Games

I just finished this game after 120~ hours. I didn't know you couldn't post reviews of Steam games you are playing through a Steam Family but don't own yourself. So I'm posting this here because I don't want my words to go to waste.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a mixed bag. While I enjoyed it enough to play it for all 120 hours it took to finish the main campaign, it has many peaks and valleys and never quite stays consistent.

The character and combat systems and rules are deep and complex, which is great for minmaxxers, but can be overwhelming for those not familiar with the Pathfinder tabletop rules. Most "optimal" decisions are not necessarily intuitive to those unfamiliar, and the game doesn't spend a lot of time trying to teach you how everything fits together. It's up to you to figure it out over the course of the campaign. For example, some meta builds have you grabbing 1 level in as many as 3 different classes for the significant benefits that 1 level gets you over going deeper into your main class. But, if this is too much, you can also just play a Fighter to max level and pick whatever feats sound best. As long as you don't plan to play on higher difficulties. The choices available, while overwhelming and easy to choose wrong, are one of the biggest strengths.

The kingdom management is less so. Once you understand two keys things - spending money on building points and prioritizing Problems instead of Opportunities - it is more a matter of flavor as you watch your decisions unfold based on the advisors you choose to assist you. Optimal town management is not necessary or particularly interesting, as you can't interact with any of the buildings other than those of the craftspeople who flock to your kingdom. They don't change the layout of your city on the actual map, and you at most get a few bonus NPCs wandering around your cities with a few sentences of unique dialogue. Very few quests are affected by the decisions you make in the kingdom management, and you will run into many repeat cards through the campaign.

This is where the first valley shows itself. The game keeps a general flow of doing some quests in your kingdom, then returning to manage your affairs before venturing out again. This would be fine, except that at many points in the game, there is nothing for you to do except to assign advisors to cards, do a project that requires your presence and passes the time, then do it again. Over and over, with very little interesting happening until the next big story beat occurs on a set schedule and calls you away. In other words, the balance is too heavy in the direction of spending hours questing with little kingdom interaction, or spending 30 minutes watching kingdom cards fly by and reading flavor text.

As for the story, it also has its ups and downs. You have a strong cast of companion characters (mostly) to choose from, and even your non-playable kingdom advisors have full and interesting backstories. They interject in conversations and many have unique dialogue with certain NPCs or change quest outcomes/options entirely if they are present. But parts of the main story, partly due to the pacing issues I described above, are a let down. They are either too short to really care about the people involved, like Chapter 6. Or they are a little too long and overstay their welcome, like Chapter 5. The first few chapters are some of the better paced and more interesting, before the mysteries of the plot are fully revealed. And probably due to undergoing more extensive testing and feedback. They are a slow burn though, so some people will likely quit before getting to the payoff.

The combat is where you will spend the bulk of the game. If you are getting the hang of things, or already know Pathfinder rules, this will be a strength. You will either beat encounters with reasonable effort, or even breeze through them with your superior game knowledge, exploiting it to its fullest. If you are not understanding how things connect, it can be very frustrating and you are likely to be staring at a battle log full of Misses because you can not overcome the enemy's AC, or having your entire party crowd controlled to uselessness because you didn't learn a certain buff on your Cleric. This is especially true near the end of the game, where the final two dungeons test how closely you've been paying attention and throw every effect under the sun at you to a frankly obnoxious degree. If you have not selected the proper spells while leveling and kept your secondary companions equipped, this last chapter is miserable and I expect another point where many will choose not to continue. There are similar, but smaller, difficult encounters sprinkled throughout the game that will either equally challenge or frustrate players. Whether you play primarily in turn-based or real-time mode, or a mixture of the two, will also make a big difference in the ease and difficulty of some encounters.

While I did not run into any game breaking bugs, even playing on Linux, I did have an entire companion disappear from my game in the last chapter. They were suddenly no longer there, were never mentioned again even in my ending slides, and I suspect there was an issue with the cutscene that was supposed to return them to my party where it just never triggered. There are reportedly amny smaller bugs throughout with feats and items not having their intended effect, but either I did not encounter them or was unaware they were happening.

Overall, it was a good experience, but I don't necessarily recommend it for someone interested in the CRPG genre who wants an especially polished game. The indirect sequel, Wrath of the Righteous, fixed a lot of issues people had with Kingmaker as the developers learned from and responded to feedback. They are unfortunately unable to port these fixes back to Kingmaker due to rights issues and have since moved on. But it has a better and more usable UI, fewer bugs, a more active modding community, and so on. There are also many other great games out there in the genre, including Owlcat's other games, and many of them do not take near as long to complete. But if the idea of building a kingdom from scratch over 100~ hours appeals to you or if you'd prefer to start with a less polished game before playing smoother ones (to truly appreciate what was changed), then Kingmaker is worth a look and can be frequently found on sale for as little as 5 dollars.