Kingmaker - Review @ Gamesxtreme

Gamesxtreme reviewed Pathfinder: Kingmaker:

Pathfinder: Kingmaker Review

Starting in with Pathfinder: Kingmaker, you have to examine its serious and deep digging roots. Let me just take a side note here and say, because this is going to be important to my views of the game, that I've never heard of Pathfinder in its original form, nor do I (unfortunately) play tabletop or pen and paper roleplaying games. The surprise of Pathfinder having a roleplay system that's been developed for ten years was a pleasant one indeed. Suddenly the core of Kingmaker made perfect sense and aside from already enjoying the gameplay, enriched it with a bit of gaming history. From what I understand, the player and fan base of Pathfinder is quite a large and loyal following as well, so it should come to no surprise that when Kingmaker was announced on Kickstarter. It blew the goal out of the water totaling to $909,057 out of it's $500,000 goal.

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Pathfinder: Kingmaker is certainly the king of kings when it comes to roleplaying games brought to a digital platform. You can really feel like this is a title made FOR the fans BY fans. Every bit of it is lovingly handcrafted and it shows. I have to put this down as a highly recommend for all: if you're new to the genre, this is a fantastic place to start. If you're not--boy, are you in for a pleasant surprise. And on native Linux too! A great time for all to be had.

More information.

I have played quite a bit of this game although i have not finished it yet. I have to say that i really really enjoy the game. The systems they have put together are pretty well done and it's just damn fun to play.

However, it does have an enormous amount of bugs and design issues.

There are quests that need to be completed as fast as possible to allow your kingdom to survive without giving you any indication that you have to rush them. There are others that you completely miss if you are out adventuring and don't return to your kingdom for a while. You get no notification that someone is looking for you or something happened either.

Despite these issue i still think the game is really good. Something RPG fans have to try at some point in my opinion.

At last some positivity, it looks awesome, just waiting a bit longer, same for Bards tale 4, both are ready to go. In the mean time: finally got a foothold in Battle Brothers after numerous re-starts.

I played for about 30 h before I stopped because of bugs. They are patching constantly and the next big patch is around the corner. I will give it another try during Christmas holidays and quite look forward to it. I will be a great game once the bugs are ironed out.

I've really enjoyed the hours I've put into this game, but parked it maybe a month ago due to all the incoming patches. I paused right during some Troll invasion, thinking it would stick in my mind when I return to the game. I'll likely pick it up sometime early next year.

Yep count me as another who put the game on ice till the patching slows down. As I got tired or downloading constant patches, and being forced to re-download the game.

Never play a game until it's been out about a year but this is on my play list.

Also put on hold until the patches slow down, but this game gave me my most-favorable early impressions in years. Any Badlur's Gate fan owes it to himself to play this one…sometime next year.

The game is really good.

The only thing I dislike: The unity engine generates looooong loading times…

I just started it this weekend and I've had a hard time tearing myself away from it during saturday & sunday.

I had hoped that with the deluge of hotfixes it would be reasonably fixed and ready to be played by now…and it sort of is…although it still has that "tons-of-little-things" that should be added for the sake of convenience & practicality feeling to it. Not to mention the occasional bug here and there.

Even so, I'm enjoying myself so much that I don't think I'll do any more waiting for patches, unless I run into a real gamestopper of a bug that is.

Played over 250 hours, I love it I'm pausing my 2nd playthrough till big patch is out, keep running into game breaking bugs in chapter 5. I'm going to start on review while I wait

Originally Posted by purpleblob
Played over 250 hours, I love it I'm pausing my 2nd playthrough till big patch is out, keep running into game breaking bugs in chapter 5. I'm going to start on review while I wait

Can't wait to read it as you probably have the most experience playing the game.

I'm 100 h in and on my 1st playthrough.
Had a game breaking-bug that was fixed a few days after I had encountered it.
As mentioned before it has some design flaws, documentation/communication issues and a serious amount of bugs BUT it's an awesome game. For the first time in ages I'm pretty sure I'll do a second run right after.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Can't wait to read it as you probably have the most experience playing the game.

Awww thanks Couch! I think there's a good chance Fluent put more hours than me, maybe even Maylander lol. It will take a while to finish the review though, its seriously huge game and I still haven't finished it!!!

I played about 30 hours. Now I’m waiting for a few more patches, not only so they smashed a few more bugs, but because I hope that they add more features for convenience and enjoyment. I don’t like to rush though a timer nor lose the opportunity to do some quest just because I was exploring and didn’t know there was a timed limited quest waiting to be triggered at my capital. I think that Pillars of Eternity did alright with the quests at the Keep.

Yeah, I'm hoping the timed quests situation might be looked at by the time it's patched up enough for me to dive in.

Played just a few hours of this, a few restarts to explore character building and touched on the beginning area barely.

Really hoping they can pull this into shape. LOVED what I saw, but I have zero interest in kingdom management and I detest timers of any kind. I know the "it's realistic" counter argument, but it's not for me. I'm moving tiny cartoon characters around a virtual world on a computer… I don't want realism like that. Just give me a game I can play adventures on.

I'll ask again, because I have never received an answer to this question here or on other forums: Has anyone actually FINISHED this game… good ending, bad ending whatever… has anyone finished it?

I haven't finished yet since I keep running into game breaking bug in chapter 5 but I know there are people who actually finished the game and saw ending slide etc.

A good review and the game definately comes across as for the fans by the fans.. a true adaptation of a pen and paper rpg digitally. This may not be to everyones taste but always made its intentions clear. The devs committed the cardinal sin of releasing the game too early, perhaps by as much as 2-3 months. It left a bitter taste in the mouth with constant patching and hotfixes required.. I initally put a fair bit of time into the game but then slowed down waiting for it to be patched out. The game is getting there now and is well worth purchasing

Originally Posted by HiddenX
The game is really good.

The only thing I dislike: The unity engine generates looooong loading times…

Oh man, those loading times. I'm literally playing World of Warcraft on the side while playing Kingmaker. Just doing some random quests and what not, especially while doing my traditional "throne room -> market (buy BP) -> throne room (start or build stuff) -> market -> leave the capitol" runs.

Originally Posted by purpleblob
Awww thanks Couch! I think there's a good chance Fluent put more hours than me, maybe even Maylander lol. It will take a while to finish the review though, its seriously huge game and I still haven't finished it!!!

Not even close, hah. I'm in chapter 4 now, but I only started a few weeks ago, and I've mainly played during weekends, so the number of hours shouldn't be anywhere near you or Fluent.