Crispy™ Is Kinkmaker gud?

[Dr Skeleton]

The game is good. It does get worse overall the longer you play but even the bad parts are tolerable because gameplay is solid.

I liked the kingdom management more than I thought I would but only up to a point (until Varnhold, I guess?). It doesn't start as bad as many people say, but eventually it becomes too repetitive and matters too little. Random events, advisors, building stuff, choices after stat upgrades, that was pretty fun for a while, especially when you struggle to get enough BP to do anything.
Then you get your 4th or 5th village and realize you can build whatever and it won’t matter. Then you upgrade a stat to level 5 and realize it goes up to level 10, and you have 10 other stats that also go to level 10. Then you sell some random magic crap you find under a rock for 1000 BP and the kingdom economy gets fucked. Then you get the same random "elf found tax loophole" or "howling wolves" event for the 20th time. Maybe they can improve it in 1.3 but playing on 1.2 it starts alright but loses the appeal fast.

 

[Jarpie]

Its mixed bag I do like the first chapter where you are just adventurer and pathfinder changes to DnD system making other classes than mages fun to play again but the game is too long, has this whole kingdom management shit which should be clicking on the (animated) screen and instead is: I am on map murdering hobo the monsters and vilains so my subject can be save got message some shit happens and I need to be in capital ASAP... its LOOONG Loading Screen->Campaign map->Oh shit we were ambushed by squirels again SHEEEET Another LOOOOONG loading Screen->Back to campaign Map->Loading Screeen->We enter capital->Loading Screen we enter Throne ROOM another Loading Screen for cut-scene where you can click one or two options of dialogue and guess what Comrade? Da another LOADING SCREEEN! You could do the same using without making my toon physically traveling to my throne room and of course wasting half hour of my type as it was made in older game, use the book interface like in CHYOA section or make nice little kingdom management screen with your capital view and some advisors or using fracking runners or delegate more to your advisors but no you are forced to loose HOURS of your time to see your Capital which hardly changes and where most buildings have no role in plot or management whatsoever. Why? Did the Medieval Kings sit their asses in Capital whole time? Nope they campaigned in field and made circles around their domain hosting themselves on the nobles and subject. The Capital should be cut from game or made so you can skip it after maybe seeing it once. Stopped to Play the game when I realized I spend more time waiting for screens to load than playing, 6/10 it has fun part but turned to be too ambitious for its own sake.

The loading times are now much faster than they were on the launch, unless you have some IDE-HD from 20 years ago. I do agree that the game should allow you to do shit outside of the capital/throne room, or let you leave to the world map directly from the throne room at least.

There's a mod which lets you do the kingdom stuff everywhere, yeah yeah I know "It's not in the game, it's a mod waah waah waah!", but at least it's something.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Oh yeah, the loading times were fixed in 1.2. I started playing last year on 1.1x and loading times in the capital and kingdom management were horrible. After 1.2 I stopped noticing them.

 

[Jarpie]

Coincidentally, they released 1.3 beta today, which adds ability to exit from throne room straight to the world map, without having to go through the city, the final 1.3 is probably 1-2 weeks away.

 

[Chippy]

Yes, it is good. This developer has made it to the top of my list expectation-wise. Forget the report of bugs and such - it seems the Russians really do know their way around software.

 

[tindrli]

i just hope that BEAMDOG will repair it

 

[Incendax]

i just hope that BEAMDOG will repair it

Add heavy handed topical social issues, you mean?

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Loading is definitely a small problem even in 1.2. I installed the game not on my ssd and each scene has maybe 5 - 6 sec loading.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Kingmaker is a pretty crappy game, imho. It is a perfect example of lowered expectations after over a decade of decline in traditional cRPGs. Unlike the action RPG subgenre, which has been genuinely humming as of late (minus the Ubisoft/Bethesda crap), cRPGs have never recovered since the late 90s/early 2000s. There have been some games lately that some people might enjoy (e.g. AoD or Underrail), but even those are fairly niche, and nothing like the cRPG classics. So in the absence of quality, stuff like D:OS and PoE gets passed off as the Renaissance, and Kingmaker is much in the same vein.

