Kingmaker - Review @NeverKnowsBest
 

NeverKnowsBest reviewed Pathfinder: Kingmaker and called it the most interesting RPG of the year.

More information.

Playing it for about 30 h now (still Act I, but tried a few different builds) and loving it! This is what I wanted PoE to be. It is much closer to BG then the newer isometric RPGs.

You get a billion of feats and skills and yes, it is hard to understand everything without prior knowledge. But you don't have to powergame this! Your chars don't have to be gods for this. You can role-play as you want. Although, any difficulty above "normal" is quite challenging and you are allowed less mistakes.

I play a lvl 4 rogue knife master atm and think about multi-classing it to alchemist vivisectionist next level. Or maybe a prestige class duelist. Oh the possibilities! Can't wait for my lawful good playthrough after I finish the current lawful evil one.

There are some bugs left, but Owlcat is quick with the patches, so this shouldn't be a problem for long.

Full recommendation for everybody missing a hardcore RPG with a very solid ruleset!

PS: The 69 % PC Gamer gave the game are a disgrace. The review is extremely short and it doesn't seem the reviewer played a lot or knew the setting/mechanics. They should at least have given it 70 % so it doesn't look that bad to the newcomers.

Seconded. It's my favorite isometric CRPG since the Baldur's Gate series. I love it. In Act II now I think and the Kingdom stuff is a lot of fun and keeps things interesting. Great game for CRPG fans! And considering they're using the Pathfinder ruleset we are guaranteed games with a solid ruleset and not a million patches tweaking the rules…

Yay!
That means halfway through my ultra difficult playthrough I don't have 1/2 my team nerfed! (Damn you POE Cipher nerf… damn you!!!)

I love the game a lot too, still in chapter 1 (despite going up to chapter 2 on a character) because I'm trying new characters and learning the rulesets (well, learning what is different from D&D 3.5e).

One thing I really love though, it how some quests, even side quests, have multiple possible way of doing them. Some depends on alignment, DC success/failure, etc but others are just doing different things.

Might still happen if some bugs are causing certain abilities/skills/feats to be more powerful than they should be based on the rules…

Yep, this is a great feature. Things change in quests based on when you do them. So if you put off a quest for some reason, an aspect of it might have changed it completely, or have a different outcome. Or if you do one quest first another one might alter in some way. Time is important in the game, more important than any CRPG I can remember playing. Not only time but in which order or how you approach things. Choices & Consequences for days, man!

I'm in chapter 2.
Buggy, but awesome game.

I might like it better than PoE II.

I love this game. I love the fact that character building is both challenging and almost unlimited in variety. I think it is a very polished game and to me the closest thing to Baldurs Gate I have played. I really hope this is a success it is quite a captivating game. Plus I love the fact that we finally have a game that is not dumbed down or neutered because "people will just look up the best build" anyway philosophy so prevalant in today's games.

The game is full of bugs at the moment, but I'm *still* playing it and loving it because of the Pathfinder ruleset. When the developers have time to polish things the game will probably be my GOTY.

Not sure from the pervious comments, but does the game allow you to make your own party, or just a single character with NPCs?

Agreed, my favourite game since BG2 and NWN :) I think I'm 3/4 way through chapter 2 after playing 36 hours (got there faster than others since I played beta before).

As others have mentioned, character building aspect is fantastic, you can resolve quests in many ways (love the "story book telling" skill checks), and there seem to be some real consequences too. I started tackling troll invasion issue early via kingdom system, while my husband left it till late. This actually seem to made difference in how many trolls you face later on - I had far less, my husband was swamped by trolls (at least from our perspective) he had to lower the difficulty for that fight.

I heard there are issues with bugs, but so far I only experienced a couple of minor ones. Guess most of bugs happen in later chapters where it's not beta tested.

Can't wait to play more this weekend :)

You can make full custom party after the tutorial but it costs you fair bit.

Costs? Like in-game gold? Seriously? :S

Yes, game gold. Higher your level, higher the cost :p

What is the reason behind this? Any ideas? Seems an odd design decision.

What does it cost right after the tutorial? Stupidity like this is why I still have to keep game editors installed. >:(

And yeah, I still play these games once with NPCs… I never understand why developers want to punish/tax the "party of my own" choice.

I like the idea of paying for mercenaries with gold for the sake of realism, but it should be a weekly or monthly salary with a cost not to preclude making a custom party right from the start or close to it.

Ok, let me clarify. You can't start the game with custom party, just your main character (PC) and companions with their own story/background.

When you finish tutorial, you will reach this place called Oleg's trading post and meet a character who provides you with mercenaries (custom NPCs) for certain amount of gold. It's not different to how things worked in PoE1. Higher your level, higher the cost presumably because the mercenary will be same level as your party (I never created custom characters so I don't know for sure).

You're hiring them from a mercenary guild called the Pathfinders. It's expensive, and the gold amount levels up each time you do, too, so it gets really pricey. They want you to play with their companions I guess. I made one Pathfinder merc but don't even use her now. Cost me 4500 gold at the time >;[

The price increase because the custom companions always start at your current level, which means it's always better to create them when you just leveled up.

Or make a few when you are level 1 before leveling to level 2 at Oleg's, they are very cheap then ;)

Cheap? Iirc, a merc costs 2000 Gold at level 1. This may allow for 2-3 mercs max at level 1. I guess later on gold is no longer an issue.

