No hit or no damage playthroughs have become an increasingly common badge of honor online, especially in precise, timing-driven action games like the Souls series. But what about in a dice rolling, stats and RNG-heavy CRPG? Davey Gunface on YouTube not only proved it’s possible, he did so in perhaps the most tedious circumstances: Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous’ Unfair difficulty.
WotR and its predecessor, Kingmaker, are two all-timer CRPGs for me. But even die-hard fans recommend them with caveats. Wrath, especially, is kinda bullshit. Once every two to five hours or so across its marathon runtime, a guy who by all rights should be a miniboss is just out of nowhere the strongest guy who ever lived. It’s like when Battle Beast first shows up as some guy’s goon in Invincible and he solos all the strongest heroes of earth.
Crazy difficulty spikes, Armor Classes through the stratosphere, save-or-die spells, level drain, damage immunities, literal minutes-long hard crowd control, Wrath embraces these and more. Its normal difficulty will make a Baldur’s Gate 3 Honour Mode veteran sweat a bit, while completing the “Core” difficulty is a real CRPG achievement in my book—you should get your picture on a wall at Owlcat HQ like you finished a Paul Bunyan Big Boy meal at a roadside steakhouse. The “Unfair” difficulty? It’s unfair.
I can only assume Gunface allowed for reloading in this challenge due to the random chance and marathon nature of a WotR playthrough—it really is, consistently, a 100+ hour deal. Gunface set the challenge of getting through without taking any avoidable damage. There are a few instances of story or cutscene-derived, unavoidable hits that just feel unsporting.