It's basically a theorycrafting autist's dream, because you can sit there and map out your character, and his build, and stats, perks, whatever, as long as you realize that's the only fun you will have. Because once you get into the actual game, it's fairly mediocre. I've seen people praise the story in this thread, and I am not sure if they are serious. Kingmaker has some of the most childish and dull writing on this side of D:OS games. It starts right off the bat with Fuckfaccio, who is a cartoonish mini-villain, the whiny bard, the butch barbarian chick, it's all so badly done. Maybe if you are just tired of grimdark settings, you might enjoy the Saturday Morning Cartoons level of discourse here, but not me. I would much rather take the adult speech and in-depth characters of the Witcher series, or Kingdom Come, or ELEX.

Combat is also like a vastly inferior and broken version of Baldur's Gate games. Those were fun because they were tactical, as in you would have a ton of options at your disposal, and figuring out which ones to use was the fun part. In Kingmaker, the combat alternates between trash fights and impossible fights because you didn't meta-game properly.

Exploration sucks because most maps are these tiny affairs suffering from Neverwinter Nights syndrome, where as soon as you pop onto the map, you take two steps and reach your destination. So most exploration is actually done on the boring world map, where you move in an abstract way and run into stupid shit.

And much of the time you will spend in this game will be on overhead. Whether it's lengthy and frequent loading screens, the 2 hours it takes to set up a resting camp, traveling on the world map, and so on, hope you enjoy NOT playing the game.

 

[Drakron]

Combat is also like a vastly inferior and broken version of Baldur's Gate games. Those were fun because they were tactical, as in you would have a ton of options at your disposal, and figuring out which ones to use was the fun part. In Kingmaker, the combat alternates between trash fights and impossible fights because you didn't meta-game properly.

I think this is more of a ruleset problem.

Pathfinder is pretty much D&D 3.5 and its success is a lot being D&D 3.5 as a significant amount of people rather play Pathfinder that move to D&D 4th, now BG as well IWD were AD&D 2nd Ed, the system wasnt as laid with mechanics as D&D 3.5, it was a more "simple" system were you had more or less a strait leveling up path since there were no traits, no skills and multiclassing was more limited as D&D 3.5 have more stuff into it such as traits and skills as well one thing that was WotC at the time of D&D 3.5 wanted to sell board figurines so rules for positioning were expanded as before they were simpler so people would be "directed" into buying those figurines.

So in IWD/BG you had more options simply because there was no options, things were rather simple and any Cleric was a Cleric with some minor variations as you could not "screw up" since all you needed was to change gear or memorized spells and you were up to go ... Kingmaker being Pathfinder/D&D 3.5 gives a lot of choices in leveling up but those have more impact, it certainly have flaws as since it have even more options that BG with all those attacks, special abilities, metamagic feats and all that leads to having a very "busy" taskbar filled with icons as IWD/BG the more limited options lead to you knowing what you could do at a glance.

One thing is true, Kingmaker does seem to push towards knowledge of the system so people that go "I will only play hardcore" but dont know the system or want to micro the party to a high extend get to eat the humble pie since they significant up the stats of the enemies compared with Pathfinder rulebook, if I recall in order to have mobs stats being of the core rulebook you have to pick "slightly easier enemies" instead of normal but here is the thing, you can accept and play as normal or under, it does allow to tailor difficulty but its still Pathfinder/D&D 3.5 so there are a lot of options and you have to think what you want that character to do.

It still have some stupid things that dont come from Pathfinder like the inability to take 20 in checks.

 

[Incendax]

Combat is also like a vastly inferior and broken version of Baldur's Gate games. Those were fun because they were tactical, as in you would have a ton of options at your disposal, and figuring out which ones to use was the fun part. In Kingmaker, the combat alternates between trash fights and impossible fights because you didn't meta-game properly.

