KickStarter Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pre-DLC Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Shadenuat]

Yeah I actually now can Hold trolls on Hard reliably.

Time to switch to Unfair I guess

 

[Andnjord]

Yeah I actually now can Hold trolls on Hard reliably.

Time to switch to Unfair I guess

I'm really glad they fixed this, until now my casters were limited to buffing bots and casting the occasional magic missile (since it's the only damage spell that allows no saves) instead of CCing. And that was with Spell Penetration, Improved Spell penetration, Magic School Focus....

Conversely, didn't your main casting stat (so Int for Wizards, Wis for Druid...) used to affect the DC of a spell in D20 games? Or am I remembering that wrong?

 

[Infinitron]

More 6/10s.

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/pathfinder-kingmaker-review-the-classics/1900-6417006/

Pathfinder: Kingmaker Review - The Classic
Not all those who wander are lost.

While there have been many, many attempts to translate the tabletop roleplaying experience to the PC and console, more often than not it hasn't quite worked out. One of the biggest struggles in transitioning a traditional tabletop RPG into the quicker, imminently more binge-able video game form is incorporating a complex ruleset faithfully. Hypothetically speaking, with the right combo of spells and skills, a tabletop campaign can get utterly bizarre, with players collaborating to do things like using effectively unlimited ammunition to shoot through a mountain. These kinds of solutions are impossible in video games, where destructible environments and the difficulty of coding different possibilities necessarily limits the ways you can interact with the game. Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a partial exception to that rule, but it often fumbles with the execution.

Just about everything has been wholesale imported from the Pathfinder tabletop games; nearly all the mechanics, spells, skills, etc. make their way in, and so does a massive chunk of the lore and mythology. That's all well and good, particularly because Kingmaker offers plenty of options to help customize the difficulty and effectively put you in the role of Game Master. There are more than a dozen options for adjusting everything from damage scaling for foes--a handicap that makes you more resistant to harm in tougher fights--to how the AI will manage your (eventual) kingdom.


Given that this is a hefty choose-your-own-everything adventure, your character is a blank slate. You can pick from many of the basic races--as well as the godlike aasimar--and a fair few of the basic classes, skills and abilities from the tabletop edition. Your companions are initially pulled from a crowd of heroes you meet in the game's opening, but it expands soon after with any number of additional friends and allies to bring along the way. For the most part, these serve as means to an end. Your allies are as much a part of the experience as your own character is, both in terms of party composition and roleplaying in the narrative.

This is reinforced by one of the few concessions the tabletop game doesn't make, but the game does: party-wide skill checks. Passing obstacles in the tabletop Pathfinder, for instance, can often separate the party, as those that don't have a skill like acrobatics won't be able to maneuver through a thicket. Instead, in Kingmaker, the party completes these tasks as a team. It behooves you, then, to really spread out your abilities and party to maximize coverage of options over making sure everyone has the same basic setup with slightly different modifications down the line.

Such concessions transition well into group cohesion in combat, as well. With such a diverse set of specializations, party management is exceptionally important--especially because of the intense base difficulty. By default, Kingmaker follows the rules of tabletop perhaps too closely; it's a system where simple combat with a few foes can take 30 minutes to an hour (or more), all compressed into a few seconds on-screen. That can be taxing as it requires tremendous familiarity with each classes' traits as well as the acuity to know how to pull them together.

Were everyone sitting around the table, each would have a couple minutes to look over their spells, consider all manner of responses, and then execute the plan on their next turn. In Kingmaker, though, combat largely happens in real time. Sure, you have a pause button and can quickly look over your characters to devise tactics mid-battle, but this absolutely grinds combat down and really hits the pacing of the game in the worst way.

Spoiler

Perhaps a bit more troubling is the fact that within Pathfinder's ruleset, many monsters and creatures require very specific tools to kill. Swarms of small creatures like rats, for instance, can't be effectively fought with a sword and shield. Sometimes Kingmaker warns you, but other times it simply expects you to know how to handle the problem. Rust monsters, skeletons, ghosts, and so on all have specific tools that you need to understand and be able to use with relative ease. That's made easier by having a diverse party, but then you have to take far more time aside to learn the ins and outs of your band of characters than a traditional tabletop player.

This tension--between what Kingmaker is trying to be and what that looks like in practice--is at the heart of many of its missteps. With more than a dozen references and resources to draw upon, quite a few things have slipped through the cracks, causing issues of balance throughout. There’s the distinct impression that Pathfinder’s convoluted rulesets have led to oversights in how damage gets calculated by the game in this or that room, or whether you’ll face a much higher spell failure chance when squaring against a boss.


There have patches since release, and many of the adjustments definitely work. A slightly modified Story Mode (the name of one of the difficulty presets) is a solid entry point for many. Still, the rules and procedures can be labyrinthine--and that's even with tooltips that explain proper nouns and the requisite in-game encyclopedia to explain everything else.

For those willing to take on the challenge, however, what lies beneath the brusque exterior is a welcome return to involved roleplaying. The voice acting is spotty, and writing can be a bit cliché at times, but the game doesn't shy away from its subtitle. In relatively short order, you earn your barony and have the ability to build it out however you choose--hiring advisers and upgrading facilities to help you along the adventure. Kingmaker’s campaign cuts much closer to long-term tabletop campaigns and gives you a stable home base from which to plan your next outing. And, not to belabor the point, but most of your mini-adventures will definitely require prep.

These outings also constitute the bulk of your questing play and a good chunk of the ongoing narrative--an interconnected web of relationships and allegiances that lends itself to plenty of political intrigue and exciting adventures. Unearthing the mysteries of not only your “employers” but also the shifting factions of the Stolen Lands and how that plays into the world at large is definitely an extraordinary and rewarding endeavor.

The interaction between the ruling bit of play and the rest of it is great. Having each of these systems--roleplaying, combat, adventuring, and what's essentially SimCity-lite--feed into and influence one another yields an experience that is as broad as it is deep. Your level of investment and engagement with each is largely up to you, but each of them matters and will require attentiveness to get the best results. But the opportunities it yields are exceptional. Having your roleplaying choices and character story and alignment all play into how you rule and who accompanies you on your trek is amazing. Working towards getting a well-crafted set of gear for your party after carefully maneuvering through hours of quests and adventures, all for the glory of besting a big bad using all the skills and abilities you've given your team, are high points of the adventure.

All-told, Kingmaker isn't a stellar outing, hampered by a litany of small issues, balancing, and the gargantuan knowledge base you'll need to play most effectively. But, for those with the patience, the rewards are well worth the investment.

THE GOOD
Faithful structure that encourages roleplaying
Excellent interplay between roleplaying, combat, and governance for an adventure that’s got breadth and depth
Exciting adventures that steep you in the political depth and drama of the region

THE BAD
Requires an overwhelming amount of background knowledge
Combat can be unforgiving

6
FAIR

https://www.rpgsite.net/review/7850-pathfinder-kingmaker-review

Pathfinder: Kingmaker Review

In a niche genre occupied by the likes of Obsidian, Larian, and inXile, it was not immediately clear exactly how well fledgling Russian developer Owlcat games could make a mark on the modern CRPG space with their debut title. One way to maximize their chances, certainly, was to adapt Paizo's Pathfinder role-playing game, a popular spin-off of the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Edition that was even able to outsell the maligned 4th Edition for a time. Part RPG and part management sim, Pathfinder: Kingmaker has some obvious potential and lots of interesting concepts that make it worth exploring. Unfortunately, to state that the majority of this potential is heavily overshadowed by the state the game launched in would still somehow be an understatement. This game was clearly not ready to be released.



The setup for Kingmaker is pretty straightforward. Your player character is summoned by a local Swordlord to venture into a region known simply as the Stolen Lands, and do what no one's been able to for an extended period of time - establish a kingdom that's able to stand the test of time. You see, most of the upstart nations of the area have tended to crumble after a short life for one reason or another, meaning that the first person able to overcome this odd circumstance would find themselves in an immensely influential position of power. Which is why so many people have tried and failed to establish their own sovereignties, and why many others would want to either ally with or undermine the first person that's able to succeed.

In a short prologue section that acts primarily as the game's tutorial, you end up encountering a good number of other like-minded personalities that immediately find their goals and dispositions either aligning or opposing with yours. Upon setting out for the unclaimed territory, It's quickly obvious that the region has a propensity for curses with many of the previous inhabitants falling victim to one tragic fate or another.

Spoiler

In the game's first act, the gameplay is singularly focused into a pretty standard real-time with pause CRPG. You have a party of up to 6 companions, each with a preset class and alignment. Interestingly enough, the companions made available to the player starting off depends on the player's actions in the game's opening hour, and while all of the available characters can eventually be recruited, it can make quite an impact on how the game's first handful of quests and encounters play out - especially on the harder difficulties.

After a handful of hours toppling the haphazardly established rule of the game's first major boss, the game's second major gameplay component is introduced: Kingdom Management. While it initially feels a little awkward to have these mechanics introduced pretty far into the game's runtime -- it took me about 8 hours to get to this point -- it ends up being a major component from then on.

Kingdom management manifests itself in a couple of ways. Party members and quest-critical NPCs can find themselves in bespoke 'adviser' roles, suited for solving many of the kingdom's problems, with curses, bandits, culture, an economy in its infancy, and so on. By keeping on top of both the desires of the inhabitants of your newly ruled region as well as the alliances of other nations, you'll find yourself able to annex more regions, appoint new advisers, and give yourself bonuses for the areas under your control. Some of this involves simply passing a dice check based on an adviser's skill level, while others will involve going out and actually investigating new areas and questing in a more standard manner.



In a lot of ways, the cross-talk between the more standard RPG exploration and combat on one side and the kingdom progression on the other is some of the most interesting and unique that I've experienced. A small number of encountered NPCs can become advisers, giving you access to completing more opportunities at once, while others become artisans that can deliver valuable and unique gear to your kingdom should you choose to ally with them. Well managed regions can give yourself bonuses to attack rolls or other perks such as poison immunity for as long as you're questing in a region that belongs to you.

Towns can be established in newly annexed regions, giving access to new NPCs and errands, and new tasks to be completed in terms of stabilizing these areas and extending the reach of your influence. In the other direction, narrative-focused questlines will have an impact on your kingdom management as well. Early on, straightforward obstacles such as trolls or the undead constantly showing up and causing problems end up requiring a strong military response in order to maintain stability. Later on, the sorts of threats become slightly more varied, such as neighboring kingdoms slandering the legitimacy of your rule and spreading propaganda amongst your people.

What this means is that there's a natural push to spend equal amounts of effort in both modes of the game. Players that ignore the kingdom building aspects of the game will find themselves forgoing the unique gear and questlines that it can open up, as well as the bonuses it can provide. Players who want to completely put off the story-critical stuff until the last moment will find themselves struggling to outpace the constant pressure on the kingdom caused by the current threats. While there's not often a hard time-limit to progress the story forward, there's usually an effective one where players will find themselves overrun if they ignore the threat for too long.



The narrative present here is a highlight, and the classic RPG component of the game is the far stronger of the two, even though the interaction with the kingdom-building is incredibly interesting. Each act has a unique and singular threat ranging from trolls, to the undead, to barbarians, to an enemy kingdom, and there's a natural sense of escalation as players move from one to the next. What starts out as seemingly isolated events ends up coalescing into a single cohesive thread by the games end. The sheer amount of questing to be done is meaty as well, and it took me about 80 hours to get to the game's final act. Enemies and environments are varied, old events are referenced back on when it becomes necessary, and party members often play a surprisingly active role as the story progresses.

Despite there being 11 unique companions available to ally with, the extent of each of their personal stories and questlines is pretty remarkable. Each party member has multiple quests relating to their history, and some of them are directly tied to the main narrative in ways that are pretty impressive. Characters will leave the party both expectedly and unexpectedly clearing stating their personal goals and involving their personal histories. On top of that, the variety of the character quests ranges from simple (and not so simple) fetch errands to hosting a party to simply solving a dispute in your capital. Not every companion's story is equally engaging -- Valerie's is especially dull -- but even the least interesting at least gives the player multiple objectives throughout the course of the game.



Unfortunately, the kingdom-building half of the game is far less engaging on its own, mainly due to a lack of feedback outside of the menus or underlying mechanics. While performing well with respect to solving disputes and undertaking opportunities that arise as your kingdom grows, it never feels like more than numbers on a page.

Upgrading settlements from villages to towns doesn't change how they look when you actually visit them, and they all have the same layout as it is. Ranking up the various stats such as military, economy, and the like provides you bonuses to undertake more difficult challenges, but it is never reflected anywhere except in the abstracted nature of the kingdom menus. Kingdoms with strong economies will find themselves with more build points and stronger advisors in order to pass higher-level bonuses, but there's next to no payoff otherwise.



