Out of all the WRPGs (western RPGs), I've played thus far. Pathfinder: Kingmaker(PK) is without a doubt the most complex and rich in nearly every category I long for in the genre. And to Owlcat’s credit, the Kickstarter backed CRPG almost achieved full marks. Multiplex of systems, deep mechanics, extensive kingdom-building, matched by a fascinating world-building and filled with memorable characters. A long story, featuring multiple endings. Real-time with pause combat. Dense fantasy single-player title in an isometric perspective. And yet I can’t help but find the whole experience of clearing everything possible in over 130 hours a double-edged sword. Full of sharp awesome content. Yet underneath lies a blunt edge full of troubling matters. Alexander Mishulin, Creative Director at Owlcat Games eloquently sums up the matter in an 2020 interview saying “...Huge Pathfinder system ruleset was left tricky and unclear in many ways for the new players unfamiliar with the tabletop game.”
The IP is incredibly different from what I dabbled in Baldur's Gate 1 last year. And the old Fallout titles. Feels a lot more in-depth not just in terms of pen-and-paper, but in different rules and how the mechanics are implemented by Owlcat on Paizo’s ruleset. I’ll run through the positives first before I dive into my mixed feelings. Full disclosure: I played 100 hours without mods before relying on them to end credits. I’ll denote a mod section properly later on, but if I don’t discuss it please assume I'm discussing vanilla.
Storywise I found to be a slow-burn. But ultimately an enjoyable affair. You start in a competition for the rights to become baron/baroness of the Stolen Lands. A large swath of unclaimed land with no leader. Think bandit territory except fantasied to the gills. Crypts and hidden tombs full of nocturnal creatures sinisterly lurk. Local settlements are plagued by monster attacks and the occasional banditry. Fill your wanderlust and discover ancient ruins and dungeons! Full of traps, puzzles, and of course great treasure awaits! But take care, whimsical fey beings roam here and there so beware! For better or worse, depending on your choices in dialogue you may come across interesting outcomes. Discover a key piece and be led to a hidden location out on the world map! Or used in a way to uncover another hidden check. Where the locals and monsters alike will be found in all manners of the noble to villainy spectrum. Take heart, for finding a true pure soul in such a hostile place may seem dangerous! Yet behold! Beyond the borders lie a people still living brightly and drinking merrily in taverns. Singing to their heart's content without end!
Before I sing on further, I must talk about the initial priorities after becoming Baron/Baroness. Consists of the gameplay overview without combat. A gentle reminder, to not go gallivanting off into the wilderness following the wanderlust compass. Rather, one must remember to research curses. Curses are something unexplainable and mysterious occurring within your lands. And it is up to you to research why. There are more than 13+ of these curse events that need to be resolved as you progress through the game's many acts. All of which contain a time limit to complete under “xxx’ day. Doing so is one of the key requirements to unlocking a secret ending and progressing through the main story conveniently. Refrain from doing so and the consequences will be severe. I didn’t have much issue with deadlines. Bona fide lenient as long as you prioritize what to do. A general loop emerges: Enter building management -> research curses, solve problems, assign advisors, resolve advisor concerns, construct structures in settlements, invest in building points(BP) or use them for erecting structures or helping pass a bill using BP. Finished? Good, we're not done. -> Check the journal to see any main quests. Usually, one or two pop-ups and its a number one priority to complete. -> Once finished then you're allowed to finish any sides and errands. Followed by companion quests -> If you have any days left on the clock. Explore the map, discover new dungeons, finish off random mobs trying to kill you while traveling, and unearthing loot by turning over rocks and crannies you see are all worthy endeavors. The priorities may seem daunting at first, but I assure you have ample weeks to months. In finishing any important tasks before moving on to the rest. Generally, Traveling around and researching will consume most of your precious days. However, there are certain ways to mitigate any losses later on. I’ll include some links later on for extra tips.
Plethora of classes to choose from and upgrade. More than fifteen main jobs. And several archetypes within. A barbarian, for instance, specializes in an armored hulk, mad dog, or invulnerable rager. A cleric branches off into a herald caller, ecclesitheurge, and crusader. All with their unique powers and skills offered. I stayed as a paladin and found it decent. My primary joy came from the multiple allies who joined my merry band. Swapping into a different profession if inclined, but I kept them as their base class to see how it feels to use them. At the end of the day, I concluded they’re fun to use. One serves as a tank such as my tower shield specialist while my inquisitor summons undead to serve as handy meatshields. My bard’s songs randomly stun my enemies. I and my barbarian cleaned up! Rinse and repeat and voila! Dead guys in the aftermath. Granted not all encounters will not go as smoothly as one would think. Plenty of surprises await in store for any curious adventurer.
Should be noted there are special prestige classes. Several are not selectable at the character creation. As you progress and meet certain requirements they become available as your second class. I’ll be honest with the exception of the Wildcard DLC. I was not able to use any of these prestige ones. As a result, I am unable to comment on them other than some being powerful and others meh from what I skimmed online. Overall essential in understanding classes, since comprehending their capabilities will mark triumph and despair concerning the combat portion.
I mainly used real-time with pause(RtwP) mode. For those unaware, in CRPG's this means each action your party makes is conducted at the same wavelength against the opposing enemy side. Casting spells takes seconds before casting but attacking is ongoing when not in cooldown. Trading blows until one side is gone. For those uninterested in RtwP. Owlcat implemented a turn-based(TB) method. Activatable anytime with a single press of a button. Initially, a mod early, the devs decided to add it for those not enthused in the RtwP approach. As someone who favors turn-based. I have to say the move was pretty based. But I couldn’t stand doing TB for every fight encounter. My entire playthrough would’ve easily doubled or tripled. But the inclusion of the mechanic later on after release I appreciate a great deal especially if I get tired of RtwP. Convenient when needed.
In my honest opinion, an enjoyable isometric gameplay emerges. Regarding the many systems at play. Battles are somewhat challenging relying on your crew's profession. For instance, if you improperly manage equipment, health items, and proper class understanding then you may be in for a life of hurt when confronting multiple foes in a large open area filled with scattered mobs. I struggled early on since I had zero Pathfinder exposure. Meaning I rushed into things without thinking, quick-saved like my life was about to expire. To make sure I gained a favorable outcome and spammed abilities like a madlad. Kindly erase those foolish ‘jump before thinking’ mentality and realize no one will hold your hand gently. Despite a wealth of options available to reduce difficulty which I will talk about later on. Look at my character and witness how one tab from the summary may induce information overload. What is AC? Fortitude? Reflex? Will? The difference between wisdom and intelligence. Knowledge arcana/world? lore/nature? Sounds rubbish, who needs these skills? Alignment? Bah, who cares. Well, my friend I do! A great deal since you must understand a sizable chunk to succeed. I won’t go into complete minute details, but suffice it to say each terminology is important to survive. Basic stereotypes do exist though, so no need to worry! A mage is squishy early on, but a glass cannon. Ranger and barbarian are viable builds and hybrid classes are available for those who wish to slot into a job outside of the standard ones.
Have no fear of the daunting Pathfinder homework ahead! I did only the bare minimum cause I wanted to get straight into the thick of things and still managed fairly well. Here’s a secret that has never failed me when playing any CRPG. Buffing/debuffing/summoning is honestly the bread and butter. And will undoubtedly your life easier. Without any of those above, I would not be able to win against my adversaries. Helped me so much to the point I spent over 100 hours buffing in less than a minute before engagements. In the blink of an eye. Yeah, I'm not kidding about those buffs. Crucial in starting up a massive advantage before striking any foe ahead. Summon any pets, skeletons, elementals, or animals at your side ahead of any battle so attackers will be dumb dumbs and attack them foolishly. As if they are the priority. Debuffing is equally important. Any Atlus JRPG fan should know from Megami Tensei how skills like reducing enemy power, missing an attack, freezing them, and whatever manner of debuffs to inflict. Will turn the tides in your favor. The same principle applies here. Min-maxers like myself who love adjusting little morsels of numbers are in for a real treat. Countless loot is around, as a result, I never had an issue strengthening my characters and applying any spells to their repertoire. No requirements to micromanage level-ups either. If checked in the menu. And since I started from beginning to end credits with the preference on. You are in good safe hands. An indispensable accessibility feature reduces the steep cliff into a more manageable one for newcomers to the series.
Do keep this in mind. It's inadvisable to spamming spells and abilities without a drawback. The consequence of using magical abilities means the 'charge' will be used up. Mana is unavailable. Instead, your party will have a certain amount of ‘charges’ so to speak on how many times to reuse a magick discipline. A basic 'fireball' for example may have one charge. In spite of that, within the magic system for some classes, possible to increase multiple slots. Consequently granting more amounts. Area of effect, cones, and single targets, bouncing are all attainable parameters, so watch out not to hurt your allies. Lest you need to revive them after the battle ends. After an engagement with an enemy, a non-combative status will occur for all. Any damages and spells used along with health will not return to their original condition. This means every skirmish with a mob will leave you bleeding. Continue fighting and sooner or later the effect of 'fatigue' will emerge. A debuff handicapping with horrible stats. Go further and you may become exhausted incurring further penalties. To counter a weakened state, one 'rest' is recommended, and rations to heal back to 100%. Be warned you may be ambushed by nearby hostiles. It's these little things that pile up later on when you expect a benefit there must always be a drawback in some form. Not much of an issue provided players remember to buy rations and set their PC to scavenge for rations out in the wild.
In the wilds and civilizations players will need to contend with the text and dialogue system. You will inevitably conduct a wide array of meaningful conversations. For instance, talking yields a host of options. Both are informative to educate, pushing to the next segment in a quest, moving the conversation forward with lore passages highlighting key information whenever you need, and taking a gamble in stat-oriented discourse to affect an outcome. Crucial to give context to the rich history in Pathfinder where putting the mouse cursor will describe any bolded phrase. Appropriately connecting any relevant lore with anyone. Where paragraphs on gods, nations, political figures, religion, etc. will be described when highlighted. Hearing a disgruntled futilist dwarf talk about the impending doom of the end of days from the god Grotis transforms otherwise static boring sentences into flavorful dynamic words to remember and an “Ahah!” moment arises. Stumble upon reading a book about certain dangerous religions only to learn later about a crazy cult related to said religion. You will inevitably come up with many of these examples. Nevertheless, conversations are susceptible to stats; you have to needle your way through unique text. Granting extra experience and new conversational topics to discuss with whomever you meet. Such a deeply intricate word system is only part of the whole gameplay pie to understand why I adore talking to my party to understand their backstory, relationships, and history and develop them further with their quest lines down the road.
Under these circumstances, the world-building is richly implemented and flourishes through meaningful lines as I meandered my way to talk to important NPCs whenever I traveled. Be it a villain, an unsuspecting stranger, or an upstanding citizen of the realm. All are not spared my inquisitive nature to converse! In my delight, speaking yields both favorable and unfavorable outcomes concerning a dice roll. Meet the stat check to enable the dialogue requirement, but plausible still failing the result. Meaning my goals for a peaceful resolution between two angry interracial groups could be thrown into the fire. Erupting a bloody feud betwixt two leaves me no choice but to eliminate both or take one side. Invigorating my soul and leaving me contemplative to carefully consider a circumspect approach. Take information with the grainiest of salts and don’t label everything in simple good or evil manners. Difficult to judge whether the NPC is acting in the best interest at your behest while secretly holding a dagger behind their back unknowingly to your eyes. As a result, Non-conflict encounters are unique here, where fights interrupted are an uncommon occurrence with a conversation box, hearing their plea and moving on from there. I’ve had the personal pleasure of converting evil dastards onto my side while subjecting good souls to betrayal. Interconnecting later on in a future side-mission or main narrative where your previous actions will have a consequence later on. I befuddled a group and investigated a murder or caused mayhem on the populace by lying to whomever. Offered a mysterious item I picked up just for this occasion. Bribed, persuaded, intimidated, or sought further lore knowledge. No one is spared from my decisions and I lived with the consequences of my actions.
If there is one notable strength here in PK then companions here are a breath of fresh air. Not the best, but certainly not the worst. Recruit all eleven comrades, plus two more from the Wildcards DLC. A wonderful motley crew full of contradictions and wild alignments from chaotic to lawful and those staying in the realm of neutrality. I adore my party's banter. Sharing wonderful stories and barbs anytime I rest. And their voice actors deserve only praise for going the distance. Seeing their background update during a loading screen is a small, but appreciative detail. As I progressed further in their questline. From the loveable optimistic bard who never fails to brighten the room, the tough barbarian exile who continues to thirst for a challenge, the curious explorer alchemist who underneath their arrogant exterior lies a heart of gold, the noble tower specialist who continues to make each stranger drop their jaw in awe at her beauty. The chaotic duo of eldritch scion and rogue wizard lent their bond to my group despite their horrible past. A stoic tragic ranger avenger, a dwarven futilist cleric, a goblin knife master, and others I could list but I'll save them for a surprise… Needless to say, all have a colorful history beyond simple tropes and evolve constantly throughout my journey. I won’t say any favorites since I like all of them equally, instead, I will remark my allies' goals are a must-play and some intertwine with the main story at length. Providing a nice integration into the story and commenting during side activities on their thoughts, feelings, and alignment. Your actions will favor or dislike you. Therefore, it's essential to think carefully about their beliefs, morals, and alignment to adjust your response accordingly relative to the situation. Complex and not one-sided, and not all that hard to keep with you by when the end credits rolled around. Heck, I operated a solid crew of five. With changes in the guard whenever any relative friend's objectives arrived. Some benefit from putting any relative members in a relatable matter for instance. Otherwise, serving an appropriate role in another area below.
