Kingmaker - Review @ Tomsguide
 

Tomsguide checked out Pathfinder: Kingmaker:

More information.

How's the patching coming along? Is it playable throughout now?

Interesting the reviewer didn't note that there are time constraints on quests (not sure if on all of them) so while the overland map does (sort of) promote exploration, be aware you'll get messages to the effect that your party is exhausted and needs to rest. And while the camping mechanism is detailed (you assign party members to hunt, stand guard, create camouflage, cook) to me it got tedious. So while taking every intersection in the roads is what exploration is all about, in the back of your mind you're worried that doing so habitually might cost you a quest or even end the game if a critical timer expires.

I like most aspects of the game (party movement, however, to me is painfully slow, like their moving in ankle-deep molasses, even when unencumbered) but I'll wait for a patch (which may never come, of course) to make the time constraints optional (and not reversible) when starting a new game. I'd also love a Fast Move option ala PoE.

Well, from what I understand the first full patch is due on the 22nd of October. Was just wondering if the hot-fixes have made it more stable.

The hotfixes fixed some and broke some. So some more patching is due.

Not sure you can characterize a bug-riddled game as "great". It may be potentially great, but how would you know if you're constantly battling issues?

I still think the game is great, a flawed gem. I will definitely consider how broken the game is when I write the review but so far I'm still enjoying it immensely despite the occasional frustration.

People are too touchy about bugs. I'm having a great time with this game.

So quests that cant be finished or don't start is being touchy. Okay

I'm guessing you haven't reached chapter 4 or 5 yet then either.

As that is were the game falls apart.

I can start to see the signs of unstability now that I'm in chap 4 although luckily I haven't experienced game breaking bugs yet. I totally understand that will be extremely frustrating but you have to give where credit is due too - it's incredibly fun game!!! (imo). Any other game I would have shelved it already at this semi-broken state but I'm still pushing forward. Will restart the game if I run into the game breaking bug.

I haven't even had many, just minor glitches here or there. If the game lags I restart my computer and it's fine again. I think a lot of the reviews mention bugs but immediately after you see "Oh and the DM is insane and it's terribly unbalanced and too hard", which is the real beef I think some newcomers have to the game. They expect it to be a breeze and level-scaled and it's not that at all.

And for the record I have 170 hours recorded in the game and have barely had any bugs I can even recall. Amiri doubled once and then her double disappeared when I left the kingdom. Big whoop.

Edit - And there is one bug which I'm sure will be addressed with Dual Wielding finesse weapons. That's a pretty big one when you get a certain character. But the big, big patch is coming Oct. 22nd, so I expect it to be fine after that.

Edit #2 - I also heard PoE2 has thousands of bugs too. Games this complex are going to have them. Can you imagine if Morrowind came out today? Get the pitchforks ready.

Exactly! Bugs are the price for complexity. I'd take bug-ridden complex game over bug-free simplistic game any day. Especially, when you have a dev that is committed to iron them out.

I agree that it has bugs, but what a great game!!
The bugs aren't worrying me as yet, but I am not at chapter 4 yet.

I use a mod from Nexus that speeds movement up somewhat. Without that mod, I would probably be too frustrated!!

I am liking this game more than divinity OS 1 and 2 or PoE 1 and 2…
PoE felt like it was trying to recreate mechanics like pathfinder or D&D forgotten realms, but it failed by trying to be too fancy… They weren't too bad though, just didnt feel as deep as this game or BG2.
DOS - scaling was just too steep for me… felt like a MMORPG in some ways, with loot boxes, and constantly needing to upgrade items.

Pathfinder is what I have been looking for for a while, and with a little time, will become BG2's sucessor IMO

I'm in chapter two right now, and haven't played for a few days. I believe I'm going to wait on a few more patches to hit before I play this one again. I'm really enjoying it, and I'd prefer not to have that diminished by running into nasty bugs, but I will be back to win!!

Cool, these are exactly my thoughts as well. The other games just lack the feeling of depth and complexity with their rulesets and Kingmaker brings that to the table and then some. Closest game to Baldur's Gate yet IMO.

