Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Review after 100%

Sharing my thoughts on Kingmaker ahead of the Wrath of Righteous release, and after obtaining 100%

Spoiler skip: 4:30

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Nic Ebenal
Anastasia Sarycheva
Saleh Al Madhi
Tim Spijkerbosch

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[phammond]

Just popping on here quickly to give a shout out to my daughter. She did some voice acting in this game. :) That is all. Carry on you gamers.

[JohnnyTightIips]

Good news everyone, 2 years after Mortym brought out this review, the completion rate of this game is now 9.1%!

[captainlcm]

I admire your effort in reviewing after 100%. Such dedication! Thank you!

[nwahally]

I loved the Kindom building. I hated the timers. There has not been a single time when I did not hate timers. They add nothing and often ruin everything.

[alabasterindigo]

I genuinely love the idea of reviewing titles after you 100%, so that alone got me to sub, but you are also very thorough and in-depth with the reviews I’ve seen so far, I love what you’re doing!!!

[Peter-khgo]

I have never played a game that was so determined to get in the way of you 'playing the game'.

[Harrison]

Another thing about alignments: it also affects your kingdom. A Lawful Good Kingdom will have a different set of buildings (& bonuses) then say a Chaotic Neutral one will. As an example, in one playthrough, where I'm a Paladin (LG kingdom) I can have a bulletin board which gives bonuses to kingdom related quests. Playing as a CN kingdom you don't have that Bulletin Board, but instead can have a (barony/state-run) Whorehouse, which gives different bonuses. In an LE kingdom, you have a Gallows in the court square, as opposed to the statue dedicated to my god in my LG kingdom. Those are small things, but added to the flavor & replay-ability on the barony/kingdom side.

EDIT: As for the low completion rate, I MIGHT have something of an answer there. When the game originally came out, it was a buggy mess once you hit the 2nd chapter & tried going forward. It was borderline unplayable if not completely unplayable in some places. Hence people dropping it without finishing it & never going back to it for whatever reason. The game got a really LOW overall rating at the time due to the bugs (What CDPR is going through with Cyberpunk 2077, is what Owlcat went through). That the game got a "2nd chance" with the definitive edition is a miracle. Owlcat games so far seems to have learned their lesson, I'm on the BETA of Wrath of the Righteous, & so far no major bugs; that written, I'm only levels 4 & going on 5 in said BETA.

[ThiLIn]

I actually liked the kingdom management ... there are problems, but urgency gives the quests a more 'real' feeling

[gvs]

Love this game, amazing world, lore and characters. I didn't mind the Kingdom management stuff, I actually found it fun. The amount of detail and variety of choice and consequence in this game is amazing!

[Parkbankroman]

You are one of the most underrating youtuber I know. Thanks for your great work. I really enjoyed this review :D

[Jach]

I love you took the time to review this, as I really enjoy this game. For me personally I liked the kingdom management and the timers, it really immersed me in the difficult decisions of running a kingdom but also helped me prioritize and categorize problems, which for me is cathartic. I’m really bad when it normally comes to choosing what quests to do in RPGs and tend to get frozen by what to start with, and something saying “the deadline for this quest is one week” and another saying “the deadline for this one is 3 months” really helped me make quicker decisions and made me feel more like a king juggling a lot of problems as best I can. I can see this being extremely frustrating when you are trying to 100% a game though.

[MrRecoilius]

This was an extremely useful review! I hope that the developers see this and can take your critical points and use them for the new sequel.

[doctorlolchicken]

I’ve been wanting to play this game for a while. The whole timer part you mentioned really put me off. I am a player who likes exploring. I hate timers.

[AJTupman]

Loved your dedication in doing a 100% run before giving your review, it’s something I wish more reviewers would do but I suppose for those with deadlines playing over 100 hrs before writing a word isn’t really practical. However, you’ve definitely earned my like and subscription.

I’ve got over 1000 hrs in Pathfinder: Kingmaker mainly due to team building in the Tenebrous Depths DLC and it’s probably my favourite CRPG. I also did a 100% run on my first blind playthrough but unlike you I loved the kingdom management and I can’t imagine playing with it turned off, or auto as they put it. I found a real sense of achievement in managing to get every artisan special piece on my first go and also really enjoyed building up my villages and towns. As for the combat, I completed my run when the only option was RTwP and it’s all I’ve done in subsequent runs although I’ve promised myself I’ll give turn based a go in my next attempt, although it will probably feel totally alien to me.

Anyway, thanks again for the review even if it is 2 years late ;)

[crow__bar]

Really good review. I'm happy that someone went through the effort of reviewing this game so long after it's been released because most of the ones that do exist focus a lot on the bugs and the features that they think are missing (both valid points, but very much less so with the current state of the game)

As for your issues with the game, I think I have to disagree slightly. Kingdom management can be boring to a lot of people, but I personally loved it. It actually made me feel like I am a ruler of the region and that I need to do ruler shit. It also served the story thanks to the time progression. Seeing the seasons change when adventuring, characters talking about other characters from 2 years ago, etc. It really makes you believe that the time shift is real, and not just a date in your journal changing with nothing else to show it.

Also have to disagree on the timers. I 100% understand why they are frustrating to you and other players, but to me it was the only time in a game where I actually felt the urgency of the main quest. Just think about all the times in Skyrim, or the Witcher where you got told that "we need to deal with this fast or the world is going to end" only for you to then spend 20 hours doing fetch quests or playing cards. In Kingmaker, there's none of that. You need to learn to budget not only your money and other resources but your time as well. "Do I have time to do this side quest? Is the risk of failing a different quest high enough for this gamble?" It just really nicely loops back around to the story and making you feel like your character. Don't really know what you're doing, everyone needs your help and you're just hoping to get through this without everyone dying.

[Deviljho]

You reviewed this two years ago and I am just now getting it! 😊 Your review is spot on!

[christophermzdenek]

Kingdom Management was the whole reason I grabbed a cheat mod. Nothing big just set the resolution of events to 1 day. Instantly made the game 100% more enjoyable.

[spartnmarcen]

Was thinking about picking this up but after hearing about the timers and the pain that the Kingdom management system (my main draw) is I'll wait. Love your review style.

[jamesclawk]

I just finished my first playthrough a couple days ago, after starting with WotR, and I appear to be in the minority with regards to both the kingdom management and the timers. The timers in particular I really appreciated since, in many games, I'll be informed of some urgent threat but instead of addressing it, I'll go around doing as much side content as I can find because I know that some of it will go away once I progress the main story. Here, because everything's on a timer, I can focus on the main story first and then I have a ton of time leftover to do side content. Narratively, I liked that a lot, and I was never really worried about running out of time, since the timers are so generous.

As for the kingdom management, it's harder to explain. I think that maybe in a game where I'm constantly unsure of how anything works (I've never played the ttrpg) it's nice to be able to take a breather with something that is simple and easy to understand. In fact, many of the parts that I found the most irritating were the longer dungeon sections, where I'm locked in to doing combat after combat with no relief.

I would actually say I liked this game better overall than WotR, though that may change, since WotR has a lot more replay value as far as I can tell.

[williamnoble]

It's a shame you didn't enjoy the Kingdom Management. I wouldn't say it's my favorite part of the game, but I certainly enjoyed it across multiple playthroughs. It really gave me the chance to feel like there were goings-on in the kingdom beyond what I was directly seeing at the end of my character's sword. It is frustrating when your 90% success chance advisors get a few critical failures on their Problem cards in a row though...

In regards to timers, I never felt they were punishing, even on my first blind playthrough when the game first came out. As long as someone pays attention and doesn't elect to ignore things that are advertised as important, I think it's unlikely that they'll run in to many walls. The main story quests are at least given the countdown in the quest log as to how many days are left before they fail.

A great review though overall, and certainly to each's own. Liked and subscribed :)
Hope you're looking forward to Wrath of the Righteous!