Kingdom building surprised me a great deal. There are plenty of systems in place here to almost make me wish for a separate game to play exclusively. Heck, employing any of your companions as advisors who will approach you about a delicate matter related to any of the stats concerning your authority. Population, relation, military, culture, divine, loyalty, arcane, stability, espionage, and community. Accepting a new policy, rejecting or fashioning a unique dialogue choice conditional on the advisor’s characteristics. I was able to increase the guardsmen with more men and budget instead of leaving them to their whits. Fought espionage wars with another neighboring nation by honoring our dead spies than risking their status. Favored culture of the arts and freedom to use magic freely and threw away the bill restricting their passion. And so forth. Completing these requests and listening to my advisors leads to benefits and detriments. So take heed of your colleague's advice and choose the best course of action. In doing so you manage your domain from impending self-destruction. Be careless and your citizenry will revolt. Therefore, it is imperative for one to finish any dilemmas arising in priority rather than any opportunity points. Issues if not solved, worsen stats, so pray to RNGSUS you land on a good dice roll to resolve the conflict peacefully. Or quickload like me hehe. Opportunities are okay to ignore, but for those who decide to try them the rewards are equally as good as solving problems. Don’t worry about taking care of your vassals constantly, a timer will run on when resolved and a notification will pop up for any impending event.
An option to automate your kingdom exists, but I still suggest that folks embrace the system to get a feel of managing affairs in your nation while also investing your precious days. Pays dividends later on in the form of passives and supplementary items. The latter leads you to new objectives and random encounters providing free equipment through artisans(Specialists who join your nation, when you visit your new settlement when claiming a region), and investing in your crown pays dividends later on to grant permanent buffs like increased attack roll chances, immunity to fear, and faster movement when traveling and more. Constructing mage towers(unlockable once you level up an advisor's ranks) allows one to teleport with minimal downtime creating a genuine saver for those urgent investigations in your journal. Aside from leveling your partners in combat and dialogue, you advance their rank in their advisory role to have a better chance to resolve troubles and opportunities. Useful when RNGSUS will sway to your lucky side rather than the unlucky side.
Decent-to-quality sidequests and errands are plentiful and ultimately awesome to complete. Enhanced my experience during my adventures. Here is a small taste of what I encountered. Uncovering a dark mega villain through a long monster extermination hunt Mediated between fey beings on trees and preached to no end on civility, peace, and compromise during heated debates and mob pitchforks. Hunted weird cultics from weird satanic ones to disturbing groups with their nefarious agenda preying on helpless innocents like a pregnant woman in need delivering her baby for a price. Oh hell no. I saved her thankfully, but whether or not it was a good thing in the end leaves me still troubled. Engaged in a puzzle to resurrect a powerful, but evil ghost for sick armor and weapons. Participated in treasure hunts, fought bandits holding hostages, saved mythical creatures like dragons, and found a boy who cried wolf-like investigation whose outcome was vastly different from what I expected. Returned a Necronomicon-like book to a powerful hermit in the lands and traveled to other realms to investigate curses to reach and attain the absurdly difficult secret ending. Heck, I took advantage of alignment choices to brutally reach a good outcome. Nonetheless, I still time-traveled into alternate universes. By reloading to recruit horrible fellows into my cabinet. Yeah, I’m not proud of that at all…
Anyway, mod time. Earlier I mentioned I played vanilla for 100 hours. Once I reached that point I decided enough was enough and threw away the base content life. And subsequently enjoyed in greater detail the latter half to an insane degree with much-needed quality-of-life features. Below I’ll briefly outline some must-haves for anyone on PC.
Mod manager - Number one key ingredient for all kingmaker needs and easy to install any of the following to make your playthrough fun and eliminate the tedium.
Bag of Tricks - Solve 99% of any troubles you face. From side quests not occurring, to fixing a bug here and there. And to be fair I had very little bugs or crashes. I think outside of a handful of minor bugs my playthrough was nearly perfect. My convenient tricks were instant teleporting on the world map, instant rest + after fighting, instant auto-complete realm events, lock-picking unlimited attempts, force success/triumph on problems and opportunities, pass skill checks, and my personal favorite a romance counter which is crucial for the secret ending. Trust me. If you want the bonus act to activate I recommend it. These listed are my favorites from the mod, but there’s way more inside I never used.
Faster menu book zoom - When you launch the program, it takes a long eternity for the book which contains the standard menu options to proceed. Do yourself a favor and download them to save you extra. Adding in the command line ‘-skip intro’ from the program launcher when right-clicking the properties on Steam is beneficial too.
Buffbot - Takes less than a second to activate all the buffs you currently have. A necessary alternative than taking a minute to individually select each member and buff them to the nth degree I said previously. Use Buffbot once and be done.
Aside from the mods above. You have a wealth of selections to tune the difficulty to your liking. From the image I customized the normal settings, making encounters less of a chore and more on the easier side. Restricting to the confines of vanilla as much as possible. So I recommend tuning them to your preference.
Now then for my mixed feelings. Consider the following text as small to big red flags in varying degrees. I feel are worth noting down. I had to trim this a bit since this review is getting too long and I apologize for that.
Kingdom Building is a mixed bag. I love the aspect of erecting settlements and determining the kinds of architecture. However the ‘time-limit’ before the next act and what to do perhaps make newcomers feel pressured and quite honestly have no clue what to do. I had to frequently Google and ask my friends about priorities. Although frankly, I'm leaning towards being positive on the aspect. Sincerely cool having advisors and solving problems since you are a Baron. I found it more enjoyable than my playthrough with Ni No Kuni 2’s version. Which ultimately was all right with uninteresting sidequests. Here I kept coming back to my empire. Taking personal pleasure in being hands-on in my day-to-day. See how your settlements grow and flourish along with your subjects. It’s thrilling, satisfying, and most of all worth seeing all your efforts come to fruition. For general tips, I'll echo what before I play & walkthrough for advice. Was instrumental and made daunting tasks to fulfill become easier to manage.
However, tiredness will undoubtedly occur. I had to stop playing kingmaker constantly in 2023 due to fatigue. The sheer amount of content if you combine the DLC is a lot for anyone’s plate. Acts on average took me 20 hours give or take some change to complete considering there are a total of 8 acts. If you count the act-like DLC Varnhold and the roguelike beneath the stolen lands. You’re easily reaching 150+. This is a friendly reminder to stop and take a break in case you are feeling burned out. I played palette cleansers like indies and shifted into different genres from a CRPG in between chapters to refresh my willpower to keep going. The slow-burn narrative along with my mixed feelings on kingdom-building aspects among others leave me in doubt whether I unintentionally had resorted to sunk cost fallacy. However, I would say once you reach part 2 to part 3 then the plot beats start to heat up gradually into a snowball. Turning my interest from a “hmmm” to an “Oh now we're getting somewhere.”
I think some rules for Pathfinder in general are too restrictive and punishing. This isn’t a negative against Owlcat; rather they did a phenomenal job adapting the tabletop ruleset for the videogame audience. Paizo the company from my understanding created the IP and surrounding laws within. Here are notable head-scratchers. I am not allowed unlimited lockpicking? Once I fail an attempt it's impossible to try again. I had to resort to a mod to give me unlimited attempts. Moreover, no instant rest after skirmishes. Meaning in vanilla, if my heavily damaged party needs to rejuvenate I have to manually activate the button to heal where I am assailable randomly. And lord help my soul if I fail that encounter during the process. Thus my momentum of adventuring unimpeded is halted. Sure I soothe my comrade's health, but what happens when I run out of charges for each of my healers? Then I am incapable of reviving their vitality. Resulting in, busywork. Coupled with the majority of loading screens from entering my throne room -> kingdom management -> back to throne room -> going out to world map -> entering a new area on the map -> reverting a save if something awry occurs -> repeat. Granted not a major deal, but over the course of my long playthrough, it all adds up. As a consequence, I am forced to struggle whereas I could be enjoying. Maybe I'm spoiled by fast load speeds, but I did install this on a fast SSD. Maybe a faster M.2 drive would be better. Goodness, imagine playing this on an HDD…
Other miscellaneous stuff: Gameplay would hang. An uncommon occurrence during random battles. Perhaps an NVME is better? I played on a Samsung SSD with a decent PC that ran the highest graphics on max settings to optimal framerate. The hanging is like a split second. Usually, initializing textures and characters when starting and during loading screens to govern your principality or unpacking a file. Not something glaringly obvious since my overall experience is still positive. Nevertheless, it is something noteworthy. Moving on. Some portraits of enemies are not given a unique picture. We are faced with our characters' faces. Pretty jarring to witness as if any major enemy is well an imposter of us. Granted not all of them are like this, but the inconsistency is mildly weird to witness.
Owlcat’s version of Pathfinder gamified is an incredibly ambitious undertaking. Took me nearly a year to finish in its entirety and while I did have some annoyances from the ruleset, scattered loading times, and mixed feelings. There’s quite a bit to enjoy among the many systems within. I liked overseeing my realm. Making tough decisions based on fair policies and having an immediate effect on my subjects whether good or bad. I delved deep to understand the deep mechanics in real time and pause. Yet at the end of the day, I think the amount of gratification here despite the herculean effort the devs have encompassed with a gigantic stuff to devour is dependent on the user's experience to get down in the trenches. If I never knew about skill checks and buffing, then I would have suffered early on because of my ignorance in taking advantage of magical resistances. If I didn’t read up on how to manage my provinces better, then possibly in a bad alternate universe I would’ve game over in my 100+ hour run due to my improper handling and neglect of the state of affairs. And that is NOT a feeling I want anyone to suffer with. Considering the reports I've read online of users having the same issues of neglecting their nation. Please make sure to check 'invincible kingdom' in the options. Speaks volumes how much you have to devote yourself to bring out something worthwhile. And for me? I think this is certainly one of the greats along with Baldur’s Gate. As long as you dedicate enough energy inside and mods installed. A deep & expansive CRPG that doesn’t hold your hand, but rewards the most invested of players. Sadly I find this incredibly difficult to recommend to everyone. Except only to fans of the genre. I believe Mandaloregaming said it best "... you play this game more for the systems than for the writing." And I can’t help but agree with their statement despite him saying the line in his story section. I would say it also accounts for the whole breadth of the game itself.
Base game without mods: 7.6/10
Base game with mods: 8/10
References & Additional Material:
Interview with the creative director on Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Pathfinder: Kingmaker Classes overview and archetypes
Example of information overload from my character
Long road to secret ending - heavy endgame spoilers within
PK Difficulty Settings - Pretty extensive options to tune the combat modifiers to your preference.
Before I play & Walkthrough
Mods:
Mod Manager - Bag of Tricks - Faster Menu - Buffbot
The IP is incredibly different from what I dabbled in Baldur's Gate 1 last year. And the old Fallout titles. Feels a lot more in-depth not just in terms of pen-and-paper, but in different rules and how the mechanics are implemented by Owlcat on Paizo’s ruleset. I’ll run through the positives first before I dive into my mixed feelings. Full disclosure: I played 100 hours without mods before relying on them to end credits. I’ll denote a mod section properly later on, but if I don’t discuss it please assume I'm discussing vanilla.
Storywise I found to be a slow-burn. But ultimately an enjoyable affair. You start in a competition for the rights to become baron/baroness of the Stolen Lands. A large swath of unclaimed land with no leader. Think bandit territory except fantasied to the gills. Crypts and hidden tombs full of nocturnal creatures sinisterly lurk. Local settlements are plagued by monster attacks and the occasional banditry. Fill your wanderlust and discover ancient ruins and dungeons! Full of traps, puzzles, and of course great treasure awaits! But take care, whimsical fey beings roam here and there so beware! For better or worse, depending on your choices in dialogue you may come across interesting outcomes. Discover a key piece and be led to a hidden location out on the world map! Or used in a way to uncover another hidden check. Where the locals and monsters alike will be found in all manners of the noble to villainy spectrum. Take heart, for finding a true pure soul in such a hostile place may seem dangerous! Yet behold! Beyond the borders lie a people still living brightly and drinking merrily in taverns. Singing to their heart's content without end!
Before I sing on further, I must talk about the initial priorities after becoming Baron/Baroness. Consists of the gameplay overview without combat. A gentle reminder, to not go gallivanting off into the wilderness following the wanderlust compass. Rather, one must remember to research curses. Curses are something unexplainable and mysterious occurring within your lands. And it is up to you to research why. There are more than 13+ of these curse events that need to be resolved as you progress through the game's many acts. All of which contain a time limit to complete under “xxx’ day. Doing so is one of the key requirements to unlocking a secret ending and progressing through the main story conveniently. Refrain from doing so and the consequences will be severe. I didn’t have much issue with deadlines. Bona fide lenient as long as you prioritize what to do. A general loop emerges: Enter building management -> research curses, solve problems, assign advisors, resolve advisor concerns, construct structures in settlements, invest in building points(BP) or use them for erecting structures or helping pass a bill using BP. Finished? Good, we're not done. -> Check the journal to see any main quests. Usually, one or two pop-ups and its a number one priority to complete. -> Once finished then you're allowed to finish any sides and errands. Followed by companion quests -> If you have any days left on the clock. Explore the map, discover new dungeons, finish off random mobs trying to kill you while traveling, and unearthing loot by turning over rocks and crannies you see are all worthy endeavors. The priorities may seem daunting at first, but I assure you have ample weeks to months. In finishing any important tasks before moving on to the rest. Generally, Traveling around and researching will consume most of your precious days. However, there are certain ways to mitigate any losses later on. I’ll include some links later on for extra tips.