In a way, it almost feels like a very parasitic relationship between the player and the game in that the player is asked to devote time and resources to this gameplay mode only to be given very little in return. Thorough heads of state will diligently delegate their advisers amongst the tasks best suited and rank up their kingdom stats, but outside of being told that the kingdom's economy is now rank IX or the like, nothing really feels different from hour 1 to hour 20.

In addition to this, some events take absurdly long amounts of in-game time, up to 90 or more in-game days. Traveling across the whole map takes about 3, to put that in perspective. This means when you only have 10 advisers at most (and you only unlock more than 5 a fair ways into the game), you'll often find yourself saddled with immediate problems that you can't solve because the only available advisers to solve the problem are occupied for the next two in-game months.

On one occasion late in the game, I found myself facing a key story-related problem where a curse was affecting my kingdom on a daily basis - each day I left it unsolved damaged my kingdom irreparably. After about 11 days of this, my kingdom crumbled under the weight of the issue that could not be addressed. The only advisers allowed to tackle the issue had been set on long-duration projects that I could not recall them from, so I found myself literally unable to progress, even though their projects had been started several days prior. The build points necessary to complete several projects also feels incredibly high, often resulting in me resorting to selling every unique piece of equipment I had but wasn't using to the shop to simply buy out the available points outright.



Which brings me to the colossal glaring flaw of the current state of Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and that's the lack of a functional game underneath it all. The lack of polish is the worst I have personally experienced in a game to date.

Early on, the bugs present were of the typical variety expected in a game like this, a few stalled quests, some items that failed to spawn, and some kingdom-management side bugs with duplicated projects. It was rough around the edges but not something that couldn't be quickly patched up.

Further and further in, however, I found myself more and more aggravated with issues that increased in size, scope, and impact. Even after story threats were dealt with, the problems arising from those threats continued to attack my kingdom (for instance, troll raids after the defeat of the troll king early on). One of my companions somehow got hit with a disintegration bug, but it didn't kick in until I visited my capital several hours later, causing him to die on the spot.

More quests would break, including several of the companion quests, my rogue's perception somehow fell to negative 250, dialogue options wouldn't engage, certain projects would somehow now be found in triplicate in the kingdom menus, quest-critical objects failed to spawn, my cleric could now channel positive energy 125 times a day instead of 10, certain areas would freeze my characters at the entrance, my barbarian companion somehow got doubled in the party menu, and one of the game's final major acts failed to close out properly, leaving me unable to finish the game outright.

While Owlcat has been patching the game near daily with bug fixes, each fix seems to incorporate several new bugs in a process that felt like an early beta rather than a 1.0 release. It's disappointing that the game is in such a poor state at the moment because the scope and framework of Kingmaker's potential is, somehow, still apparent. There's a high ceiling here, but the walls haven't even finished being built. This isn't a game waiting for the paint to dry, it's still wrapped in caution tape.



I do want to make one thing clear - I enjoyed what I played of Kingmaker so much that losing a companion to a bugged status effect and many numerous resets of several hours of progress to circumvent poorly balanced kingdom mechanics wasn't enough to get me to shelve the game. Interesting companions, a unique framework, and a strong story were all enough to force me to keep going, to hope that I could somehow navigate the bugs, ignore the failed questlines I wanted to finish, and persevere through wonky balancing in an attempt to reach the game's conclusion, only to be stonewalled on the last lap. In 6 months or so, once the many numerous issues are dealt with both on a performance front as well as balance, this game could be amazing. But right now it's not, and sadly, it's not close.

 

[Shadenuat]

Conversely, didn't your main casting stat (so Int for Wizards, Wis for Druid...) used to affect the DC of a spell in D20 games? Or am I remembering that wrong?

It does.

Basic Harrim with like a band of wisdom gains +7 DC, and trolls I just met on Hard have +8 Will so far after patch. That means that without any spell focus, anything, two Hold Persons is enough to hold any basic enraged troll. For a 1 tier lower difficulty from hardest in the game, this is a really good chance for a character that has, well, no bonuses to spells except his basic high WIS.

Consider this: my 16th level Linzi has +5-7 DC for Enchantment/particular enchant spell from *items*. Only items, not stat items - just like, +2 dc to enchant, +2 dc to mind affecting, +2 dc to particular spell... Game gives you a shitton of tools to skew numbers in your favour.

 

[Hamster]

BREAKING NEWS: Codexers desert new cRPG en-masse as city builder lack of cosmetic upgrade proves to be the breaking point!

Spoiler

Well, yes, it was a final piece of the puzzle for me:
- we know from discord server that the game was released early due to pressure from the publisher.
- physical copies were supposed to be shipped shortly before release but were delayed for a month.
- and now community managers on steam are suspiciously silent about missing city progression.

We are most likely not waiting for just bug fixes, we are waiting for them to patch in the rest of the game.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

More 6/10s.

It's what they deserve for how buggy it is.

 

[Luckmann]

how fucked up do you have to be to rating spree someone and then complain when they do it back to you? I've asked you a million times to leave me alone. Don't rate me, don't post on my page, don't add my name in posts, don't reply to me.

Seems like a fair eeee... demand?

Thing is, I've literally never gone on a rating-spree against Roqua, I just rate his posts as I see them and according to their content, which is usually retarded, butthurt, and/or condensed autism, nor have I ever stalked him. I only started to use the stalking function the other day because he keeps living in this alternate dimension where people pay attention to him other than laugh at him, and where everyone is stalking him.

And every time you call him out on his subsaharan behaviour, he spergs out, shits his diapers, and spills all the spaghetti. It is just extra-funny that he is on a crusade against nu-Codexers, where nu-Codexers are apparently anyone and everyone that isn't as much of a socially challenged dumpster-fire as himself, and he's completely unable to pick up on even unsubtle hints that when it comes to some, he is the nu-Codexer.

Also, it's hilarious to watch him melt down as he chews on the keyboard in impotent (literally and figurative) rage, so it's not like I'm going to stop rating the retard's retarded retard-posts. Unfortunately, I can't rate :autism: for some reason.

God, you are fucking retarded. If I log in and have 15 ratings from you in a row, and I give you 12 back, and then you claim I did 30 like a super autistic fema-NAZI psycho, and you keep fucking replying to me, and keep posting on my page, and keep going out of your way to be a nuCodex retard-hero, specifically to bother me - then you whine that it bothers me. How hard is it to leave me alone and not stalk me? Just stop being a hyper-retard and stop. Go play pokeman and my little pony with the other little girls at your school.

