Owlcat made some scummy choices when they re-released the game under this new "enhanced edition" title in order to delete all of the negative reviews. Like a good old evening of table-top DND, if prior to beginning the DM found out you’re f***ing his wife.
The quest design is obtuse and poorly written, the interface and design itself plays like a board game that is pretending to be a badly DM'd D&D game. I would fire this DM if he sat at my table.
Time limits and a game that punishes you if you don't play the way the developers want you to makes for an un-fun experience.
I've been playing RPG's since the first Baldur's Gate in 1998, so when i say I haven't played a worse RPG you can take it to the bank. It fails on every level except visuals, it looks pretty but combat, story, tool tip are sloppy, unfun and lacking. Avoid this game at all costs
The insufferable Fatigue status is ALWAYS popping and forcing you to the arduous work of resting, that includes never used before rations, hunting and stuff that, again, just ruins the game further. Nobody likes rest, no one actually uses complex resting mechanics in the tabletop game. Whoever developed this, i'm sure never played Pathfinder before.
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Pathfinder Kingmaker is a bad game
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The late game, at level 15+ is absolute horrible. Creatures with Armor Class of 63, everything damages Str, Dex, Con or drains your levels. You have to constantly reload to pass skill checks of 40+, you miss treasures, events and even locations in the map just because of the ridiculous high Challenge Difficulty skill checks. No d20 game should go as far as this, the late game is just a mesh of high numbers and hit-kill spells.
The Kindgom management system ruins the game. You will spend a vast amount of time dealing with annoyances from everything around you with the most overcomplicated, boring and unecessary system imaginable. The game completely change, and the feeling of a good rpg adventure is lost. Now is just a chore. Dozens of events, keeps poping while you try to explore or resolve other stuff in the game, random stuff happens and you lose events. Your advirsors need a unreasonable amount of time, months and months to solve anything and, in meantime, more stuff pile on and can even fail tyour game, because of timers. With that you will have bad quests failing because you have to deal with other stuff. And this is core gameplay, this kingdom management simulator is a crucial part of the game, and I can't imagine a dev making it worse than this one. This point is the sole responsible for the vast amount of negative reviews, and with reason.
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FARMER COCK
SO GOOD
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And the ultime disrespect to the player: The game remove your companions near the end. You pass through one of those old cliché "you must find your companions (because they conveniently got separeted) and you witness villain talking to them". And just like that, you can't use some anymore. And you are done for if you made your strategies around using those, like I did by losing two of three casters in my party. A disrespect to the player, the removal of crucial pieces just because "its fun". And its not even with good reason.
The final battle is a huge chore. This kind of mechanic no one should use in a game where casting is limited uses per day. It reforces the idea that the devs don't actually play tabletop Pathfinder, in order to create such a bad showdown.
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Worst of all, though, are the stupid secret timers. You get some message saying that you better hurry up on a particular plotline, so you go off to do it, and then midway though SURPRISE the timer goes off and you lose. I don't know why anyone thought that was a good idea. Even the "can't fail" mode doesn't actually prevent these from happening. If you're forewarned, at least know that it is presented as an open world, but you're on a railroad nonetheless.
And, actually, that brings me to my final complaint. There's an alignment system where you're supposed to be able to choose good, evil, lawful, or chaotic options, but often these are assigned nonsensically, and it's usually a thin veil over "of course we're going to solve this the murder-hobo way no matter how this conversation goes". It's just really, really poorly done.
To be very clear: this isn't a complaint about difficulty. The game difficulty is fine. I don't care that the advisor activities are sometimes low-percentage, or that there *is* a time limit. I care that it's just all so arbitrary.
So, the game is pretty, the scope is vast, and there's plenty of leveling up and finding new gear and stuff, and it really seemed like there was enough potential here that I kept playing until finally I got to the last straw... but, yeah, I don't recommend that YOU do. Save your time for something better.
I'll keep this short since many other reviews detail the many specific shortcomings of the game. To summarize: the design is awful. Horrible. Terrible. It's like playing tabletop DND with a DM who is a massive, gaping, prolapsed SHIT.
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In a nutshell, poor level design. Everything in a level should be beatable or escapable so you can come back another day. Relying on the player reloading constantly is a poor design construct.
Don't get me started on Kingdom Management, or the ridiculous time crunches, or the cheesy dialogue, or the annoying stereotype companions.
Putting the bugs aside, even if the game worked perfectly, it still has a major flaw built into it and that is the fact that you are limited on time for the main quest. It kills almost all desire to play this game. It seems to me that Pathfinder: Kingmaker could have been the next Baldur's Gate 2, but the devs failed to realized that this is a game and it's meant to be enjoyed. Rushing through a game like this isn't fun.
Lopsided Fights with underpowered party members and overpowered enemies in great tactical positions don't make for "Challenging" fights, they just make for unfair slogs that require scum saving to get through.