Couldn't agree more :) loving this so much

I agree to that, but this does not explain all the bugs in Kingmaker.

For instance, the fact that every single artisan quest is or was broken tells me that noone tested them. I suspect, testing was limited to speed runs.

Which I can kinda understand due to the length of the game, but still, that essentially means that paying customers are beta testers.

I love the game despite that, but if we start to okay stuff like that, we'll get even more of it in the next game.

Yep, I love the game but still think the customers must be vocal about the technical problems.

If you experiencing minor bugs, it's a great game.
For me it was a great game up until the lag. I've tried anything. Changed graphic settings, restarted my pc but nothing. I created a new character and started from the beginning and it seems to run just fine. Maybe it is a corrupted save?
I'll be waiting for the next patches and hopefully it will be fixed. Else i'll start from the beginning but the frustration is there.

Loving the game so far. It looks great, feels great and class building is awesome. i can't recall any other DnD game where i had to multiclass a companion into 4 classes to fix her.

p.s. Just put kingdom management on easy. or your game might end unexpectedly.

p.s.2. I only encountered 1 bug in chapter 2. judging by steam forums game is extremely buggy in Ch5.

Actually turn on Invincible Kingdom or your kingdom might end early. ;) Easy just makes it easier to deal with. Even with IK on you can still lose if your main quest timer expires.

is it a new option? When I was starting the game, next option after easy was auto. And people are saying it makes kingdom fail automatically.

It's not on the difficulty screen at the start, go into the difficulty options while you're playing to turn it on. It just means your kingdom won't fail unless you mess up the main quest timer.

I was waiting a bit for some patches before starting it but the recurrent mentions for Quest Timers have me on the fence here. I hate to be rushed and like to wander around.
Are those Quest timers which make you fail the game a real issue?

Yes. This game doesn't hold your hand and it's pretty intolerant. However, if you watch your journal, it keeps track of the time for you. Most of the time the timers are main quest related. I believe there are a couple companion quests that can fail too though if you're not careful. Maybe Amiri, Gnome-Jsomething, and Tristian iirc.

I decided to stop playing the game till they finish it. This game is too good to rage quit, so I placed it on a back burner till year end.

Not really. You just have to pay attention when someone tells you something is really urgent and threatening your kingdom. For example, I finished Chapter 1 with 48 days left on the timer. I explored a bunch of side areas and did all side quests in the region and still had that time left. Future chapters might be rougher but as long as you pay attention and heed the warnings you'll be fine. Kingdom crumbling via bad management is another thing, but they're working on adding better tutorials and more information on how to deal with the kingdom sim better. You can also always turn on Invincible Kingdom if you don't want to game over because your kingdom crumbled (but it will still game over if you don't do the main quests in time).

NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer also had a "timer" of a sort with the whole spirit eater thing, and it's just about the only thing I never liked about that expansion. How does the Kingmaker stuff compare to it in terms of pressure/time to do stuff?

It varies on each chapter. In first chapter, there was plenty of time to explore, finish off all side quest before facing the final boss of the chapter. The deeper you get in, the less time the game allows you since you have more responsibilities to juggle. Kingdom takes up quite a large chunk of your time, companions demand your attention more often and it seems like some of their personal quest also has hidden timer associated with it.

I have 3 gripes with Kingmaker:
1. Kingdom system - it's really not very well explained how everything works.
2. Timer - I don't usually mind it, but hidden timer + kingdom system have caused me quite a bit of grief in chapter 4.
3. Bugs - I haven't encountered any major one until few days ago but now I'd rather wait for big patch on 22nd.

Despite the problems, I'm in love with this game. Positives far outweighs negatives.

MotB timer was much worse. It punished you more if you were of different alignments. Also it was shorted if you didn't keep your hunger at max.

Act 1 timer was very generous as long as you don't pick up all crap loot that encumbers your party making them move very slow on the overland map.