I truly despise Dunning-Kruger champions like you. You really think you are some sort of hot shit because you post way too much on an rpg site taken over by 12 year old retarded edgelords you make laugh. You have failed at life in everyway possible. You are too frightened to leave your government subsidized apartment, too dumb to be able to play video games like a non-retard, too stupid to leave the adults alone, too low T to do anything but stalk people on a fucking rpg website, too immature and retarded to make anyone but a little kid as retarded as you laugh. Just a complete failure.

Now seriously, leave me alone. Again, do not quote me, mention me, reply to any of my posts, and for the love of God don't rating spree me and then get all butthurt like a retard and throw your helmet off in rage and make a post about how I gave you triple the negative buttons I did. Just fuck off you fucking moron.

You need a fucking Bruce tag you little low T bitch. I want to use your prostate like a punching bag for my dick you little pansy ass sheboy.

The thing is, though, if you happen to log in and have 15 ratings from me in a row, it would be because you've written 15 retarded posts in a thread that I'm following. Given your post frequency and the fact that there isn't actually that many threads where we meet, combined with the fact that I'm not the only one rating your posts, suggests that you're an autistic liar full of shit. You, on the other hand, are a butthurt retard that cannot help yourself but to absolutely lose your mind and think that you're stalked every time someone points out that something you're saying is retarded - which happens with alarming frequency - and then you go on targeted rating sprees regardless of what thread the posts are in and regardless of their content, hoping that this time, this will be the time someone actually cares and doesn't just laugh at you like the little spergy screecher that you are, Tyrone.

I have no doubt that you believe the little scenarios you make up about other people either, just like you think that you're being stalked by someone - anyone - as if anyone would think that you're relevant or important and not just retarded.

And thanks for the offer, Tyrone, but I'm not gay and I don't want AIDS, so please keep such fantasies to yourself in the future. You're not healthy.

More 6/10s.

It's what they deserve for how buggy it is.

I can't disagree, no matter how much I wish I could. It should never have been released in this state. Honestly, given the bugs and the release issues, I think that 5/10 would be a completely fair score to give, as long as that is cited as the reason why.

I think in Pathfinder Druids may need Strenght if they want to melee. The wildshape is supposed to add a bonus to stats, not overwrite them.

Yep, most shapeshifter druid builds have high strength. There is also a pnp class called Shifter which is a full martial dedicated to shape-shifting and taking beast buffs, it is unfortunately much weaker than playing a druid who specialises in wildshape.

It isn't that hard to do really, you just keep mental stat (wisdom) high enough to accomplish any casting you need to do and put the rest into phys stats.

A common issue, I feel. Paizo often over-compensates, creating Archetypes and Prestige Classes that are powerful and specialized, and then tune them downwards until they are useless compared to the base class. It's incredibly annoying, actually, because it neuters a lot of cool concepts - such as Shifter, for example.

 

[Morkar Left]

Lots of popamole bullshit there. Seems nobody mentions all the bugs??? Game is basically unplayable in its current state...

EDIT: ok, the second one mentions it

 

[Hamster]

More 6/10s.

It's what they deserve for how buggy it is.

Except when you read the gamespot review it's apparent that they didn't play far enough to encounter gamebreaking bugs.

 

[Hamster]

Lots of popamole bullshit there. Seems nobody mentions all the bugs??? Game is basically unplayable in its current state...

You have to be actually competent to play far enough to encounter serious bugs.

 

[fantadomat]

BREAKING NEWS: Codexers desert new cRPG en-masse as city builder lack of cosmetic upgrade proves to be the breaking point!

Spoiler

Well, yes, it was a final piece of the puzzle for me:
- we know from discord server that the game was released early due to pressure from the publisher.
- physical copies were supposed to be shipped shortly before release but were delayed for a month.
- and now community managers on steam are suspiciously silent about missing city progression.

We are most likely not waiting for just bug fixes, we are waiting for them to patch in the rest of the game.

This make me soooooo proud. No better scammers than Slavs .

 

[Jaedar]

Lots of popamole bullshit there. Seems nobody mentions all the bugs??? Game is basically unplayable in its current state...

You have to be actually competent to play far enough to encounter serious bugs.

This was true at launch but the stacking bug could occur very early.

 

[Luckmann]

do blight druids suck or did i just build mine wrong? necromancy is fun but aint particularly strong, so is miasma. it's still druid so it's not a weak character by any means, but the trade off for lacking animal companion doesn't seem great.

What do Blight Druids even get? When looking at it, it seems like they trade in their animal and some other shit in order to be able to pick two rather bad domains (sadly, most domains are pretty shit, it seems).

It just seems like a terrible trade-off, really, since a regular Druid already can trade in their animal for Domains.

Also my mage can't cast stoneskin for some reason, I click on the icon and then can't select anyone and nothing happens.

You need ingredients for some spells. Stoneskin is one of them.

I also can't recruter Bartholomew after havin killed the trolls because he's just gone.

Assuming you checked inside of house/lab, maybe this is another timed quest. At least when i recruited him there was a line about "going to leave soon" at start.

Not sure I want to continue until some serious polishing.
Which is sad because I am having lot of fun

Yeah, same. I restrained myself for weekend but gave in yesterday only to find 2 new combat bugs (shatter defences allows character just plain ignore DEX on shaken foes and temporary keen weapon buffs, e.g. falcon aspect or magus enchantment, stopped working)

I didn't know about stoneskin!

Btw I doubt the Bartholomew quest is timed.... I went straight to the dwarves ruins after saving him in his lab and apparently I failed it the moment I picked the whip in the troll stronghold (that's the trip from lone house+1 single resting). The journal description straight said something along the line of "now that he's gone we won't miss him" or something like that...(why would be like that? Because I am chaotic evil?!?!)
It really felt bugged.

I did the same - I went straight to the hold after saving Bartholomew's ass, and then I went back after resolving it all, taking the whip with me (also, I think it's complete bullshit you can't tell Octavia that no, we've agreed to take that whip to Bartholomew, instead it's like "give it to me").

I don't remember anything about a journal update, though. I can't find it noted in my quest journal at all, and Bartholomew is just gone. And I'm Neutral Good, so it has nothing to do with alignment.

My game is fucked up beyond repair, quests that don't close, Amiri is invincible, Jubilost is now a toad, cutscenes that make npc unresponsive, Tristian keeps telling me to decide his fate even tho I did 200 days ago, it's like they didnt even play past chapter 4.

