[2021] (Un)popular opinion - WOTR might have been in a better state than Kingmaker when it launched, but that still doesn't mean it was ready for release.

Just something I needed to get off my chest, downvotes be damned.

Yes, the game was better than Kingmaker when it launched. But IMO that still doesn't mean it was ready for release. Given all the bugs, broken abilities, mythic paths and the frankly rushed final act, I honestly would have been happy waiting another few months to get a more fully finished product.

Some examples of things that should not exist in a 1.0 release that spring to mind:

• Basic Mythic Path Abilities outright not working (Aeon Bane, Trickster Knowledge Nature, a ton of the summons don't summon what they say they will)
• Basic Class Features not working (Oracle Life Link, Bloodrager Rage Powers, Draconic Bloodlines, etc.)
• A ton of tooltips/ability descriptions with that were never bothered to fill out
• Game Breaking Crusade / Mythic Path Bugs that block progress
• Unpolished Crusade Mechanics in general (bloated tooltips, lack of general info, poor pacing on unit acquisition)
• Magic Items not working properly (btw this is still the case in Kingmaker and they'll probably never get fixed there)
• Lack of relative balance in between the Mythic Paths - Angel/Lich/Azata outperform almost everything else
• The final Mythic Paths (Dragon/Swarm/Legend) come way too late to plan a playthrough around
• The arguably rushed / cut down final act

Credit where it's due, I'll praise Owlcat for patching these bugs regularly, but that doesn't excuse the lack of testing in the first place for the most basic of features in a CRPG (items + abilities). And some of these things like pacing or Mythic Path progression now probably can't ever be changed :( . I'd hoped this could have been addressed in Beta feedback, but I heard a lot of the Mythic balance things were just ignored. Can anyone confirm if that's true?

Say what you will, but for a CRPG, functional testing on class abilities, mythic paths and magic items should have been done for a launch. I don't expect them to catch every weird class combo/use case as that's practically impossible, but I do expect someone to spend the 30 seconds required checking if a class ability works or not.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Pathfinder games (my highest playtime on Steam by far), but it makes me sad to see the wasted potential and frustration coming from things that could have been thought through a little more.

Here's hoping for the next game it spends a little more time in the oven, or they can pull a Larian on us and rework the final chunk of the game (fingers crossed).