Act 2 timer is connected with barony destroying effect (which does not happen suddenly) and you get a quest about it and you can ignore it for a shorter while but it is recommended you try to finish that quest (I did it as lvl 7 party) within a few weeks (I think I did it within 2 weeks, but I am sure you got way more time than that; but longer you wait, more it is going to affect your barony stats). The quest is way shorter than Act 1 one so you also need less time. If you do it in reasonable time you get like 250 days to do whatever until next barony killing main quest appears.

Then Act 3 and beyond all got a main quest that you can ignore for few weeks but should not more than that and when you finish it, you can freely explore and work on your barony for many months until next major crisis.

Sounds exactly like my experience. Although I finished Chapter 1 at 48 days left and now I'm exploring all the little side areas I'm finding. I have 27 days left and am just finishing exploring every nook and cranny I can find. Level 5 so far.

I didn't realize that the timers were actually a "thing" in the game. Call me oblivious but I was so used to "normal" RPGs that I thought I could get away with leveling up before going to Act 3's dungeon, which was a big mistake. I game-overed a lot because of it, but fixed it with save-scumming which wasn't very satisfying, so I started over now and just finished Chapter 1.

The game over timers aren't so bad, it's figuring out exactly how to build your kingdom properly so you don't get riots and crumbling status. That was my biggest issue.

Well during loading screen the game says that allowing your Barony to fail will cause the game to fail. So yea, ignoring serious dangers to your Barony should end the game.
But building your Barony part of the game should not cause it to fail unless you completely ignore it (and didn't put it on auto), at least not on Normal difficulty. That part of the game should be just about being able to unlock bonus content and quests.

In last chapter(s) some people have said how their Baronies suddenly go all crazy and start failing for no apparent reason, I am sure that is either a bug or bad balancing and that devs will fix that eventually.

I think what happened is that my RPG Senses said "oh shoot, Act 3's dungeon is too hard, better go level up somewhere else first", and the timer kept crushing my kingdom. By the time I realized it it was too late, already riots and then quickly crumbling.

But what I meant was, it would be nice to have at least a little more tutorial and guidance on kingdom building. I don't know if I should be doing Projects, conquering lands, what days I should spend there and which I should be adventuring and so on. It was kind of overwhelming and I spent way too much time there during Act 3 and got in trouble because of it. But now I know about the big timers at least.

Doing projects while a big barony shattering quest is active is a big NoNo. You don't spend 14 days implementing new Community guidelines while trolls or undead are rampaging through your Barony. Also spending 14 days annexing new areas means little when your current areas are failing.
I guess devs expected people to use common sense :D

Your plan to level up first was probably good if you felt the dungeon was hard but you should have probably focused on adventuring more :)

Well 99% of RPGs don't use timers like that, so somehow it just went right over my head. Looking back I was completely oblivious, haha. And you're right on the 2nd part. I'll adventure more and pay much closer attention this time.

Yep, the game teaches us again to use brains when it comes to these "meta-decisions" about when to do what.

And I love it! Just wasn't ready for it.

Timers are and always were a stupid idea. Making the gameplay harder just by adding a counter clock is easy for the devs but for many gamers is annoying at best. At worst, it simply ruins the game experience. On top of that RPGs are all about exploration and taking your time, it doesn't even make sense…

I'll wait for the patch + any "timer" fixes that gonna come up official or not and then buy..

Normally I would say yet but in a game that wants to make resting matter and not be just another BG or (even worse) NWN2 you need timers.
Even generous ones will force players to not abuse resting all the time.

I'll be starting it soon, but I fear those timers might just ruin it. I hope they patch in an option where it can just be disabled..

Exactly. And it gives some weight and realism to the world. What sense would it make if trolls were actively invading your kingdom and you're out picking flowers or having a jolly good time? You have to be proactive a bit, and as I said a million times, the timers are very lenient. Very. It's the kingdom crumbling from poor management you have to worry about, not timers that are there just to give you some impetus and reason to continue handling grave threats.

The timers make this game hugely better. It feels as though you're actively running a kingdom, not sweeping the map to completion and then dealing with the supposed terrible danger when you feel like it. :nod: