Pathfinder Why Owlcat's Kingmaker Sucks, in Plain Language

[luj1]

I do suspect a lot of Codex goodwill to Kingmaker hinges on how conservative/traditional it is

Yeah. It's so traditional that it uses a cardgame/facebook game to replace questing

It relies on many tried and true formulas to achieve that cohesiveness.

 

[AdamReith]

The thing that killed Kingmaker for me was meeting an ancient ghost who continually referred to somebody's "mom".

Also there was a bit where the two options were to attack and brutaly kill a fey being or try to give it a big hug.

I was able to ignore the bad pukey companions but little things like that were like turds in my coffee.

 

[The_Mask]

I do suspect a lot of Codex goodwill to Kingmaker hinges on how conservative/traditional it is

Yeah. It's so traditional that it uses a cardgame/facebook game to replace questing

You ever meet with real people? At these meetings, do you ever play with lil dice and figurines? Maybe say the name of the game was Dungeons and Dragons?



Leap: maybe someone can't make it for a session. As DM you need to make up a story as to why they suddenly "missed out".



Voila.


*sigh*... but no. It's a card game that simulates facebook and wants to enrange luj, so he can cum on the Codex and lament the hipsterisms and shillisms of the 21st century.


'k

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Also, "impossible".

yes, "impossible"
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...go-to-new-thread.124047/page-111#post-5814615
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...go-to-new-thread.124047/page-186#post-5822442
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...go-to-new-thread.124047/page-188#post-5822584
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...go-to-new-thread.124047/page-215#post-5825452
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...go-to-new-thread.124047/page-150#post-5818467
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...go-to-new-thread.124047/page-244#post-5830093

 

[vortex]

Oh my. They'll reuse engine? Why? Can't they choose better one?

Because doing all the coding work required again from the scratch is so crazy it is financial suicide?

That map loading times drive me crazy.
Can't they bring more money to the table? Kingmaker was success for them.

 

[Q]

I don't like timings or kingdom management system, but it's bearable.
Difficulty spikes got more tiresome with time, cause they are amidst a hordes of trashmobs and badly designed encounters.
I don't like RTwP but with such amount of trashies it makes clusterfuck of the entire game.
Autokill, autokill, autokill, difficulty spike, reload, trying to be mindful, victory... and then autokill slugfest all over again.
What a shitty game.

 

[RNGsus]

 

[Daidre]

Can't they bring more money to the table? Kingmaker was success for them.

They used money from P:K sales to break away from mother company and go indie. Source.
Mail.ru still probably gives them money even if the agreement is a bit different. Mail Group got a pretty horrid reputation in Russian IT and gaming circles so imho distancing from them is always a good thing.

Most of the key people from Owlcat wasted their creative years on making/supporting Allods Online MMORPG that was systematically destroyed by Mail donate/mtx politics, so I just glad they are making a good games again.

 

[Haba]

Ideas expressed in this post are so retarded it makes me wonder how this person is even able to produce any coherent speech at all since his IQ must be no more than 50.

Please remember that the OP has genuine mental health related issues.

 

[ScrotumBroth]

Yeah, I just can't seem to bite the bullet on this one.

Fatigue from Kickstarters, if it ain't brilliant, just not worth my time.

 

[Daidre]

Please remember that the OP has genuine mental health related issues.

*Sigh* At least I gathered enough data to write Codexian shit-posting bot. Step-by-step:

1. Find last RPG GOTY - target Disco Elysium.
2. Run search by all threads, last big discussion died out (recent post count < 50), skip.
3. Find most controversial RPG in GOTY list - target The Outer Worlds, not enough posts, skip.
Year - 1
1. Find RPG GOTY - target Pathfinder: Kingmaker.
2. Recent post count in the developer's sub-forum >100!
3. Make opening post: connect to Steam API, pull random negative reviews on the subject and combine one paragraphs from each into text.
Note to self: feed last 3 years of data from General RPG Discussion to neural network for proper training
Success!
4. Go into maintenance mode: make 1 generic post per 2 weeks in each "hot" (post count > 50) topic about how much currently discussed game sucks.

