Pathfinder: Kingmaker - out now

[Sly Boots]

Sounds like an interesting one this, a sprawling cRPG that also puts you in charge of a kingdom to manage. Quite costly on release, however, £35 for the most basic package up to £75 for the priciest

Also reading on the Steam page that a lot are seeing some major bugs, including CTDs and save file corruption, so maybe worth holding off for a patch or two before buying:



It does sound intriguing though so I'll probably pick it up some way down the line.

Not seeing professional reviews anywhere yet, though, so wondering whether there weren't any copies sent out to journos pre-release.

[Wrathbone]

I'm steaming in on this one, but not until next week when I'm getting it for my birthday.

[Jez]

Will wait for reviews and what you guys say. Looks interesting as you say

[Jez]

Been reading a bit into this one. Currently sitting 6/10 on steam mostly because of bugs I think. Needs a patch or 7 maybe.

I can't find any information on how the story side is presented...is it text only, fully voice acted or voice acted only for the highlights etc.

[Wrathbone]

A lot of the negative reviews on Steam seem to be on the theme of "I wanted to play this on ultra-difficult but it turns out it's too hard". Apparently it implements the Pathfinder pen and paper rules very accurately, which may not be very forgiving in certain combat situations. Personally that's a big plus point for me, although it may fall over in practice in a CRPG.

[DjchunKfunK]

I grabbed this last week as it was £21 on CDKeys. I'm a bit concerned about the difficulty level so I might start it at a lower difficulty than I normally would. Looking forward to getting stuck into this over the weekend. Will let people know how I find it.

[Wrathbone]

Just started it and after a few hours I’m having a blast. I’ve gone with easy difficulty based on feedback I’ve seen, and it really has been easy so far so I may bump it up. The writing is a bit rough around the edges and pretty much every D&D stereotype you could name is present, but I eat up that sort of stuff so it works brilliantly for me.

[DjchunKfunK]

I've just started as well, but only just got past the character creator. Didn't really know what I was doing as it's so complex so I may have made a terrible Sorcerer. I stuck the difficulty on normal, but turned down a few things, like combat damage.

[Wrathbone]

Yeah, the rules aren’t for the faint hearted, although I’ve got a good idea how most of it works as Pathfinder is basically an expanded D&D 3.5. If you’ve played Neverwinter Nights it should be very familiar. What’s surprising is that with such a dedicated implementation of the Pathfinder system, they’ve still gone for real-time with pause combat rather than turn-based. The combat’s fine, but I can’t help but feel that a proper turn-based system would be superb.

[Wrathbone]

Really enjoying this. I’ve just been given control of my own lands and there’s a reasonably in-depth realm management system that ties in with your companions acting as advisors. It looks like there’s going to be some substantial political machinations too. There are niggles, like the glacial speed of your party if someone is exhausted, but generally it feels like a quality game with some interesting features that distinguish it from the other modern BG pretenders. I’d already go as far as saying it does a better job than Pillars of Eternity in most areas, and for me that’s saying something.

Also, as a wizard I have a familiar. I went for a duck, which means I have a lovely mallard waddling by my side at all times, even during dramatic cutscenes. This is something more games should have.

[DjchunKfunK]

I think the fatigue system isn't balanced properly for a computer game. It might be that it's correctly within the rules of the RPG, but it's not fun in game as you get tired too quickly. Also the walking speed in this is glacial.

[Jez]

So I'm still dithering a bit on this. It sounds like it does many things well and a few poorly or overly complicated?

Is it fully voice acted?

Having played and massively enjoyed Divinity OS2 is this going to be a bit jarring?

[DjchunKfunK]

No it isn't, just the main story stuff has VO, I've not minded it too much.

It's very different to DoS 2 so yes it will be rather jarring. It's much more along the lines of a Baldurs Gate game as it is a rule set based very much on DnD.

[Wrathbone]

I think the fatigue system isn't balanced properly for a computer game. It might be that it's correctly within the rules of the RPG, but it's not fun in game as you get tired too quickly. Also the walking speed in this is glacial.

The fatigue hasn't bothered me because I quite like the resting system where you assign party members to roles (cooking, lookouts, hunting, etc) based on their skills. The movement speed is the only thing that's really annoyed me, but I'm starting to understand when and why it occurs and how to deal with that:

- Exhaustion makes you walk rather than run; fixed by lesser restoration spell or resting.

- Rough terrain makes you walk. This can also be caused by heavy rain. I don't think there's anything you can do other than wait for the rain to end, which is silly in a real-time game (which wouldn't be the case in the tabletop version).

- Certain spells or injuries make you walk. I think this depends on the difficulty settings, but healing or resting seems to fix it.

To be honest I'd rather there was an option to just move at a consistent speed unless you're hit by a slow spell or similar. I expect that will be modded soon.

Jez, I'd say the combat doesn't have the same dynamic environmental logic as DOS2 (e.g. water puts out fire, etc), but there's a tonne of depth to most of the systems in the game. The parts of it which are over-complicated (and there are a few) haven't spoiled the experience for me so far. If you don't expect anything revolutionary and just want a good BG-style RPG romp, it's spot on.

[Wrathbone]

Some more thoughts (good and bad) now I'm in the meat of the game. Most importantly, I'm still having a blast, although I'm acutely aware that I'm this game's niche target audience. I've encountered some of the crazy difficulty spikes that people have mentioned, and the problem isn't so much to with balance as the lack of signposting to insurmountable dangers. As an example, I discovered a swamp while exploring the map and fought a few wolves - slightly tougher than I'd expected, but not hugely challenging. I then encountered some large thickets which had an icon to indicate I could perform an athletics check to try and get through them. I tried, I succeeded, and I found myself on the other side in a secret area of the map. Cool! Except I then came face to face with three gigantic, super-high level owlbears who mauled my entire party in seconds.

Bwuh?!

And this is where signposting comes in. Any tabletop RPG needs good collaboration between the DM and the players, and part of that is the DM dropping subtle hints if the players are getting in over their heads, as well as the players listening carefully to pick up on that. Pathfinder: Kingmaker is missing a good DM to indicate that sort of thing. With the owlbears, if there'd been blood trails heading into the thicket, or massive footprints nearby or a big signpost saying "KEEP OUT: DEADLY FAUNA", I couldn't have blamed the game for ignoring those hints. In reality there was no warning, no hint, nothing to tell me that going here will result in instadeath.

It's not the end of the world because obviously I just reloaded and left the owlbears to their business, but it's a shame that a little more thought with regards to difficulty design could have made a big difference. On the plus side, the rest of that area had some really good challenges and characters in intriguing situations. As I say, I'm very positive overall, just conscious that not everybody will love it as much as I do.