Pathfinder: Kingmaker - out now

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Jez
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Re: Pathfinder: Kingmaker - out now

Post by Jez » Thu Oct 04, 2018 11:15 am

Hahaha :)

They could have provided such warnings good as they are but we all know you still would have blundered through that hedge out of curiosity :)
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Re: Pathfinder: Kingmaker - out now

Post by Wrathbone » Thu Oct 04, 2018 11:45 am

I definitely would have. :lol:

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Re: Pathfinder: Kingmaker - out now

Post by Wrathbone » Thu Oct 04, 2018 6:54 pm

See, this is more like it!

Image


(Yes, obviously I went inside, and yes, I was immediately annihilated ¬_¬)

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Re: Pathfinder: Kingmaker - out now

Post by Jez » Thu Oct 04, 2018 7:37 pm

Brilliant! Sort of went looking for a cute white bunny amongst all that bone :)
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Re: Pathfinder: Kingmaker - out now

Post by Medicine Man » Mon Oct 08, 2018 11:51 am


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Re: Pathfinder: Kingmaker - out now

Post by Jez » Mon Oct 08, 2018 1:57 pm

Not for the faint hearted then really.

I see the reviewer got some flak for basically pointing out that the game was not really for newcomers to the genre either digitally or paper based. Dunno if that is a fair point or not.
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Re: Pathfinder: Kingmaker - out now

Post by Wrathbone » Mon Oct 08, 2018 2:11 pm

Honestly I don't think it's as impenetrable as is implied. If you've played any similar sort of RPG since Baldur's Gate then the vast majority of it will be familiar. There are background complexities with the rules but you really don't need to understand most of them. It's no different to the level of complexity of Pillars' rules (which still make little sense to me).

Anybody who plays it and feels overwhelmed should play on easy. Seriously, do it, because this from the review...
Want to level up? You need to choose which class to level up, select new powers, and distribute stat points. But does your build even make sense? Who knows.
...becomes irrelevant when you have some leeway with difficulty. When you level up you should always choose what you want, not what you think you'll need to win fights. And if levelling up is so alien to you that you've no idea what putting points into things like dexterity or charisma are likely to improve, this really isn't the game for you.

The bit about dry storytelling is true - the writing isn't the best. As an adventure it's great, though.

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Re: Pathfinder: Kingmaker - out now

Post by DjchunKfunK » Tue Oct 09, 2018 10:53 am

Have to say that's a pretty terrible review. Comparing the game to a proper paper RPG with a DM is complete nonsense, of course it is going to feel limiting if you do that. You could do the exact same with the Baldurs Gate games and if you did you would also feel like they were terrible games, which they weren't.

I've taken a break myself. Going to wait for the big patch they say is coming towards the end of the month. I have AC Odyssey to play in the mean time.

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Re: Pathfinder: Kingmaker - out now

Post by Wrathbone » Sun Jan 13, 2019 10:23 pm

After 92 hours spread over several months, I’ve finally finished this. It’s a brilliant game - one of my favourites of the last few years - that at times is an infuriating pain in the arse. I’m going to detail its flaws so that anyone interested can decide if they’re too much to put up with. If you can bear them, there’s a fantastic game buried under the mountain of crap.

Patches have fixed a lot, including numerous catastrophic bugs (my favourite was when I suddenly had two of the same character in my party), and yet there are incomprehensible design choices that are less easily fixed. The most prevalent problem is the number of loading screens in some areas, particularly with kingdom mangement.

Here’s an example of a frequent thing you have to do: You enter your capital and go straight to the throne room (loading screen). You then click on the map table to start kingdom management (loading screen). You want to build something in one of your towns, so you open the town manager (loading screen) and do what you need to do. You then want to check another town, but that means you have to go back to the kingdom manager (loading screen) and then open the other town (loading screen). When you’re done, in most cases you’ll want to go straight back to the world map and continue adventuring. What you actually do is go back to the kingdom manager (loading screen), back to the throne room (loading screen), leave the throne room to the main square (loading screen) trudge slowly across the entire main square map and then leave the capital (loading screen). It’s maddening.

I swear to god, I really did enjoy this game a lot! :lol: It just does its level best to piss you off sometimes. The final two chapters, for instance (which are minor in the grand scheme of things), consist mostly of endless groups of the same ridiculously, annoyingly difficult enemies for no justifiable reason. The penultimate chapter also has one of the most spiteful, poorly designed dungeons I’ve ever encountered: three floors packed with aforementioned enemies, each floor with a maze of teleporters that skip between floors and - wait for it - change the content of each area, including even more enemies. Oh, and there’s no clue or info to indicate how to solve the huge and daunting puzzle. Far from being exciting, interesting or rewarding, its sheer trial by error and endurance. If a real-life DM had designed that dungeon, I would rip up my character sheet, declare my character plunged a dagger through his own eye socket, and then leave the table.

The other significant issue is with quests and how they’re tracked. Essentially the quest log usually gives you nowhere near enough info to remember what the hell each quest is about or where you need to go. Sometimes there are indicators on the map, sometimes there aren’t, and I’m not sure why it’s so inconsistent. I think there are still bugs around this, as I still had quests listed at the end that I’d completed. For a lot of quests, though, I had to google where I was meant to go.


...Other than all that, it’s great.

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Re: Pathfinder: Kingmaker - out now

Post by Sly Boots » Mon Jan 14, 2019 7:42 am

:lol:

I've been keeping a semi-interested eye on its price on a few sites (remains high, incidentally), but after all that I think I may skip this one. Maybe if it becomes very cheap one day.

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Re: Pathfinder: Kingmaker - out now

Post by Wrathbone » Mon Jan 14, 2019 9:51 am

I'm doing it a disservice, but I needed to vent after those final few hours! The bulk of the game is highly engaging and fun (for me, at least), and it's one of the few games I've ever played that genuinely makes you feel like a leader desperately trying to hold his lands together. It's a true epic which earns that accolade in a gradual and believable way. Choices DO have weight and impact, and that's one positive thing I'll say about the ending - choices I faced even 70 or 80 hours previously made a difference. I became emotionally invested in the characters, despite the often wonky writing. Despite its many glaring flaws, it's a barnstormer of a game. It just seems to keep poking you in the eye every now and then.

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Re: Pathfinder: Kingmaker - out now

Post by Sly Boots » Mon Jan 14, 2019 10:03 am

I was a bit cursory as after writing that sentence the morning school routine exploded in my face, but I am intrigued by it, you don't see many unabashedly old-school new cRPGs these days and the kingdom management element sounds intriguing. More than anything it's the high price it's still going for that is putting me off right now, if and when it hits the £15 mark I expect I'll pick it up then.

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Re: Pathfinder: Kingmaker - out now

Post by DjchunKfunK » Mon Jan 14, 2019 10:44 am

I keep thinking of going back to this, stopped to allow the game to be patched. Can't really motivate myself to do so though and hearing how the game ends isn't helping. :D

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Re: Pathfinder: Kingmaker - out now

Post by Wrathbone » Mon Jan 14, 2019 11:55 am

The patches have helped and it now mostly resembles something that works more than it breaks.

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