Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is in many ways an admirable attempt at a Baldur's Gate-style game for the Pathfinder RPG system, and at first glance it appears to be competently put together. The reason I give this such a bad score is varied, but it's mainly a case of horrible balance. At "normal" difficulty the game is so hard you might as well be playing with a Game Master who uses loaded dice. One of the earliest quests, for example, has swarms. Swarms are immune to normal weapon damage and automatically hit, and are also typically poisonous. The game does provide you with anti-swarm weapons, but these deal area damage and are likely to hit your own party. With how deadly and numerous enemies are, it's like the game expects you to rest after every encounter. The issues only become more apparent towards the late game, where enemies have insanely high saving throws and spell resistance, to the point that some fights are simply a matter of chance. For example, an enemy might have an aura that paralyzes your entire party unless they make a very difficult saving throw, but not just once, oh no, it happens *every round.* The final dungeon is the epitome of this, and also kills some of your party members if you haven't completed their side-quests. It doesn't warn you that this will happen. The game also loves to waste your time. Several quests require you to wait a set amount of time, but in some cases they are lying to you and actually require you to do certain things to progress. Oh, and they're main quests that you must do within a time limit or lose the game. The kingdom management is also terrible. You assign advisors to tasks and hope they roll high. Advisors can only work on one task at a time, most of which take two or more weeks, and you don't have access to all your advisors off the bat either. You can rank them up to make them better, but this not only takes their time, but *yours* too. My advice: mod the game *heavily* and don't bother with the final dungeon.

Классические ролевые игры вроде Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter nights всегда были среди любимых. Они пройдены не один раз, но понятное дело, что всегда хочется видеть новые проекты по классическим системам и вселенным. Печально, что в нынешнее время, какой-нибудь Fallout4, по какой-то никому неведомой причине записывают в стан ролевых игр, хотя никакой ролью там даже близко не пахнет. Но приятно, что за последнее время вышли такие проекты как divinity original sin, Tyranny и Pillars of Eternity, это хоть как-то реабилитировало жанр. Но тем не менее, недавно появился очень интересный проект - Pathfinder Kingmaker. Игра от наших соотечественников Owlcat Games при поддержке Криса Авеллона. Взяв за основу ролевую систему Pathfinder, которая является продвинутой переработкой правил D&D 3.5 редакции, разработчики создали ту самую классическую ролевую игру. К базовой системе вопросов нет - это обкатанная годами настольная ролевка, которая как-то даже обскакала D&D по популярности, что в принципе удивительно, поскольку D&D - это почти (да даже не почти) родоначальник жанра. Что касается реализации ролевой системы в компьютерной игре - очень хорошо: партия приключенцев, таинственные события, герои и злодеи, короли и безумцы. Всё очень грамотно и органично смешанно в игре, предоставляя действительно выбор и возомжность отыграть роль (в разумных пределах, разумеется). Персонажи интересные, их истории прописаны очень хорошо, за ними любопытно наблюдать. К ним привязываешься, их квесты проходишь, говоришь с ними, чтобы побольше узнать о мире. Мир, Голарион, не сильно отличается от Забытых Королевств, но свои тонкости имеются. Мне было очень интересно исследовать новую вселенную и находить знакомые моменты. Игра понастоящему длинная, и для полного прохождения потребуется около 100 часов (допы я не проходил, но 70 часов набегал). Но я наиграл их с огромнейшим удовольствием. Да, баги есть. Да, иногда они раздражают. Но они никаким образом не перекрывают достоинств игры.

I'll try to make this short :). While this game had big issues according to difficulty with certain early fights, I did not encounter them at all, because they made the quests easier - in regards of information given by the NPC, items given to help you actually survive the encounter and tips. If you are a fan of the oldschool type of RPGs, where character creation and planning is a challenge itself and you want that rewarding feel of getting a level up and feeling stronger, then this is for you. While some bosses have insane dmg output, there are always ways of dealing with them. For example: !!SMALL SPOILER!!: If you fight the Stag Lord doing a frontal attack w/o checking other possibilites inside the camp, you gonna have a very hard time and most likely die a lot. SPOILER END I did not encounter any bugs, aside from some tooltip errors, where my spell has a reflex save and 2 sentences later it's a fortitude save all of a sudden. Second thing I dislike is, that we do not see the stats different weapons are using. (ATK mod, DMG mod), while veteran DnD players will know them anyway, some of my friends do not. And I'm not sure, if there are weapons out there, using some uncommon modifier like CHA or CON like in some DnD games. Why am I writing this review? Because I think this game deserves more good feedback. If you are unsure, wait for a few patches. After that you can enjoy entertaining companions, interesting quests and landscapes, almost a very good story (looking at you, time limit) and actually leveling up taking longer than getting the XP bar full :D. Cheers

Pathfinder: Kingmaker has almost everything that I've wanted in a cRPG lately. Top down isometric views, full customization of your player character, and a moderate customization of your NPC party, an almost full spell book utilizing both divine and arcane spell trees, combat and spell feats for you to select while leveling up. If you've played Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, the views of Pathfinder: Kingmaker are similar. Of course as expected Pathfinder: Kingmaker's art style is not the same as such Infinity Engine games of the 90s, but it comes close. If you enjoyed the spells and feat selections of games such as Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2, then you'll also find pleasure in Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Pathfinder: Kingmaker not only allows you to level up your party, it allows you to build a Kingdom. Without getting into spoilers, at a point you will either by good or evil actions, inherit a small Barony. You'll make decisions in your council room every week to 2 weeks on the politics, borders, military, financial and spiritual well being of your Barony. At times it does feel tedious, having to be back at your Barony every 2 weeks or else you fail your Kingdom and the game ends, no seriously if your Kingdom gets destroyed you have to start over. You can turn that off in the in game menu, but then the game feels empty. The game doesn't have as many quests as it could, and you don't always know when and where you should go. Thats where google comes in. I'm not kidding, there might be a clue that a NPC said 5 weeks ago, that you didn't write down in your journal, that you're supposed to remember where to find a hidden Gem to finish a quest. Oh and if you didn't finish that quest in time, then the quest is ruined and you can't. Owlcat Games just released a huge 2.0 update for the game, there are multiple improvements, and I've never once encountered a bug that has crashed the game, only my stupidity has ruined it for me. 4/5 because I'm still a sucker for BG1 and 2, and NWN1-2.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker lets you you play as the ruler of your own kingdom, expanding it every chapter and solving/fighting the various threats your kingdom encounters. For the most part this means visiting lots of areas and dungeons with your party, doing quests and fighting enemies. Another part consists of managing your kingdom as a ruler and building settlements - this is basically a minigame within the game. I agree with a lot of people that the kingdom management part isn't really engaging, but you can just set the difficulty of it to effortless or easy. The best part of the game is the combat. You can play real time with pause, or turn based. I advise everyone new to the game to start with turn based combat, as it really lets you understand what the different skills and spells do. When you reach a higher level, you can always switch to real time combat. The story and companions were okay in my opinion, but not as good as Baldur's Gate 2 or Divinity Original Sin 2. The only real downside to this game is the steep learning curve. If you're not familiar with the pen and paper version of Pathfinder, prepare to look up a lot of things on the internet. I used a build guide myself. Conclusion: Pathinder: Kingmaker is basically the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. If you like those games, you owe it to yourself to play this game.