I am still working my way through the DLCs for Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, which I bought for cheap in a bundle in a recent Steam sale. I finished both Through the Ashes and The Lord of Nothing, and now started The Treasure Of The Midnight Isles. Which is a bit of a weird one when you play the standalone version, as it turns the game into a roguelike dungeon crawler. And that brings me to some thoughts about the dual nature of roleplaying games in general.

What I mean by the dual nature of roleplaying games is that they are both tactical games and narrative games. "I rolled a 20 and my barbarian deals 24 critical damage to the orc" and "Thrud the barbarian rushes forward, swinging his battleaxe, splitting the orc's head in two" are actually both describing the same event. While Wrath of the Righteous has lots of tactical combat and character build optimization, there is also a large story spanning five acts, plus numerous side quests and companion-specific quests. And the two parts can get into each other's way, when for example you play with a group of companions who aren't exactly the classes or builds that would have chosen if you had made the full party from scratch.

In The Treasure Of The Midnight Isles you make your whole party from scratch, starting with two characters and gaining more until your group is full over the course of the game. There are no companions, and there is only a very thin story leading your through a series of procedurally generated dungeons full of random monsters and treasures. So if in the main game you never got the party of your dreams, if you play this DLC standalone, you can build this dream party and try it out against various combat challenges. Or you can build various parties with the more exotic classes and builds that you never had the opportunity to try out in the main game.

The downside is that other that combat there isn't much to see in The Treasure Of The Midnight Isles. There are a few token opportunities to use skill checks, but succeeding a Lore skillcheck rewards the party with a buff instead of giving you any actual lore. At the end of each 5-dungeon run is a boss fight, but you've never heard of that boss before, and he is just a final, harder challenge for each run. You don't have history with the bosses, like you often do in the main game. And that makes the DLC a bit more boring than the main game, because the narrative of the main game is a motivating factor in the game.

I don't think I will play The Treasure Of The Midnight Isles very long. I'm trying out some character classes and builds for fun, but I will probably only do a handful of runs before returning to the main game. I am happy that I can try out some things, but after a few dungeons a character build without a story isn't enough to carry the game for me.

- posted by Tobold @ 12:25 PM Permanent Link