Hi, so I think this game looks very interesting and I am considering buying it. I am already somewhat familiar with 3.5 edition D&D and the D20 SRD. However, it seems quite polarizing and I am seeing a lot of negative reviews flying around.

One thing I am hearing a lot about is a predominance of timed quests, where the player is not even aware of the timer. I have heard that even parts of the main quest line are timed and if you fail those then you can get into a state where you can't progress any further in the game.

How much of that is true? Also, I am curious as to what extent the game is mod-able? Is it likely there is (or at least could be) a fan-made mod that would turn off some of the quest timers, if I don't like that? Does it have an 'editor'? Is it likely we will see a lot of fan-made quest content, that might be worth playing, even if I don't like the base content that is included in the game?

If you played pnp it's no worse than most DM's enforce. Everything in the game is on a fixed timer and things will happen when they will happen regardless. Same with quests. It's a basic priority assessment. Bad things tend to happen to people in trouble with time and murderous things assaulting your kingdom is maybe not the best time to go on a hike. Makes sense.

Overall the game is very lenient on the timers. You will have months to skip with nothing to do by the end of it if you were even somewhat optimal. It's mostly there to prevent players from going nova on every encounter and to create a sense of time and to make the time a bit of a resource.

There are quite some mods that allow you to cheat in various ways, including the time if that's your thing.

Thanks for your reply. Sure, it might 'make sense' from a 'realism' point-of-view, but that doesn't necessarily equate to a fun game experience. Based on what I've read, the number of timers in the game seems to be very contentious and some people seem to really hate it, hence all the bad reviews. I can see how, if timers are very frequent and overly aggressive, it could be unfun, particularly in combination with a game that seems to be quite bad at providing in-game explanations for how the ruleset mechanics work.

Again, I haven't played the game, so I can't comment on it myself. If I play it, I will try it with the timers first and see how it goes. But, it seems like it wouldn't have been a hard thing for the devs to include an option in the settings to turn off (or at least tone down) the timers, for newer players or those that don't like them. Ok, this is encouraging to hear. So far, I have heard from other sources that the timers are quite aggressive and make the game less fun. It seems a bit judgemental to label the use of mods as 'cheating'. Many players use mods on games to tweak things they don't like or that they feel make the game less fun for them. I'm not sure the concept of 'cheating' even makes sense for a single-player game. It's not as if you're competing against other players. The only real reason to play a single-player game is to have fun, and different people prefer different levels of challenge. That's why many games include different difficulty settings, after all.

Call it however you like. I remember cheat books floating around the school back when. Things that let you circumvent intended design are called cheats to me and it's not necessarily a bad thing when nobody else is affected.

So, your initial questions were: And here are the answers:
1. Yes, there are time limited quests. For some people it is big hindrance and the reason to write negative reviews. For other people it is a fun challenge of resource management on several levels. Naturally, the game is for the latter ones and probably not for the former. It's up to you to decide which group you belong to.
2. The game has neither official mod support nor any kits for modders. However, even without support the game code is easy to modify in-memory which means there are plenty of QoL, cosmetic, and even additional content mods. The best place to find them is Pathfinder: Kingmaker page on Nexus.
3. There is a mod that allows to cheat out some time restrictions.
4. There is no game resource editor, and a save file editor neither.
5. AFAIK there is no fun-based quest content, and the game is two year old; however, there are mods that add new classes and mechanics. You need to check them for compatibility with the latest game patch, though.

1. The whole main story line and some side quests are timed.
2. There are two kinds of timers: those that tell when the quest will fail; and those that warn about something potentially not good happening in the future. In both cases it's up to the player to decide and prioritize; however, some poor decisions could lead to loosing the game. On the other hand, if the priorities are set correctly then there is plenty of time to explore.
3. See (2). If the player does not understand the urgency then something starts to happen in-game that is clearly detrimental to the player. However, it can be freely ignored up to the point of loosing the run. Well, the issue is - the last game I remember which can be lost due to a timed quest was Fallout from Interplay released in 1997. So yes, Pathfinder: Kingmaker provides some sense of urgency; but as it is probably the first such RPG in 20 years, there are not that many to compare to.