Combat was horribly broken in Baldur's Gate I and II, and the forums were full of people with proverbial pitchforks declaring it the death of tactical gaming. I don't think it's an issue with lowered expectations, so much as rising expectations that future games will live up to rose tinted nostalgia. To be fair, that's the point of Codex. But it would be a lie to suggest those old games were not fucking messes that we love in spite of their flaws.

 

[Haplo]

Combat is also like a vastly inferior and broken version of Baldur's Gate games. Those were fun because they were tactical, as in you would have a ton of options at your disposal, and figuring out which ones to use was the fun part. In Kingmaker, the combat alternates between trash fights and impossible fights because you didn't meta-game properly.

I think this is more of a ruleset problem.

Pathfinder is pretty much D&D 3.5 and its success is a lot being D&D 3.5 as a significant amount of people rather play Pathfinder that move to D&D 4th, now BG as well IWD were AD&D 2nd Ed, the system wasnt as laid with mechanics as D&D 3.5, it was a more "simple" system were you had more or less a strait leveling up path since there were no traits, no skills and multiclassing was more limited as D&D 3.5 have more stuff into it such as traits and skills as well one thing that was WotC at the time of D&D 3.5 wanted to sell board figurines so rules for positioning were expanded as before they were simpler so people would be "directed" into buying those figurines.

So in IWD/BG you had more options simply because there was no options, things were rather simple and any Cleric was a Cleric with some minor variations as you could not "screw up" since all you needed was to change gear or memorized spells and you were up to go ... Kingmaker being Pathfinder/D&D 3.5 gives a lot of choices in leveling up but those have more impact, it certainly have flaws as since it have even more options that BG with all those attacks, special abilities, metamagic feats and all that leads to having a very "busy" taskbar filled with icons as IWD/BG the more limited options lead to you knowing what you could do at a glance.

One thing is true, Kingmaker does seem to push towards knowledge of the system so people that go "I will only play hardcore" but dont know the system or want to micro the party to a high extend get to eat the humble pie since they significant up the stats of the enemies compared with Pathfinder rulebook, if I recall in order to have mobs stats being of the core rulebook you have to pick "slightly easier enemies" instead of normal but here is the thing, you can accept and play as normal or under, it does allow to tailor difficulty but its still Pathfinder/D&D 3.5 so there are a lot of options and you have to think what you want that character to do.

It still have some stupid things that dont come from Pathfinder like the inability to take 20 in checks.

IMO Combat is pretty great as far as Real Time with Pause games go.

There is lots to do, spells and abilities have high impact, Attacks of Opportunity can play a huge role. As do melee combos (Outflank, Seize the Moment). The only area where BG 2 is still better is mage combat. But I will happily sacrifice it to have a much more interesting system and all classes actually feeling useful.
Kingmaker also does a pretty good job of getting the attrition aspect right, particularly early on. You could try resting after every 3rd encounter, but you will waste a lot of time. And time is precious here. So rationalizing spell and item use is a very welcome aspect.

 

[Falksi]

Some people could player it All Day and All of The Night, even if it's a Sunny Afternoon with an evening sees a Waterloo Sunset.

You Really Got Me, because I haven't played it yet. Some many say that makes me a bit of an Apeman, but I just get Tired of Waiting for patches ans such things, so think I'll lay Lola in this case.

 

[pomenitul]

Leaving aside the TB vs RTwP controversy, which is staler than a fossilized crumb of Sumerian bread, I'd like to schematically expand on my terse assessment upthread ('a mixed bag').

Pros:

– excellent implementation of a tried and true P&P ruleset
– skill checks galore
– significant amount of reactivity and C&C, far more than in the BG, IWD or NWN series
– outstanding exploration
– laudable attempt at kingdom management
– solid CYOA sequences
– use of time limits
– little to no handholding throughout
– playtime-wise, an embarrassment of riches
– deserving of extra points for ambition

Cons:

– far too long for its own good (this is the wellspring; most of the game's issues flow from here)
– piss-poor, charmless stock fantasy writing for the most part, aided only by its reliance on a pre-written campaign
– predominantly unmemorable companions
– overrepresentation of superfluous tiny maps (Small Teeth Pass-style)
– ubiquitous trash mobs
– gameplay skewed towards tedious power- and meta-gaming
– wild, no doubt unintended fluctuations in terms of difficulty
– for all its qualities, kingdom management falls short ('so what?' all too often remains unanswered)
– promising evil options that ultimately pale next to their morally upstanding counterparts, as always
– massive dip in quality once late game is reached
– uneven itemization
– bland, routinely childish (rather than nostalgically child-like) art
– inconsistent (mostly subpar) voice acting
– forgettable music
– utter lack of atmosphere (logical consequence of previous three)
– where is my time stop (wtf Owlcat)?
– yes, it's still teeming with bugs, some borderline gamebreaking

This is what currently springs to mind. Anyhow, my playthrough was frankly enjoyable for the most part, but some of you are overhyping the game hard.

 

[Cael]

Gregz is correct about most of his points.
And yet, I still had quite a bit of fun.
Flawed but enjoyable describes pretty much all the old classics, so this feels right at home.

I... will go back to ToEE, thanks...

 

[Jarpie]

– far too long for its own good (this is the wellspring; most of the game's issues flow from here)
– massive dip in quality once late game is reached

IMO only problem with the end game was that the very repetitive encounters in HATEOT, I thought Armag and Pitax were mostly fine, narratively game IMO held up very well till the end, at least on the first playthrough, which I was pleasantly surprised for.

– piss-poor, charmless stock fantasy writing for the most part, aided only by its reliance on a pre-written campaign
– predominantly unmemorable companions
– promising evil options that ultimately pale next to their morally upstanding counterparts, as always

I found the writing to be pretty decent, no overly long or overly written "purple prose" or filled with pop culture- or meta-jokes and references, and overly comical (Looking at you DOS), and no millennial "Josh Whedon"-fangirls writing "Oh so snappy and clever sarcastic/sardonic dialogue!", characters felt like they were in fantasy world, and not self-inserts by the writers. One of the writers said in discord that they intentionally made the game to be more light-hearted and brighter, instead of being super serious and grimdark, and I really liked that. I've really missed this kind of games, where everything isn't doom and gloom, DOS was too comedic for my taste, too much on the nose.

Some companions were boring, such as Tristian, Amiri and Valerie, but I liked Harrim, Nok-Nok, Jaethal, Jubilost and Regongar. Linzi was alright for what she was suppose to be, and to my surprise, I liked the tiefling sisters from the DLC, if one complaint I have about the companions is that they were maybe a bit too "special", all of them with the exception of Nok-Nok were (more or less) "chosen ones".

I played LN/LG during my playthrough so I didn't really pay attention on evil choices so can't comment on that.

– overrepresentation of superfluous tiny maps (Small Teeth Pass-style)
– ubiquitous trash mobs
– gameplay skewed towards tedious power- and meta-gaming
– wild, no doubt unintended fluctuations in terms of difficulty
– for all its qualities, kingdom management falls short ('so what?' all too often remains unanswered)
– uneven itemization

I agree that many of the maps were too small, the maps you just go to explore should be larger, but I imagine this is due limited resources, either have fewer locations to explore or have smaller maps, I'd probably gone with something in the middle, a bit fewer locations and somewhat larger maps.

All crpgs I have played have been basically skewed toward power- and meta-gaming, welcome to the computer games I guess. The difficulty did fluctuate somewhat, at first it was challenging on challenging, then it became easier so I had to up the difficulty to hard and finally to unfair, and for HATEOT, the difficulty spike rose again, this problem isn't unique to Kingmaker.

As for kingdom management, it did become a bit tedious after some point in the game, and somewhat divorced from the narrative, the choices you make for the different kingdom events doesn't really affect the game itself, but I imagine it would've required a lot of more writing if it would've affected the quests.

Itemization probably is one of those things they didn't have time to really polish because they were (afaik) forced to push the game out, but at least it's IMO much better than itemization in Pillars of Eternity or DOS with it's randomized crap.