You think they played past Chapter 2? Here, have a rainbow.

Yeah I actually now can Hold trolls on Hard reliably.

Time to switch to Unfair I guess

I'm really glad they fixed this, until now my casters were limited to buffing bots and casting the occasional magic missile (since it's the only damage spell that allows no saves) instead of CCing. And that was with Spell Penetration, Improved Spell penetration, Magic School Focus....

Conversely, didn't your main casting stat (so Int for Wizards, Wis for Druid...) used to affect the DC of a spell in D20 games? Or am I remembering that wrong?

It should be, and does. But apparently (unless they've fixed it) it's supposedly Intelligence for everyone.

 

[Hamster]

Seems like romance system is the most immersive to be ever implemented in crpg:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/640820/discussions/0/1730963192555035022/

Octavia/Regongar romance frustration.
So it's not really romance with one of them "with optional threesome" as was promised, and more like poly relationship with optional same sex scenes. On kickstarter update about romances they did say:
"At the game's start Octavia and Regongar are a couple on the verge of breaking up." But in game they are actively flirting and sleeping with each other without any fights between them.

When Regongar purposes to have sex he always asks Octavia to join without asking my character at all.

He does, but she can refuse to join.

I know, but still it feel uncomfortable to me.

 

[Life of the Party]

Pathfinder: Kingmaker Review – It’s My Destiny to be the King of Pain

Every game wants to be the next Baldur’s Gate, and with the Dungeons & Dragons license mostly forgotten (Unless you choose to remember the lackluster Sword Coast Legends), it’s long been the dream of CRPG fans everywhere that someone would eventually rise up to fill the void that BioWare and Obsidian left behind. Sure, there have been some great attempts, such as Obsidian’s own Pillars of Eternity series – and some not-so-great attempts, like Beamdog’s Siege of Dragonspear – but the best chance anyone has at being “The Next BG” is to probably just start over and do something new.

That’s exactly what was proposed on Kickstarter when developer Owlcat games decided to use the popular Pathfinder setting to design their own party-based CRPG. Their aim was to not only bring back the Baldur’s Gate style of gameplay, but to do it in a completely new setting and with new gameplay elements that would do for the genre what Interplay’s original masterpiece accomplished in the late 90s. A lofty goal, to be sure, but one that many gamers – myself included – desperately wanted them to shoot for.

The fruit of that idea now sits in front of us as Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and after 50 hours of playing it, both in pre-release beta and the official release, do I feel it has fulfilled its mission to recreate and improve upon that late 90s style of CRPGing? Read on to find out why I think this game succumbs to the “one step forward, two steps back” conundrum.

Spoiler

While playing the game on Steam, a lot of friends messaged me and asked if it was a worthwhile purchase. The amusing thing about this is that depending on which section of the game I was in, my responses varied from “You need to play this at least once before you die” all the way to “This is the digital equivalent of Chinese water torture”. I eventually started replying with a blanket statement of “It’s hard to explain” and told them to wait for my review.

Let’s get one thing out of the way right now: The game’s combat, equipment, feat, skill, and underlying gameplay systems are all phenomenal. It takes standard 3.5 edition D&D and ups it a couple factors by giving you neat features no other D&D game had, but should have had. Things like being able to toggle power attack and cleave, and changing those two feats so that they actually do something meaningful instead of being rarely used situational skills. Or add prestige classes that can be taken almost immediately after starting the game as well as give you a truly gargantuan amount of feats to choose from during each and every level up screen. I simply couldn’t be happier with how the actual gameplay turned out.

While it does have some very high peaks and low valleys in terms of difficulty, that’s not neccesarily a bad thing. Though I think the developers made a big mistake by placing overpowered mobs in the wrong places (Let’s not throw damage resistant 26AC werewolves at a level 2 party in the second area of the game, ok?), it’s not that damning to just wait a few levels and come back to stomp those enemies with better equipment and a higher level party.

Combat is fast, exciting, full of gore, and plays like a “grown up” version of those old Infinity Engine titles. It’s a bit more tactical and noticeably slower than those games, but I felt it worked well for the kind of game they were pushing, since it’s meant to be a more robust answer to the trimmed-down aesthetic you see in other post-Baldur games like Pillars of Eternity and Sword Coast Legends.



Being able to right click toggle skills in the GUI, hot swap four different equipment load-outs, separating abilities from spells in the action bar, and giving you the option to snap/un-snap AoE spell radius circles are just some of the genius moves the developers came up with to make what is, in my opinion, the best real-time-with-pause CRPG combat that has ever been attempted.

The game’s combat and tactical style gave me huge ToEE vibes right out of the gate, and if Troika’s cult classic D&D game is your idea of the perfect CRPG, then you’re going to love at least half of Pathfinder.

I don’t know of any other CRPG, outside of Age of Decadence or Temple of Elemental Evil, that has dared to translate so many pen and paper skills to a video game before. The amount of realism it adds to the tired and stale 1990s formula is a breath of fresh air. It’s the same depth and combat realism that, until now, we were only getting from indie CRPGs.

Complexity is a double-edged sword though, and how you handle it determines whether you cut yourself or not…and looking at how they carried that fervent adherence to realism over to the rest of the game, it appears they’ve damn near beheaded themselves with it.



Realism works well when it’s used sparingly and its impact on gameplay is understood. Putting wind factors into a golf game where the breeze can affect your shot is a good idea. Allowing someone to manage the health and fitness level of their players in a football game can be fun. It can be said that, at least when used in a limited fashion, realism in a game can add to a player’s enjoyment by making them feel more in control of the character(s) they are playing.

The problem with Pathfinder is that the realism this game adds doesn’t give you control, it instead takes some level of control away from you and replaces the fun you were having with a large dose of tedium and frustration.

Imagine having a slow walking speed to begin with. Imagine that different levels of inventory encumbrance, even at low levels, greatly slowed you down as well. Imagine also that inclement weather, even light rain, decreased your speed even worse than the highest item weight did.

Now, imagine having to walk out of a dungeon with a lot of gear in your pockets and running smack dab into a raging rainstorm.



To illustrate this problem even further, picture a large overworld area that, when you waste 5 minutes trying to reach the edge of the screen through a rainstorm and a heavy backpack, won’t even let you leave until you sift through your gear and drop a few dozen things so you can make the encumbrance-reliant horseback ride to your castle.

I would have accepted this, since many games are guilty of similar crimes (Fallout, Elder Scrolls), but Pathfinder’s strict laws of realism did not simply end there.

