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Pathfinder Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition - now with turn-based combat

Q

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Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Torment: Tides of Numenera Divinity: Original Sin 2
But the game is really full of boring trashmobs grinding. Even Deadfire is not great, but a far better game.
 

Cryomancer

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Has this four hour diatribe on the game been posted and discussed yet?

Not watched the whole thing, some of his UI issues and UI bugs specifically I can definitely get on board with, but I noticed an undertone I last witnessed with D:OS (original) where the game is apparently at fault if it doesn't specifically spell out what you have to do at any given time in neon letters in the journal. Downtime between major kingdom events is also likened to DA:Inquisition's gating of content behind power currency, which was somewhat curious to me given that I appreciated that free time to actually explore your growing kingdom. It's kinda unfocused and the dude sounds like he's having a breakdown at times, but there are some decent points peppered throughout. If I were a dev I'd give it a watch just to see how he misunderstands certain things.


That guy is garbage.

His number one problem is that nobody close to him has ever had the heart to tell him he's a moron.

Edit: Look at this one comment left on that video:

Damn, this is practically spot-on with my own impressions of the game. I was also frustrated to no end by it despite finding some enjoyment in some of the stories and quest/character arcs. On the Obsidian forums someone asked how Kingmaker compares with Deadfire, and I wrote the following in response:

I wasn't a fan [of Kingmaker], and it's a massive time-sink, probably twice as long as Deadfire overall and largely because of a lot of trash encounters, artificial timers surrounding the kingdom management system, and a much more extensive main story opposite to optional sidequesting and the likes. However, I would recommend giving it a try at least. It has its worthwhile elements and others have loved it so, who knows? As to how it compares specifically with Deadfire, well... I think it doesn't. I started a second playthrough of Deadfire as soon as I was done with Kingmaker and the more I played, the more the problems in Kingmaker became extremely apparent. Kingmaker is a pulpy high fantasy power trip, your goal is essentially to rise from novice adventurer to king of an entire new nation, and amidst it all there's numerous threats to your realm and pretenders to your throne, plenty of big epic stakes and enemies, but it's all very surface-level, it's all there for spectacle and entertainment's sake. Nothing wrong with that of course, it knows what it is. But Deadfire, as most Obsidian games, thrives a lot more on a solid thematic foundation, and even at its pulpiest there's still a sense of purpose to much of the content therein, if only to describe another facet of this world that is so deeply tied with the undelying discourse the game presents.

And whereas the writing in Kingmaker frequently comes across as crude or generic, there's a life and character to the particular cadence of the Huana or the Valians that is unique, lively and very underrated when in contrast to the former. From a sidequest or side content perspective, there's no doubt in my mind that Deadfire's the better game - most of the side content in Kingmaker is lacking, the sidequests tend to be very straight-forward and not plentiful, whilst 80% of what is there to discover in the world map amounts to endlessly rehashed small areas that act as little more than "arenas" to trash encounters. And whilst the game does react to the choices you make, these are almost exclusively dialogue or build-based, and often dialogue options are gutted outright by arbitrary barriers like alignment - in comparison the roleplay in Deadfire seems much freer and more plentiful, as quests and area design allow for a player to resolve the same in multiple ways just by choosing to play the sequence differently instead of merely choosing a different dialogue branch. The freedom of exploration and liveliness of the world stand out a lot more in Deadfire when directly compared to Kingmaker, which on the other hand feels generic to a fault, if no doubt appealing on a sheer comfort-food level.

All this without touching the worst aspect, which to me is the combat. Kingmaker's combat is absolutely woeful, ubiquitous and inescapable. If the first Pillars had a trash encounter problem, this one has it three times over. And all this without taking into account that the game does everything in its power to worsen and exacerbate every flaw in the IE games' combat system as well. This is the kind of game that follows the same balancing principles as a regular combat/strategy mod for Baldur's Gate II in that even in normal difficulties it requires you to have the prescience of knowing what you'll face when and what scrolls and characters to bring alongside you for which area; and since the game is on a timer all throughout, backtreading to acquire X or Y supply or companion is very costly. This is essentially a game where prebuffing isn't just a clever and accidental workaround to combat the way it proved to be in the IE games, it becomes a mandatory element through which all encounters are balanced around - and if you happen to forget to prebuff your party for a single trash mob of spiders (which can also occur as a random encounter on the road), then good luck because you'll likely end with two or three characters sporting a massive -8 STR, DEX and CON permanent debuff at the end of it. If you think this is just a single type of creature, or just a couple who can do this, think again, because basically everything here is capable of dealing attribute damage or permanent afflictions (see blindness too) to your party - and that's not even touching on several other baffling enemy designs like the AoE paralize auras on the Wild Hunt which themselves become your usual dungeon filler during the end of the game.

