Pathfinder: Kingmaker | A Look Through UX Eyes

I’m not going to lie. This old game playing fellow does indeed find your material well presented and yes, very soothing. I’m calmed, not euthanized.

Everytime I see someone use real time with pause instead of turn based in pathfinder I gotta hold back. Like turn based makes it so much easier. Real time is only cool against weaker enemies

Pathfinder Midmaker

The first time I stopped playing it was when I realized how unnecessarily brutal and punishing the difficulty is even at the lowest settings combined with how they take away my favorite party members. During my playthrough, there were only TWO CHARACTERS that felt tolerable to me and the game took them both, one permanently and one just for a chapter or two, and gave it back to me blind and after he betrayed me.
The second time I stopped playing, after deciding to give it another go with an OP solo build, I realized that 90% of the game time is watching a piece move on a map at an unnecessarily slow speed over ridiculously inefficient roads that were designed to take the longest possible time to get anywhere, and every time you would be interrupted from that torture with two loading screens every time two goblins decided to attack a mystic theurge with a belt full of magic wands, an awesome super epic cape, with magic lights and sparks coming out of every inch of leather metal or fabric that he was wearing, AND a giant smilodon pet. Not that my Smilodon couldn't solo every random encounter that came my way, but I also had more spells that I could use before having to sleep off an exhausted status. And two goblins or three bandits go "Yeah we can probably take them down!". I actually stopped looting these random encounters because It wasn't worth the time it took to click on the sums of money or items that each of them had, and collecting all was out of the question since I would get encumbered by worthless cumbersome clubs and hide armors.
So even with kingdom management on auto, playing solo and not being invested in any way in any companions, and having an OP build with actually limitless spells and a giant monster animal companion that can deal 100+ damage per round, the game is still unbearable because of the atrocious travel system and game pacing.

4 years later still broken buggy mess.Worst game i ever played sadly

Dude, learn Delay Poison lmao

I disagree with your notion of balancing. I'll take level-gating and occassionally getting slammed, over level-scaling any day. In fact, i love level-gating, as it makes you feel like you conquer the map as your party progresses - which has rarely been more thematically fitting than in this game. You just have to come to terms with the fact that sometimes you need to tug your tail and leave to try again a few level-ups later. This also helps to give the player a sense of "his place". In my view it makes perfect sense to throw in some super-challenging, if not impossible (at the current party level, supposed or real) foes in some optional locations especially early on, to drive the point home, that you are nothing yet. Your video shows this perfectly. From "this is way too easy" to dropping two levels of difficulty in like 10 minutes. Kinda showed you your place, didnt it? What you were supposed to do, is to turn around, go somewhere else, and come back later, beat them on your difficulty level, and feel great for it, afterwards. IMHO this is the way it has to be, lest party progression is nothing but a steady rise of meaningless numbers.

(IMHO, Oblivion is the worst RPG i ever played, because of its massive level-scaling - i dropped it, as soon as i learned about it - makes the entire role playing part pointless).

Are any of the problems he had still in the game. Gonna try the game out just hoping its not gonna be like he had

I didn't have the patience to finish kingmaker after putting 100 hours into it, yet I finished both baldur's gates back to back in 320+ hours, something just didn't sit right with me about kingmaker, and yeah the morality choices were nonsensical.

I wanted to watch this, but I couldnt get through the section complaining about alignment. Unfortunately, you seemed to lack an understanding of what alignment is and how it's supposed to work. Most people do because of WOTC, but in a nutshell, yes a Lawful Good character would absolutely murder slavers without asking questions. Slavers are outlaws who kill, steal, and sell people. It is lawful to kill outlaws, and they had plenty of chances to talk and to repent before you and your sword got there. That said, alignments are deacriptive rather than prescriptive. Good, or Lawful characters don't "always" do anything.

