Kingmaker - Review @ Invisioncommunity

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Pathfinder: Kingmaker Review

Pathfinder (PF), a highly argued improvement over Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) 3.5 edition, praised by the community and ran by groups ever since it was conceived back in 2009 while others may have jumped to 4th and 5th editions of D&D. I myself am an avid role-player, starting my journey with D&D over 10 years ago, shifting to PF when I first found it around 5 years ago.
As a fan of the pen and paper (PnP) version of PF, I was excited to hear that a video game version was making its way to the Steam store, while still reserved about how well it would translate. With the final release of this Kickstarter success, gaining $909,057 out of the required $500,000, Owlcat has brought us a lovely packaged adventure path to delve into. But did it deliver on a video game adaptation of a PnP game, or did it instead release a poorly written homebrew?

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Overall, Pathfinder: Kingmaker gets an 8/10, it is a wonderful experience, full of tactical choices, political decisions, and splitting paths. However, the countless bugs, off-putting design choices and nit-picks all add up to dampen the otherwise amazing adventure. Mechanics are changed for somewhat random reasons, whereas others are deleted entirely. Balancing has taken a strange turn, with “normal” difficulty increasing enemy stats above normal PF versions. Hopefully, the dedication of the team continues on past the initial week of release as they continue to fix the game and improve on its countless flaws.

If you are a fan of Pathfinder, then Kingmaker may scratch your itch while you look for a PnP group to join. Though, due to the number of characters you need to control, reading text, character optimisation and player-input it may feel off-putting to players who don’t normally play D&D or PF.

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If i read reviews this is a great game but if i read forums its infested with nasty bugs, devs Patches break stuff and people is quite disappointed.

where is the truth?

Originally Posted by They Live
where is the truth?

Only when you join the Holy Order of Owlcat will you know truth. Join us, my son, and be freed of the blasphemy of unclean reviewers and negative naysayers! hooo…hooo…

Originally Posted by They Live
where is the truth?

Simple answer from me in list Form.

Pros

1. Its one of the best RPGs out now that is similar to Baldur's Gate.
2. It doesn't hold your hand and you can die or fail the game if your not careful.
3. You can tailor the difficultly to your liking.
4. Companions are well thought out.
5. The world feels alive.
6. The voice-overs are professional and don't feel amateurish.
7. You actually feel like a Baron running a Kingdom.

Cons

1. Has to be said a ton of Bugs.
2. Patched every other two days.
3. To many Load screens/Load times vary per player.
4. Lack of armors and weapons.
5. Timed Quests.

That's just some of my options,and others may differ.

That's a good list Couch I agree 100% except there are a lot of weapons in the game.

Originally Posted by Hastar
That's a good list Couch I agree 100% except there are a lot of weapons in the game.

Not in my experience though I could be missing some.

Maybe I should of said lack of variety instead.

Take armor for example

Padded
Leather
Scale Armor
Chain Shirt
Chain Mail
Breastplate
Half Plate
Full Armor

All are the same except for a few +1.

I found maybe two special sets that have customized names.

It was the same with the weapons.

Originally Posted by They Live
If i read reviews this is a great game but if i read forums its infested with nasty bugs, devs Patches break stuff and people is quite disappointed.

where is the truth?

The first tree chapter provides a good 80 hours of gameplay a game even more in depth than baldur's gate 2 and frankly considerably superior than anything obsidian ever released. In those chapters there's a few minor bugs still, nothing important.So the owlcat cult is born , best rpg ever! Most reviewers stopped there or before .

Past chapter 4 game is completely unfinished stats on monsters are weirds, scripts broke, encounter unblanced unless you overleveled it with shared xp off .The further you progress in and the more broken and frustrating it is.I turns into a big unplayable pile of garbage.0.4 % of players past that point.

Eventually it will be fixed but tis quite unacceptable to release games in this state. Devs are probably highly competent, we are speaking about a 150 hours rpg , 150 hours of real content, but they were not given enough funds.
The right way to do pc gaming nowaday is only playing them when they are at 70% discount , wich doesnt take long with rpgs, or wait for complete edition at 1 euro on humble store.

I have found all kinds of weapons. Flaming, cold, acid, keen, undead bane, oversized, cold iron, evil and good slaying, then some special named ones and all the different +1 +2 +3 ones and I'm still in chapter 2.

