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

[2house2fly]

I have to admit, I'm really keen to see if there's any payoff to "how bad could the last couple of chapters really be?"

 

[Safav Hamon]

As its already been established, casuals will play difficult games if they're fun overall. That's why Cuphead has 33,000 reviews over 95% positive.

The only reason casuals whine about Kingmaker's difficulty, is because the rest of the game isn't good enough to justify the frustration their having.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

You're just cherry-picking to perk up your ego bro. You've spent 400+ hours learning how to think like a twisted russian developer, that doesn't make you smarter than anyone else.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that yes, the game is obtuse and hard to figure out, it's a tough nut to crack. But so was ELEX, Lords of Xulima, and others. The point is, casuals don't want to learn a game, they want to just play and steamroll everything. You can't do that in Kingmaker, you have to LEARN it. I'm not someone special who learned, others here know a hell of a lot more than I do about it. But at least we attempted to figure it out rather than leaving a negative review without understanding how it's designed (a common fault of the negative Steam reviewers).

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Another example: Negative reviews for ELEX stating it takes an hour to kill a troll. PROFESSIONAL reviews even said this. They have no idea how the game works, lol. What more can I say? It's like that with a lot of hardcore CRPGs. Which is why I think the games need philosophy tutorials to explain and hand-hold people as to how and why the game is made like it is. Because people's first response is "it's broken!!!11"

 

[Sharpedge]

It sounds like a hell of a game, if even the lowest difficulty mode is too punishingly hard for 98% of all humans.

It's not difficult, however many fights are impossible without very good rolls. This is poor design, but not the only reason this game is being trashed.

This is not true, I have finished the game on solo hard, on party unfair and I am working on solo unfair now and no, if you have brain cells the game does *not* require lots of good rolls, with the EXCEPTION of the tutorial area for some classes and ONLY on unfair.

Combat difficulty is hardly ever mentioned in the negative reviews. It's a completely false narrative that this is why people are quitting the game.

People are giving up because of the quest and kingdom management bugs, and blind failure conditions, that people are falling prey to. This was unheard of in any of the IE games, and I assume the PoE games.

I don't bother reading steam reviews, so I have no idea why they are leaving x review for y game, but I can respond to the so called reason given by Safav Hamon.

 

[Gregz]

I don't bother reading steam reviews

Do you work for Owlcat?

 

[Safav Hamon]

Another example: Negative reviews for ELEX stating it takes an hour to kill a troll. PROFESSIONAL reviews even said this. They have no idea how the game works, lol.

And they didn't want to learn, because the game didn't give them enough motivation to bother. Same story.

If a game is fun, then people will want to get better and learn how to play.

 

[Morkar Left]

I only played for 5 hours to have a quick look, most of it spent on char gen and the tutorial. I'm just waiting for some actual serious bugfixing and I'm a bit worried about uneven difficulty (the sort of difficulty that comes with bad implementation of game rules and bad itemization). I'm mostly worried about the bugfixing to be honest. With every new patch it seems more bugs get introduced. How bad is it really?

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

It's not that cut and dry man. Dark Souls you learn patterns, plus it was a cultural phenomenon complete with memes and tons of fans. Eventually when you learn the patterns you can win, thus making it player-skill based. You can't learn patterns in a CRPG, it relies on RNG and stats, etc.. And since it already has a smaller fanbase the ones expecting an easy story mode walkthrough get blown away by it and are less forgiving. Mainly due to RNG.

 

[2house2fly]

Only a minority leaves steam reviews so they aren't necessarily representative, in the same way Pillars 1's high review scores didn't mean anything for Deadfire. 44% of PK's players don't get as far as killing the bandit king, and their reasons for quitting before that point can only be guessed at using the lens of steam reviews and other online comments

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

I only played for 5 hours to have a quick look, most of it spent on char gen and the tutorial. I'm just waiting for some actual serious bugfixing and I'm a bit worried about uneven difficulty (the sort of difficulty that comes with bad implementation of game rules and bad itemization). I'm mostly worried about the bugfixing to be honest. With every new patch it seems more bugs get introduced. How bad is it really?

It's not bad at all, it's completely playable. I have almost 500 hours in it and barely saw any bugs at all. Certainly nothing game-breaking.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Well I'm done arguing, not taking anymore bait. I'm full bellied at this point, thank you.

 

[Safav Hamon]

Eventually when you learn the patterns you can win, thus making it player-skill based. You can't learn patterns in a CRPG, it relies on RNG and stats, etc.. And since it already has a smaller fanbase the ones expecting an easy story mode walkthrough get blown away by it and are less forgiving. Mainly due to RNG.

If a game relies more on RNG than strategy to win, then it's a shit game.

For the record, it is in fact possible to make a CRPG with minimal to no RNG.

