Pathfinder: Kingmaker – Enhanced Edition
With the help of over 18,000 Kickstarter backers, Narrative Designer Chris Avellone and composer Inon Zur, Owlcat Games is proud to bring you the first isometric computer RPG set in the beloved Pathfinder tabletop universe. Enjoy a classic RPG experience inspired by games like Baldur's Gate, Fallout 1 and 2 and Arcanum. Explore and conquer the Stolen Lands and make them your kingdom! Based on our players' feedback and suggestions, this version of the game improves and builds upon the original. Based on our players' feedback and suggestions, this version of the game improves and builds upon the original. This edition includes: • numerous gameplay-enriching content additions and dozens of quality-of-life features • new abilities and ways to build your character, including a brand-new class • new items and weaponry
Steam User 69
For a CRPG lover such as myself, this game is pure gold. First of all, it is MASSIVE, as in INSANE loads of hand-crafted content. The mechanics are also very classicist, i.e. a very detailed and accurate implementation of the Pathfinder ruleset, complete with very slow level progression (by today's standards), despite the huge number of fights you're going through.
The sheer number of fights and their challenge (if you don't dumb it down in the difficulty settings) means that this is a game for people who love tinkering with complex RPG mechanics and optimizing the heck out of their party. Some fights will really challenge you to think out of the box, and you will always need to be smart about managing your resources, because at some point you will be caught ill-prepared.
But what makes this game so massive is mainly the Barony mechanics that force you to travel back and forth through your entire realm, having random encounters and exploring every corner of your realm while expanding it through diplomacy, construction and questing. This serves to pace and spread the feet-on-the-ground content over this extra layer of event-driven political/strategic RP and city building mechanics. This additional layer is very well integrated in that it keeps interacting with your party gameplay through quests and resources.
Don't believe the negative comments you may have read about the encounter design. Enemies spawning out of thin air is extremely rare, and in the few cases I've seen it happen it was always somehow motivated through the story. Some people may also have gotten confused by invisible enemies. There are MANY encounters, and of course the random encounters are technically infinite and follow a set of blueprints. So of course not every one is a masterpiece, but there is a lot of diversity and some very memorable ones.
Steam User 44
F5 is your friend. Something moved? F5. You think something might move? F5. The night before you dreamed something might move? F5.
Steam User 34
Lets start with the bad since there isn't a lot of it.
1. The camera sucks for combat sometimes. With no ability to rotate the camera you can sometimes end up fighting outlines behind walls, this dosent matter in most situations but in dungeons and narrow maps this can be annoying.
2. The kingdom management feels tacked on and annoying. Multiple aspects including figuring out how to unlock advisor positions and figuring out how to raise kingdom stats felt unfulfilling and frustrating at times. There are aspects of kingdom management that can make you lose the game if certain situations get out of control and your advisors cant handle them. Fortunately you can turn on "invincible kingdom" in the options and it negates 95% of this but this was easily my least favorite aspect of the game.
3. Multiple quests are time gated, while this almost never was a problem for me i can see how someone who gets carried away can fail things just by not paying attention to timing.
Now for the good:
1. The story is epic, from the opening moment to the final scene there are multiple times in the game that have stuck with me. Story moment abound and pull you into the world and the lore that is being built.
2. Choices matter: Seriously, i had choices that i made in the first 20 hours of the game that played out in the final 10. Some were good and some absolutely sucked, your decisions carry weight and choices stick with you and have meaning. More games need to pay attention to a system like this.
3. Companions and side quests are really good, each companion has their own story that you can dive into and play out to learn about them but also to build their loyalty too you in the kingdom.
4. Combat feels really good, this is Pathfinder to its core as the name suggests. Having played the tabletop i can tell you that this is as faithful an adaptation of that system as you are going to get.
Overall this was one of the best CRPG's ive played in a very long time, 100% worth sinking your time into if you enjoy Pathfinder, D&D or anything fantasy.
Steam User 33
The Good
- Gives you a TTRPG experience in a video game.
- The choices you make (seem to) matter! Especially when it comes to companions, future dialogue, and the state of your alignment and religion.
- Timing matters! Especially in the political phases, take too long to resolve something? too bad.
- If you're itching for more BG 1&2, this is it (but updated)
- Graphics, performance, sound, all pretty much good for a cRPG
- So much loot, so many characters, so much variety
- Character (main) progression is nice
The Bad
- Its pacing is slooowww, sloth-like slow. It's frustrating.
- It's repetitive, combat can come down to just attacking single enemies in mobs. I've experienced some strategy here and there but rarely. Most of the time it's just a send-all-in-to-attack style strategy.
- It's repetitive, the even resolutions, like the curses, constantly dealing with the same ones over and over unless you spend a ridiculous amount of resources to research them...it’s frustrating
The I-Wish-It-Had
- Multiplayer. I can see this being played in segments with a group of friends the same way TTRPG is played. This would improve the game greatly.
As it stands, I'm only ~30hrs in, on the (third?) chapter, and I can't get through it without falling asleep. That's not a good or a bad thing, I know people who like their slow and chill rpgs, but this one is not for me. I am hoping WotR will be an improvement.
If I could give it a middling rating I would, but as it stands, I will give it a recommendation because the good outweighs the bad. I just wish I had the energy to see it through.
Steam User 43
Don't listen to all the people complaining about missing and the game being hard there are lots of difficulty option choices to choose from the lowest being nearly impossible to die on. If you are finding the game too difficult it probably stems from a lack of knowledge of the pathfinder system and talents. That being said you don't have to follow meta builds, play what you want if it's too hard it's a single player game you can turn the difficulty down nobody is there to judge you.
I ignored this game for a long time because of all the comments about time limits. They can be annoying for sure, but if you do all the main story quests as soon as they pop up you will be fine. After they are done you still have the same amount of time before the next big section starts to explore and do side quests. Would I prefer they didn't exist? Yes. do they ruin the game? No.
Some of the areas can be quite repetitive (re-using the same maps for example), and the game does feel a bit dated.
I know the game was released in a buggy state, but I have run across very few, and none of them game breaking.
All that being said:
The story is good.
Kingdom management is enjoyable.
Character building in pathfinder is great and trying new builds is always fun.
Combat is as challenging as you would like.
Huge bang for your buck, think I found it at 75% off.
I wouldn't buy it over Baldurs Gate 3 or even Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, but if you are a CRPG fan it's worth a play.
Steam User 39
This is a good a** RPG. Someone who is a D&D guy, really enjoyed this title. Let just say, I had the black flag version of this game, which didn't cost me anything, and liked it so much that I went and bought it here on Steam just because I felt the devs deserved my money and felt guilty for playing such a great title without giving compensation to the creators.
Steam User 44
Baldur? Hardly know her!
No but seriously I'm just too broke to get BG3 right now so I'm finally playing this after having it in my library for ages lmao