This isn’t the 21st century and these are Evil people in a world where Good and Evil are tangible cosmic forces - not subject to moral debate. Obviously this explanation is oversimplified, but as much as I appreciate your analysis, it's distracting how unwilling you were to learn the source material.

Both Pathfinder games should of been awesome adventures, but instead, they are more of a pain in the butt to be able to play. In Kingmaker, the last thing i wanted to do was having to rush back to my kingdom when yr half way up the map or even run a small kingdom for that matter. All i wanted was to play an adventure, exploring ruins and dungeons, killing monsters etc with a good run story, and the same goes for Wrath of the Righteous. Great start to that adventure too, then it all gets bogged down in moving armies around on the map. If i wanted to play a game with armies running around a map, i would play Rome Total war or whatever.
Thing is i am more of an old school D&D adventurer. Both of these games are like two games in one. And in my point of view, these games are failures and are just not for me. They had great graphics, game play, everything. But as i have said above, they get so bogged down in trying to do too many things at once that the adventure just dies there and then. They should of been better than this.

wrath is a much better game than kingmaker, plotwise. the final boss is a bland fairy and the end dungeon feels a chore. sucks. the serial killer companion from wrath ... camille! man i love that psycho

The game was fine for me for the most part, as i just picked the casual difficulty and enjoyed the story instead. Some things to note is, the game warns you that turning kingdom management on auto is a permanent solution so that was on you. Also you miss out on the true ending if you put it on auto. You don't have to abide by the core rules to experience the game, difficulty options are so vast that you can tailor the experience to the exact condition you want them in. There is no shame in playing on easy.

I love the atmosphere, enemy variety, and world map of this game. It's comfy to hunt for rations and uncover the landmarks. The bugs and UI are fucking terrible and even worse after playing WOTR

I also played a paladin in this game and had the exact same experience. Some of the things you said gave me flash backs. I did only have to wait 1 day to get to moonday though.

ah yes it's good to slaughter evil things, it's just how dnd been the whole time.

Hmm... I wonder if, as someone who has played a lot of tabletop Pathfinder/D&D 3.X, and as someone who has actually run (just the first part) of Kingmaker for a D&D group, that I would be able to get past the unfriendly GUI.

Do a Solasta video but make sure to use the dlcs :)

That fight. That specific fight at 17 mins is why I checked out. Felt like a random spike that was utterly out of my control. Switched play throughs to go from swordsaint to a range magus and it tore me apart. I’ve never played pathfinder I couldn’t understand any of what was going on in melee or how to prevent getting aggro’d, or what to even build the characters into. Hell I got more out of turning the Barbarian into a Druid then the Milage I was getting out of barbarian.

I have over 100 hours on Kingmaker. . . I have never made it past chapter 3. I have tried to love it... so hard. I went back for the turn based mode up date. Not balanced for it enemy number nuts. Wrath of the Righteous It was there map mode that kicked my butt so hard I stopped which was a shame. It was shaping up as a super power fantasy.

That nymph quest where you’re supposed to go alone, the description of the quest literally hints at it being a trap and that you should bring invisibility potions

Kingmaker does something really unique among mainstream games.
It will slap you whenever you expect it to behave like a game!
- If you rest just outside a cave, have an encounter! Because the inhabitants of the cave don't know that this is a game where they should let you rest on their doorstep.
- If you go somewhere you have no reason to be, it will kill you. Because the encounters don't know that this is a game and that you are too low level for this area.
- Trying to find Armag's tomb but cant find it where the walkthrough tells you it is? It is not bugged. The Perception DC is set to auto-fail and you need to find clues that reduce the DC first. Why do you expect to find someplace where you would have not a single idea on where to look? The clues will reveal themselves in time.
- Are you expecting to get the next story mission immediately? Why would the world and story cater to you? Is this a game? Are you the protagonist? Down Boy! Bad assumptions!
- Did you not pack enough supplies? If this is an "unfair" game-over in a game where surviving the wilderness is central, then what would be a fair game-over? Camping without supplies is dangerous, and you should not treat this like a game!