Plethora of classes to choose from and upgrade. More than fifteen main jobs. And several archetypes within. A barbarian, for instance, specializes in an armored hulk, mad dog, or invulnerable rager. A cleric branches off into a herald caller, ecclesitheurge, and crusader. All with their unique powers and skills offered. I stayed as a paladin and found it decent. My primary joy came from the multiple allies who joined my merry band. Swapping into a different profession if inclined, but I kept them as their base class to see how it feels to use them. At the end of the day, I concluded they’re fun to use. One serves as a tank such as my tower shield specialist while my inquisitor summons undead to serve as handy meatshields. My bard’s songs randomly stun my enemies. I and my barbarian cleaned up! Rinse and repeat and voila! Dead guys in the aftermath. Granted not all encounters will not go as smoothly as one would think. Plenty of surprises await in store for any curious adventurer.
Should be noted there are special prestige classes. Several are not selectable at the character creation. As you progress and meet certain requirements they become available as your second class. I’ll be honest with the exception of the Wildcard DLC. I was not able to use any of these prestige ones. As a result, I am unable to comment on them other than some being powerful and others meh from what I skimmed online. Overall essential in understanding classes, since comprehending their capabilities will mark triumph and despair concerning the combat portion.
I mainly used real-time with pause(RtwP) mode. For those unaware, in CRPG's this means each action your party makes is conducted at the same wavelength against the opposing enemy side. Casting spells takes seconds before casting but attacking is ongoing when not in cooldown. Trading blows until one side is gone. For those uninterested in RtwP. Owlcat implemented a turn-based(TB) method. Activatable anytime with a single press of a button. Initially, a mod early, the devs decided to add it for those not enthused in the RtwP approach. As someone who favors turn-based. I have to say the move was pretty based. But I couldn’t stand doing TB for every fight encounter. My entire playthrough would’ve easily doubled or tripled. But the inclusion of the mechanic later on after release I appreciate a great deal especially if I get tired of RtwP. Convenient when needed.
In my honest opinion, an enjoyable isometric gameplay emerges. Regarding the many systems at play. Battles are somewhat challenging relying on your crew's profession. For instance, if you improperly manage equipment, health items, and proper class understanding then you may be in for a life of hurt when confronting multiple foes in a large open area filled with scattered mobs. I struggled early on since I had zero Pathfinder exposure. Meaning I rushed into things without thinking, quick-saved like my life was about to expire. To make sure I gained a favorable outcome and spammed abilities like a madlad. Kindly erase those foolish ‘jump before thinking’ mentality and realize no one will hold your hand gently. Despite a wealth of options available to reduce difficulty which I will talk about later on. Look at my character and witness how one tab from the summary may induce information overload. What is AC? Fortitude? Reflex? Will? The difference between wisdom and intelligence. Knowledge arcana/world? lore/nature? Sounds rubbish, who needs these skills? Alignment? Bah, who cares. Well, my friend I do! A great deal since you must understand a sizable chunk to succeed. I won’t go into complete minute details, but suffice it to say each terminology is important to survive. Basic stereotypes do exist though, so no need to worry! A mage is squishy early on, but a glass cannon. Ranger and barbarian are viable builds and hybrid classes are available for those who wish to slot into a job outside of the standard ones.
Have no fear of the daunting Pathfinder homework ahead! I did only the bare minimum cause I wanted to get straight into the thick of things and still managed fairly well. Here’s a secret that has never failed me when playing any CRPG. Buffing/debuffing/summoning is honestly the bread and butter. And will undoubtedly your life easier. Without any of those above, I would not be able to win against my adversaries. Helped me so much to the point I spent over 100 hours buffing in less than a minute before engagements. In the blink of an eye. Yeah, I'm not kidding about those buffs. Crucial in starting up a massive advantage before striking any foe ahead. Summon any pets, skeletons, elementals, or animals at your side ahead of any battle so attackers will be dumb dumbs and attack them foolishly. As if they are the priority. Debuffing is equally important. Any Atlus JRPG fan should know from Megami Tensei how skills like reducing enemy power, missing an attack, freezing them, and whatever manner of debuffs to inflict. Will turn the tides in your favor. The same principle applies here. Min-maxers like myself who love adjusting little morsels of numbers are in for a real treat. Countless loot is around, as a result, I never had an issue strengthening my characters and applying any spells to their repertoire. No requirements to micromanage level-ups either. If checked in the menu. And since I started from beginning to end credits with the preference on. You are in good safe hands. An indispensable accessibility feature reduces the steep cliff into a more manageable one for newcomers to the series.
Do keep this in mind. It's inadvisable to spamming spells and abilities without a drawback. The consequence of using magical abilities means the 'charge' will be used up. Mana is unavailable. Instead, your party will have a certain amount of ‘charges’ so to speak on how many times to reuse a magick discipline. A basic 'fireball' for example may have one charge. In spite of that, within the magic system for some classes, possible to increase multiple slots. Consequently granting more amounts. Area of effect, cones, and single targets, bouncing are all attainable parameters, so watch out not to hurt your allies. Lest you need to revive them after the battle ends. After an engagement with an enemy, a non-combative status will occur for all. Any damages and spells used along with health will not return to their original condition. This means every skirmish with a mob will leave you bleeding. Continue fighting and sooner or later the effect of 'fatigue' will emerge. A debuff handicapping with horrible stats. Go further and you may become exhausted incurring further penalties. To counter a weakened state, one 'rest' is recommended, and rations to heal back to 100%. Be warned you may be ambushed by nearby hostiles. It's these little things that pile up later on when you expect a benefit there must always be a drawback in some form. Not much of an issue provided players remember to buy rations and set their PC to scavenge for rations out in the wild.
In the wilds and civilizations players will need to contend with the text and dialogue system. You will inevitably conduct a wide array of meaningful conversations. For instance, talking yields a host of options. Both are informative to educate, pushing to the next segment in a quest, moving the conversation forward with lore passages highlighting key information whenever you need, and taking a gamble in stat-oriented discourse to affect an outcome. Crucial to give context to the rich history in Pathfinder where putting the mouse cursor will describe any bolded phrase. Appropriately connecting any relevant lore with anyone. Where paragraphs on gods, nations, political figures, religion, etc. will be described when highlighted. Hearing a disgruntled futilist dwarf talk about the impending doom of the end of days from the god Grotis transforms otherwise static boring sentences into flavorful dynamic words to remember and an “Ahah!” moment arises. Stumble upon reading a book about certain dangerous religions only to learn later about a crazy cult related to said religion. You will inevitably come up with many of these examples. Nevertheless, conversations are susceptible to stats; you have to needle your way through unique text. Granting extra experience and new conversational topics to discuss with whomever you meet. Such a deeply intricate word system is only part of the whole gameplay pie to understand why I adore talking to my party to understand their backstory, relationships, and history and develop them further with their quest lines down the road.
Under these circumstances, the world-building is richly implemented and flourishes through meaningful lines as I meandered my way to talk to important NPCs whenever I traveled. Be it a villain, an unsuspecting stranger, or an upstanding citizen of the realm. All are not spared my inquisitive nature to converse! In my delight, speaking yields both favorable and unfavorable outcomes concerning a dice roll. Meet the stat check to enable the dialogue requirement, but plausible still failing the result. Meaning my goals for a peaceful resolution between two angry interracial groups could be thrown into the fire. Erupting a bloody feud betwixt two leaves me no choice but to eliminate both or take one side. Invigorating my soul and leaving me contemplative to carefully consider a circumspect approach. Take information with the grainiest of salts and don’t label everything in simple good or evil manners. Difficult to judge whether the NPC is acting in the best interest at your behest while secretly holding a dagger behind their back unknowingly to your eyes. As a result, Non-conflict encounters are unique here, where fights interrupted are an uncommon occurrence with a conversation box, hearing their plea and moving on from there. I’ve had the personal pleasure of converting evil dastards onto my side while subjecting good souls to betrayal. Interconnecting later on in a future side-mission or main narrative where your previous actions will have a consequence later on. I befuddled a group and investigated a murder or caused mayhem on the populace by lying to whomever. Offered a mysterious item I picked up just for this occasion. Bribed, persuaded, intimidated, or sought further lore knowledge. No one is spared from my decisions and I lived with the consequences of my actions.
If there is one notable strength here in PK then companions here are a breath of fresh air. Not the best, but certainly not the worst. Recruit all eleven comrades, plus two more from the Wildcards DLC. A wonderful motley crew full of contradictions and wild alignments from chaotic to lawful and those staying in the realm of neutrality. I adore my party's banter. Sharing wonderful stories and barbs anytime I rest. And their voice actors deserve only praise for going the distance. Seeing their background update during a loading screen is a small, but appreciative detail. As I progressed further in their questline. From the loveable optimistic bard who never fails to brighten the room, the tough barbarian exile who continues to thirst for a challenge, the curious explorer alchemist who underneath their arrogant exterior lies a heart of gold, the noble tower specialist who continues to make each stranger drop their jaw in awe at her beauty. The chaotic duo of eldritch scion and rogue wizard lent their bond to my group despite their horrible past. A stoic tragic ranger avenger, a dwarven futilist cleric, a goblin knife master, and others I could list but I'll save them for a surprise… Needless to say, all have a colorful history beyond simple tropes and evolve constantly throughout my journey. I won’t say any favorites since I like all of them equally, instead, I will remark my allies' goals are a must-play and some intertwine with the main story at length. Providing a nice integration into the story and commenting during side activities on their thoughts, feelings, and alignment. Your actions will favor or dislike you. Therefore, it's essential to think carefully about their beliefs, morals, and alignment to adjust your response accordingly relative to the situation. Complex and not one-sided, and not all that hard to keep with you by when the end credits rolled around. Heck, I operated a solid crew of five. With changes in the guard whenever any relative friend's objectives arrived. Some benefit from putting any relative members in a relatable matter for instance. Otherwise, serving an appropriate role in another area below.
Kingdom building surprised me a great deal. There are plenty of systems in place here to almost make me wish for a separate game to play exclusively. Heck, employing any of your companions as advisors who will approach you about a delicate matter related to any of the stats concerning your authority. Population, relation, military, culture, divine, loyalty, arcane, stability, espionage, and community. Accepting a new policy, rejecting or fashioning a unique dialogue choice conditional on the advisor’s characteristics. I was able to increase the guardsmen with more men and budget instead of leaving them to their whits. Fought espionage wars with another neighboring nation by honoring our dead spies than risking their status. Favored culture of the arts and freedom to use magic freely and threw away the bill restricting their passion. And so forth. Completing these requests and listening to my advisors leads to benefits and detriments. So take heed of your colleague's advice and choose the best course of action. In doing so you manage your domain from impending self-destruction. Be careless and your citizenry will revolt. Therefore, it is imperative for one to finish any dilemmas arising in priority rather than any opportunity points. Issues if not solved, worsen stats, so pray to RNGSUS you land on a good dice roll to resolve the conflict peacefully. Or quickload like me hehe. Opportunities are okay to ignore, but for those who decide to try them the rewards are equally as good as solving problems. Don’t worry about taking care of your vassals constantly, a timer will run on when resolved and a notification will pop up for any impending event.
An option to automate your kingdom exists, but I still suggest that folks embrace the system to get a feel of managing affairs in your nation while also investing your precious days. Pays dividends later on in the form of passives and supplementary items. The latter leads you to new objectives and random encounters providing free equipment through artisans(Specialists who join your nation, when you visit your new settlement when claiming a region), and investing in your crown pays dividends later on to grant permanent buffs like increased attack roll chances, immunity to fear, and faster movement when traveling and more. Constructing mage towers(unlockable once you level up an advisor's ranks) allows one to teleport with minimal downtime creating a genuine saver for those urgent investigations in your journal. Aside from leveling your partners in combat and dialogue, you advance their rank in their advisory role to have a better chance to resolve troubles and opportunities. Useful when RNGSUS will sway to your lucky side rather than the unlucky side.
Decent-to-quality sidequests and errands are plentiful and ultimately awesome to complete. Enhanced my experience during my adventures. Here is a small taste of what I encountered. Uncovering a dark mega villain through a long monster extermination hunt Mediated between fey beings on trees and preached to no end on civility, peace, and compromise during heated debates and mob pitchforks. Hunted weird cultics from weird satanic ones to disturbing groups with their nefarious agenda preying on helpless innocents like a pregnant woman in need delivering her baby for a price. Oh hell no. I saved her thankfully, but whether or not it was a good thing in the end leaves me still troubled. Engaged in a puzzle to resurrect a powerful, but evil ghost for sick armor and weapons. Participated in treasure hunts, fought bandits holding hostages, saved mythical creatures like dragons, and found a boy who cried wolf-like investigation whose outcome was vastly different from what I expected. Returned a Necronomicon-like book to a powerful hermit in the lands and traveled to other realms to investigate curses to reach and attain the absurdly difficult secret ending. Heck, I took advantage of alignment choices to brutally reach a good outcome. Nonetheless, I still time-traveled into alternate universes. By reloading to recruit horrible fellows into my cabinet. Yeah, I’m not proud of that at all…
Anyway, mod time. Earlier I mentioned I played vanilla for 100 hours. Once I reached that point I decided enough was enough and threw away the base content life. And subsequently enjoyed in greater detail the latter half to an insane degree with much-needed quality-of-life features. Below I’ll briefly outline some must-haves for anyone on PC.
Mod manager - Number one key ingredient for all kingmaker needs and easy to install any of the following to make your playthrough fun and eliminate the tedium.