Other irritating features, as with the IE games, include crowd control conditions and DoT AoE spells alla Wall of Blades, Web or Cloudkill enduring for minutes after combat ends, rest interrupts and random road encounters consisting of trash mobs are plentiful to the point you could well have four or five of the former and two or three of the latter occur before you finish either action, enemies having a tendency to be dumb and heavy on spamming single moves or attacks (case in point: alchemist enemies tend to bombard you with a seemingly endless and constant barrage of fireball, regardless of whether it's effective against your party or not (say that we've cast communal protection against fire on ourselves for example), despite also wielding a crossbow for example), and these shortcomings in AI tend to be 'balanced' through inflating base stats and abilities to absurd degrees, to the point that even a regular boar in act 1 can have an STR score of 32. It's compared to games like this that you realize just how much great work has gone into redesigning and improving combat in the Pillars series. All of which also leads me to the bottom line which is...

Kingmaker is very likely a game served best by playing with cheats and cheat mods on. Movespeed cheats, difficulty down to a bare minimum, even the removal of random road encounters, anything to not have to deal with the relentless, tedious combat in this game and nevertheless allowing you to experience the story and several companions and companion arcs which are all very decent - I'd likely have enjoyed the game way more had I played it this way and not tried foolhardily to beat the game at the difficulty I did. Anyhow, these are my thoughts on the matter, hope they're worth something.

I must now give my eyeballs an acid bath.


I found this short comment to be much more insightful about this blithering retard:
"35 restoration potions? Delay poison, communal. Damnit man, you had two clerics. Read the descriptions of their spells) Edit: oh god, all those scrolls too... So... Easily... Avoidable..."
Followed by:
"it hurt to watch that debacle unfold. READ. YOUR. SPELLS."

:deathclaw:


I strongly agree; Putted in a random part of the video since i will not wast 3 hours of my life and started to listen while play Warthunder.

This guy was seriously complaining about "blind"? That he rested one time to switch cleric spells and another time to re switch when he could easily play in a custom difficulty where this effects are removed by an resting? Or purchase an SCROLL? He even suggested an option to remove effects on resting( that was in the game )? I played PfK on custom difficulty. Most of his complains could be resolved just by playing on custom difficulty. But no

"hur dur, i never played pathfinder but can't solo this game on unfair, so the game is bad", what is the next? "i don't understand the Chess rules but could't defeat the IA that defeated Kasparov, this chess game is unbalanced"
 

Jarpie

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Codex 2012 MCA
The comments are pure cancer, those people and his audience must be very mentally challenged, almost unbelievable.
 

smaug

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I’m at 11 mins and this guy just rambles in, good god I still have 3 hours.
Is the TL;DR really he just forgot to read the tutorial?
 

smaug

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Kingmaker was my first real CRPG, and I didn’t complain about shit. I ran into the wererat encounter and just left to come back later. Btw how do you not start with a tank? Is it possible to not get Harrim or Valerie? I started over 10 times and I got either 1 or the 2.
 

Beggar

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At first I was amazed and only later you find out what really is beneath the surface.
Oh, and ATOM is not even worth mentioning, it's just a mediocre game in every aspect.
Only Underrai isl still unblemished, even though being a 7/10 game
 

Country_Gravy

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bought during summer sale on steam. Just got to kingdom management. Enjoying it so far. Could be a really good mix of infinity engine type combat and kingdom management sim.

Needs TOEE turn-based combat, though.
 

smaug

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bought during summer sale on steam. Just got to kingdom management. Enjoying it so far. Could be a really good mix of infinity engine type combat and kingdom management sim.

Needs TOEE turn-based combat, though.
Are you using the turn-based mod?

It helps replicate ToEE’s combat, not fully but looks pretty good (has stuff like 5-step).
Here’s a video to see impressions.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=scNQGxexJeA
 
Last edited:

santino27

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My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
Kingmaker was my first real CRPG, and I didn’t complain about shit. I ran into the wererat encounter and just left to come back later. Btw how do you not start with a tank? Is it possible to not get Harrim or Valerie? I started over 10 times and I got either 1 or the 2.

You always get one or the other, yes... it's valerie/harrim and linzi/jaethal, plus amiri.
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
The turn based mod is pure gold.