I hated parts of this game, especially early on. But when it started to click I had a blast for most of it.

This is a game is about dragging yourself through the mud, conquering every step with your blood, sweat and tears.
It's a monkeys paw. You think you want to build a kingdom? That sounds awesome right? Well be careful what you wish for! For this game will let you build a kingdom. From nothing. In the middle of nowhere. With nature and everything else stacked against you. But you will do it alone and with your own bare hands.
Dare I say this game is "Hardcore". It is certainly not for everyone. And I respect the hell out of the game for having the balls to do this in a mainstream space. And when you do win? For all the frustrations I had, I regret nothing! I conquered this hill on Normal+ difficulty (with mods and occasional walkthrough) and I feel like a boss! That's what this kind of game is for!

The biggest problems I see is that
- The game does not set the expectations it needs. I think most will expect a power trip. To get a crown early on and get to lead armies. You will get only one of those and it is more than halfway through a very long story.
- It tutorializes its gameplay poorly. Like how on Candlemere you realize that you need to use Protection from Electricity to solve the Wisp encounters, because brute forceing the issue won't cut it any longer. Same with Delay Poison in all of chapter 3. Or death ward in chapter 4. And the game does not tell you that the vast amounts of downtime is there so you can play the kingdom management aspects.
- It tutorializes its controls poorly. If you did not look for the buttons yourself then you are unlikely to find Analyze, or Offer, or the Calendar showing the day of the week, or the Unsnap targeting toggle, or the log that is essential to figuring out why something happened or did not work.
- The game does not tell you that it is not a game. You should not expect game-y things. Events have fixed dates so there will be downtime.
- I suspect the game does not tutorialize the Pathfinder 1E system well. And the 1E ruleset is incredibly unforgiving to new players.
- At least for me, it did not tutorialize its own differences to the pen-and-paper system well.
I'm not defending the poor design and UX. But at least these are all things that are no longer an issue with a second playthrough.

If you were looking for more of a power-fantasy. Check out Owlcats next game: Wrath of the Righteous.

So I've never had the chance to play a pen and paper rpg but some of my buddies play DnD and pathfinder so I would probably try a game like this to kind of get an idea of how it would work since I don't have the most time to physically hang out with people. I'm certain if this was my first time with that experience I would not want to play any kind of tabletop rpg.

i had the complete opposite experience, i don't know for the life of me why people need a game to beat them over the head with what to do, i know for a fact that i'm not that smart.. I think you're just used to the games spoon feeding you.

Love your content Strat. Stopped buying anything from Owlcat the moment they failed hard the second time and many class related bugs still havent been fixed in Wrath. Appaling.

Playing on unfair, the game abuses me, I abuse it in return. Just the law of fair trade. I'll detail how I do so if there is interest. Let's just say that the game IS soloable on unfair, if you are willing to grind through the horrible prologue. Also, I hate to say it, but this game requires save-scumming. This will cut down a lot of the frustrations. I also got almost stuck on finding Armag's Tomb, but I managed to find it after doing a project of finding it in kingdom management.

"A lawful good character will always try to solve a problem without violence." Ah, so you're not familiar with D&D, then.
This review sucks, man.

I've just gotten my kingdom up, and went to meet the Dryad.

When I played, the dwarf and the edgy elf chick both threw in with tartuccio.
Now... I kinda of wanted to kill them? Like, fuck you for siding with the gnome, of all creatures? But I guess I can't do that lol. I don't care how useful those two are. I hold a grudge and want them dead. My inquisitor would absolutely have them executed in I was allowed that RP lol

I would love to see your reaction to russian gothic 2 mods. I admit that they are essentially a compilation of your problems with this game turned up to 11 but at that point you might as well treat it as satire.

