Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

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3.6/5

( 662 Reviews )

3.6

662 Reviews

English & 5 more

Posted on: November 5, 2018

Fjartholf

Verified owner

Games: Reviews: 2

Great Game with some flaws

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a great CRPG combined with kingdom management. It is - however - hampered by some usability and user experience issues. The character building options are plentiful and fun. Difficulty options are plentiful and detailed. I'm comfortably playing on normal and getting a relatively smooth experience. Big fights might require a reload or two. You can run into monsters you are unable to handle and might have to come back to. Other fights might require you to find the right tactic, but hints are provided, if you read the texts. The story so far (I am in chapter 3 as of writing this review) is tied to your kingdom. It follows certain fantasy tropes, but has been fun so far. The companions are, as expected, a weid and varied bunch, although they won't be winning any awards for outstanding creativity. They are well-written and their personal quests do a good job of endearing them to the player. Now to the bad points: User experience and usability are severely hampered by the loading times combined with a lack of shortcuts to avoid unnecessary loading screens. Load times on my slightly aged gaming PC (game installed on an SSD) can be up to a minute long. Combine that with unnecessary loading screens in kingdom management makes this game a candidate for having a podcast on in the background, just to pass the time while you wait. A lot of this annoyance could be fixed by adding direct ways to access the world travel map from your throne room and the kingdom management screen. Integrating the town building into the same unity scene as kingdom management would also be great (but could, of course, be a lot harder). Optimisation of the necessary loading screens is also a must. Unity is known to be bad at this, but any time taken off would greatly reduce frustration. Overall a hesitant recommendation. If you have a hankering for a good but flawed crpg right now, get it. If you want a smoother experience, wait for patches.

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Posted on: November 19, 2018

karnowski

Games: 75 Reviews: 1

Great Game

Is Kingmaker without flaw? Definitely not. However, the game has a tremendous depth in story and design. The developer may have rushed the release but has been eager to fix all issues with a string of patches. I have been playing fro 40+ hours and are still in chapter 2. If you like the classic cRPGs or tabletop RPG go and get this gem.

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Posted on: December 3, 2018

willifisk

Verified owner

Games: 58 Reviews: 1

Did you like NWN and Baldur's Gate?

This game had me hooked. This review is for those of you who know Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights and are thinking about this game: Get the game. I played through 12 hours of it before I realised I had built a fairly useless character, and the game got very difficult as a result. So I started up a new character, and got further before hitting the same plateau. With my third character, I thought the game was bugged beyond repair and just ruining itself for me for no reason. Turns out, I had been skipping through a lot of tutorials, and a good bout of googling and old fashioned logical thinking had me working out most of my kinks and straightening my campaign back out. This game is not cruel. You will need to google stuff, you will need to revise your thinking, and your choices matter to a point where one might think the game is being needlessly pedantic. If a quest is worded as an urgent quest, such as "Save them before it is too late", then count on the quest failing because of your tardiness. Do not tarry. Save your game often, think about your choices, plan ahead and enjoy this game. It is both a fantasy campaign and a kingdom simulator, and it is absolutely epic. The bad: The game loads slowly, and the loadscreens are often inconvenient. My fix? Write down possible quests and kingdom issues on a sheet of paper, and consider your options during the load times. This is particularly annoying in the kingdom navigator/throneroom-areas. Still: Great game. Just buy it.

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Posted on: January 6, 2019

dmonkyking

Verified owner

Games: 28 Reviews: 1

This game is an unbalanced mess.

I'm in agreement with the othe reviews, this game seriously needs to be fixed. I'm all for a challenging game, but when you're missing 90% of the time to the enemies 90% hit rate and they are doing 15 points of damage (to your 5 points) at the very start of the game, you know something is wrong. Until more patches come out that fix the balancing and doesn't rely on a roll of a dice on whether you created the acceptable character the developers wanted you to make in order to make it through, avoid this game and stick to well put together games like POE II.

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Posted on: January 21, 2019

purpleblob

Games: 30 Reviews: 1

True spiritual successor to BG2

I really wanted to share my opinion on this flawed gem - the detailed review with screenshots and all was published on RPGWatch: https://www.rpgwatch.com/show/article?articleid=466 Here's the snippet of my full review: To my surprise, Kingmaker far exceeded my expectations, and provided me with more than 100 hours of immensely fun gameplay. I was given a plethora of options to create a character of my desire to explore the vivid and rich world filled with colourful and mysterious characters, and was captivated by the amazing story-telling. However, the game is not without its flaws – Owlcat Games appeared to have bitten off more than they could chew with their ambitious first project – a buggy release, mediocre kingdom management system and atrocious end game design marring an engaging and deep game. A furious post-release patching schedule has seen the most glaring technical issues resolved, allowing players to experience the full scope of Owlcat Games vision. For me, Kingmaker is the true spiritual successor of Baldur’s Gate, a feat no other games have achieved up until now. Pros: +Fun and complex character building and combat +Lots of meaningful choices and consequences +Fantastic story telling +Well written characters +Innovative camping system +Highly customisable difficulty settings to suit different play-style Cons: -Buggy release -Kingdom system that lacks player feedback, and feels separate to the main game -Terrible end game experience -Several and long loading screens Pathfinder: Kingmaker is an extremely complex and fun cRPG despite all its flaws, and I highly recommend it to all cRPG fans, especially for those who yearn for a true Baldur’s Gate like experience.

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Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

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