Originally Posted by Hastar
I have found all kind of weapons. Flaming, cold, acid, keen, undead bane, oversized, cold iron, evil and good slaying, then some special named ones and all the different +1 +2 +3 ones and I'm still in chapter 2.

Only found cold iron and flame weapons and I'm in chapter 2 right now. Like I said above the swords/bows all look the same except have the elements applied to them.

I also finally found some different looking armor, and no nothing above +2 so far. I wonder if difficultly plays a part in the loot placed, or I'm just missing a ton of gear?

Also had a few quests that didn't fire yet especially Harrim's troll quest.

The best armor I have found in chapter 2 is also only +2.

My paladin uses a +3 heavy mace that does double damage and gives me freedom of movement. Guess I wasted a feat to spec in long swords

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Simple answer from me in list Form.

Pros

1. Its one of the best RPGs out now that is similar to Baldur's Gate.
2. It doesn't hold your hand and you can die or fail the game if your not careful.
3. You can tailor the difficultly to your liking.
4. Companions are well thought out.
5. The world feels alive.
6. The voice-overs are professional and don't feel amateurish.
7. You actually feel like a Baron running a Kingdom.

Cons

1. Has to be said a ton of Bugs.
2. Patched every other two days.
3. To many Load screens/Load times vary per player.
4. Lack of armors and weapons.
5. Timed Quests.

That's just some of my options,and others may differ.

Agree with the list except I will replace lack of armours and weapons (you will find heaps further into the game past chapter 1) with lack of proper tutorial/explanation on kingdom building.

Yeah, Kingdom building is like a mess when you don't know what you're doing. They're working on that apparently. But I don't think timed quests are a con. For once, you actually have to act like the world is burning when they tell you it is. I for one am tired of games like Oblivion and many other RPGs where hell gates are opening and demons are pouring out while you're picking flowers and moseying around the countryside in no hurry.

I don't mind timer usually for the reason you pointed out, but with Kingdom system it can cause quite a lot of grief

Btw love your avarta and title Fluent

Originally Posted by purpleblob
I don't mind timer usually for the reason you pointed out, but with Kingdom system it can cause quite a lot of grief

Btw love your avarta and title Fluent

Love yours, too! H.O.O. High Priestess, awesome.

And yeah, it can cause grief, mainly because they don't explain the kingdom management enough and you aren't sure how to do it. Then, it's pretty strict on Normal mode, so for a first run it's probably better to do Easy and maybe Invincible Kingdom. It can cause grief but this second time around (I started a new character) I'm going to try and do it a lot better with the managing time aspect.

So… H.O.O stands for Hordes of Ogres? Help our Oaks? Horrors of Owlcat?

Originally Posted by purpleblob
Agree with the list except I will replace lack of armours and weapons (you will find heaps further into the game past chapter 1) with lack of proper tutorial/explanation on kingdom building.

The problem is not the amount its the variety as I said in my reply above.

As most look the same the same. If we compare this to NWN 2 it would win in that department as the actually weapons & armor looked different. Just my opinion.

Anyway just woke up so haven't played more yet, and dealing with a few idiots in the political forum right now doesn't help either. So I'll report back later.

Originally Posted by TomRon
So… H.O.O stands for Hordes of Ogres? Help our Oaks? Horrors of Owlcat?

Nope it stands for the great and most Holy Order of Owlcat.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
The problem is not the amount its the variety as I said in my reply above.

There are a good variety of magical items the further you get in, some of them named and with useful abilities too. I'm kinda hording on those at the moment.

Originally Posted by purpleblob
There are a good variety of magical items the further you get in, some of them named and with useful abilities too. I'm kinda hording on those at the moment.

Good to know as my stash is full of generic same looking weapon and armor. Seems I'm finally using a flame bastard sword, and found some legendary Half-Plate armor.

Originally Posted by purpleblob
There are a good variety of magical items the further you get in, some of them named and with useful abilities too. I'm kinda hording on those at the moment.

I had a lot too, and artisans if you get them to stay at your capital make you stuff too that is "legendary" or named, and if you make the right building upgrades for them to work with, they work on their "masterpiece" item for you. Magical items are good to hoard if you need to quickly sell and buy BP or some expensive item.

And if you want a bangin' plate mail for a Paladin character: