Game Review - Pathfinder: Kingmaker

Game Review: Pathfinder: Kingmaker by Owlcat Games
Score: Fail, +2/-15

If you don't already know, the Epic Games Store gives away full titles every week, and not cheesy indie titles either.

Thankfully, I got Pathfinder: Kingmaker free from the Epic Game Store. You really don't want to waste your money here, unless you are a superfan of pen-and-paper Pathfinder or Dungeons & Dragons and don't mind playing those games in a way utterly contrary to how you would play not just those games in a tabletop setting, but any video game at all.

If you have experience with the old great games in a similar mode, like Neverwinter Nights or Icewind Dale, this game is actually nothing like them. Don't be deceived. (We'll compare them at the very end of this review).

 

Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition is the first isometric party-based computer RPG set in the Pathfinder fantasy universe. Enjoy a classic RPG experience inspired by games like Baldur's Gate, Fallout 1 and 2 and Arcanum.

CAVEAT: At the time of writing this review, we didn't get too far into the game. We finished the prologue, explored some optional map locations, and pursued some main story quests. Even at this early stage, it was enough to recommend against buying this title without somehow trying it first, such as getting a limited edition for free from Epic Games (like we did). Only if you actually like it should you buy additional content.

So we didn't get to kingdom management yet and the game is a fail. But the kingdom management phase in Kingmaker has issues too and isn't really anything to look forward to.

It's a "choices-matter" style story-drive roleplaying game, so let's first examine these aspects.

• +1 You start with an "alignment" or moral compass. This initially seems meaningless as you can apparently still say or do what you want, though at the risk of shifting your moral compass.
• The whole idea of fixing players with a moral compass was probably rooted in trying to make players actually role-play instead of being focussed on mathematically optimal outcomes and "roll-playing". But let's sidestep this debate entirely and just say that your first look at the roleplaying opportunities in the game -- the opportunities to express how you want your character to act and others to react to your choices -- seem quite good.
• The concept of a morality compass at all is more useful for non-player characters, as a reminder and guide for how to make them behave and thereby add another layer of characterization.
• -1 However, later in the game, they go back on this trend and outright disallow you from taking certain actions.
• Obviously this is an attempt to make your morality matter, and therefore give a sense that your choices matter.
• Some seem appropriate -- only if you are of an "evil" morality are you allowed to extort money from an innkeeper.
• -1 But others don't make sense. For example, you are tasked to spare the life of a certain bandit, but you cannot make that choice for any reason at all unless you are of a "good" morality. Not even for purely mercenary reasons, such as expecting a reward for fulfilling
• A better way of handling the situation would have been to allow all actions but some with a more severe morality shift -- though this would ultimately require some other way of making your morality actually impactful. Which isn't as serious as it sounds because the developers created the problem themselves by forcing a consequence on this mechanic to make it feel relevant.
• +1 The range of character types you can play is staggering. And initially this appears to reinforce the notion that the game wants you to have the experience of playing what you want and being who you want. We'll examine this more closely when we talk about combat, but the sheer breadth of choices is noteworthy.

The actual playability of any game is tested by not just combat, but the design of encounters.

In the prologue you are not faced with any opposition that requires a lot of tactics and good team composition. What this means is you have a very controlled environment in which to learn the basics of the game -- i.e., it's a tutorial.

This is fine until your first truly significant dialog choices, which unbeknownst to you, will determine which companions you get. If you don't get a good mix, you are basically doomed for many reasons.

• -1 On the one hand they seem to want you to roleplay and choose words and deeds according to the concept of your character. But at the same time, if you can't shore up some of the shortfalls of your party, you will either have to make a more viable player character, or start making choices based on outcomes.
• You could pretend that you are a psychopathic liar and make choices strictly according to what you feel is the best outcome, but doing so also requires you to know ahead of time what outcomes are related to your choices. For example, at the end of the prologue, you discover that the choices you made in that final conversation will determine who is on your team when you end the tutorial.
• If you happen to end the tutorial with a priest and a bard for example, you're going to have a really rough time when they keep getting their spells interrupted and they get chopped up in combat because they don't have good defenses. So you will have to pick up the slack, but you can't really do that if you also happen to be one of the fragile classes like a wizard.
• There is no way to make it more playable by developing your character.
• -1 In open world games, there is typically the option of spending time doing repeatable side tasks to improve your character's abilities (level up) and get gear or currency to buy gear. But it is not clear how this is possible in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, if at all. The overland locations are all scripted one-time encounters.
• There are random encounters as you travel, but you cannot reliably trigger them. Even if you could, they typically involve only a couple of enemies and barely any loot for your time. They are basically random time wasters during travel or camping.
• -1 Even supposing you could somehow get currency to buy gear, there is nothing much to buy at the starting home base.
• Getting your team more armor is absolutely important, especially for your front line that has to survive lots of attacks, but there are basically no upgrades, or just one or two for specific characters. Most of the items are the same trash you can get off common enemies.
• While this might be "realistic" or to prevent players from somehow buying their way to victory early in the game, it does nothing to actually help players improve their party, especially if their roleplaying lands them with a weak party combination.
• All the gear in the game world is essentially non-random. If the developers didn't think to put it in, you won't find it.
• here is no way to tell where the "low level" encounters are so you are wandering all over the map, spending resources camping as you do so -- resources you can't recover because there's no reliable / repeatable way to get more currency.
• -1 Even if you do defeat enemies, random repeatable encounters or otherwise, you get only a tiny amount of Experience Points. Most of your ability to improve your character's level will be dependent on actual questing -- which also means somehow getting through those scripted encounters.
• -1 There is no way to tell where the "low level" encounters are so you are wandering all over the map, spending resources camping as you do so -- resources you can't recover because there's no reliable / repeatable way to get more currency.
• -1 Even if there were a way to work on your character and companions, there is a time limit on how much time you can waste wandering the map and going back and forth to home base because from the start you are told you have only a limited amount of time to accomplish the key main story quest task.
• -1 So they give you optional tasks, but you are actively discouraged from doing them.
• And depending on who's available for your party, you might not even be able to succeed.
• At your "home base" location there is a mechanic for you to spend an enormous amount of currency to get a custom companion -- that is, create another character of your choice to fill your party.
• -1 It is contrary to the role companions play in the story and your choices.
• And it is clearly their backup plan for poorly designed overland and encounters and the non-viability of some character classes that you choose as your player character.
• -1 So you might as well just look up online builds and create a party of clownish combinations which are mathematically optimal. So much for focussing on story and roleplay.
• FAIL If you needed a particular companion in order to get through the game -- then why not play that build from the very start? Obviously not all player characters are viable.
• -1 The underlying mechanics make combat very chancy.
• Suppose you actually have a good front line high-defense "tank" character or companion. You still cannot control the flow of the fight for proper tactics because the enemy could suddenly shift their attention to another character, especially if they are close by also (e.g., multiple party members in hand-to-hand with the enemy) and there's nothing you can do, especially at a lower level.
• The mechanics work fine in live tabletop games with a human gamemaster controlling the monsters because they can make decisions on the fly to ensure the other players have an exciting time. In a computer game, there isn't that sort of adjustment to account for too much randomness.
• Critical hits from monsters, even if they do not do extra damage, are particularly irritating as it can nullify all your preparations.
• For this reason, most games do not allow NPCs to score critical hits, thus putting the focus back on skill and strategy. Even though in such games players can score critical hits, it is often factored in as a character build strategy rather than straight overwhelming luck.
• Players winning because of a lucky streak of critical hits is similarly dissatisfying.
• -1 Some encounters are extremely bad.
• For example, Fangberry Cave is one of the locations that causes problems for many new players. You can get a quest to go there very early, suggesting that it is an area for starting adventurers. You are even given some gear at the time you get the quest, as a hint about what you're going to need (but obviously you have no idea how much you will actually need) against the special enemies (spider swarms). But there is so much chance involved in the entire sequence.
• If you don't have a companion who can tank you are in trouble. You need at least one character who can survive for quite a long time holding a chokepoint.
• If they are taking too many hits they will likely also be poisoned too many times and lose too much of their stats to be viable. So again you have to go back to base and cure them and spend time and resources in doing so. Or more likely just load a save game and hope for better random results.
• If you don't have such a character, you are extremely vulnerable when you try to use the special gear ("Alchemist Fire" -- basically fire bombs you throw) because they allow nearby enemies to take a swing at you.
• If you happen to have the right spell or the right player character class, you have more options like some kind of area effect spell of an appropriate type, but the same vulnerabilities and drawbacks apply.
• Even if you do have someone to hold the line, every time you use the fire bomb, they will be hurt by the fire explosion. If you try to use some other area effect attack, your front-liner will also be hit because the swarm literally occupies the same space as that character.
• You could miss and your fire bomb will do very little -- extending the time needed for the encounter and reducing the survivability of your front liner, if you actually have one.
• Meanwhile if your front line character is hurt too many times, they suffer special attribute damage which reduces their viability for future encounters.
• Too many misses and you run out of bombs.
• It is basically not feasible to kill the swarms in any other way.
• There are several other enemies that come at you at the same time.
• Fangberry Cave can be easy if you happen to have a good party mix right out of the Tutorial -- for example if you have Valerie who specializes in the Tower Shield. Or it can be a frustrating disaster.
• Suppose you fail to clear it. Now what? You can reload and walk out of the location. More likely players will reload a much earlier save game and either prepare better or give the area a pass until they have a proper party to handle it.
• Both of these represent a lot of wasted precious player time.
• The outcome is unsatisfying because now you are going back to replay the encounter with too much foresight / spoiler information.
• A smooth way of clearing it is to find a tight passage where the spiders can't get around Valerie, and have everyone behind it shoot spiders or throw Alchemical Fire. Ideally you can scout ahead with a stealthed character and throw an Alchemical Fire before running back into position ahead of all monsters.
• But doing it this way makes the fight feel like you cheesed it by bodyblocking with a high-armor character. And that's not really satisfying either.
• A lot of fights will end up this way -- one high-armor "tank" front liner hopefully not getting hit while you shoot everything to death. If they do get hit, walking up to heal them will be tricky, especially if they are holding the line against a Large sized creature that can actually strike past your front line character at the spell-caster trying to heal them.
• Another bad encounter is Temple of the Elk, an early main story quest.
• Up to this point you can have encounters ranging from moderately challenging to challenging, depending on your party. But very suddenly the encounter difficulty jumps up when you meet the bear.
• Even if you do have a tank a couple of lucky swipes from the Bear will drop them suddenly and the encounter will basically be a wipe.
• Some online guide suggest you use this or that spell, but that also depends on whether you have such spells as well as the willingness to spoil your gameplay experience by reading ahead of time what you will "need". And even if you do so, you might have had to make choices very early on in order to get those spells or items.
• So then is the party supposed to backtrack and do something else? What exactly? As we mentioned before, there is no indication of where to go in order to get better and get geared. You could certainly randomly try the various encounters on the map but there's no guarantee you can pass them either. All wasted time.

Miscellaneous issues:

• -1 Really poor documentation in-game.
• For example, an odd-value Intelligence score gives you one skill point at first level and then one every other level. But this isn't stated and you can easily believe that you've found a bug starting at level 2 when you're missing a skill point to spend.
• Cooking: You can acquire and copy a recipe, but... how do you use it? How do you even see what recipes you know, so that you can assemble the ingredients -- assuming you know how and when to use it.
• -1 Overland map locations are not necessarily revealed when you pass by -- further encouraging players to look up spoilers online, in this case, fully revealed maps to see if they missed anything. In-game it also means moving back and forth wasting time until you reveal the event location.

This is not Baldur's Gate

The game promises you will "enjoy a classic RPG experience inspired by games like Baldur's Gate, Fallout 1 and 2 and Arcanum". But in fact you will not.

The key difference between those games and this the reduced freedom you have in those games. You were basically on rails in Baldur's Gate for example. Sure you had some freedom to move around, but in the end you were moved through the story in a very controlled way. In this way, by controlling so many variables, they ensured that you had a reasonable chance of success unless you set out to sabotage yourself with deliberately bad choices.

In contrast, your experience of Pathfinder: Kingmaker will be one where reasonable choices in character creation and sometimes in gameplay can result in later failure. This increases the pressure to metagame -- making choices based on foresight (spoilers). And in doing so, actually reduce their own choices by choosing what is efficient.