difficulty makes even bosses die in 1 turn, before they take action.

On Casual Act 3 starts difficult and you will meet encounters that far surpass "casual" approach to the game. You will be forced to rest and heal every encounter to have spells and abilities, you will use mythic powers on regular mobs etc.

Normal is harder than rulebook of pathfinder, monsters have higher level, more DC etc.

Generaly, the game is made with the idea, that players are hardcore pathfinder veterans and know the abusive and cheesy builds that give them so much edge, they can play on nightmare dificulty, where enemies are double their level, have extra abilities, atributes, DCs and other stuff.

Game is also designed for fanatics that love spending couple of minutes before every encounter to buff them selves with every known spell.

[LGalucard]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

Originally posted by LGalucard:

Terms like "saving throws"and "dXxx" feel incredibly alien. I am way more use to this will do x to x damage. This has X% of success. The amount of mechanic going at once here are overwhelming and while i want to play it, every video makes me feel like it would be a chore. I also hear you need to buff your party with 10000 buffs every few mins?

Well, yeah, that stuff is kinda the point of the game, why the Pathfinder system is popular and why this game is so good. Also why it's so replayable since there are so many ways to skin a cat in it.

What difficulty did you beat DOS2 on if you don't mind me asking?

Always normal. Only games i play above normal are action games where rng is not factor.

[LGalucard]

Originally posted by Anaztazioch:

no, saddly.
Story mode difficulty makes even bosses die in 1 turn, before they take action.

On Casual Act 3 starts difficult and you will meet encounters that far surpass "casual" approach to the game. You will be forced to rest and heal every encounter to have spells and abilities, you will use mythic powers on regular mobs etc.

Normal is harder than rulebook of pathfinder, monsters have higher level, more DC etc.

Generaly, the game is made with the idea, that players are hardcore pathfinder veterans and know the abusive and cheesy builds that give them so much edge, they can play on nightmare dificulty, where enemies are double their level, have extra abilities, atributes, DCs and other stuff.

Game is also designed for fanatics that love spending couple of minutes before every encounter to buff them selves with every known spell.

Ouch!

[Anaztazioch]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

Originally posted by LGalucard:

Terms like "saving throws"and "dXxx" feel incredibly alien. I am way more use to this will do x to x damage. This has X% of success. The amount of mechanic going at once here are overwhelming and while i want to play it, every video makes me feel like it would be a chore. I also hear you need to buff your party with 10000 buffs every few mins?

Well, yeah, that stuff is kinda the point of the game, why the Pathfinder system is popular and why this game is so good. Also why it's so replayable since there are so many ways to skin a cat in it.

What difficulty did you beat DOS2 on if you don't mind me asking?

DOS2 has a competely different balance. Unlike feat tax, mandatory buffs and... useless items... DOS2 is all about leveling. Enemies dont scale, but items at vendors do. Level up, buy an armor and an enemy that was one-shotting you now needs 4 turns. Enemies who you couldnt get past magic/physical armor now go down in 2 hits from two handed weapon.

[tamtitam]

Originally posted by LGalucard:

This game looks quite interesting thematically and aesthetically to me. However, the DnD stuff? Scares me! The closest i have played and its still miles away from this in terms of complexity is Divinity 2 (which i loved). I bought this game once and after fiddling with character creation without understanding anything i ended up returning it. Terms like "saving throws"and "dXxx" feel incredibly alien. I am way more use to this will do x to x damage. This has X% of success. The amount of mechanic going at once here are overwhelming and while i want to play it, every video makes me feel like it would be a chore. I also hear you need to buff your party with 10000 buffs every few mins?

So can one ignore all that and kinda get by on low difficulty and not feel like you are steamrolling all?

Yes. You can play this game casually.

I didn't know the pathfinder system when I started and had great fun with it. There is an extensive tutorial and many different diffiulty settings.