Ah, this is probably joining a chorus far too late, but "Lawful" in terms of TTRPG speak (DnD, Pathfinder, etc etc) does not mean "I abide by the laws of the land". "Lawful" in this sense means "ordered", as in "in opposition to chaos", which is what "chaotic" alignments are. The "alignment" chart is an oft debated thing, with hundreds of millions of people weighing in on what THEY think it means because of how THEY were told what it means.

The shorthand is that "Good", "Evil", and "Neutral" are the measures of your MORALITY. "Lawful", "Chaotic", and "Neutral (as used as an afix)" measure your MODALITY. "Chaos" and "Law" are the diametrically opposed forces in (most of) these universes. A "lawful" character and a "chaotic" character can have the same morals, but diverge in their methods.

It doesnt change the fact that the "Lawful Good" option to MURDER a bunch of slavers is totally mislabeled. That would be a CHAOTIC Good character's choice. A Chaotic Good character is best exemplfied as "vigilantes", they're the sort of person who would, in this situation, eliminate the slavers on sight and without any other provocation. To the Chaotic Good character, evil is something that MUST be defeated, by any means necessary, and theyre most satisfied when the quickest path to these ends are taken.


The LAWFUL Good solution to this problem, would be to free the slaves, capture the slavers and take them someplace where they could be tried for their crimes -- not because the lawful good character is stringently attached to written laws or anything, but because to the lawful good character, murder is still murder. Killing these slavers is A good thing to do, but not THE good thing to do. To a lawful good character, these slavers are still people, they made the choice to do evil, but, they could still choose to be good. They MUST answer for their crimes, but after that, they may be good people, given the chance.

The problem with the "alignments" as popularized by TTRPGS (especially in regards to "Lawful Good" in particular) is that, over the years, the perception, proliferation, expression and depictions of them have evolved. Due to the nature of humans being humans, playing games together, using and viewing these things through their own lenses. The characters who once served as fantastic examples for the alignments have seen so many iterations that saying "Captain America is a Lawful Good character" now comes with an asterisk, since Steve Rodgers has been depicted as a jingoistic xenophobe, which is a distinctly non-'lawfuful good' character trait. Likewise, many people have had to deal with "lawful good" paladin's being obnoxious, preachy, moralist boyscouts who ruin the party dynamic by tattleing on the thief everytime he picks a lock (because some people believe THAT is what LAWFUL means and play it as such).

The key here is that these definitions are very very old. When they were published, they meant different things. Lawful was codified as Lawful because it was commonly believed that the law and it's keepers were upstanding heroes who constantly strived to protect people from evil. Public perception on law as a concept has shifted and with it, the definitions of what it means to be a "lawful" character. Likewise, as the plots have turned away from the Tolkienian plots of Good vs. Evil and embraced more nuanced character conflicts, the stalwart paragon hero that served as the typifier for Lawful Good characters has now been tested, deconstructed, sabotaged and more.

When in doubt, I like to go to the "Burning Building" hypothetical.

A building is burning down...

Lawful Good characters rush in, and attempt to save everyone in the building. Women, children, even the arsonist doesnt deserve to die in this inferno. Everyone gets out. It is not the place of one person to decide who "deserves" to live.

Chaotic Good characters save the innocents, but leave the criminals to burn. If allowed to live, they could escape, go on to burn more buildings down. It is better that they die here.

Lawful Evil characters started the fire, because they have a massive insurance payout coming to them. The people inside don't factor into their thoughts, and they kill any witnesses as it would endanger their scheme.

Chaotic Evil characters started the fire. They kill anyone trying to help, or, trying to escape. There is no reason, this is just what they enjoy.

Man, I'm still halfway through and all I can say is that this video is one hell of a ride

Most common weapon historically was a spear. The long sword is actually pretty rare if compared to spears and axes. Also not the most useful on battlefield it was a backup, status and "civilian" (something to walk around in town with) weapon but was never most common.

Lack of towns by design i think, supposed to be wild lands to be settled more or less?

Cleave allows you to turn to smack someone so yes its 360