 

[Sykar]

Kingmaker is like the Dark Souls of Infinity Engine. Scrubs should just git gud and stop complaining.

On Challenging and below this game is so easy, 99% of the time you literally don't have to do anything but cast a couple long duration buffs + select all & left-click. Throw in haste for more difficult fights. This game has nothing on old RPGs difficulty wise. (unless you play on unfair)
If you can't handle the difficulty on Normal or even story mode, sorry to be so frank, but yes, that means you're a confirmed retard.

which one of you two is a bullshiter?

Both. Truth is somewhere in-between. I personally play on Challenging only, hits the right spot for me. I think it has just the right amount of difficulty that I have to pay attention but do not have to build retarded character builds or cheese by having Vivi in everything.

 

[Van-d-all]

I do suspect a lot of Codex goodwill to Kingmaker hinges on how conservative/traditional it is

Yeah. It's so traditional that it uses a cardgame/facebook game to replace questing

It relies on many tried and true formulas to achieve that cohesiveness.

It actually did both. It was very traditional in regular, isometric game parts in regards of map exploration & NPC dialogues. Went even beyond that in terms of combat and build crafting. And that's exactly what the game is praised for. The fact they decided to smack an annoying card management mini game on top of that is a whole separate thing.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I must say i agree with about half the points from the OP.

Worst things about the game :

• Lot of quests feature more loading screens than content (1st quest for every companion, artisans quests)
• Level design is alright, even good sometimes (Stag lord's fort, Vordakai's tomb ) but forgettable most of the time.
• The main quest on a timer is pretty bad design, you can't even speed it up and have to skip days and days (one at a time of course waiting for that clock animation)
• RTwP, partially fixed by the TB mod but you remember how the game isn't meant to be TB when fighting hordes of sluggish zombies (even with fast travel, these fuckers are way too slow)

It's honestly not fun constantly being betrayed all the time.

To summarize, this game could be fun. But honestly, it's terrible. While other rpgs let me enjoy the story, questing, and characters, pathfinder kingmaker makes me want to rip my hair out. I'm constantly being hamstrung by game mechanics, being backstabbed by my followers, hitting difficulty spikes, spending most of my time played googling things rather than actually playing the game, and there is a looming 24 like timer in the background counting down the days until you fail the game.

Well, i for one love being backstabbeb by followers and even difficulty spikes, i'd rather have a higher difficulty passed level 8 though but i didn't play the end game so maybe at some point it'll get interesting again ?

Chapter I was decent.

Chapter one is quite good, then there's a kind of void with some interesting areas but nothing of note story-wise with tons of annoying micro-quests, then the next development and another round of skipping through the same shit.

The season of blooms wakes you up but the good stuff really starts in Varnhold, didn't get farther but it was the best part of the game with some interesting spikes like the Stag Lord's fort and a couple of nice areas. (like the top of the mountain with the Roc)

Kingmaker's writing is very good. It is uneven at times, but still very good.

The narrative is mind blowingly interesting in how it achieves its goals. I am not saying that it does not have flaws or parts that it falls short (or parts that I still do not understand). However, the way all content in this fucking huge game fits under only a few intertwined themes is a sight to behold. I have never seen anything like this in another game of this length before. It is a quality in story telling and theme exploration that goes beyond gaming.

Some of you are not worthy. Tigranes gets a free pass, because he has not seen the full picture yet (let alone start identifying the connections between the various stories in the game).

I mostly agree, people seems to forget how retarded BG 2 plot is and how the secondary quests made the game.
Here, it's quite good.

Same for the writing, worst offender being companion's states summaries during loading screen and you're going to read them a lot if you don't have 2 000 000 TB of SSD ...

 

[Jvegi]

House at the edge of time is one of the worst dungeons I've ever experienced in any RPG, ever.

Shitty dungeons never stopped any game from getting on the top 10 list.

Never played the game beyond the character creation. That part was cool.

 

[Serus]

I mostly agree, people seems to forget how retarded BG 2 plot is and how the secondary quests made the game.
Here, it's quite good.

Same for the writing, worst offender being companion's states summaries during loading screen and you're going to read them a lot if you don't have 2 000 000 TB of SSD ...