Take for instance the map traveling you do in-between places of interest. Your party has to camp to rest, which is fine, but due to the slow speed and the fast passing of time in relation to your walking, you can barely get to the next way point on the map until you have to sleep again. Of course, you can ignore your party member’s pleas for shut-eye, but if you do, guess what? Your traveling speed decreases even more.

Even when you do give in and sleep as the game requires, you have to go through a camping mini-game where you set up guard duty, determine who cooks the food, who goes on hunts, and what skills are used to protect against attacks. While that in itself sounds fun, it comes tied with needless realism that only serves to make the game more frustrating.



How so? Well, imagine having a rule where anyone wearing medium or heavy armor has to take it off to sleep, so if you get attacked at night you enter the fight naked. Also imagine that, at least early on in the game before you can get your nature lore skill sufficiently high enough, your campsite is attacked 2-3 times a night.

I hope your inventory isn’t still causing encumbrance or (god forbid) it’s raining, because if it is, you’ll be picked off before you can even move a few feet. There are other little annoyances related to the game’s obsession with realism, but they are tied to the much-hyped “Kingdom Building” component that Pathfinder was built around. Which brings us to the game’s most disappointing misstep.

On the surface, the kingdom building mechanic seems like a great idea. After all, other CRPGs have tried it and succeeded, and what could be wrong with fleshing the system out a bit and improving on it? Games like Neverwinter Nights 2, Pillars of Eternity, and even console titles like Suikoden have handled it brilliantly, but they did so in very limited and streamlined ways.

Why not add more depth and realism to it in order to give the player more control over their story? And that’s the problem. The design choices they’ve made take away player control and, in the end, do not add much to the story either.



To start with, the kingdom building “mini-game”, since that’s what it essentially is, has turned out to be nothing more than an extremely stressful time management sim. Though it attempts to borrow from Dragon Age: Inquisition in the way that advisers are appointed and then assigned to varying tasks around the countryside, Pathfinder lacks any of that game’s quality of life enhancements or intuitiveness.

Events that happen in your kingdom pop up at random intervals, and it’s your job as baron to see those problems addressed in the best way possible. While that seems easy, you have to understand that time is constantly ticking, and each event has a certain amount of days it will take to complete, and while it is underway, the assigned character will be unable to do anything else.

This wouldn’t be a problem if you knew, at least partially, what events were coming up a week or so ahead of time, or were at least given some leeway in how you assign them. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case, and many times I lost considerable amounts of loyalty/economy points for my kingdom due to me having a crucial event arise but the only diplomat who could attend to it was on a 60 day un-cancellable mission.



Now this is assuming you’re in your throne room at the time these missions arise and you can handle them almost immediately. Try to guess what would happen if, as I mentioned earlier, you’re slightly encumbered, walking in the rain, lacking in sleep, and caught a few thousand miles away in a main story quest. If you’re anything like me, you’ll curse at your screen, exit the game, and take a break from it for the rest of the day.

Granted, there is supposed to be a feature that lets you remotely handle business at the castle as long as you’re within a territory you currently own, but since you’ll spend 90% of each chapter fighting enemies in new territories that you’re still trying to claim, it’s a bit useless.

Furthering the complication is that I never got such a feature to work with my game, and the icon to go back to the throne room only appeared when I was less than a day’s walk from the castle, which didn’t make sense to me, and often caused me to quit the game out of frustration when I ended up missing an important kingdom quest while out gallivanting with my party members.



Of course, your punishment for not being able to predict the future will be waiting for you when you load the game back up again.

Though perhaps punishment is too strong of a word for what goes on after you fail. Sure, your kingdom can collapse and you can even “lose the game” due to your spectacular fumbling of governance, but you’d really have to try hard to get to that point. While it’s true many of the main and side quests have a time limit that, if passed, results in them failing and possibly ending your campaign (And not all quests show their time requirement), that amount of time is usually pretty fair.

The truth is, what you do in the kingdom management mode has very little effect on the rest of the game. It doesn’t open new quests, doesn’t unlock new dungeons, doesn’t add new party members, and doesn’t give you new abilities or alter the plot in any major way. All it does do, on rare occasion, is unlock a new merchant (Such as the artisan that can repair artifacts) or line your pockets with gold.

As much fun as it is to see your kingdom grow and mature, as enjoyable it may be to annex neighboring territories and build your own towns on them, and as satisfying as seeing your townspeople throw you celebrations may be, none of it is as rewarding as it could have been or was promised to be. It feels like a wasted effort.



A good example of that wasted opportunity to create something fun would be when you finally upgrade your village to a full-fledged city. Once I spent about a thousand points and 25 hours of real world time upgrading it, I thought I could walk through it and see how it changed. I thought the incomplete buildings and ramshackle shrine that stood in the middle of the town square would now be finished and looking as grandiose as the game implied it would before I upgraded it.

No such luck, I’m afraid. The town looked just as dingy and uninhabited as it did before the upgrade. No actual change took place in the town itself, only in the stat sheet where the numbers detailing its advancement were shown and the sim-city-esque aerial view of it from where I placed buildings. Wonderful.

It doesn’t help either when to even get to the throne room to handle the business of your barony that you have to sit through half a dozen loading screens while flitting back and forth from one scene to the next.

Perhaps the most damning mistake of all is that the developers have made absolutely zero attempts to modernize their game. The cumbersome navigation of its many menus and sub-screens is so infuriatingly slow and laborious that there have been times I shut the game off simply because I didn’t feel like clicking through it all and needed a cold drink and a nap before I could gain enough mental stamina to put up with it for another hour or two.



I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating, but imagine wanting to go back to town and handle a few problems within your barony, but end up waiting through six or seven loading screens and a good 10 minutes of tedium just to appoint a ruler to the problem and head back out to the dungeon you were exploring.

First you’d have to walk back to the town on the overworld map, then click on the throne room icon in the town map, then walk to the war table in the throne room, then click on the appropriate area to assign the diplomat to, then walk out of the throne room, walk all the way through the entire town (Since there is no button to simply go back out of your throne room), and load the overworld map again.

Six loading screens, five menus, and probably 15 minutes of wasted time, all to do something that every other game that has had a similar kingdom management mini-game would do with a single button press. Is it realism that prevented Owlcat games from merely attaching a button that would warp you back to your throne room and back out again?

Is it devotion to Pathfinder lore that prevented them from having some magical artifact that would let me communicate with my advisors back at the castle while I’m half dead and 5 levels deep in a dungeon? I would assume so, and if you couldn’t tell yet, I’m not too pleased about it.