Slick presentation but design is all over the place. Uneven combat, choice being clumsily taken away in places for 'story purposes', and most importantly, the inane completely unnecessary time limits on everything.
There's a truckload of bugs and optimization issues in this game, Instead of fixing bugs the devs have the audacity to launch a kickstarter campaign for a sequel that will be just as crappy as this one.
anti-fun and just frustrating. If you buy this game be prepared to destroy your f5 and f8 button, discover that certain classes are terrible and have to restart the game and pray to rng that you roll well.
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You didnt play the game. The game removes your companions for 5 minutes at the end, youre with your party through the entire house of time and during the multliple giant owlbears fight AND you have your party during the last boss, LK
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Probably the worst part of the game is the final levels and the final boss fight, repeatedly I've had to stop playing because of how annoying it was and the only reason I've kept going is of how much time I had already put in.
This game is honestly pretty bad. I spent 90% of my time googling answers to things. The questing system is absolutely terrible. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing half the time. Constant difficulty spikes make the game super frustrating. The kingdom management is so annoying. There is a countdown timer where if you don't complete certain missions in a certain timeframe you can actually lose the game. I ended up failing it with 40 hours played. I understand that to some people this might be fun, but I just quit after that. I absolutely hate the followers. They are all incredibly annoying. They constantly ask things of you, but don't do anything for you in return. One of my followers straight up stole a ton of money out of the town's treasury so they could buy a printing press. Like, are you actually serious? The options to deal with her are like: it's okay, I forgive you, or wow that's awesome! so glad you got a printing press!! There's no option to kill her, or exile her. There is also another follower who suddenly decides to become evil, steal some magical artefact and teleport away. And then the game has the nerve to give me a quest where I can get him back as a follower. Why would I want someone like that on my team again??? Every single follower is out to get you. It's honestly not fun constantly being betrayed all the time.
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No need to read all this bullshit everyone, OP is fantasizing things that didnt happen
git gud
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To summarize, this game could be fun. But honestly, it's terrible. While other rpgs let me enjoy the story, questing, and characters, pathfinder kingmaker makes me want to rip my hair out. I'm constantly being hamstrung by game mechanics, being backstabbed by my followers, hitting difficulty spikes, spending most of my time played googling things rather than actually playing the game, and there is a looming 24 like timer in the background counting down the days until you fail the game.
To summarize, OP spent 20 minutes writing his headcanon
>HEY GUYS DON'T READ WHAT THIS GUY IS SAYING THE GAME IS GUD BELIEVE ME THE GAME IS GUD GUD TRUST ME
Fuck off you sperg, you're everything that's wrong with this board.
Nigga do you really expect me to read: "all that shit" - by (you)
Except I read it, its 90% headcanon and skill issues. He blatantly lied in most of it describing parts of the game that dont exist except in his headcanon
"I played on core/hard and got punished for not understanding the game mechanics or not min/maxing": The Posts
Its okay to not like a game, you don't need to be a sperg about it.
>You have to constantly reload to pass skill checks of 40+
No you don't, normal people when they fail a speech check roll with the consequences, like you would do in tabletop when you fail.
>The insufferable Fatigue status is ALWAYS popping and forcing you to the arduous work of resting
Ok, I'll agree with you on this point. I also hated all of the characters. The combat is fun, the characters suck ass.
In the early game fatigue is annoying, yeah. But once you have enough money for rations or lots of food in your inventory, it becomes too trivial imo. You can rest literally anywhere lmao. Press R and set up camp
I played up until the kingdom management opened up.
Then it felt too much of a chore to manage both adventuring and kingdom and I ended up uninstalling.
you should focus your autism on improving yourself instead of writing whatever that shit I didn't read was
>And just like that, you can't use some anymore
Only if you fucked up their quests or mistreated them, you imbecile.
This shit gets dumber the more I read, so I'll stop here honestly, you can't even be bothered to check if you did something wrong when you lose half your companions.
For me it's Valbear
game is indeed very mediocre
but it does scratch the autistic itch of making a fuckton of character builds
everything else is just background noise
The developers of this game are almost certainly THOSE types of DMs who feel as if they need to “win” against their players
Not wrong. I modded away the retarded parts and it was much more enjoyable. In comparison I played wotr vanilla and it is way better
>The Kindgom management system ruins the game
It could've been good if it affected normal gameplay more, and wasn't just busywork.
>And the ultime disrespect to the player: The game remove your companions near the end.
I stopped playing at this point.
Except you can win the game. Its not hard
>modded away
? You can turn anything you dont like off in KCD settings or difficulty customization
We know you did OP. Youre the only person retarded enough to fail a companion quest
Kingmaker is literally about knowing how to play the game and the difficulty is highly customizable.
Your senses have just been dulled by the utter lack of difficulty in modern RPGs.
You don't even need to min max, a party with full story characters with pure class levels is more than enough unless you want Unfair no reload or some other sadomaso tier autism run