How retarded was bg2 plot (and it was) it has no logical bearing on p:k writing. Unless you want to compare relative writing of two particular games but i fail what would be the point in the context of this discussion.

Having said that I don't have a strong opinion on writing yet. Still too early in game. Seems pretty meh so far. And here is too much of it. Since I don't play crpg for "writing" i'm more interested in quests structures, and it also meh - so far. The exploration is uneven, big map with lots of locations is nice but the actual location are of varying quality. Whats good though are the combat mechanics, character creation/development, enemy variety... stuff like that. I talk with the tb mode in mind. Which because those are things I value the game is good for me so far.

 

[AdamReith]

At least the bf2 story felt centered on me. In kingmaker I felt like a non-entity. It felt like a burden to be given control of that state, couldn't even appoint a private guard of hot babes or crush the peasantry with unreasonable taxes.

Really it felt like being a government appointed administrator who doubled as therapist for some violent mentally ill homeless people.

 

[Daidre]

worst offender being companion's states summaries during loading screen

I always thought it is neat idea - whole journal and companion biographies written by Linzi, and texts are very in-character for comic-relief Bard often criticized in-universe for questionable quality of her creative output.

Extra points for quest description being vague - as your secretary, she had a huge problems with concentrating on what it is important, so paying attention is mandatory.

 

[luj1]

It actually did both. It was very traditional in regular, isometric game parts in regards of map exploration & NPC dialogues. Went even beyond that in terms of combat and build crafting. And that's exactly what the game is praised for. The fact they decided to smack an annoying card management mini game on top of that is a whole separate thing.

The traditional part was nearly impossible to fuck up due to the imported ruleset and campaign and it still turned out mediocre for the most part. Not exactly an achievement, but w/e. I don't know how you can say a central mechanic which drives gameplay is a "whole separate thing". It directly shat on the whole experience.

 

[Razzoriel]

I remember failing miserably multiple times on my teens to the Ankheg in Baldur's Gate. It was my first contact with the Dwarf Fortress concept of "fun". I loved it.

 

[Beggar]

I was amazed until the kingdom management. Something similar to Witcher 1 - Chapter one in the village is just perfect and then they just throw all the shit at you.

Pacing in Pathfinder is also shit. I don't feel like a king. Why all of a sudden I have a kingdom

 

[ArchAngel]

I was amazed until the kingdom management. Something similar to Witcher 1 - Chapter one in the village is just perfect and then they just throw all the shit at you.

Pacing in Pathfinder is also shit. I don't feel like a king. Why all of a sudden I have a kingdom

You don't. You have a Barony. 100h later when you feel like a King, you will have a kingdom.

 

[ArchAngel]

It actually did both. It was very traditional in regular, isometric game parts in regards of map exploration & NPC dialogues. Went even beyond that in terms of combat and build crafting. And that's exactly what the game is praised for. The fact they decided to smack an annoying card management mini game on top of that is a whole separate thing.

The traditional part was nearly impossible to fuck up due to the imported ruleset and campaign and it still turned out mediocre for the most part. Not exactly an achievement, but w/e. I don't know how you can say a central mechanic which drives gameplay is a "whole separate thing". It directly shat on the whole experience.

In the worlds if immortal DE devs: Last night your mother was mediocre. Then you sister came in and she was mediocre too.

 

[Beggar]

I was amazed until the kingdom management. Something similar to Witcher 1 - Chapter one in the village is just perfect and then they just throw all the shit at you.

Pacing in Pathfinder is also shit. I don't feel like a king. Why all of a sudden I have a kingdom

You don't. You have a Barony. 100h later when you feel like a King, you will have a kingdom.

But I made my character like a bum. Why am I a superman then

 

[ArchAngel]

I was amazed until the kingdom management. Something similar to Witcher 1 - Chapter one in the village is just perfect and then they just throw all the shit at you.

Pacing in Pathfinder is also shit. I don't feel like a king. Why all of a sudden I have a kingdom

You don't. You have a Barony. 100h later when you feel like a King, you will have a kingdom.

But I made my character like a bum. Why am I a superman then

Destiny.

Spoiler

Play more, later you learn you were never supposed to succeed.