Bag of Tricks - Solve 99% of any troubles you face. From side quests not occurring, to fixing a bug here and there. And to be fair I had very little bugs or crashes. I think outside of a handful of minor bugs my playthrough was nearly perfect. My convenient tricks were instant teleporting on the world map, instant rest + after fighting, instant auto-complete realm events, lock-picking unlimited attempts, force success/triumph on problems and opportunities, pass skill checks, and my personal favorite a romance counter which is crucial for the secret ending. Trust me. If you want the bonus act to activate I recommend it. These listed are my favorites from the mod, but there’s way more inside I never used.
Faster menu book zoom - When you launch the program, it takes a long eternity for the book which contains the standard menu options to proceed. Do yourself a favor and download them to save you extra. Adding in the command line ‘-skip intro’ from the program launcher when right-clicking the properties on Steam is beneficial too.
Buffbot - Takes less than a second to activate all the buffs you currently have. A necessary alternative than taking a minute to individually select each member and buff them to the nth degree I said previously. Use Buffbot once and be done.
Aside from the mods above. You have a wealth of selections to tune the difficulty to your liking. From the image I customized the normal settings, making encounters less of a chore and more on the easier side. Restricting to the confines of vanilla as much as possible. So I recommend tuning them to your preference.
Now then for my mixed feelings. Consider the following text as small to big red flags in varying degrees. I feel are worth noting down. I had to trim this a bit since this review is getting too long and I apologize for that.
Kingdom Building is a mixed bag. I love the aspect of erecting settlements and determining the kinds of architecture. However the ‘time-limit’ before the next act and what to do perhaps make newcomers feel pressured and quite honestly have no clue what to do. I had to frequently Google and ask my friends about priorities. Although frankly, I'm leaning towards being positive on the aspect. Sincerely cool having advisors and solving problems since you are a Baron. I found it more enjoyable than my playthrough with Ni No Kuni 2’s version. Which ultimately was all right with uninteresting sidequests. Here I kept coming back to my empire. Taking personal pleasure in being hands-on in my day-to-day. See how your settlements grow and flourish along with your subjects. It’s thrilling, satisfying, and most of all worth seeing all your efforts come to fruition. For general tips, I'll echo what before I play & walkthrough for advice. Was instrumental and made daunting tasks to fulfill become easier to manage.
However, tiredness will undoubtedly occur. I had to stop playing kingmaker constantly in 2023 due to fatigue. The sheer amount of content if you combine the DLC is a lot for anyone’s plate. Acts on average took me 20 hours give or take some change to complete considering there are a total of 8 acts. If you count the act-like DLC Varnhold and the roguelike beneath the stolen lands. You’re easily reaching 150+. This is a friendly reminder to stop and take a break in case you are feeling burned out. I played palette cleansers like indies and shifted into different genres from a CRPG in between chapters to refresh my willpower to keep going. The slow-burn narrative along with my mixed feelings on kingdom-building aspects among others leave me in doubt whether I unintentionally had resorted to sunk cost fallacy. However, I would say once you reach part 2 to part 3 then the plot beats start to heat up gradually into a snowball. Turning my interest from a “hmmm” to an “Oh now we're getting somewhere.”
I think some rules for Pathfinder in general are too restrictive and punishing. This isn’t a negative against Owlcat; rather they did a phenomenal job adapting the tabletop ruleset for the videogame audience. Paizo the company from my understanding created the IP and surrounding laws within. Here are notable head-scratchers. I am not allowed unlimited lockpicking? Once I fail an attempt it's impossible to try again. I had to resort to a mod to give me unlimited attempts. Moreover, no instant rest after skirmishes. Meaning in vanilla, if my heavily damaged party needs to rejuvenate I have to manually activate the button to heal where I am assailable randomly. And lord help my soul if I fail that encounter during the process. Thus my momentum of adventuring unimpeded is halted. Sure I soothe my comrade's health, but what happens when I run out of charges for each of my healers? Then I am incapable of reviving their vitality. Resulting in, busywork. Coupled with the majority of loading screens from entering my throne room -> kingdom management -> back to throne room -> going out to world map -> entering a new area on the map -> reverting a save if something awry occurs -> repeat. Granted not a major deal, but over the course of my long playthrough, it all adds up. As a consequence, I am forced to struggle whereas I could be enjoying. Maybe I'm spoiled by fast load speeds, but I did install this on a fast SSD. Maybe a faster M.2 drive would be better. Goodness, imagine playing this on an HDD…
Other miscellaneous stuff: Gameplay would hang. An uncommon occurrence during random battles. Perhaps an NVME is better? I played on a Samsung SSD with a decent PC that ran the highest graphics on max settings to optimal framerate. The hanging is like a split second. Usually, initializing textures and characters when starting and during loading screens to govern your principality or unpacking a file. Not something glaringly obvious since my overall experience is still positive. Nevertheless, it is something noteworthy. Moving on. Some portraits of enemies are not given a unique picture. We are faced with our characters' faces. Pretty jarring to witness as if any major enemy is well an imposter of us. Granted not all of them are like this, but the inconsistency is mildly weird to witness.
Owlcat’s version of Pathfinder gamified is an incredibly ambitious undertaking. Took me nearly a year to finish in its entirety and while I did have some annoyances from the ruleset, scattered loading times, and mixed feelings. There’s quite a bit to enjoy among the many systems within. I liked overseeing my realm. Making tough decisions based on fair policies and having an immediate effect on my subjects whether good or bad. I delved deep to understand the deep mechanics in real time and pause. Yet at the end of the day, I think the amount of gratification here despite the herculean effort the devs have encompassed with a gigantic stuff to devour is dependent on the user's experience to get down in the trenches. If I never knew about skill checks and buffing, then I would have suffered early on because of my ignorance in taking advantage of magical resistances. If I didn’t read up on how to manage my provinces better, then possibly in a bad alternate universe I would’ve game over in my 100+ hour run due to my improper handling and neglect of the state of affairs. And that is NOT a feeling I want anyone to suffer with. Considering the reports I've read online of users having the same issues of neglecting their nation. Please make sure to check 'invincible kingdom' in the options. Speaks volumes how much you have to devote yourself to bring out something worthwhile. And for me? I think this is certainly one of the greats along with Baldur’s Gate. As long as you dedicate enough energy inside and mods installed. A deep & expansive CRPG that doesn’t hold your hand, but rewards the most invested of players. Sadly I find this incredibly difficult to recommend to everyone. Except only to fans of the genre. I believe Mandaloregaming said it best "... you play this game more for the systems than for the writing." And I can’t help but agree with their statement despite him saying the line in his story section. I would say it also accounts for the whole breadth of the game itself.
Base game without mods: 7.6/10
Base game with mods: 8/10
References & Additional Material:
Interview with the creative director on Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Pathfinder: Kingmaker Classes overview and archetypes
Example of information overload from my character
Long road to secret ending - heavy endgame spoilers within
PK Difficulty Settings - Pretty extensive options to tune the combat modifiers to your preference.
Before I play & Walkthrough
Mods:
Mod Manager - Bag of Tricks - Faster Menu - Buffbot
Of nearly all of the modern CRPGs I've tried, this one is the best. Better than Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, Torment Tides of Numenera, Divinities, Shadowruns, Solasta. The only exception to this is Disco Elysium, but that game wrestles in it's own category altogether.
(Note: I haven't played Wrath of the Righteous yet, so this opinion may yet change.)
I've often felt that the more modern (3rd edition onward) iterations of DnD would be more fun on a video game than on the table, and this game seems to bear that out. It really feels like a sincere translation of the modern TTRPG experience: the extensive character building, the tactical challenge of combat, the character development power fantasy of 1-20 (ish, I only managed to get to lvl 18 by the end), combined with an enjoyable adventure story, world exploration and fun companions.
The scope of this game is immense and ambitious, which gives the game a great sense of adventure. You're given a relatively huge map to explore point-crawl style. Time passes during travel, and camping, lending to a certain amount of verisimilitude for the world, as the main quests do come with time limits (though the time limits never seemed particularly oppressive as long as you're prioritizing the order in which you do things).
The camping system in itself is the best I've seen in any CRPG; you assign party roles for watches, hunting, cooking, hiding the camp. Random encounters can take your camp by surprise, especially in more dangerous areas. This is an important part of a TTRPG adventure to me, and too many CRPGs opt to turning resting into some kind of an automatic heal-button, but not this game. You companions even have small conversations during camping, which adds a nice bit of flavor. It really does feel like taking a party to an adventure, much more so than any other CRPG I've played.
The gameplay is classic CRPG fair of party based dungeon crawling and tactical combat. The main difference maker here is that Kingmaker lets you switch between turn-based and realtime with pause on the fly, which is something I hope every modern CRPG does from now on. You can use real-time when you know a few on the fly commands combined with party AI will get the job done, and turn on turn based for more challenging encounters that require more granular control of what your party is doing.
Those challenging encounters can be very challenging indeed, and the game does have some difficulty spikes that may feel jarring. Frequent saving is advisable because the game does not pull it's punches. I do think many people are overstating the difficulty though, I never really felt like I was sucker punched with a completely unfair encounter, and I never had to revert a significant amount of progress due to difficult encounters.
The combat is some of the more satisfying CRPG combat that I've played, mostly owing to the faithfulness to the TTRPG system. There's a wide array of tactical choices at your disposal, and the game tests your knowledge of it's systems regularly, though it doesn't always present information to you that well.
I do have to say, though, that at time the combat encounters can become somewhat of a slog. Some dungeons are quite long and consist of a lot of repeated encounters of defeating groups of the same enemies one after the other. The pacing of the game could do with some tightening, and though I appreciate it's immense scope, it doesn't really need to be as long as it is.
The main story is fun. It is nothing groundbreaking to be sure, but it sets a good stage for your exploration of the Stolen Lands, and the journey itself is satisfying. A lot of it is pretty classic fantasy stuff: trolls, owlbears, fey and kobolds and the like. Personally, I've come to appreciate the more classic tropes like this. Dialogue gives you a nice amount of options of using your skills and stats for certain dialogue options, and the game gives you nice freedom of roleplaying the kind of character you want to be. Each companion comes with it's own set of quests that resolve throughout the lengthy game, and most of them go through some nice development.
The Kingdom Management will be an acquired taste, to be sure. It doesn't feel tacked on exactly, and I wasn't annoyed by its inclusion, but it is also not particularly deep and I can definitely see how some players might it gets in the way of the actual adventuring content. There is an option to let the game handle it, I didn't test that option out so I don't know how that affects the experience and whether you end up missing some content if you do automate it. It was an interesting experiment, and definitely suits the story this game tries to tell, but it doesn't completely hit its mark.
Overall, this is a robust and faithful TTRPG experience in a video game format, and the most worthy successor to games like Baldur's Gate out of the modern offerings. The game is incredibly ambitious and I'm shocked at how well it succeeded in what it set out to do.
(Note: I haven't played Wrath of the Righteous yet, so this opinion may yet change.)
I've often felt that the more modern (3rd edition onward) iterations of DnD would be more fun on a video game than on the table, and this game seems to bear that out. It really feels like a sincere translation of the modern TTRPG experience: the extensive character building, the tactical challenge of combat, the character development power fantasy of 1-20 (ish, I only managed to get to lvl 18 by the end), combined with an enjoyable adventure story, world exploration and fun companions.
The scope of this game is immense and ambitious, which gives the game a great sense of adventure. You're given a relatively huge map to explore point-crawl style. Time passes during travel, and camping, lending to a certain amount of verisimilitude for the world, as the main quests do come with time limits (though the time limits never seemed particularly oppressive as long as you're prioritizing the order in which you do things).
The camping system in itself is the best I've seen in any CRPG; you assign party roles for watches, hunting, cooking, hiding the camp. Random encounters can take your camp by surprise, especially in more dangerous areas. This is an important part of a TTRPG adventure to me, and too many CRPGs opt to turning resting into some kind of an automatic heal-button, but not this game. You companions even have small conversations during camping, which adds a nice bit of flavor. It really does feel like taking a party to an adventure, much more so than any other CRPG I've played.
The gameplay is classic CRPG fair of party based dungeon crawling and tactical combat. The main difference maker here is that Kingmaker lets you switch between turn-based and realtime with pause on the fly, which is something I hope every modern CRPG does from now on. You can use real-time when you know a few on the fly commands combined with party AI will get the job done, and turn on turn based for more challenging encounters that require more granular control of what your party is doing.
Those challenging encounters can be very challenging indeed, and the game does have some difficulty spikes that may feel jarring. Frequent saving is advisable because the game does not pull it's punches. I do think many people are overstating the difficulty though, I never really felt like I was sucker punched with a completely unfair encounter, and I never had to revert a significant amount of progress due to difficult encounters.
The combat is some of the more satisfying CRPG combat that I've played, mostly owing to the faithfulness to the TTRPG system. There's a wide array of tactical choices at your disposal, and the game tests your knowledge of it's systems regularly, though it doesn't always present information to you that well.
I do have to say, though, that at time the combat encounters can become somewhat of a slog. Some dungeons are quite long and consist of a lot of repeated encounters of defeating groups of the same enemies one after the other. The pacing of the game could do with some tightening, and though I appreciate it's immense scope, it doesn't really need to be as long as it is.
The main story is fun. It is nothing groundbreaking to be sure, but it sets a good stage for your exploration of the Stolen Lands, and the journey itself is satisfying. A lot of it is pretty classic fantasy stuff: trolls, owlbears, fey and kobolds and the like. Personally, I've come to appreciate the more classic tropes like this. Dialogue gives you a nice amount of options of using your skills and stats for certain dialogue options, and the game gives you nice freedom of roleplaying the kind of character you want to be. Each companion comes with it's own set of quests that resolve throughout the lengthy game, and most of them go through some nice development.