If I wanted a custom party from the get-go, I would look out for a gold cheat.

2000 gold is at level 2. It is 500 gold at level 1, but apparently there is a bug(?) and only 100 gold is taken.

The formula for custom companion is (500 * party level * party level).

While I don't play with custom characters I think this is a major flaw that could have easily been avoided.
It may be that they want you to use the premade companions. But that's something the player should decide.

I would have much preferred to roll all six characters right at the beginning or shortly after the tutorial. I'm pretty sure I won't pay that outrageous amount of gold per person to do it, though, maybe that will be changed in the future because to me it makes absolutely no sense.

I edited in enough gold to pay for them. You need decent knowledge of coding or a good cheat engine table. You could also download MrAntiFun's trainer. It has unlimited health, gold, encumbrance and levels. I use the encumbrance mod because traveling back w/o fast travel isn't happening. I don't recommend using the wealth option in MAF's trainer. It gives you 10,000,000 gold which will allow you to buy every item in the game.

P.S. I assume I broke most achievements when I took out encumbrance, but I could care less about achievements. I play for me, not for some status :D

Why don't these role-playing games assume that you have a trustworthy caravan following your party around? They sell the loot and keep a nice portion for themselves. That's why you only get 1/4 of what an item is worth. The rest is kept for upkeep and payment of your caravan….

This caravan should be responsible for hunting, setting up camp, having quest giving npcs, etc. It would also be a logical place for the companions that aren't tackling an area with you. They'd be close by if you want to swap out someone. Say you run across some traps and don't have the right person in your group; click on caravan and get a choice screen.

Yeah, I don't like the idea of paying for a custom party. It would make sense to me if you could pay for temporary mercs if you needed some extra muscle for a while, but I don't see why my own party of adventurers must be hirelings on the payroll.

Me either, so I edit out Owlcat's stupid choices wherever I can. They're not the first to penalize true role-playing for playing with their limited options. Another thing I hate is custom companions only get 20 points at creation even though you have to pay for the privilege of hiring them. I could have edited that with cheat engine but just left it alone. Your character gets 25 and I think 25 is common in the tabletop too, but someone else can answer that.

Wow, things just keep stepping down a notch for this game. So in addition to penalizing you by needing to buy the ability to make your own, they are also handicapped to be worse than the Companions? Or does only the main character get the 25 point buy?

Technically, Paizo designs their APs with 20 point buy for PCs. I know a *lot* of groups both online and off that use 25 so that the more MAD classes are more viable. Will Cheat Engine modify that or would it require the trainer you mentioned?

EDIT: My grey matter is obviously failing… the above should be 15 point and 20 point respectively. Yes, originally, APs were built for 15 point buy and that's the suggested amount for a standard game per the rulebook.

The companions are all over the place. Some are 20 point buys, others are even over 25.

Yeah, and a few are 18. :S Hopefully the website I checked is just out of date and/or wrong. I guess it's possible the builds above 20 are because the character is picked up at level 4 or 8 or later when stat increases happen, but not sure.

I like that it has variety. It would be boring if every character had exactly the same point amounts to spend. I also like having underpowered or overpowered characters as long as the game is balanced for a variety. It's also fun to turn the underdog party member into a great one by using your brain.
@crpgnut, You can change your party on the world map screen by clicking the Group Manager button at the bottom. Beware that it takes some hours of in-game time to do that.

I don't understand why people don't want to play the game with given companions. After all, they are part of the game too and the developers spent great amount of time and effort creating them.

I will be more than happy to play the game with Companions once I purchase it. By why all the extra effort to throw up hurdles to play the game without them once I've seen those Companions? I played the infinity engines games numerous times, and the only reason I did so was to take different party compositions through the games. Wanting to play one way is not at the exclusion of the other. But if my only choice is a subset of rigidly constructed companions, no matter how well done, I'm far less likely to play through the game again. Also, the alignment issue may or may not be a thing. If evil companions will not stick around with good players (and vice versa), then the possible party compositions are further restricted.

I'm not touching this game until it becomes a much more solid product. Right now it sounds as bug-riddled as a rotting carcass. I'm surprised there isn't more criticism by reviewers. Are they getting a pass because they aren't a better known company? It'll probably okay eventually, but how could they release a game players can't complete?

Because it was added in the late stage of the development (not planned initially) as a result of feedback? It makes perfect sense since you are *hiring* mercenaries. You don't start off the game with your own gang.

You are raising the concerns of limited replayability and yet you haven't even played the game using available companions yet. There are 11 of them, you can only travel with 5 at a time, seems to me plenty of choices for at least first playthrough. Sounds to me you just want to play the game with custom party from the beginning.

That's what I would like, ideally. If it is the sort of game where it's an option to have a completely custom party, I'd prefer that option not to be constrained by requiring ingame gold.

Some more Pathfinder: Kingmaker Reviews & One Interview. Enjoy.:)

ScreenRant -4/5
GameSkinny - 8/10
GamesIndustry.biz Interview

Would you rather prefer the feature not available at all as planned initially?

No, but that's a false dilemma; there's no reason it has to be a choice between those two states. I've explained what my preference would be. You never know, if they made such changes before, and they're busy patching now, they might be open to some more changes if enough people express that preference.

I have a feeling Owlcat will probably lower the price for custom companions eventually. I just find it funny people are okay spending game gold paying for magical weapons and armors and yet feel cheated paying for mecenaries of their liking (custom companions)