You know the game is in serious need of usability enhancements when you accidentally take the wrong NPC in your party and need to go back and swap them out for another, but have to go through the entire main capitol town and load 3 screens worth of kingdom navigation until you walk into one of the only two areas in the entire world that allow you to alter your active party roster. Just writing all of this is making my left eye twitch.

To be fair, you can shut off Kingdom management entirely. Due to my desire to finish the game and begin this review I did in fact do just that. Unfortunately, I realized very quickly that you miss out on half the game’s major story points and that while not handling your kingdom stripped the game of its tedium, it also had the unintended side effect of removing its personality as well.

You miss out on the foreshadowing of future events, the interactions between you and your counselors, the slow building up of your empire and you don’t get the satisfaction of seeing it grow. It does hurts a little bit, truth be told. So I reloaded an older save to where I still had it turned on and continued playing with it. I still don’t know which I prefer, and that bothers me.

Why they couldn’t have thrown in a carrier pigeon or “magic mirror” mechanic that lets you communicate with your castle while out adventuring is beyond me. I understand the value they place on realism and how they want to stay true to Pathfinder lore in order to establish a strong core to build a new intellectual property on, but “quality of life” enhancements are the big thing in gaming now, and unless you want to limit yourself to the hardcore “play 50 hours a week” types who seek out unweildy, aggravating indie CRPGs to brag about having beaten, then you better learn how to increase the usability of your game a tad.



So the Kingdom management isn’t all that we’d hoped for. Fine. You can shut it off and be done with it, or just half-heartedly engage in it just enough to keep the game from failing but still see all the plot points it presents to the story. No problem. As long as the gameplay, character interaction, and plot are strong, it’ll make up for it, right?

Let’s explore the party roster first:

Amiri, the barbarian girl you get early on, is a stereotypical “Men are holding me back” feminist that constantly (and I mean constantly) goes on rants moaning about how the men in her village were sexist against her. I normally wouldn’t be phased by it since this character type is common in fantasy stories, but how she drones on and on about it tested my patience.

Her companion quest is one giant cringe-fest where you have to engage with a rare boss monster and allow her to fight it by herself, and if you don’t turn off the rest of the party’s AI routines to facilitate that request, she verbally assaults and admonishes you for thinking she was so weak that she needed her help.

The hilarious addendum to this quest is that if for some reason Amiri starts to lose any of her one-on-one fights, she cries out to your party to help her, and upon winning, still brags about how she doesn’t need any men and can do things by herself.



To be honest, I don’t know if the entire quest is meant to be serious or if it’s just meant to be making fun of this kind of female behavior. I’m leaning towards the former, though.

Another painful addition to the party roster is Valerie, a fallen (but not evil) Paladin that left her knightly order because…wait for it… They thought she was too pretty and wouldn’t stop complimenting her. Every dialog with her, especially the romance-related ones, are filled with her getting rude with you for even daring to compliment her. It’s equal parts hilarious and sad.

There’s also the resident Mary Sue, the halfling girl named Linzi who also acts as the story’s narrator. Her companion quests basically revolve around you constantly telling her how amazing she is and how she is a gifted writer and her teachers back at the university were all closed-minded dunderheads who were holding her back with their devotion to tradition.

There’s even one instance where she steals a large sum of your kingdom’s treasury to start a book publishing business and you are forced to laugh it off and tell her she was completely in her right to take the funds to live out her dream. My eyes rolled so hard they nearly ended up on the floor.

There’s also Octavia, the typical promiscuous progressive who is hugging trees and preaching tolerance one minute then primping herself and flirting with everyone the next. She’s not as hideously ignorant as the aforementioned women, but her unrealistic approach to every situation makes her a very saccharine character, and one that were it not for her stats and how well she works as an arcane trickster, I would’ve never used in combat.



Somewhat amusingly, the only decent and entertaining character is the supposedly unlikable halfling alchemist, Jubilost. He’s haughty, over-confident, highly fond of capitalism, extremely logical, doesn’t care about anyone’s feelings and is as straight-laced and uncomplicated as a fantasy character can ever hope to be. He is essentially written in such a way that you can tell the writer was trying to make the player hate him, but he comes off looking just the opposite.

Jubilost can be appointed as your minister of the economy, and when you do so, he tinges every decision with subtle putdowns while belittling anyone who tries to inject “feelings” into matters of state. It’s for that reason alone I found him so relatable, since everyone else who surrounds you seems to think monster attacks, invading empires, and ancient curses can all be wished away with positive vibes, while Jubilost correctly admits that it takes money, personal sacrifice, and hard work.

Earning a respectable nod would be the Chaotic Evil goblin rogue, Nok-Nok, who you can recruit a bit farther into the game. He’s not too bad of a thief, and while you would expect his alignment to mesh with a Paladin hero, I went through the game as a Paladin and had no problems with him. In fact, his attitude is such that he doesn’t care about anyone or anything and would rather snatch nearby chickens to eat while the party is talking with an NPC. He does an admirable job of being this game’s comic relief, if nothing else.

Overall, the character roster is a bit weak, though I loved having an emo dwarf cleric and an undead elf on my team who didn’t try to murder the rest of my group in their sleep. I also enjoyed the half-orc Magus (and one required homosexual spellcaster) who is a completely overpowered tank mage that has an ability to use touch-range spells with his equipped melee weapon…a skill that allows him to cut through the game’s difficulty in the cheesiest way possible. So yes, the characters are a bit underwhelming…but how is the story?

It’s serviceable.



What I mean by that is it gets the job done. Partly due to the fact that the plot is delivered in drips and drabs through foreshadowing in the kingdom management quests, there wasn’t much that happened that ever made me anticipate getting over the next plot point and seeing what would occur next. The story just slowly plods along, like everything else in the game, and the payoffs at the end of the chapter are just a storybook vignette and a segue into the next great catastrophe that you have to deal with.

In truth, none of that bothers me, what does bug me is the fact that nothing in this game seems “finished” or fully fleshed out. Outside of the wonderfully crafted combat and 3.5-style game rules, everything else is bogged down by tedium and poor design. It’s obvious the developers are new at this, since they have no idea how important quality of life and usability enhancements are, especially in an RPG.

Their inexperience is also evident in the fact that the game has been out a week, received 4 patches in the time, and the game’s biggest problem – the long load of the intro screen – was “solved” by just putting a warning telling users to expect an unusually long load time.