Character creation is very intimidating and asking a bit too much from new players, thats true. But you can also choose a pre-made character or just follow the suggestions (auto-levelling) after choosing a class. The game also tells you, which classes are more or less difficult to play. Level-Ups are far easier (less options) than creating a character from the scratch. Usually you can get away with taking whatever skills and feats sound good - if you really do mess up, re-skilling your character is free. Also, you could just auto-level characters and stay fully blissfully ignorant of the complexity of the pathfinder-system.

You need to buff your party for difficult encounters, especially on higher difficulty. But it's not as bad a the memes make it look.

Most mechanics and abilities are kind of intuitive and you don't have to understand every weird detail of the pathfinder ruleset to be succesfull on normal difficulty. There are some strange difficulty-spikes, though, which hopefully will get fixed soon.

But, all in all, this game is really not that hard - and I say this as a more casual player. Many people who criticise the difficulty for some reason insist on playing on "Core"-difficulty (for the archievements or because it uses the full pathfinder rules), which is actually one of the most difficult ones.

[Anaztazioch]

Originally posted by LGalucard:

Originally posted by Anaztazioch:

no, saddly.
Story mode difficulty makes even bosses die in 1 turn, before they take action.

On Casual Act 3 starts difficult and you will meet encounters that far surpass "casual" approach to the game. You will be forced to rest and heal every encounter to have spells and abilities, you will use mythic powers on regular mobs etc.

Normal is harder than rulebook of pathfinder, monsters have higher level, more DC etc.

Generaly, the game is made with the idea, that players are hardcore pathfinder veterans and know the abusive and cheesy builds that give them so much edge, they can play on nightmare dificulty, where enemies are double their level, have extra abilities, atributes, DCs and other stuff.

Game is also designed for fanatics that love spending couple of minutes before every encounter to buff them selves with every known spell.

Ouch!

I understad you. Also understand this - I was on normal doing fine, now im level 18 and my party gets wiped by elevator guards at ACT 3 end. My highest attack roll is 47 and enemy AC is 65. Can only hit on 20s.

Suddenly after 40+ hours ingame i realized my build is ♥♥♥♥. My arcanist that was diong 50+ damage from fireballs, now have everyone DC, resist them to 20 damage while having 2 times more HP. Maximize spell, Cone of cold, some instant cast spells. I try midnight bolt, missed - WOW. Level 8 or 9 spells and cant hit enemy because i can cast it 2 or 3 times per rest. Awesome, brilliant.

My character feels wasted, builds misplaced, continuing feels a drag. midpoint of game, im almost top of my tree and enemies are bound to be even stronger. I lost ANY will to continue this without cheats. 190h into this game, i dont want to spend 1000 to get "better" i simply want to enjoy the game, not be a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ master of it.

This game has far worse scaling and ruleset than Kingmaker. Ive learned not to buy any more games from Owlcat

And lets not forget how terrible writing is on Iomede and Nocticula bickering. Really a "god" and a "demi-god" bicker like peasants.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by LGalucard:

Always normal. Only games i play above normal are action games where rng is not factor.

OK, this is my assessment of how the game works at various difficulty levels from another thread:

But unless you play on Hard or Unfair you absolutely do not need to min-max:

* if you are an experienced cRPG player (someone who has beaten PoE on Path of the Damned or DOS2 on Tactician for example) then if you are prepared to put some effort into learning the basics of the Pathfinder ruleset AND put further effort into understanding how to deal with specific monster types and find the easy ways to defeat the big encounters then you will have a great game on Core with no min-maxing required.

* if you are a similarly experienced player but instead want to fly by the seat of your pants and see were the game takes you then you will have a great game on normal with no min-maxing required.

* if you are a less experienced cRPG player then if you are prepared to put some effort into learning the basics of the Pathfinder ruleset AND put further effort into understanding how to deal with specific monster types and find the easy ways to defeat the big encounters then you will have a great game on Normal with no min-maxing required.

* if you are a similarly inexperienced player but instead want to fly by the seat of your pants and see were the game takes you then you will have a great game on Story with no min-maxing required.

This is how Owlcat have balanced WotR and my view is that they have done a fantastic job of it to provide an excellent experience all the way from total beginners to Pathfinder veterans. But it is up to the player to pick the right difficulty matching a) their skill level with cRPG in general and b) the amount of effort they want to put into learning how Pathfinder itself works or they might get a miserable experience.