A Kinetic Knight is a really nice class to play turn-based. Blade whirlwind is a standard action (so you can position first in your round) and appears to cost no burn, even composite and infused (bug?). Real time before a KK assumes position half or more of his targets would be dead. Now he can hit multiple foes with composite (double damage) blasts and try to CC them all - for example trip. Awesome! That's still weak next to what a real Kineticist can do with Deadly Earth but... its more party friendly and more active. One you cast Deadly Earth, your entire party needs to stay far away and watch the show. A KK can carelessly whirl among allies all the time.

The mod auther was even so nice to fix Vital Strike to act as a Standard action. This feat chain now finally has a use! (outside of scoring damage records with an SS). Allows to deal decent single target damage even after movement (and potentially eliminate a target before it has a chance to act).
Real time you don't appreciate it much, but in turn based mode that's quite nice.
 

smaug

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Kingmaker was my first real CRPG, and I didn’t complain about shit. I ran into the wererat encounter and just left to come back later. Btw how do you not start with a tank? Is it possible to not get Harrim or Valerie? I started over 10 times and I got either 1 or the 2.

You always get one or the other, yes... it's valerie/harrim and linzi/jaethal, plus amiri.
He kept complaining about not having a tank, when he had one already.
 

Shadenuat

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A Kinetic Knight is a really nice class to play turn-based. Blade whirlwind is a standard action (so you can position first in your round) and appears to cost no burn, even composite and infused (bug?).
It should be Burn 3 even using basic element.
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Well, less then that, as by the time you can pick it, you'd already have some Infusion Specializations. But costing 0 even composite and with substance infusions appears to be a bug.
Even fixed, it could be an interesting option to use gather power low or mid and aoe composite blast - using composite blasts and full attacking generally costs way too much burn and you can't gather power and full attack in the same round.
 

Jimmious

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
So now that the game is mostly patched, can someone direct me to the optimal settings to replicate "Core Rules" as much as possible?
 

santino27

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My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
So now that the game is mostly patched, can someone direct me to the optimal settings to replicate "Core Rules" as much as possible?

Set on Challenging and then change mob strength to normal instead of slightly overpowered. (And then potentially install P&P flanking rules mod and TB mod)
 

jungl

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But the game is really full of boring trashmobs grinding. Even Deadfire is not great, but a far better game.
Truth game never makes you think. Kingmaker game where you can play intoxicated or deprived of sleep from start to finish. Pillars has its faults also mainly that the player is too strong at high levels. There no real way of remedying it without not allowing you to choose new abilities and spells.
 
Unwanted

NikitaSdkov

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I considered playing this game, but then I googled about it and
https://www.mobygames.com/game/pathfinder-kingmaker
Art Director:
Victor Surkov
Creative Director:
Alexander Mishulin
QA Director:
Alexander Vertyankin
Technical Director:
Aleksey Drobyshevsky
Executive Producer:
Oleg Shpilchevsky
Lead Area Designer:
Evgeniy Sanin
Audio Team:
Sergey Eybog
Core Design Team:
Alexander Gusev
Narrative Design Team:
Alexander Komzolov
Narrative Designer:
Chris Avellone
Technical Art:
Timofey Nikitchenko
UI Design Team:
Mikhail Rotfort

No. Thanks a lot. I've just recently escaped from Russia. And it will be the end of me if I ever buy a single product made in Russia.
 

Lambach

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Is there any benefit to continue leveling Amiri as Barbarian rather than just going Two-Handed Fighter? Rage powers are kinda shit compared to all the class-specific bonuses and extra feats you pick up as THF.

Also, lmao at how they took a potentially cool concept of a Vampire companion but completely botched it in practice by making her a mediocre, fairly squishy fighter who will have to either use all of her spells just to heal up or force your Cleric to memorize a bunch of spells you would otherwise pretty much never use. Even Beamdog handled a Vampire companion better, mechanics-wise.
 

Lambach

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You could, but why would you bother? Her being Undead is more of an inconvenience than a benefit, there aren't that many things that she's immune to and other companions aren't. And most of those things are easy to block/remove.

I haven't tried pitting her against Soul Eaters, maybe she'll shine there.
 

Shadenuat

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lolz

she's immune to like everything, only character in whole game who can tank mandragora swarms probably. not to mention she can't die.
git gut.
 

deuxhero

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Her biggest issue is that inquisitor is a fairly weak class, easily the lamest of the medium BAB 6th level spells classes, and has no other need for charisma. As an Oracle (with appropriate ability distribution) she'd be awesome, and downright insane if she was built so she ignored two ability scores (which you could do if you could play something without con in PF).
 

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