– bland, routinely childish (rather than nostalgically child-like) art
– inconsistent (mostly subpar) voice acting
– forgettable music
– utter lack of atmosphere (logical consequence of previous three)

I thought the art was fine, maybe a bit too like in WOW, but at least armors mostly looked more realistic, than in say...DOS where they had just utterly fucking ridiculous looking equipment, with retarded spikes and shit. God I hated the armor design in DOS. Music was inconsistent, some of the music was great like the coronation theme or the music in the first world, sometimes it was "just there", maybe they should've gone with the more epic-sounding music like in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2.

The voice acting was IMO mostly fine too, only voices I found grating was Amiri and Tartuccio/Tartuk but fortunately you don't see them that much. Some of the line deliveries by the voice actors was inconsistent, for example some of the delivery by Nyrissa's VA was great, some was quite grating. The most consistent was probably Jaethal and Jubilost VA's, and also the Lantern King's, who's VA I found to be very fitting for what they were going for, but I've only played since they added some effect(s) into some of the lines.

– where is my time stop (wtf Owlcat)?
– yes, it's still teeming with bugs, some borderline gamebreaking

This is what currently springs to mind. Anyhow, my playthrough was frankly enjoyable for the most part, but some of you are overhyping the game hard.

Eldritch Arcana mod adds time stop-spell, and they did add some spells with the latest free DLC, so maybe they'll add time stop at sometime in the future, and sorely lacking divination spells. Can you give examples of the game breaking bugs as I didn't encounter any, and with one exception, only one quest bugged out for me.

 

[pomenitul]

Can you give examples of the game breaking bugs as I didn't encounter any, and with one exception, only one quest bugged out for me.

Spoiler

I had to repeatedly return to a pre-endgame save for the companion-related scripted interactions to trigger in the House at the End of Time. I also had to replay the Irovetti fight as his crazed naga became untargetable after he went down.

 

[Haplo]

I agree with Jarpie on most points.

Well, in fact only point I don't agree on is poor itemization in PoE. It's good IMO - very good in White March and stellar in Deadfire in fact.

Kingmaker on the other hand does have a good selection, perhaps a bit too far on the OP side, but the distribution is sadly pretty bad.

Well, at least we can both agree that its miles above DOS with its tiered, leveled junk.

 

[pomenitul]

Compared to D:OS2, it's positively stellar on every front.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

I just remembered one thing about alignments and C&C that bothered me, in almost every case you can choose whichever good/evil/chaotic option you want regardless of your alignment and that only moves you on the character sheet in that direction but then are some cases where choosing something requires a specific alignment instead. And that only seems to happen in places where it opens an alternate way to resolve something, like

Spoiler

peacefully resolving the mite/kobold war or negotiating with the troll king

It’s like they couldn’t make up their mind if the game gives you an alignment based on what you do or it restricts what you can do based on your alignment, so they did both.

 

[Sacred82]

More liek soyfinder: cuckmaker

Jokes aside, it's not total shit, which by today's standards makes it GOTY. Had a lot of balancing problems at launch but most of them have been fixed by now. DLCs are mostly good. Can't romance the muscle lady, which is a terrible shame.

fail, Regongar is probably the best written RPG companion in decades. It's exactly soyboys who want a kewl supposed self-insert like Edwin, a comic relief companion, a wide-eyed retarded companion who couldn't make it on their own for 2 minutes or a stronk independent wahmen companion. Regongar is a legitimately no fucks giving survival oriented character who still enjoys life.

 

[Sykar]

Regongar is probably the only chaotic evil companion which is not batshit insane retarded. Though you can make an argument that he is more CN or NE.

 

[bataille]

The game allows for some chilling NE roleplay...

Spoiler

 

[anvi]

Needed an option for "quite good". It is basically the same as every other CRPG ever. You travel around blowing stuff up with a fireball. I seem to recall one (or both) of the IWD games were a bit more interesting because the battles were hard, magic defenses needed stripping etc. This game is mostly just blowing up wolves and spiders for 1000 hours.

 

[fantadomat]

The game allows for some chilling NE roleplay...

Spoiler

Kicking a dog is not an evil act.