If that makes sense to you.

I would hazard a guess, given you've beaten DOS2 on normal and what you said in your OP, that you may have to put in more effort to learn Pathfinder systems than you'd like to have a good game on normal (i.e. not getting your arse handed to you every two minutes) but on the other hand you'd probably find Story mode too easy to be worth playing.

Which of course you probably already realised and is why you walked away earlier.

All I can say is it's down to you if you want to put in the effort to figure out the basics of the Pathfinder systems or not. And that if you do decide to do so your effort will be well rewarded (and of course benenfit you in any other serious cRPG you want to have a look at in the future).

The other comment I'd make is that one of the most complex aspects of this game is character builds and development. On normal difficulty you can largely avoid getting into the details of that by simply following the default recommendation level ups for the story companions (or simply put them on auto-level up) and picking a tried and tested kickass MC class that's easy to play. I would personally recommend a 2H Bloodrager Primalist built for Cornagan Smash and Pounce as a perfect "get my feet wet" starter MC. Other's may have other good suggestions. You can ask here or look it up online easy enough for details of such a build.

Whatever, if you did that IMHO you'd find life a bit harder than DOS2 on normal, but not that much harder.

[tamtitam]

Originally posted by Anaztazioch:

no, saddly.
Story mode difficulty makes even bosses die in 1 turn, before they take action.

On Casual Act 3 starts difficult and you will meet encounters that far surpass "casual" approach to the game. You will be forced to rest and heal every encounter to have spells and abilities, you will use mythic powers on regular mobs etc.

Normal is harder than rulebook of pathfinder, monsters have higher level, more DC etc.

Generaly, the game is made with the idea, that players are hardcore pathfinder veterans and know the abusive and cheesy builds that give them so much edge, they can play on nightmare dificulty, where enemies are double their level, have extra abilities, atributes, DCs and other stuff.

Game is also designed for fanatics that love spending couple of minutes before every encounter to buff them selves with every known spell.

Thats just not my experience.
I play on "daring", with unoptimized rpg-builds and without fully understanding all mechanics and Act 3 was just fine. Buffing can be annoying, but I never buffed my group for a couple of minutes (is that even possible?) and usually only rest after boss-battles.

You don't need abusive and cheesy builds unless you want to play on hard or unfair.

Normal is harder than rulebook pathfinder, because the KI is not nearly as smart as a human Game-Master and you can reload. But it's deffinitely managable for a Newbie.

[Mallas]

You can play the game on custom difficulty where you choose how difficult the game is.

If you want it easy, you can turn down enemy damage to party to 0.2 and enemy strength to extremly weak. The game absoultely supports game styles where you just run around, kill stuff and enjoy the story.

[djinnxy]

There's literally a setting called casual. If you're new casual may be story mode in this depending how fast you pick it up. I'm playing "casually" on core right now.

[LGalucard]

Originally posted by Mallas:

You can play the game on custom difficulty where you choose how difficult the game is.

If you want it easy, you can turn down enemy damage to party to 0.2 and enemy strength to extremly weak. The game absoultely supports game styles where you just run around, kill stuff and enjoy the story.

Like the other poster above said. Thats most definitely not what im looking for. I want somewhat of a challenge but simplified one where strategy can give you the upper hand vs rng. Looking that the answers ive gotten (which are appreciated) this is not possible. You either learn the pathfinder stuff or set it to steamroll mode.

[Darakkuu]

Well, yeah. It will be hard to play pathfinder game without learning pathfidner stuff...

[Entropie]

Originally posted by Anaztazioch:

Normal is harder than rulebook of pathfinder, monsters have higher level, more DC etc.

Though technically the pointvalues may be higher, it is probably still easier because you can basically pre buff and get a drop on the enemy every encounter.

In an actual Pen & Paper setting you will be a LOT more vulnerable to going into fights underprepared or with limited resources.

Obviously it depends quite a bit on how devious your dm is.