There was a chance to craft a beautiful game here. An RPG that would’ve blown every imitator out of the water and been the replacement for Baldur’s Gate that people have been craving for a decade-and-a-half. Unfortunately, mired in poor design decisions and needless fluff, Pathfinder: Kingmaker is not that game.

Granted, it is fun due to the great combat, faithful interpretation of its D20 rules, 50+ hours of content, and supremely large overworld, but the tedium and lack of player comforts it remains saddled with bring it down substantially. Perhaps it was too lofty of a goal for an inexperienced developer to handle, or perhaps the resources weren’t there to make the kind of game they wanted…but whatever the reason was, this is the sort of CRPG you need to accept several major flaws with in order to gain any enjoyment from.

If you have the spare time, patience, and forgiveness to look past the jumbled mess of ideas and poorly implemented features this game was released as, then you’ll be rewarded with a gorgeously detailed combat system and a very large world to test your favorite builds out in. If not, however, you might just want to boot Neverwinter Nights 2 up again and see how this was done better 12 years ago.

What’s so sad about Pathfinder: Kingmaker is that the combat, spells, classes, and actual gameplay are all so solid, but everything else is mired in poor planning and design. Had the Kingdom management mechanic been exactly like, say, Pillars of Eternity or Neverwinter Nights 2, then half of this game’s problems would instantly disappear and you’d be looking at one of the best adaptions of tabletop the genre had ever produced.

Perhaps some will like the realism and enjoy the long periods of inactivity the game makes you put up with. Maybe they’ll enjoy the massive time sink (with little payoff) that the kingdom management mini-game represents. Maybe they’ll love walking slowly from zone to zone. Looking at the forums, I think most folks agree with me when I say that it’s holding the game back from being something greater.

The Verdict: 7

The Good:

• Faithful recreation of the tabletop game
• Excellent combat that challenges you and stays exciting through 50hrs of play
• Large overworld, tons of quests and content to battle through
• Character creation and development is some of the best in the genre right now

The Bad:

• Absolutely abysmal end-user experience, poor usability and interface problems
• Kingdom Management is a garbled mess of half-finished ideas and tedium
• Very few of your decisions in the kingdom management portion have an effect on the actual game, and vice-versa
• Baffling choices in gameplay design hold back enjoyment by adding frustration in areas where ease of play is desired/valued.

https://nichegamer.com/reviews/pathfinder-kingmaker-review/

 

[Alienman]

Is this area bugged for anyone else:

It's located to the far west. When I entered the map lots of gargoyles came wandering down the mountain, looked really weird. Like they ignored the rocks.

When I try to continue up the path, something here blocks me. Can't get passed it. New bug or something that has been there always?

 

[Shadenuat]

It should be, and does. But apparently (unless they've fixed it) it's supposedly Intelligence for everyone.

It works I just gave an example with Harrim

But for some reason Jaetal casts Inflict Light Wounds with +11
5 level+4 wis = 9, if we count Elf it would be 11, but Elf is +2 against spell resistance, not DC right?

or is spell penetration in spellbook is actual DC, I am now confused. I thought that is what you roll against enemy spell resistance i.e. like dragons n shit

no wait it is all correct im dumb game just shows DC in log in a wierd way. it's 1 + 4 like it should be.

 

[Luckmann]

It should be, and does. But apparently (unless they've fixed it) it's supposedly Intelligence for everyone.

It works I just gave an example with Harrim

But for some reason Jaetal casts Inflict Light Wounds with +11
5 level+4 wis = 9, if we count Elf it would be 11, but Elf is +2 against spell resistance, not DC right?

or is spell penetration in spellbook is actual DC, I am now confused. I thought that is what you roll against enemy spell resistance i.e. like dragons n shit

no wait it is all correct im dumb game just shows DC in log in a wierd way. it's 1 + 4 like it should be.

Sorry, I had apparently missed that post. Still, some people claimed to get weird results, so it might differ based on class. It could've been Eldritch Scion scaling by Intelligence (like a base Magus) or the Druid Archetype that scales based on Charisma instead of Wisdom, I dunno.

Seems like romance system is the most immersive to be ever implemented in crpg:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/640820/discussions/0/1730963192555035022/

Octavia/Regongar romance frustration.
So it's not really romance with one of them "with optional threesome" as was promised, and more like poly relationship with optional same sex scenes. On kickstarter update about romances they did say:
"At the game's start Octavia and Regongar are a couple on the verge of breaking up." But in game they are actively flirting and sleeping with each other without any fights between them.

When Regongar purposes to have sex he always asks Octavia to join without asking my character at all.

He does, but she can refuse to join.

I know, but still it feel uncomfortable to me.

So let me get this straight; they romance the dismissive half-orc that is open about his open relationships and giving absolutely zero fucks, and it triggers them when he asks others to join in and completely ignores your wishes?

Sounds like pure incline, to me. He may be a faggot, but at least he's a character. What, did they expect him to bend over backwards to appease them and change his ways? What absolute fags.

Imagine being so deep into the ideological trashbin and so coddled by modernist society that when you engage in a polygamous relationship with an abusive swinger, you get triggered when it turns out that he's actually an abusive swinger in a polygamous relationship.

 

[fantadomat]

Is this area bugged for anyone else:

It's located to the far west. When I entered the map lots of gargoyles came wandering down the mountain, looked really weird. Like they ignored the rocks.

When I try to continue up the path, something here blocks me. Can't get passed it. New bug or something that has been there always?

Yeah that is an area i mentioned before,it is pretty fucked up. Still the bug made the battle harder and more interesting tho.

 

[Bohrain]

Got Valerie's first quest and this time I tried to win the duel. Since I hadn't used her, I leveled her up as a sylvan sorcerer. The fight was a breeze with gazillion self buffs and animal companion.

 

[Jenkem]

this game is just a couple hotfixes away from perfection right?

 

[Got bored and left]

I am now no longer able to load the game. Everything is pain.

 

[Lambach]

How the fuck do you build the lab for Bokken? I don't see anything of the sort on the list of buildings that can be built in the capital.

 

[Doma]

How the fuck do you build the lab for Bokken? I don't see anything of the sort on the list of buildings that can be built in the capital.

You cannot build it in the capital.

You need to build a village in the outskirts. There you can build the lab.

 

[Alienman]

Yeah that is an area i mentioned before,it is pretty fucked up. Still the bug made the battle harder and more interesting tho.

I see. I'm wondering what is up there though.

this game is just a couple hotfixes away from perfection right?

Just a few microissues left!