Pathfinder: Kingmaker

[cherrycoke2l]

Has anyone played it yet? I've just bought the game and will probably start it tomorrow.

For those who don't know: it's a cRPG supposedly inspired by classics such as Baldur's Gate using Pathfinder system. Chris Avellone has been involved, so I hope for a good game.


owlcatgames.com/

[Edge]

Off the top of my head I know I, trylobyte, and Ladybug all backed the kickstarter. Trylos been playing it for the past few days, I haven't started yet.

[kothoses]

So, I am about 70% of the way through it, and the short version is, if you liked the Baldurs gate style games, or Pillars of Eternity you will enjoy it but it is not without flaws.


The Setting, Pathfinder much like the Pillars of Eternity games both draws heavily from and suffers because of its DnD (Especially Forgotten realms) influences.  Your mind can not help but look for connections that are not there, stories that never happened in this world and as such it will sometimes feel like putting on an old pair of slippers that have a small rock just under the Bridge of your foot.  Most of the time you wont notice it, but when you do it will feel like a much bigger annoyance than it actually is.

The Story.  It is based I am told on a PnP module of the same name and in my opinion they have done a really good job of transfering it to a CRPG, you will see lots of people complaining of "Difficulty spikes" and having to "save scum"... Mostly these people never played a proper old school CRPG, where the loading screen literally told you "Save early, save often" they didnt pay attention to the small visual clues that indicate a difficult optional challenge / Side quest is ahead.   Over all the Story is enjoyable but it does have moments that cause you to bang your head against a wall.

Speaking of banging your head against a wall.

The "kingmaker" side of it is woefully underexplained and obtuse, it is possible to royally fuck up your game by fudging this to the point that unless you turn off the possibility in the difficulty menu, your game can and will end in fire.  However, this does allow for one of the BEST difficulty managers of any game ever to shine, you can literally tune ANY Element of the game, finding combat just a tad too harsh, just lower the crit damge modifier of enemies by 0.1 there are also a LOT of overall difficulty levels.

The characters.  Initially I thought the companions introduced were cookie cutter and bland, but as the game goes on they show a decent level of depth, while none as as Memorable as Minsc, Jahiera or the Mass Effect Crew they do a good job of delivering their stories, motivations and goals and inject enough personality into them that you will have a couple that you refuse to ever leave town without.

Plot twists, while a few of them are cool, so far I have yet to hit a moment that made me go "Oh wow".

So over all I would say it is a solid RPG, from a new studio with a good future ahead of them, with Obsidian potentially getting Microshafted in the near future (and yes I appreciate the irony of ME making that statement) Owlcat may well carve out a nice enough little niche for them selves.

Ruleset, I am not familiar with Pathfinder at all, but it is close enough to DnD 3.5 that the transition was easy, however, be prepared to read a lot of tooltips if you are new to the system like I was before it sinks in.  PS Group feats can be OP AF if you use them right.

If you enjoy old school CRPGs with concessions in presentation to the modern but not to the core gameplay then give it a whirl.  I bought it on launch day at full price, and I have not been disappointed.  Had it not been for the new Assassins creed basically stealing me in a way few games ever have I Would have put even more time into Kingmaker.

Overall I rate this game, 7.77777 @belladonna's out of 10