Pathfinder Kingmaker

[Docwagon 856]

I downloaded the base game + DLC pack from GOG on one of their clearance sales and have been enjoying it.  If you liked the pen/paper version of Pathfinder DnD and/or don't mind reading up on the rules, you'll have fun with it.  If you expect a standard video-game-ized version, you'll likely be disappointed.  It has pros and cons to the approach, primarily in how much you have to rest at early levels since healing and spells are very limited, as you'd expect from a 1st level DnD character.

 

You can respec for free three times.  I've respec'd once at 10th level because I wasn't using two of my feats at all and for some reason long swords seem to be very uncommon in the game so I wasn't using my weapon focus at all.  I'm playing a human Paladin.  I don't normally go for Paladins, but I figured it would fit this game.  You are trying to establish a barony from an unclaimed land full of monsters and curses, and I'm assuming from the game title you eventually develop it into a kingdom.  I know how AI can be in these games so I figured I'd need a tanky character with some diplomacy skills and so far it's working out well.  I'm using the tower shield specialist fighter NPC as my helper on the front line, gave both the 'shield wall' teamwork feat, and let the tower shield fighter fight defensively.  With the various buffs and lots of lay on hands uses, as long as nobody gets stunned it works pretty well.  The rest of my party is all standard NPCs (you can buy 'mercenaries' and spec them from scratch if you don't want the story based NPCs).  I'm using a kinetics character, something I was completely unfamiliar with, a rogue/wizard/arcane trickster, a cleric, and a bard.  Bards are actually pretty solid in Pathfinder and their party buffs are very helpful.  I let the cleric use a heavy crossbow most of the time and hang back with the squishy characters in case something flanks us, then he can go to mace/shield and fill in the gap.

 

This game mostly plays by the pen/paper rules.  You want to cast stoneskin?  You need (expensive) diamond dust.  You want to cast restoration?  You need an (expensive) diamond.  You need to carry rations into areas you can't hunt in if you want to rest, and rations have weight, and weight leads to encumbrance.  There is no fast travel.  

 

What's actually my favorite departure from standard RPGs is there *is* time pressure.  Don't get your barony established in 90 days?  Game over.  Screw around with side quests and don't follow the main plot line?  It doesn't care, the next curse is coming on X date if you're ready for it or not.  If you aren't, it'll damage your barony and be harder to deal with, or cause you to lose.  The troll invasion starts when it starts, not when you walk over a certain trip wire or use a certain dialogue tree.  Your peasants complain about a problem, there's a deadline to set an advisor on it or if fails.  Early on you may have more problems and opportunities then you have available advisors.  Get a diplomat visiting from another country?  He'll wait for awhile while you're out, but not forever.  

 

Some things will wait forever.  Establishing a trade route with a given country seems to always be an option.

 

Alignment actually matters.  Your dialogue choices may vary based on your alignment.  What sort of things you can build in your city depend on your alignment.  If you get along with your advisors or not, since they aren't all going to be your alignment and apparently if you disagree with them too much they'll quit.  I have a lawful evil treasurer, for example.

 

The combat is...spotty.  There are some real difficult encounters mixed in areas that you wouldn't think they'd be in.  You can change the difficulty on the fly, though.  I have had to do so twice to advance the story in probably 40 hours of game play.  Once when I got stuck in a dungeon with no rations (cave in blocked me in and I was 3 short of being able to rest before a really tough boss fight) and once when I'd spent too much time building my barony and not enough leveling my character and was getting my ass kicked by cursed creatures.  

 

All in all, I have found it to be at least as much fun as the various NeverWinterNight games were, if perhaps just a touch more amateurish in the difficultly scaling and tutorials.

[J4MES OX4D 10,037]

This is one CRPG I haven't got round to playing just yet. I've done them all from Baldurs Gate, Neverwinter, Planescape Torment, Pillars of Eternity up to Divinity Original Sin. May look to pick it up in the coming weeks. A sequel was recently kickstarted too

 

[phil bottle 9,767]

I need to go back and finish Baldurs Gate 2, think I have the enhanced edition.

Sent from my SM-G955F using Tapatalk

[Docwagon 856]

So for me the game got progressively less interesting.  The amateurish development began to shine through and the narrative died down quite a bit.  The ending is so damned dumb that I can barely make myself care enough to finish it up.  I've turned it down to "story mode" difficulty just to get through the last chapter quicker.

 

Honestly I doubt I pick up the next title and I definitely won't be in on the kickstarter since it took them so long to get this one "working".  The game still crashes more then you'd expect and the longer you play the longer loading screens take.  Anyway, at about the 2/3 mark I felt like the game was just killing time vs wanting to see what happened next.  The biggest kick in the ass is realizing that literally none of the kingdom management stuff did anything but keep you from losing.   Only companion quests mattered.

[GazzaGarratt 11,056]

2 hours ago, Docwagon said:

So for me the game got progressively less interesting.  The amateurish development began to shine through and the narrative died down quite a bit.  The ending is so damned dumb that I can barely make myself care enough to finish it up.  I've turned it down to "story mode" difficulty just to get through the last chapter quicker.

 

Honestly I doubt I pick up the next title and I definitely won't be in on the kickstarter since it took them so long to get this one "working".  The game still crashes more then you'd expect and the longer you play the longer loading screens take.  Anyway, at about the 2/3 mark I felt like the game was just killing time vs wanting to see what happened next.  The biggest kick in the ass is realizing that literally none of the kingdom management stuff did anything but keep you from losing.   Only companion quests mattered.

 

To change the difficulty setting just to get through it says it all. Shame it didn't live up to initial expectations.

[Docwagon 856]

6 hours ago, GazzaGarratt said:

 

To change the difficulty setting just to get through it says it all. Shame it didn't live up to initial expectations.

 

It's tough to list specific complaints without going into spoiler territory, but essentially it shifts from an RPG to a combat simulator, and large scale combat is not Pathfinder rule set's strong point.  It's a shit ton of micro-management at a normal difficulty since you have a party of 6 vs waves of enemies. You'll also need to rest often, which mandates cut scenes and dialogue.  It just feels like stretching the game so you can say "XX hours of game play" and the game gets cheat-y.  And there's still bugs.  Your allies can get trapped outside of "gates" that they can normally walk through if combat starts while the party is even near one.  So, defeat a few waves of meaningless enemies.  Rest.  Repeat.  While working your way through some BS "puzzle" maze.

 

My biggest complaint is you lose access to NPCs you've had in your party from the start.  Apparently due to a bug, one is just gone forever.  Not due to any in-game reason, they just don't show up to be rescued.  So you take these fairly horribly spec'd NPCs and you go through the entire game with them because of the story lines associated with them (instead of just buying "mercenaries" who are blank characters you can spec as you like) only to have them removed at a crucial part in the game and what party you have now is luck based on who you find first.  Except that one character, who's just gone.  Now you can get free mercenaries.  

 

So here's who will enjoy the late game:

 

Somebody who really likes making Pathfinder characters.  Would you like to make 5 level 17-ish pen-and-paper characters from scratch?  Here's your chance.