The Kingdom Management will be an acquired taste, to be sure. It doesn't feel tacked on exactly, and I wasn't annoyed by its inclusion, but it is also not particularly deep and I can definitely see how some players might it gets in the way of the actual adventuring content. There is an option to let the game handle it, I didn't test that option out so I don't know how that affects the experience and whether you end up missing some content if you do automate it. It was an interesting experiment, and definitely suits the story this game tries to tell, but it doesn't completely hit its mark.
Overall, this is a robust and faithful TTRPG experience in a video game format, and the most worthy successor to games like Baldur's Gate out of the modern offerings. The game is incredibly ambitious and I'm shocked at how well it succeeded in what it set out to do.
Pathfinder Kingmaker is a CRPG that feels pride in it's table top roots and tries hard to emulate that feeling while taking inspiration from more contemporary CRPGs and I'd say they mostly succeeded in that vision with some hiccups.
1st the positives :
• The character creation is very deep, possibly overwhelming for new players. But once you get a hold of it, it's very rewarding with how much build variety can be done.
• The Pathfinder table-top rule set makes for very engaging battles. It used to be very hard at launch, relying more on rng luck but after several patches I think it's quite fair now. Using proper buffs, feats and spells to counter the enemy strength never stops being exciting.
• Without going into spoilers I'd say the story while nothing groundbreaking works well enough to keep the player invested. Each story arc has enough plot intrigue to have it's own game but since there's so many, individually they feel a bit shallow. Despite this complaint I would argue that it works to serve the larger narrative.
• Companion characters have actual personality with history and are not just stand ins for their race, this I greatly appreciated. I loved the camp side banter and how they can interject during story moments. Having to have them in party for romance to trigger properly was nice too.
• Kingdom management mini game is quite fun with choices than can have consequences with the companions. Watching your city having the buildings you built show up in the map screen never got old for me. Small side quests from unlocked locations were nice too.
• The visual design is gorgeous with perfect use of special effects. Using powerful AOE spells never got old. But I wish the game had camera rotation like D:OS2.
• Voice acting for the most part was great and added to the immersion. Though I wish important story dialogues weren't half voiced, either keep it silent or voice it fully. Having to hear half dialogues in great voice acting and having to imagine the rest took me out of experience slightly, though this is a minor nitpick.
• The music, my god. Inor Zur is a genius and it shows. Every tracks fits the game ambience just right and quite a few of those I would listen to ousdide of the game too.
Now for the parts that in my opinion can be improved:
• 1st point has to be bugs. I'm glad how much the devs have worked to fix the bugs and balance issues of the game but still there is some work to be done. I ran into 2 broken quest that was supposed to be fixed and a few visual glitches here and there. Saving takes too much time and it needs to be fixed, taking 7-8 seconds for a quick save during later parts of the game is unacceptable. Fortunately there's a mod.
• Although visually gorgeous, I'm not that impressed with level design. Specially during earlier positions of the game you get kinda bland maps purely carried by the quest story you have in mind instead of visual story telling. 1st World was a breath of fresh air but even that went stale soon. Also I feel they are too open and lack strategic use like in POE, but it will be a very subjective opinion. Unique locations aside from main quest that have optional bosses often reuses same locations. Maybe this where the kickstarter budget shows most.
• The companions need more flavor text to flesh them out. After you initially meet and talk with them, there's nothing to talk about for 20-30 hours before their companion quest kicks in and even then it's just a couple of lines at most. At the least they should have dialogues after each important story event. Also longer dungeons needs some side story in the form of notes or something. Idk about others but fighting similar enemies over and over without discovering fun stuff about the location is boring. I hope the story's better in the future games too.
• There are unsual difficulty spikes in the game, specially towards the end. Hopefully will get more balance patches.
• A personal grievance but I dislike the over reliance on RNG in everything. I know that's how table top games are probably but on higher difficulties you are forced to reload not because you did something wrong but because the enemy just had a higher roll than you. That is not fun. I'm so glad DOS2 moved away from it although armor system needs some fixing.
Overall it's very fun game and a solid entry into the CRPG genre.
1st the positives :
• The character creation is very deep, possibly overwhelming for new players. But once you get a hold of it, it's very rewarding with how much build variety can be done.
• The Pathfinder table-top rule set makes for very engaging battles. It used to be very hard at launch, relying more on rng luck but after several patches I think it's quite fair now. Using proper buffs, feats and spells to counter the enemy strength never stops being exciting.
• Without going into spoilers I'd say the story while nothing groundbreaking works well enough to keep the player invested. Each story arc has enough plot intrigue to have it's own game but since there's so many, individually they feel a bit shallow. Despite this complaint I would argue that it works to serve the larger narrative.
• Companion characters have actual personality with history and are not just stand ins for their race, this I greatly appreciated. I loved the camp side banter and how they can interject during story moments. Having to have them in party for romance to trigger properly was nice too.
• Kingdom management mini game is quite fun with choices than can have consequences with the companions. Watching your city having the buildings you built show up in the map screen never got old for me. Small side quests from unlocked locations were nice too.
• The visual design is gorgeous with perfect use of special effects. Using powerful AOE spells never got old. But I wish the game had camera rotation like D:OS2.
• Voice acting for the most part was great and added to the immersion. Though I wish important story dialogues weren't half voiced, either keep it silent or voice it fully. Having to hear half dialogues in great voice acting and having to imagine the rest took me out of experience slightly, though this is a minor nitpick.
• The music, my god. Inor Zur is a genius and it shows. Every tracks fits the game ambience just right and quite a few of those I would listen to ousdide of the game too.
Now for the parts that in my opinion can be improved:
• 1st point has to be bugs. I'm glad how much the devs have worked to fix the bugs and balance issues of the game but still there is some work to be done. I ran into 2 broken quest that was supposed to be fixed and a few visual glitches here and there. Saving takes too much time and it needs to be fixed, taking 7-8 seconds for a quick save during later parts of the game is unacceptable. Fortunately there's a mod.
• Although visually gorgeous, I'm not that impressed with level design. Specially during earlier positions of the game you get kinda bland maps purely carried by the quest story you have in mind instead of visual story telling. 1st World was a breath of fresh air but even that went stale soon. Also I feel they are too open and lack strategic use like in POE, but it will be a very subjective opinion. Unique locations aside from main quest that have optional bosses often reuses same locations. Maybe this where the kickstarter budget shows most.
• The companions need more flavor text to flesh them out. After you initially meet and talk with them, there's nothing to talk about for 20-30 hours before their companion quest kicks in and even then it's just a couple of lines at most. At the least they should have dialogues after each important story event. Also longer dungeons needs some side story in the form of notes or something. Idk about others but fighting similar enemies over and over without discovering fun stuff about the location is boring. I hope the story's better in the future games too.
• There are unsual difficulty spikes in the game, specially towards the end. Hopefully will get more balance patches.
• A personal grievance but I dislike the over reliance on RNG in everything. I know that's how table top games are probably but on higher difficulties you are forced to reload not because you did something wrong but because the enemy just had a higher roll than you. That is not fun. I'm so glad DOS2 moved away from it although armor system needs some fixing.
Overall it's very fun game and a solid entry into the CRPG genre.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker is an RPG that is a lot of fun at the beginning, but unfortunately quickly becomes redundant. In the game, the kingdom is constantly plagued by threats such as pandemics, wars with neighbours and barbarians. Although the story is okay at the beginning, it eventually becomes uninteresting due to the unreasonably long playing time. What we have here is a story for perhaps 30 to 35 hours stretched to almost 80 hours, according to HLTB.
Another point of criticism is the unnecessarily difficult battles in the later stages of the game. Instead of the enemies becoming stronger and more powerful, you are simply bombarded with an excess of 20 to 30 enemies. This not only affects the game performance, but also the enjoyment of the game.
One annoying aspect is that potential companions can be missed. As these companions are needed for kingdom management, this leads to problems. An example is a companion who is found in an uninteresting location during a single specific main quest. It is possible to spend the entire game without a chamberlain, causing the kingdom to fail and the game to be lost. One could argue that you should simply explore more, but this leads to the next point of criticism.
All quests have an invisible time limit, which reduces the enjoyment of the game. Although it is realistic that NPCs do not stay in one place indefinitely, this gives the player little freedom. What if you want to pursue the main quest before doing the companions' side quests? What if you want to explore the map, but time passes and you run the risk of losing the game? What if you just want to spend a few months in the game managing the kingdom?
The questlog often does not give you enough information. In the majority of the quests you will find yourself wandering all over the world map hoping to finally find the place you are supposed to go. I think it's pretty obvious that this, along with the time limit, is pretty bad design.
Despite these points of criticism, there are also aspects worthy of praise. The level of difficulty can be customised very nicely so that both pros and newcomers can have fun with the game. In addition, kingdom management can be minimised by only taking on the most necessary tasks. The lore of Pathfinder is also explained quite well, so that even players who have never come into contact with Pathfinder before are not completely lost.
Another point of criticism is the unnecessarily difficult battles in the later stages of the game. Instead of the enemies becoming stronger and more powerful, you are simply bombarded with an excess of 20 to 30 enemies. This not only affects the game performance, but also the enjoyment of the game.
One annoying aspect is that potential companions can be missed. As these companions are needed for kingdom management, this leads to problems. An example is a companion who is found in an uninteresting location during a single specific main quest. It is possible to spend the entire game without a chamberlain, causing the kingdom to fail and the game to be lost. One could argue that you should simply explore more, but this leads to the next point of criticism.
All quests have an invisible time limit, which reduces the enjoyment of the game. Although it is realistic that NPCs do not stay in one place indefinitely, this gives the player little freedom. What if you want to pursue the main quest before doing the companions' side quests? What if you want to explore the map, but time passes and you run the risk of losing the game? What if you just want to spend a few months in the game managing the kingdom?
The questlog often does not give you enough information. In the majority of the quests you will find yourself wandering all over the world map hoping to finally find the place you are supposed to go. I think it's pretty obvious that this, along with the time limit, is pretty bad design.
Despite these points of criticism, there are also aspects worthy of praise. The level of difficulty can be customised very nicely so that both pros and newcomers can have fun with the game. In addition, kingdom management can be minimised by only taking on the most necessary tasks. The lore of Pathfinder is also explained quite well, so that even players who have never come into contact with Pathfinder before are not completely lost.
Poor design cripples an almost-great game. Kingmaker attempts to faithfully emulate tabletop Pathfinder's combat (Except for a few rules which have been deliberately altered for the better, such as flanking) to the game's overall detriment. Kingdom management is a major source of frustration and while it can be automated you'll be missing out on several major mechanics. Slavish adherence to PF's rules means that most combats are minor fights intended to chew up party resources you can sleep your way through, though the spell effects from that combat will linger for ten real life minutes once that minor combat has ended. Tons of minor inconveniences and bugs add up to make an experience that, while initially promising, ends up being massively painful.
It's cool if you know how to min/max or like using guides for single-player games. I think it's better to play a real casino and not this random.org type of game.
Summary: A near-perfect RPG, marred only by unforgiving and opaque kingdom mechanics, occasionally poorly telegraphed consequences, and its commitment to a hardcore ruleset that breaks down in ways that can make things less fun at high levels.
This is a labour of love: A digital realization of a tabletop campaign that would take years to experience. Such things don't easily translate to video games, where the lack of a human storyteller to nudge you in the right direction, or soften harsh penalties can create harsh breaks. These things are true here as well, but I've never played a game that is as true to the old-school tabletop experience as this.
This is a labour of love: A digital realization of a tabletop campaign that would take years to experience. Such things don't easily translate to video games, where the lack of a human storyteller to nudge you in the right direction, or soften harsh penalties can create harsh breaks. These things are true here as well, but I've never played a game that is as true to the old-school tabletop experience as this.
Pathfinder Kingmaker is another game in the cRPG 'renaissance' of the past six years, and one that I have been slowly playing over the past year or so (jeez!). So you may have noticed the "beaten" tag on this one - yeah 80 hours in and I still have not finished the game. In fact, I'm still only in Act 4 of 7. Now, about 20~25 hours of that is my original playthrough from when I first got the game but I restarted a couple of months back when I decided to really give it another go. So this is another game I did not really finish per the intent of this challenge, but I put such a time investment into it and I have such thoughts about it that I'm going to count it anyway, alright???
So the time invested here presents an interesting conundrum - if I liked it enough to play 80 hours, why didn't I finish it? I've played really long games before, why not this one? If I got so damn tired of it I didn't want to even keep playing any more (despite setting the entire Kingdom mechanic on auto and using cheats to speed along several other parts of the game) then I must not have liked it right? Well it's complicated alright! So much of the game is great - the combat is damn damn good, the writing is overall pretty solid, companions are all at least pretty good, the art style is pleasant and the music is near enough to top notch. So what's the hold up, Modest? The pacing is fucking garbage, that's what.
While most cRPGs post-2000s I feel are in some way a response to Baldur's Gate, either in aping or repudiating it (a pretty simple judgement on my part but stick with me) and Kingmaker is VERY much a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate I, even moreso than BG2 itself was. Kingmaker is all about having an expansive world map and making your way about, making discoveries, having random combat encounters and meeting strange new folk - adventure!! And in a way, it does that exceptionally well. It is more 'open world' than I believe any other game I have played and it is stuffed to the brim with content. And all that stuff you find? It's pretty darn good, most of the time. Interesting enemies, engaging story or characters, ethical dilemmas... But there's JUST. SO. MUCH. The world map could take upwards of 5~ minutes to walk across WITHOUT any encounters along the way and you're just watching your pawn slide across the exact same map you've been looking at for dozens of hours... There's a main story of course, and companions who follow you who have their own story, but honestly that must account for MAYBE 10-15% of my play time? The amount of sheer BUSYWORK is just neverending.
