What do you think is the better game / experience and why? (and yes, if need be you can add Baldur's Gate 3 to the mix)

Many thanks for any thoughts / opinions!

It depends. Note that I've only played a bit of WotR and haven't played Solasta.

Wrath of the Righteous:
* Has more character build options, but has the drawback that it's easy to build a bad character as a result.
* Is the harder of the two games.
* Is the longer of the two games.
* You create your main character, but not companions. The game does give you the option to hire mercenaries.
* You fight demons in this game, and that's pretty much all you fight, for the most part.
* Combat can be either real-time-with-pause or turn based. Movement is continuous, not on a grid.
* Game over if main character dies.

Solasta:
* Far fewer character build choices, but at least it's much harder to screw things up.
* Is the easier of the two games.
* Is the shorter of the two games (but note that there's custom dungeons available).
* You create a party of 4 (and it has to be 4, as the game doesn't allow smaller parties).
* Not familiar with the mix of enemies in this game.
* Combat is always turn based. Movement is on a grid.
* Game over if someone is dead and you don't have any ability or item that would revive that character. (In other words, you can't just leave a character dead; you *have* to revive the character, or the game will end as soon as you can no longer do so.)

I've only played the first Pathfinder but I'd say Solasta has more uses of skills and spells. Like they have uses beyond combat

In addition to the provided campaign, Solasta also allows user-created adventures, some are available at Solasta: Crown of the Magister Nexus. This is somewhat comparable to Neverwinter Nights, where the provided campaigns are only part of the experience.

I haven't played Wrath of the Righteous, only Solasta and the first act of Kingmaker. If I go by that, I'd say:

- Games in the Pathfinder series are more ambitious and original, with possibly better story and writing (though sometimes cringy as well), better graphics and possibly more interesting encounters

- I found Solasta more fun to play regardless.

For me the genre mix in Pathfinder is exhausting, as I love RPGs but don't really like Strategy, and I hate time limits. Solasta is pretty linear and Pathfinder is pretty open, and yet I felt more restricted in Pathfinder due to the time pressure and events being mutually exclusive. I felt the urge to look up infos on the net in order not to make decisions that would come back to haunt me. Rather stressful. The time limit in the first act of Kingmaker was comparatively generous, not as bad as I thought it would be, but its existence alone makes the game less fun to me. I haven't dared to play on since, due to the kingdom management.

Story and writing in Crown of the Magister were meh, IMO, standard fantasy fare, and the cosmetic customization options for characters are very limited, even worse that they are not moddable, as far as I know. You can create maybe one or two decent looking characters per race, if you're good, and after that everyone will look the same or ugly. Voices are even more limited (2 for males, 2 for females, +1 supposedly gender neutral (?) voice for both that sounds pretty male though - unless this is a bug -, so female only really has 2; a bit of variation comes from different backgrounds influencing the voice lines). But the tactical turn-based combat in Solasta was quite fun, and the game had something that just made me play on and on until I was through.

EDIT: I have to admit though that I made some adjustments to the rules in order to make Solasta more enjoyable. By default the common low dice rolls of both player characters and enemies can make battles very tedious. When I set it to always roll twice and take the better roll (for both PCs and enemies), it became a bit more fun. It sounds like a huge exploit, but in reality it just makes the game feel more like other CRPGs. You won't notice any significant advantages, just a few less rounds wasted on unlucky misses on both sides (and even with that rule in place, you will still get 1's quite frequently, meaning the game rolled two 1's in a row - figure that). I don't know whether the game's dice roll algorithms are particularly skewed or particularly realistic, but they did feel a bit odd to a lot of players. Maybe the roll results are truly random, but oddly distributed (like good streaks balanced out by bad streaks)? Anyway, the good thing about Solasta is that in contrast to the restricted cosmetic options, gameplay/rule customization options are very extensive, among the most flexible I've seen in a CRPG.

. Yes and no. I applaud the option to create your own campaigns, but it's rather limited compared to NWN. For one, in terms of dialogues, due to the way they set it up in the official campaign. But the worst part of it, I think, is that it's not really open to third party modding, meaning that contrary to NWN, you can only ever modify and rename the official models from the game and never introduce new settings and models by talented 3D modders. That seriously restricts the longevity of the editor. The game is mostly focused on combat with limited options for storytelling and exploration, and after a while everything will feel like more of the same.

Pathfinder is based on Pathfinder rpg, while Solasta is based on D&D5:
Pathfinder is an advanced DD3.5, more rich (far too, some says),
while DD5 is countrary: a synthetis of DD3.5, an excellent one.

The problem is that, while DD5 is an excellent synthesis for table rpg, it's too streamlined for a pc rpg, as the "work" of the computer is already done by the synthesis, the computer brings nothing more than an UI.
Countrary, the PC is excellent to simplify the work for the player for this heavy Pathfinder game.

Many thanks for the breakdown. I wasn't aware of a few of them... especially the "game over" states. Yes, I know the feeling. For me it's time limits and the possibility that you could completely mess up your chances of finishing the game by fumbling your stat allocations. Wow, a major reason I am interested in Solasta is for the additional "mod" content. I had no idea that the game wasn't open to proper modding, just essentially rearranging game assets. That's disappointing.

I'm not a 100% sure, but so far, everything I've seen points to that. Check the mods on Nexus for example, and you will see that almost all of them are just adventures, no significant changes or additions to the main game. And I think I've seen someone confirm my suspicion on a forum, but I might be mistaken.

You still get good dungeon crawl modules with that, but I think in the long run, they will be less satisfying than the main campaigns, as soon as you grow a bit weary of the combat.