This was a hostile game that eventually justified its hostility. It demanded time, study, and patience, and it punished a lack of commitment relentlessly. Built on the same Pathfinder foundation, it doubled down on complexity and made no attempt to ease new players into things. Mastery required external research and careful planning. A willingness to fail repeatedly also helped.

It bore many of Owlcat’s familiar problems. Bugs, performance issues, and an awkward interface persisted. Dialogue sprawled out of control. Buffing and inventory management remained tedious. Combat balance was uneven, with many encounters solvable only with the aid of specific tools. Despite the apparent breadth of options, the number of truly viable paths was narrower than it first appeared.

And yet - unlike its predecessor - this one held it together. Within the above constraints, it quickly became exhilarating. The difficulty and length created real decisions rather than meaningless speeches. Party composition, mythic paths, and mechanical expression aligned in ways that rewarded your necessarily deep engagement. What began as punishment gradually revealed itself as a creative sandbox - albeit one lined with spikes.

More importantly, it embraced the strangeness and variety of its setting. Golarion was not content to showcase the default heroic fantasy here. Moral, ethical, and metaphysical choices carried mechanical consequences, and the game committed. That ambition elevated it well above routine sword-and-sorcery fare. Games are often too quick to strip the Evil Path of content; no such limpness was on display here.

This was never meant to be broad or welcoming. It was a niche product built for committed players, and on those terms it succeeded wildly. After hundreds of hours, my resistance gave way to deep appreciation. The systems opened up. The harshness made sense. The experience came together.

It remains wise to treat Owlcat’s releases with caution - especially at launch. Still, in its finished state, this was a formidable and engrossing work. If you are willing to meet it where it lives and tolerate its faults, it could easily become an obsession.