Speaking of neverending busywork - the entire Kingdom management mechanic. Is it neat in its own way? Of course it is! You get to pick your advisors in each area of ruling to handle the little shit, and every few days a problem comes to you in the throneroom and you get to rule on it. Sounds neat? It is! Then it happens 1000 times in the first 30 hours and basically none of it means a single god damn thing other than the kingdom stats notching up and down a few points and you just get tired... Oh and you have to watch all the same little animations over and over and over each time....
So to get to the main point - nothing about Pathfinder Kingmaker is bad. But on the flip side - basically nothing is genuinely GREAT either. The combat gets pretty close but only with the turn based mod - and that ends up just slowing down the proceedings even more. The characters are pretty good, but no one is great. The art is nice, but generic. The quests you stumble over are at least a bit interesting, but nothing that genuinely pulls the heart strings or gets the blood pumping. The main quest line is very good and all but it is at most 20% of the actual content you will be DOING in the game which makes it tiring to slog towards. Also there is 'missable' events in your kingdom that can lower your stats and potentially end the game, which makes skipping time towards the main content feel risky each time you do it..
It's been a long time since I did this, stopping a game only most of the way through to review it. With Sekiro and Mario Odyssey last year though it was due to pretty bitter disappointment - with Pathfinder its more a bittersweet resignation - I quite liked everything the game had to offer - it just went too far out of its way to keep me wading through mud to get to the good stuff.
So the time invested here presents an interesting conundrum - if I liked it enough to play 80 hours, why didn't I finish it? I've played really long games before, why not this one? If I got so damn tired of it I didn't want to even keep playing any more (despite setting the entire Kingdom mechanic on auto and using cheats to speed along several other parts of the game) then I must not have liked it right? Well it's complicated alright! So much of the game is great - the combat is damn damn good, the writing is overall pretty solid, companions are all at least pretty good, the art style is pleasant and the music is near enough to top notch. So what's the hold up, Modest? The pacing is fucking garbage, that's what.
While most cRPGs post-2000s I feel are in some way a response to Baldur's Gate, either in aping or repudiating it (a pretty simple judgement on my part but stick with me) and Kingmaker is VERY much a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate I, even moreso than BG2 itself was. Kingmaker is all about having an expansive world map and making your way about, making discoveries, having random combat encounters and meeting strange new folk - adventure!! And in a way, it does that exceptionally well. It is more 'open world' than I believe any other game I have played and it is stuffed to the brim with content. And all that stuff you find? It's pretty darn good, most of the time. Interesting enemies, engaging story or characters, ethical dilemmas... But there's JUST. SO. MUCH. The world map could take upwards of 5~ minutes to walk across WITHOUT any encounters along the way and you're just watching your pawn slide across the exact same map you've been looking at for dozens of hours... There's a main story of course, and companions who follow you who have their own story, but honestly that must account for MAYBE 10-15% of my play time? The amount of sheer BUSYWORK is just neverending.
Speaking of neverending busywork - the entire Kingdom management mechanic. Is it neat in its own way? Of course it is! You get to pick your advisors in each area of ruling to handle the little shit, and every few days a problem comes to you in the throneroom and you get to rule on it. Sounds neat? It is! Then it happens 1000 times in the first 30 hours and basically none of it means a single god damn thing other than the kingdom stats notching up and down a few points and you just get tired... Oh and you have to watch all the same little animations over and over and over each time....
So to get to the main point - nothing about Pathfinder Kingmaker is bad. But on the flip side - basically nothing is genuinely GREAT either. The combat gets pretty close but only with the turn based mod - and that ends up just slowing down the proceedings even more. The characters are pretty good, but no one is great. The art is nice, but generic. The quests you stumble over are at least a bit interesting, but nothing that genuinely pulls the heart strings or gets the blood pumping. The main quest line is very good and all but it is at most 20% of the actual content you will be DOING in the game which makes it tiring to slog towards. Also there is 'missable' events in your kingdom that can lower your stats and potentially end the game, which makes skipping time towards the main content feel risky each time you do it..
It's been a long time since I did this, stopping a game only most of the way through to review it. With Sekiro and Mario Odyssey last year though it was due to pretty bitter disappointment - with Pathfinder its more a bittersweet resignation - I quite liked everything the game had to offer - it just went too far out of its way to keep me wading through mud to get to the good stuff.
This review contains spoilers
This game ticks aaall my boxes but for some reason I didn't love it the way I thought I would.
Although I've never played Pathfinder, I'm a huge fan of similar TTRPGs and must say this was a stunning CRPG. I'm also a sucker for Kingdom management so you won't hear me complain about that.
In classic me-fashion, I will say that I LOVED this game up until the end. Then came House at the Edge of Time (?) and it was as if all momentum just... died. It was such a colossal pain in the ass that a few hours in, I died and reincarnated as a spiteful ghost of my former self that is now writing this review. Luckily Nyrissa girlbossed gatekept gaslighted the rating up half a notch
Although I've never played Pathfinder, I'm a huge fan of similar TTRPGs and must say this was a stunning CRPG. I'm also a sucker for Kingdom management so you won't hear me complain about that.
In classic me-fashion, I will say that I LOVED this game up until the end. Then came House at the Edge of Time (?) and it was as if all momentum just... died. It was such a colossal pain in the ass that a few hours in, I died and reincarnated as a spiteful ghost of my former self that is now writing this review. Luckily Nyrissa girlbossed gatekept gaslighted the rating up half a notch
This review contains spoilers
This was, in all honesty, a really good game. Sure, it's incredibly long, but it was adapted from a tabletop pathfinder campaign, so that was pretty much bound to happen.
Going all the way from a simple adventurer to owning your own barony and then to a full on kingdom and annexing other kingdoms into your own was an excellent experience. Sure, it has it's bugs and some parts are slow, but overall, the characters gripped me and the story was pretty good too.
Again, it's a very long game (even more so than Persona 5), so I can't imagine I'm going to go back to it to get the achievements. Therefore, I count it as complete.
Going all the way from a simple adventurer to owning your own barony and then to a full on kingdom and annexing other kingdoms into your own was an excellent experience. Sure, it has it's bugs and some parts are slow, but overall, the characters gripped me and the story was pretty good too.
Again, it's a very long game (even more so than Persona 5), so I can't imagine I'm going to go back to it to get the achievements. Therefore, I count it as complete.
I enjoyed the intro quite a bit but couldn't will myself to keep playing. At most I could play an hour at a time. I didn't find the combat that engaging. While I liked the story, I had trouble "finding it" throughout the world, making my time with the game feel a bit more like a slog. I'm sure it's a fine enough game and I intend to return to it in a few years, but I'm pretty certain it's just not for me.
speaking as someone who loves pathfinder 1e the tabletop system as well as crpgs. this game is just not that good, but its taunting how almost good it is.
some of the characters are great, some fall flat. the adaptation of several classes and mechanics from pathfinder are great, some mechanics are missing, and some shouldve been reworked or left behind on the tabletop. the level design and quests are almost really cool, but plagued by numerous trash fights in a system that really suffers from that. i wouldve much rather had a more faithful adaptation of pf1e as a turn based game, no matter how much i love real time games like pillars of eternity.
some of the characters are great, some fall flat. the adaptation of several classes and mechanics from pathfinder are great, some mechanics are missing, and some shouldve been reworked or left behind on the tabletop. the level design and quests are almost really cool, but plagued by numerous trash fights in a system that really suffers from that. i wouldve much rather had a more faithful adaptation of pf1e as a turn based game, no matter how much i love real time games like pillars of eternity.
Amazing isometric RPG with a steep learning curve and a complex combat system. It has a great story, but stretches for a tad too much time imo. Took me about 150 hours to finish it, doing most of the content and playing on normal difficulty.
This is one of those lovable janky titles.
It lacks polishand has glitches here and there. Some solutions to problems are really obscure too. And the game is also really unbalanced. It is totally unclear what kind of built is worth shit and what isn't and the game gets way too hard, way to fast. Even on normal.
But, on the other side, this game has loads and loads of content, a captivating story, motivating side quests and side activities, extremely unique and interesting compagnions and just about anything you'd want from a masterclass CRPG.
Unfortunately, the problems that plague this game are simply to extreme for it to be labeled as such.
And because of that, I would put it right at the edge of the top-tier.
As one of those pretty great RPGs, that aren't quite really great :D
But still: Highly recommended for any fan of the CRPG Genre.
It lacks polishand has glitches here and there. Some solutions to problems are really obscure too. And the game is also really unbalanced. It is totally unclear what kind of built is worth shit and what isn't and the game gets way too hard, way to fast. Even on normal.
But, on the other side, this game has loads and loads of content, a captivating story, motivating side quests and side activities, extremely unique and interesting compagnions and just about anything you'd want from a masterclass CRPG.
Unfortunately, the problems that plague this game are simply to extreme for it to be labeled as such.
And because of that, I would put it right at the edge of the top-tier.
As one of those pretty great RPGs, that aren't quite really great :D
But still: Highly recommended for any fan of the CRPG Genre.
A CRPG ruleset that could potentially lead to greater things in the future stapled to a terrible, mandatory 4X game. On one hand, adapting an existing campaign book probably takes a huge load off the dev team; on the other hand, you're stuck with a fundamentally simplistic story that was meant to be buoyed by the social experience of tabletop play. Every companion is one-paragraph-backstory as hell, and just have nothing interesting going on. What an utterly mindless play experience.
All this said (and after the post-launch patches and mods), it's amazingly well put together game for a studio's first release. I respect it immensely.
All this said (and after the post-launch patches and mods), it's amazingly well put together game for a studio's first release. I respect it immensely.
a bit surprised by this one! a game which has languished in my steam library since i picked it up in a bundle some years ago, i had written it off as likely some soulless imperialist fantasy sim/rpg, admittedly based more or less on its title alone. as it turns out, well, after falling in love with baldur's gate this fall i started looking for more games in that vein of crpg. recently, pathfinder: wrath of the righteous appears to be the hot new thing among hardcore fans of the genre (and i must say that one looks far more appealing to me at a glance), and so i decided to give this one a chance first.
i'm pleasantly surprised. the most common complaint i've encountered is that the kingdom management aspect of the game, foisted upon you as you're tasked with the establishment of a new barony in neighboring lands infested with trolls and other monsters, bandits, and a cruel warlord, is poorly executed and a drag of a distraction from adventuring and dungeon crawling. i gather settings which automate this part of the game or render it effortless (in a difficulty setting for the management alone literally called effortless) wasn't always available, but it is now and as such i think it's perfectly fine.
what interests me more is the range you're given to be the baroness you'd like to be (within the dnd alignment system). i am loathe to be a lord of lands, but there's ample opportunity to rule with benevolence, instructing your advisors to tend to various matters before you and your party set out to make efforts in service of the people.
one thing i will warn about: character creation and early leveling are extremely daunting, even after getting a grasp on baldur's gate. the build potential is unreal. i love that shit, personally, though it does mean i end up spending hour after hour figuring it all out. a mod that lets you respec for free is an absolute must. i mean, you essentially need to have an understanding of how leveling works, how classes synergize—you select your class for every level you gain, then choose from a number of subclasses, abilities, spells, feats, etc. unless you just set it on story mode and do whatever you think seems cool, i suppose. i started as a sorcerer and later switched to a paladin with a dip into the thug subclass of rogue so that i can tank, heal, and put out the big damage with sneak attacks (which are powerful frontal attacks of opportunity, not stealth attacks). i seem to typically prefer a chaotic good mc with high charisma for games like this, and turn up my nose at lawful religious zealots, but again, in kingmaker (actually queenmaker tho) you can be a truly good person even as such. that matters to me. i don't like being evil unless it's in a game like tyranny, and even then i strive to do all the good i can for as many people as possible. big part of my enjoyment of these games, of roleplay...
might eventually amend this with further thoughts, assuming i finish it. i think i'd like to unless it really falls off later on.
i'm pleasantly surprised. the most common complaint i've encountered is that the kingdom management aspect of the game, foisted upon you as you're tasked with the establishment of a new barony in neighboring lands infested with trolls and other monsters, bandits, and a cruel warlord, is poorly executed and a drag of a distraction from adventuring and dungeon crawling. i gather settings which automate this part of the game or render it effortless (in a difficulty setting for the management alone literally called effortless) wasn't always available, but it is now and as such i think it's perfectly fine.
what interests me more is the range you're given to be the baroness you'd like to be (within the dnd alignment system). i am loathe to be a lord of lands, but there's ample opportunity to rule with benevolence, instructing your advisors to tend to various matters before you and your party set out to make efforts in service of the people.
one thing i will warn about: character creation and early leveling are extremely daunting, even after getting a grasp on baldur's gate. the build potential is unreal. i love that shit, personally, though it does mean i end up spending hour after hour figuring it all out. a mod that lets you respec for free is an absolute must. i mean, you essentially need to have an understanding of how leveling works, how classes synergize—you select your class for every level you gain, then choose from a number of subclasses, abilities, spells, feats, etc. unless you just set it on story mode and do whatever you think seems cool, i suppose. i started as a sorcerer and later switched to a paladin with a dip into the thug subclass of rogue so that i can tank, heal, and put out the big damage with sneak attacks (which are powerful frontal attacks of opportunity, not stealth attacks). i seem to typically prefer a chaotic good mc with high charisma for games like this, and turn up my nose at lawful religious zealots, but again, in kingmaker (actually queenmaker tho) you can be a truly good person even as such. that matters to me. i don't like being evil unless it's in a game like tyranny, and even then i strive to do all the good i can for as many people as possible. big part of my enjoyment of these games, of roleplay...
might eventually amend this with further thoughts, assuming i finish it. i think i'd like to unless it really falls off later on.
