Kingmaker - Review @ Tomsguide

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Tomsguide checked out Pathfinder: Kingmaker:

Is Pathfinder: Kingmaker 2018's Next Great RPG?

The isometric PC role-playing game has had something of a miraculous comeback recently.

Games like Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, Divinity: Original Sin and Torment: Tides of Numenera remind us of why we fell in love with their endless customizability and engrossing stories. Just a few months ago, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire demonstrated that the genre still has new ground to cover, whether the new approaches are as big as traversing the high seas in a pirate ship or as small as giving characters entertaining idle animations.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker ($40) is the latest contender in the world of retro isometric RPGs, and right off the bat, it has a lot going for it. It's the first major adaptation of the massively popular Pathfinder tabletop RPG rules; it's both a role-playing game and a city-management sim; it's got an enormous map that encourages actual exploration. If you yearn for the days of Icewind Dale and Fallout, this title should be an easy sell, especially since you get about 80 hours of gameplay for $20 less than the price of a new big-budget title. Right?
[...]

Bottom Line

There are some aspects of the game that I haven't touched on — the city-building, the bugs, the dialogue, the semiopen world — but the first few hours of Pathfinder: Kingmaker are ambitious, unpolished, satisfying, complicated, engrossing and tedious. I like the game, but I'm not sure I'm ready to commit 80 hours of my time to it.

In the meantime, the staff at Owlcat Games is working overtime to iron out a lot of the game's issues, coming out with patches to that effect almost every day. They're taking their creation very seriously — as they should, because it's a game with a lot of heart and an impressive scope. The game won't make you feel like a king just yet, but it's good enough to merit minor nobility, at least.
More information.
 
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How's the patching coming along? Is it playable throughout now?
 
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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.
 
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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.
 
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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?
 
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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.
 
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People are too touchy about bugs. I'm having a great time with this game.
 
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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.
 
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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.
 
People are too touchy about bugs. I'm having a great time with this game.

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.
 
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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.
 
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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
 
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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!!
 
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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

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.
 
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Bugs are the price for complexity.

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