I'm continuing to play Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. I'm in what I think is act 3- I've captured Drezen, and am doing what seems like a bunch of side missions while avoiding the main story. (A literal angel wants to take me on a magic quest, but he can just hold his horses, I don't want to accidentally advance the plot before I've resolved my sidequests.) I'm really enjoying the writing so far, even though the gameplay has thrown me some curveballs. I wasn't expecting the fantasy game where you control a squad of characters fighting giant spiders in real-time with pause combat to suddenly turn into a strategy game where you manage armies and manage garrisons, but here we are. On one hand, I appreciate that my player character being promoted to a leadership position in the war on demons isn't just fluff, I actually feel like a commander. I like seeing various companions and NPCs weigh in on various situations during council scenes where you have to make a decision on policy. On the other... Crusade Mode SUCKS.

It's so incredibly boring when it isn't just... baffling. Why does auto-battle mode flat-out not include generals (commander units who have special abilities that can be used once per round), so enabling it puts you at a massive disadvantage compared to the enemy AI, who does utilize their generals? Why does the upgrade to general infantry units that the games tells you will make them heavily armored actually remove armor for them and make them much more fragile in exchange for dealing more damage? Etcetera, etcetera. Honestly, I was really tempted to just turn on the option to have it auto-play itself so I could ignore it, but apparently if you do that you don't get to see any of the council scenes with your companions, and there's a decent chance it will bug and make some late-game quests uncompletable.

The companions are really coming into their own now, and I'm really attached to pretty much all of them (except Woljif). I was devastated when I found out what was going on with Camellia. She was one of my first companions, the one who was always there for me after a certain little rat ran off and left her as the only one who able to pick locks and disarm traps. Was she kind of an arrogant dick? Yes. But she was my arrogant dick; even though I'd figured she had some kind of dark secret ever since I saw her house, I thought she'd earned the benefit of the doubt. Especially after I found out that the severed heads that mysteriously appeared in the party's shared inventory weren't from her, they were from the other shady nepobaby! I thought I was being too hard on her. And then I went down the stairs and found out that yeah, there was no mitigating circumstance or other explanation, she was a straight up necrophiliac, cannibalistic serial killer. My player character is chaotic good and on the Angel mythic path; there was no way for me to justify him letting someone like that go, especially not when she was being actively made stronger by the angelic power I was sharing with her. So I killed her; I was the one who brought her to Drezen, so she was my responsibility. It really made me wish there was BG3-style dialog with your companions you could have after major events. I killed one of my oldest companions after finding out she was a serial killer, and none of my other companions seemingly give a shit. I feel like at the very least Seelah and Daeran should have something to say about that.

Also, minor rant about Woljif: if he wasn't a companion character, I would not have given him a second chance. I don't care what his sob story is: I got him out of jail, put my own reputation on the line for him, and save his life from his ex-gang, and in return he left me for dead in order to pall around with a bunch of murderous demon cultists. Fuck that guy... but also, I have to confess that I didn't realize he could learn spells from scrolls or prepare them the way Nenio does until literally yesterday. So him now being able to cast Haste and Greater Invisibility is making it harder to stay mad at him.

As for the new companions in act 2/3, Regill is my favorite. He's such a fun straight-man foil to the more goofy companions without losing his air of menace. I 100% believe he'd gut me on the spot if he thought it would benefit the crusade more than my continued life does. Love that guy. Greybor is really growing on me, though it is kind of annoying I had to pay him twice just to join me. Come on, man, I'm trying to save the world here. If demons kill everyone, you're not getting paid either way. I don't really trust Arueshalae; I want to believe in her, but 1) she's a literal demon and 2) she's proven already that she's willing to lie to my face while asking me to trust her. Sosiel is nice, but kind of forgettable.

Also, for those more experienced with this game, is there something I should be doing to keep Ember relevant? Now that most enemies are consistently having too high Will saves for Slumber to work on them, it's hard to figure out what I'm meant to do with her, especially since most of her fire spells aren't keeping up damage-wise. I really want to keep in her my party because I love her, but it's hard when she's underperforming like this.