Thanks to @Detectivefail's very in-depth and well-written review of this game, and my urge to try yet another CRPG, I jumped right into it. 175 hours later, I can confidently say this is one of the best in its genre.
Like many others, I was immediately overwhelmed by the myriad choices during character creation, especially since I had no prior knowledge of the Pathfinder systems and ruleset. During that time, having rewatched the late 90's Berserk anime, I opted for a character reminiscent of Griffith. In hindsight, this choice was fitting with the theme of governing my own kingdom. Since I typically play neutral good characters, trying out a lawful evil one offered a refreshing new perspective on RPGs for me.
The writing for your companions is consistently excellent. A standout example is Valerie, a somewhat snobbish ex-noble paladin devoted to an art-loving deity, which doesn't quite align with her general demeanor. She just wants to live life on her own terms. Throughout the game, she and my main character had fantastic chemistry and often took on leadership roles in our diverse group of deep and non-clichéd characters. Overall, the dialogue is so vivid and crisp that it pulls you right into this world, making you lose track of time and your surroundings. This is one of those games you just can't play for only two hours a day.
The overarching plot is fairly typical for a CRPG, with godlike beings plotting schemes and manipulating "lesser" beings for their own benefit. It starts surprisingly slow and down-to-earth, without immediately overwhelming you with lore. Instead, you're gradually and organically introduced to the larger schemes as you progress.
As someone who usually prefers turn-based combat, I appreciated the option to use a turn-based mode. However, after some time, I noticed that the game is clearly designed for real-time combat. It often felt tedious when facing large groups of enemies, and there are many encounters like that, especially in the endgame. I switched back to real-time with pause, and it turned out to be a much better experience than I had anticipated.
What I didn't expect was how often I was completely obliterated on the 4th of 6 difficulty settings. In comparison, Baldur's Gate 3 feels like a walk in the park. I had to learn a lot and adapt to its systems just to stand a slight chance in most battles. Especially the final dungeons of each chapter introduced new ways to experience the battle system, making them particularly engaging.
The kingdom management was also quite addictive and well-integrated into the game. It's one of the few games where I genuinely enjoyed building something up from scratch. The political and role-playing choices during the numerous events felt deep and engaging, although they often lacked real consequences.
I'm really glad that games like this still exist today. From an economic perspective, it's quite daring to develop a 120+ hourish complex beast of an RPG, knowing that only a small percentage of players will even start or complete it. According to Steam, only 9.8% did.
I considered giving this a 5 out of 5, but I want to leave room for improvement, especially since Wrath of the Righteous is supposed to be even better.
Like many others, I was immediately overwhelmed by the myriad choices during character creation, especially since I had no prior knowledge of the Pathfinder systems and ruleset. During that time, having rewatched the late 90's Berserk anime, I opted for a character reminiscent of Griffith. In hindsight, this choice was fitting with the theme of governing my own kingdom. Since I typically play neutral good characters, trying out a lawful evil one offered a refreshing new perspective on RPGs for me.
The writing for your companions is consistently excellent. A standout example is Valerie, a somewhat snobbish ex-noble paladin devoted to an art-loving deity, which doesn't quite align with her general demeanor. She just wants to live life on her own terms. Throughout the game, she and my main character had fantastic chemistry and often took on leadership roles in our diverse group of deep and non-clichéd characters. Overall, the dialogue is so vivid and crisp that it pulls you right into this world, making you lose track of time and your surroundings. This is one of those games you just can't play for only two hours a day.
The overarching plot is fairly typical for a CRPG, with godlike beings plotting schemes and manipulating "lesser" beings for their own benefit. It starts surprisingly slow and down-to-earth, without immediately overwhelming you with lore. Instead, you're gradually and organically introduced to the larger schemes as you progress.
As someone who usually prefers turn-based combat, I appreciated the option to use a turn-based mode. However, after some time, I noticed that the game is clearly designed for real-time combat. It often felt tedious when facing large groups of enemies, and there are many encounters like that, especially in the endgame. I switched back to real-time with pause, and it turned out to be a much better experience than I had anticipated.
What I didn't expect was how often I was completely obliterated on the 4th of 6 difficulty settings. In comparison, Baldur's Gate 3 feels like a walk in the park. I had to learn a lot and adapt to its systems just to stand a slight chance in most battles. Especially the final dungeons of each chapter introduced new ways to experience the battle system, making them particularly engaging.
The kingdom management was also quite addictive and well-integrated into the game. It's one of the few games where I genuinely enjoyed building something up from scratch. The political and role-playing choices during the numerous events felt deep and engaging, although they often lacked real consequences.
I'm really glad that games like this still exist today. From an economic perspective, it's quite daring to develop a 120+ hourish complex beast of an RPG, knowing that only a small percentage of players will even start or complete it. According to Steam, only 9.8% did.
I considered giving this a 5 out of 5, but I want to leave room for improvement, especially since Wrath of the Righteous is supposed to be even better.
judging kingmaker is so terribly difficult for me. i can see the charm and earnestness through the bars of the jank jail it's thrown me in. but i utterly despise its structure and what an awful blow its pacing takes from that. the amount of time i spent just hitting "skip day" was frankly ridiculous. i wish it didn't impact my enjoyment of the game as much as it did, but god, there were moments i hated the game.
i definitely don't hate it! but its particular flaws are ones i really struggle with. this is an insanely scrappy first attempt at a crpg this huge, and nothing in me could ever hate that.
the ways wrath of the righteous improved on the structure and storytelling is really impressive to me now that i've played both. no regrets in playing kingmaker, but hooo boy, if i replay, i'll be much less reluctant to use various mod features.
i definitely don't hate it! but its particular flaws are ones i really struggle with. this is an insanely scrappy first attempt at a crpg this huge, and nothing in me could ever hate that.
the ways wrath of the righteous improved on the structure and storytelling is really impressive to me now that i've played both. no regrets in playing kingmaker, but hooo boy, if i replay, i'll be much less reluctant to use various mod features.
Enjoying this currently. Turns out Pathfinder is a terrible system to track manually, but quite good when computers are taking care of that stuff.
Play in turn-based mode. Who saw D&D in the 90's and thought "we should make this, but without turns and you have to pause a lot."
Play in turn-based mode. Who saw D&D in the 90's and thought "we should make this, but without turns and you have to pause a lot."
Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a product of frustration, so much so that it inherits exceptional potential before failing on multiple fronts. Owlcat's first game of its kind, it seeks to follow in the footsteps of the greatest Baldur's Gate and other CRPGs, by offering an adaptation of Paizo's eponymous Adventure Path for their paper role-playing game. To do so, the studio launched a participative financing, which is at the root of many mistakes: in particular, the title was published far too early and, even today, there are still some particularly restrictive bugs. As in the paper version, the game takes place in the River Kingdoms, where the player embodies some adventurer in search of glory or in love with a heroic impulse, and soon finds themselves at the head of a barony that must be defended against numerous enemies. The idea is therefore to take up the division between classic exploration and management phases, which made Adventure Path quite innovative for its time. Kingdom management involves resolving critical events and opportunities to strengthen the kingdom. Although sometimes unpleasant, this phase of the game tries to enter in symbiosis with the exploration phases by guaranteeing mechanical bonuses on certain dice rolls. The concern is nevertheless that this more administrative part is compulsory to keep up with the statistics, so that a very strong time constraint is exerted on the player. This is not necessarily serious at the beginning, but in the final acts, a certain frustration can be felt, when one realizes that the management was not optimally carried out during tens of hours, resulting in a particularly arduous end of the playthrough. It then becomes apparent that kingdom management is more of a parasite on exploration, sometimes forcing one to turn away from the rather engaging stories of the companions for something that feels like a chore. For the rest, the more traditional gameplay is generally functional and initially foreshadows great things. If the non-linearity of the narrative threads and the organic side of the world shines in the first acts, the facade crumbles little by little: not so much on the side of the companions, who are all pleasant to follow, but more on the international politics, much less exploited than the beginning of the game suggested, not to mention the less and less rewarding confrontations – the Pitax arc is probably the most mediocre, as it seemed to be the highlight of the game, with all the elements sprinkled in since the first hours. The amount of bugs doesn't help and some quests were impossible to complete due to save corruptions. In trying to release a game too quickly to please the crowdfunding crowd, Owlcat sacrificed an extremely important part of the technical finishing touches and attractiveness of their world. A case in point is the quest written by a contributor about a pirate fleeing the Hellknights: it is the antithesis of what should be written for a CRPG, and the fact that Owlcat obviously made no changes to a particularly poorly written script – and the consensus is general on this issue – is a mark of a lack of professionalism. In general, Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a particularly bold adventure, in terms of the volume of material adapted, but is constantly broken by more or less serious, more or less structural problems, which make for a rather unpleasant tedium. This is not an observation I am happy to make.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a game with a lot of charm, deep lore, interesting gameplay loop, charismatic characters, interesting premise and fun story. But it has some glaring issues that spoiled my fun.
This game can be lots of fun, but can also become a source of frustration if you're unlucky like me. As these types of game are, where most of what you can and will do is determined by a dice roll, if the randomly generated number is too high or too low you'll have a bad time.
Even playing on the "Story" difficulty, I had a lot of trouble on some sections, specially one right before the end of the game. In these encounters, you can have your entire party buffed, with the best items and such, and still be paralyzed for 1 minute or straight up one-shot. There are also many effects that reduce your stats or even level and LAST FOREVER. Very poor game design, as I supposed the "Story" difficulty would allow me to play without having to minmax or keep reloading constantly.
The game is also very long. I took 105 hours to finish it, and, by the time I got to the end, specially the section where I was being one-shot constantly, the game had overstayed its welcome.
Overall, I became very frustrated, but I also had lots of fun, and I'm sure that, in the future, I will mostly remember the fun I had and will even replay this game, choosing different paths and choices.
This game can be lots of fun, but can also become a source of frustration if you're unlucky like me. As these types of game are, where most of what you can and will do is determined by a dice roll, if the randomly generated number is too high or too low you'll have a bad time.
Even playing on the "Story" difficulty, I had a lot of trouble on some sections, specially one right before the end of the game. In these encounters, you can have your entire party buffed, with the best items and such, and still be paralyzed for 1 minute or straight up one-shot. There are also many effects that reduce your stats or even level and LAST FOREVER. Very poor game design, as I supposed the "Story" difficulty would allow me to play without having to minmax or keep reloading constantly.
The game is also very long. I took 105 hours to finish it, and, by the time I got to the end, specially the section where I was being one-shot constantly, the game had overstayed its welcome.
Overall, I became very frustrated, but I also had lots of fun, and I'm sure that, in the future, I will mostly remember the fun I had and will even replay this game, choosing different paths and choices.
Gosh I don't know where to start with this one! To be clear, I only completed the first act, and have ended up dropping it a short way into act 2.
Let's start with the positive shall we? I really liked the setup of the first act, the rival you start with is extremely hateable in all the right ways, and the idea that your choices in that early moment of crisis influences which party members trust your leadership enough to join your team is super cool. The story is one of the less eye-rolly I've played in the genre which I suppose counts for something. The character portraits are all very good and in general the design and atmosphere of these early areas I found quite nostalgic in a way I'm finding it hard to put to words, and is the main reason I find it a great shame that I didn't really have much fun actually playing the game.
Alright time for the negative... The roleplaying and dialogue options are severely limited by the alignment stuff (I've always disliked D&D style alignment so I'm somewhat biased here) and I was often presented with a set of choices that forced me to act out of character. I'm a bit of a role player even in games like say, the Yakuza series, so this is a pretty major downside for me. The character building is also extremely obtuse and filled with options that sound good but are secretly useless.
The combat is fine for this type of game, although I, like many people it seems, found the turn based mode to be the better way to play (despite a number of pathfinding bugs, ironically). The vast majority of encounters in the first act are either completely trivial, or borderline impossible unless you know this one weird trick that makes it completely trivial. This usually comes in the form of making sure you have a specific spell on hand (or more likely scroll in act 1) that nullifies whatever thing the specific enemy you're going up against does. Given how key preparation like this is for even the earliest fights/dungeons in the game, it's then baffling that the game purposefully directs you away from the quest that unlocks the merchant who actually sells those items, by pressing the importance of catching up with the rival rather than progressing the main quest. I don't necessarily dislike the idea of proper prep or character building being key to an adventure (I love the Etrian Series for example!), but I just don't find it fun or satisfying in this game. It doesn't really ever feel like you came up with a clever strategy to win a difficult fight in these instances, since it mostly just boils down to applying a bunch of buffs pre-emptively getting a sneak attack in and then just doing what you'd do in one of the trivial encounters. Winning an encounter that previously gave me trouble didn't feel triumphant, it just felt like I'd cheesed it.
The game also suffers from an unfortunate combination of being deliberately obtuse, and frequent bugs that mean any time something doesn't go the way you expected, it's hard to tell if it's on purpose or not. Did that spider react to a spell that has never provoked an opportunity attack before because it had some skill that let it, or because it bugged out? I guess I'll never know.
Turn based mode also ends up with many wasted turns due to a number of bugs/oversights that make knowing how much of your action a given move will take unreliable at best. I also had a number of moments where I'd click to attack an enemy, only for my character to run off in the other direction prompting multiple opportunity attacks on the way, which made a lot of encounters far more frustrating than they should have been.
Exploring the world map by forging these little pathways by picking which direction to go at crossroads was really neat I thought, but generally getting from place to place is a bit of a chore as none of the random encounters are particularly interesting, and the story encounters you have often foist ridiculous negatives on you (healer kidnapped by slavers followed by an event that causes the main character to be permanently fatigued until you backtrack to the start of the map for example), that just make the game a complete slog to play.
In general, I think a lot of the games problems come from being a little too faithful to the source material while lacking the thing that makes it all work: a human GM who wants everyone to have fun. It being so close to the ttrpg draws a lot of unfavourable comparisons, and the game often feels like it's being run by one of those GMs who thinks it's their job to do everything they can to kill the players, aka the type no-one wants to play with.
I only had a brief look at the barony management stuff so I'll reserve comment on it, but it did look like it could have gone either way.
None of the above is necessarily enough to make me feel badly about a game, and in isolation I've played and loved games that had the above flaws, but for me the good moments are just not interesting or fun enough to make me feel like continuing to slog through the bad parts. It's a game I really wanted to like though, so maybe I'll try the sequel in few years time once I've washed the taste of this one out of my mouth.
Let's start with the positive shall we? I really liked the setup of the first act, the rival you start with is extremely hateable in all the right ways, and the idea that your choices in that early moment of crisis influences which party members trust your leadership enough to join your team is super cool. The story is one of the less eye-rolly I've played in the genre which I suppose counts for something. The character portraits are all very good and in general the design and atmosphere of these early areas I found quite nostalgic in a way I'm finding it hard to put to words, and is the main reason I find it a great shame that I didn't really have much fun actually playing the game.
Alright time for the negative... The roleplaying and dialogue options are severely limited by the alignment stuff (I've always disliked D&D style alignment so I'm somewhat biased here) and I was often presented with a set of choices that forced me to act out of character. I'm a bit of a role player even in games like say, the Yakuza series, so this is a pretty major downside for me. The character building is also extremely obtuse and filled with options that sound good but are secretly useless.
The combat is fine for this type of game, although I, like many people it seems, found the turn based mode to be the better way to play (despite a number of pathfinding bugs, ironically). The vast majority of encounters in the first act are either completely trivial, or borderline impossible unless you know this one weird trick that makes it completely trivial. This usually comes in the form of making sure you have a specific spell on hand (or more likely scroll in act 1) that nullifies whatever thing the specific enemy you're going up against does. Given how key preparation like this is for even the earliest fights/dungeons in the game, it's then baffling that the game purposefully directs you away from the quest that unlocks the merchant who actually sells those items, by pressing the importance of catching up with the rival rather than progressing the main quest. I don't necessarily dislike the idea of proper prep or character building being key to an adventure (I love the Etrian Series for example!), but I just don't find it fun or satisfying in this game. It doesn't really ever feel like you came up with a clever strategy to win a difficult fight in these instances, since it mostly just boils down to applying a bunch of buffs pre-emptively getting a sneak attack in and then just doing what you'd do in one of the trivial encounters. Winning an encounter that previously gave me trouble didn't feel triumphant, it just felt like I'd cheesed it.
The game also suffers from an unfortunate combination of being deliberately obtuse, and frequent bugs that mean any time something doesn't go the way you expected, it's hard to tell if it's on purpose or not. Did that spider react to a spell that has never provoked an opportunity attack before because it had some skill that let it, or because it bugged out? I guess I'll never know.
Turn based mode also ends up with many wasted turns due to a number of bugs/oversights that make knowing how much of your action a given move will take unreliable at best. I also had a number of moments where I'd click to attack an enemy, only for my character to run off in the other direction prompting multiple opportunity attacks on the way, which made a lot of encounters far more frustrating than they should have been.
Exploring the world map by forging these little pathways by picking which direction to go at crossroads was really neat I thought, but generally getting from place to place is a bit of a chore as none of the random encounters are particularly interesting, and the story encounters you have often foist ridiculous negatives on you (healer kidnapped by slavers followed by an event that causes the main character to be permanently fatigued until you backtrack to the start of the map for example), that just make the game a complete slog to play.
In general, I think a lot of the games problems come from being a little too faithful to the source material while lacking the thing that makes it all work: a human GM who wants everyone to have fun. It being so close to the ttrpg draws a lot of unfavourable comparisons, and the game often feels like it's being run by one of those GMs who thinks it's their job to do everything they can to kill the players, aka the type no-one wants to play with.
I only had a brief look at the barony management stuff so I'll reserve comment on it, but it did look like it could have gone either way.
None of the above is necessarily enough to make me feel badly about a game, and in isolation I've played and loved games that had the above flaws, but for me the good moments are just not interesting or fun enough to make me feel like continuing to slog through the bad parts. It's a game I really wanted to like though, so maybe I'll try the sequel in few years time once I've washed the taste of this one out of my mouth.
I refuse to learn min maxing in pathfinder
While the pathfinder rules, gameplay elements and kingdom management all together were a bit to much of an information overload at times, the worldbuilding and story were worth it.
I believe this game is adapting a well known tabletop pathfinder campaign. What seems to be a simple rags to riches hero fantasy story, becomes something else entirely when all twists and turns are revealed. A slow burn longer than persona 5 royal. With sidestuff and companion stories included it can easily count 200 hours! What's even more insane is the fact that i have the feeling they had to scrap some content towards the end as well for budgetary reasons (Numeria gets a bit of buildup but is a big empty spot on the worldmap).
This game asks a lot of the player in a lot of aspects (time, mechanics, management, following the lore), so i wouldn't dare recommend as something anyone could like. But as an acquired taste it checked a lot of specific boxes i have a weakness for (i love DnDlike fantasy settings). It does have some flaws, and the very last dungeon is a major pain in the ass.
More a game that personally really clicked even with it's flaws. than a generally amazing game.
I believe this game is adapting a well known tabletop pathfinder campaign. What seems to be a simple rags to riches hero fantasy story, becomes something else entirely when all twists and turns are revealed. A slow burn longer than persona 5 royal. With sidestuff and companion stories included it can easily count 200 hours! What's even more insane is the fact that i have the feeling they had to scrap some content towards the end as well for budgetary reasons (Numeria gets a bit of buildup but is a big empty spot on the worldmap).
This game asks a lot of the player in a lot of aspects (time, mechanics, management, following the lore), so i wouldn't dare recommend as something anyone could like. But as an acquired taste it checked a lot of specific boxes i have a weakness for (i love DnDlike fantasy settings). It does have some flaws, and the very last dungeon is a major pain in the ass.
More a game that personally really clicked even with it's flaws. than a generally amazing game.
After 130 hours I can only say three things about this game:
1) CRPG developers should stay as far away from TTRPG mechanics as possible
2) The debut game of a new game development studio should not be a 100+ hour CRPG
3) The best chapters are the first and last ones because linzi stops talking
+1 star because I could turn into a dragon and the writing was okay sometimes (whenever nyrissa was on screen)
but -1 star for having some of the worst dungeons in the genre
1) CRPG developers should stay as far away from TTRPG mechanics as possible
2) The debut game of a new game development studio should not be a 100+ hour CRPG
3) The best chapters are the first and last ones because linzi stops talking
+1 star because I could turn into a dragon and the writing was okay sometimes (whenever nyrissa was on screen)
but -1 star for having some of the worst dungeons in the genre
Got me hooked on CRPGs. Super deep class system, lots of content and surprisingly thematically consistent writing. It does have some frustrating dungeons at the end of the game but aside from that it's an amazing experience.
As everyone ever has said i think that the kingdom mode is actually heinous BUT i think the main game is so fucking good it doesnt matter.
This game made me care a lot more about golarion than wotr, though i liked the cast less. I also finally learned how to use magic classes in these games because my mc was a druid. Valerie being practically invincible and kanerah dealing shitloads of damage definitely carried me through the early parts and last 2 dungeons tho.
I would recommend this game to anyone tbh
This game made me care a lot more about golarion than wotr, though i liked the cast less. I also finally learned how to use magic classes in these games because my mc was a druid. Valerie being practically invincible and kanerah dealing shitloads of damage definitely carried me through the early parts and last 2 dungeons tho.
I would recommend this game to anyone tbh
Pathfinder: Kingmaker has some cool ideas and the systems are super intricate, but it is all pulled down by repetition, length, and the cruft-filled nature of the Pathfinder rules.
This plays like a classic real-time with pause game, though I played it in turn-based mode (I don't really see how real-time can work with some of these abilities... Magus would just not be functional, right?). It is tactical and fun when it is balanced, but difficulty swings pretty wild in this game. Many encounters are overly difficult and extremely punishing for un-optimized characters. Pathfinder's prevalence of spells and abilities that do semi-permanent ability damage or full CC effects that last 10+ rounds make the game feel super unfair and pointless.
The combat is also very janky in certain ways. There are times when your actions are unclear and inputs get eaten, resulting in missed opportunities. The extreme complication of the pathfinder rules also don't lend themselves to this very much at all, since many of the options and benefits of certain abilities are basically wasted or impossible to use.
When it is working and kept fairly simple, it is still very interesting and fun, however.
The Kingmaker portion of this game is a kingdom management simulation with some interesting ideas, but not enough to really hold my attention. You can assign advisors to do events for you, but everything takes an extreme amount of time (presumably to encourage you to go out exploring while your advisors are doing things?) for very little reward. There are also hidden punishments for missing events and the amount of resources you can put into this mode is extremely limited, reducing the actual choices it feels like you can feasibly make.
Pathfinder looks good, using the style of the tabletop game to good effect. I like that it is distinct from D&D while still having a classic fantasy feel. I definitely had some random framerate issues while playing, though they didn't negatively impact the experience too much.
Character building in Pathfinder is a direct implementation of the Pathfinder rules, which would be cool if the Pathfinder rules didn't have so much unnecessary jankyness and cruft to them. The TTRPG feels like a couple of character ideas with a ton of (really boring, terrible) feats to band-aid over basic problems with the system or destroy any class uniqueness and this holds true for Kingmaker. There isn't much reason not to take the same basic set of feats for every character, most of which are astoundingly unexciting (Weapon Focus!? GREATER Weapon Focus!?!?).
It can still be fun initially to pick a character and plan out how you want to build them, but it eventually broke down pretty hard for me.
Pathfinder is HUGE. There is a map you can explore as if it were a hex crawl, with events and locations scattered throughout. Most of this is unconnected to the main story, however, and eventually started just being busy-work. Everything in the game just takes a very long time to do, from waiting for your kingdom events to happen, to traveling to your current destination. It is realistic, but definitely not fun.
I did still get some entertainment out of this game -- choosing from the different classes, building your character, and combat are all fun at first. The extreme length and lack of depth and variety in both the combat and kingdom management eventually just made me lose interest with the Pathfinder feat system being the final nail in the coffin for me.
This plays like a classic real-time with pause game, though I played it in turn-based mode (I don't really see how real-time can work with some of these abilities... Magus would just not be functional, right?). It is tactical and fun when it is balanced, but difficulty swings pretty wild in this game. Many encounters are overly difficult and extremely punishing for un-optimized characters. Pathfinder's prevalence of spells and abilities that do semi-permanent ability damage or full CC effects that last 10+ rounds make the game feel super unfair and pointless.
The combat is also very janky in certain ways. There are times when your actions are unclear and inputs get eaten, resulting in missed opportunities. The extreme complication of the pathfinder rules also don't lend themselves to this very much at all, since many of the options and benefits of certain abilities are basically wasted or impossible to use.
When it is working and kept fairly simple, it is still very interesting and fun, however.
The Kingmaker portion of this game is a kingdom management simulation with some interesting ideas, but not enough to really hold my attention. You can assign advisors to do events for you, but everything takes an extreme amount of time (presumably to encourage you to go out exploring while your advisors are doing things?) for very little reward. There are also hidden punishments for missing events and the amount of resources you can put into this mode is extremely limited, reducing the actual choices it feels like you can feasibly make.
Pathfinder looks good, using the style of the tabletop game to good effect. I like that it is distinct from D&D while still having a classic fantasy feel. I definitely had some random framerate issues while playing, though they didn't negatively impact the experience too much.
Character building in Pathfinder is a direct implementation of the Pathfinder rules, which would be cool if the Pathfinder rules didn't have so much unnecessary jankyness and cruft to them. The TTRPG feels like a couple of character ideas with a ton of (really boring, terrible) feats to band-aid over basic problems with the system or destroy any class uniqueness and this holds true for Kingmaker. There isn't much reason not to take the same basic set of feats for every character, most of which are astoundingly unexciting (Weapon Focus!? GREATER Weapon Focus!?!?).
It can still be fun initially to pick a character and plan out how you want to build them, but it eventually broke down pretty hard for me.
Pathfinder is HUGE. There is a map you can explore as if it were a hex crawl, with events and locations scattered throughout. Most of this is unconnected to the main story, however, and eventually started just being busy-work. Everything in the game just takes a very long time to do, from waiting for your kingdom events to happen, to traveling to your current destination. It is realistic, but definitely not fun.
I did still get some entertainment out of this game -- choosing from the different classes, building your character, and combat are all fun at first. The extreme length and lack of depth and variety in both the combat and kingdom management eventually just made me lose interest with the Pathfinder feat system being the final nail in the coffin for me.
The best CRPG you will ever play.
I wanted to like it and there were parts I did like. However the game purposefully makes it so you have a 50% hit chance which gets tedious. This game is the epitome of early game hell.