 

[Shadenuat]

Ooh, Safav is trying his bite on Elex.
That is a cookie that might break your teeth friend.

 

[Thonius]

500 hours no bugs? I call it bananas! Even fake.
People leave because of that spider cave, because normal is normal, loading times (toaster problems), and weak story start. There is literally no bugs left till chapter 2.

 

[Safav Hamon]

Ooh, Safav is trying his bite on Elex.
That is a cookie that might break your teeth friend.

In Elex's defense, it has a better completion rate than Kingmaker.

22.5% finish Elex compared to 1.6% that finish Kingmaker. Sad!

 

[Shadenuat]

Weakling.

 

[Safav Hamon]

Gregz wanted me to weigh in, because he is perma-triggered by fluent. As an objective observer, I can say without the least trace of bias that Kingmaker is a fairly crappy game. I kinda get why the people who like it do (and also Crispy), it feels more organic and less formulaic than other recent iso-RPGs (e.g PoE, D:OS, etc). It feels more like a labor of love than a by the book rehash from has-beens. But with that said, it's just not very good.

The game consists of a ton of unnecessary overhead to gameplay. The endless loading screens, the 2 hour rest sessions, the dull overworld map traveling, even the overhead of having to put up with slow walking speed when you carry any weight. The quality of maps of which the actual game consists of varies wildly, with many just being tiny underwhelming affairs in the Neverwinter Nights style. The combat alternates between trash mob fights and ridiculous difficulty curve spikes that will leave you having to reroll and start over, or rely on RNG. The story is pretty meh. A lot of class/kit design is very underwhelming as well. For example, look at the Duelist class, which is a prestige class, and ought to be pretty powerful. But if you actually look at abilities, it is way weaker than many standard melee classes. Or how about the sword saint kit, which is supposed to be a master swordsman, but in this game is actually some kind of a magic user. Yes, I know, these are Pathfinder issues, but if you make a game based on it, feel free to adjust things for the benefit of gameplay and/or coolness. Oh, and the whole kingdom thing just feels like a giant hassle for the most part. Constantly having to deal with some bs popping up, that's not why I play these kinds of games.

It's a more tedious Neverwinter Nights 2

 

[Safav Hamon]

Weakling.

If this is your only defense, that confirms it's a shit game.

 

[Funposter]

22.5% finish Elex compared to 1.6% that finish Kingmaker. Sad!

If I look up ELEX on HowLongToBeat, it says that the main story is 27.5 hours. I haven't beaten Kingmaker yet and I'm not even close, with 54 hours invested, but that means I could have beaten ELEX two times over now.

What could it mean??????

 

[Safav Hamon]

It doesn't take that long to finish chapter 3 of Kingmaker, yet only 10% of players manage to do so.

 

[Sharpedge]

It doesn't take that long to finish chapter 3 of Kingmaker, yet only 10% of players manage to do so.

Correct, it takes that long to finish character creation.

 

[Luckmann]

It's not bad at all, it's completely playable. I have almost 500 hours in it and barely saw any bugs at all. Certainly nothing game-breaking.

You also can't see narrative inconsistencies even when explicitly pointed out to you. Your ability to notice things and make judgements regarding them is suspect at best.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

You also can't see narrative inconsistencies even when explicitly pointed out to you. Your ability to notice things and make judgements regarding them is suspect at best.

I saw what you mentioned and I thought you were nitpicking. I felt Chapter 5 flowed just as well as the first few, and even became one of my favorite chapters yet. Yes, you can see some dumb things in that chapter but also throughout the game. It's not perfect. If you care to list them again I will break each one down point by point if you'd like. I'm not blind.

 

[Luckmann]

You also can't see narrative inconsistencies even when explicitly pointed out to you. Your ability to notice things and make judgements regarding them is suspect at best.

I saw what you mentioned and I thought you were nitpicking. I felt Chapter 5 flowed just as well as the first few, and even became one of my favorite chapters yet. Yes, you can see some dumb things in that chapter but also throughout the game. It's not perfect. If you care to list them again I will break each one down point by point if you'd like. I'm not blind.

Yet at the time, you did dismiss them as if you were blind, and I trust that more than any potential backpedaling in the now. Yes, some of it is nitpicking (but the Tristian thing is not; it's glaring), but the fact remains that they passed you by completely, and saying that previous chapters had as obvious issues as latter ones is a straight-out lie, since I wouldn't have played as much as I did if that was true; I'd just have dismissed the game as shit outright, much as the initial meeting with Jaethal almost did.

There's just simply no way in hell you've had 500 nearly bug-free hours of play. It is possible you have 500 hours of only bugs you don't care about, but that's a huge fucking difference, since your standards are incredibly low, as established both here (in terms of narrative issues, bugs, etc) and elsewhere (in terms of games in general).