Thanks again for your advice, I really appreciate it. So, it sounds like the timed quests are quite prevalent, but the time pressure isn't a big issue, as long as you 'get on with things'? The game sounds different and interesting and I think I will give it a try.

It seems like the sort of game where you need to know what you are getting into. I get the impression quite a few people bought it without realizing about the timed quests, expecting it to be like PoE or Baldur's Gate and had a bit of a shock.

I found the time allotments for the quests were extremely lenient. I literally finished all the story missions as well as having fully-explored all the world locations with nearly two years remaining before the final chapter triggered. I never had issue with being on the clock; there were a few events that were obviously timed, but I just played them casually and never experienced a problem with taking too long. There was only one companion quest where I ever received a warning that it might time out soon, and that was because the companion quest bugged out and failed to trigger properly (so it wasn't appearing correctly in my quest log and none of the dialog options were available; I had to consult a guide to figure out how to fix it. It's a good thing I had to check a guide at that moment, because otherwise I might not have known about the following...) If I had to guess, it's because of the surprise perma-deaths that can happen to companions in the final chapter. If you didn't complete their companion quests in exactly the right way then you lose the companion in question. And there's no way of knowing if you completed the companion quests in the right way until you reach the perma-death section. Even following a guide, I still lost a companion and I have no idea what I did wrong as I *thought* I had obtained the good ending of his quest line. This is atrociously bad game design and I have no idea what the developers were thinking.

The other screw-you moment is the Soul Eater fight, which puts three characters in the party into 1v1 battles where no one else can interfere. While this is perfectly manageable if you know what's coming, or if by chance the three chosen characters are good for fights, but in my case one of the characters was... the bard... who had no good way of damaging the enemy she had to fight. Even turning the difficulty down to the lowest level and abusing turn-based mode to create an impassible barrier so she could just snipe the enemy to death with her crossbow it took me over 10 minutes to whittle it down to death. This was marginally faster than reloading to the point at which I could designate a different character to suffer this fight.

These are the sorts of things that can make people rage-quit and leave bad reviews. And quite frankly, developers had it coming. These are absolutely obnoxious game elements that can have a massive negative effect on your game experience, and if you don't have a guide in front of you then you're liable to be screwed by them.

Hi and thanks for the warning. I agree these things you describe do sound highly obnoxious and it is off-putting. These are the sorts of things that, if a DM were to pull that in a tabletop game, I would think many players would just stand up, say "fuck you" and walk away. The thing is, if they have made design decisions that are that bad, I have to wonder what other dubious decisions they will have made. Is this the sort of virtual DM that I really want to spend time playing with?

Have the devs said anything about why they have done these things? They must have received feedback about it from many people.

This is why I was asking about modding support. It would be nice to know if there are mods available that can fix these sorts of issues, or fan-made modules I could try, if I don't like the built-in campaign.

Owlcat Games consider themselves "sadistic DM's", and are proud of that. In the days of "inclusivity", "accessibility", and "no one left behind" - which is the plague of modern gaming - their approach is a breath of fresh air. Naturally, it means that their game is not for everyone. Probably, it is not for you; but it is definitely for me. And modding out this design approach is, probably, possible - but then you will not be playing the game you paid for. So... why bother buying it in the first place?

I know what you mean and I don't like the recent hand-holding trend in games either. But, I think there is a big difference between an RPG not hand-holding and a DM just being a dick. I play games to have fun and my play time is precious. I'm not sure that playing a long RPG campaign with a 'sadistic DM' is my idea of fun.

It sort of begs the question as to who the game is for then? From what I'm hearing, it sounds like it is for people who are: a) already familiar with the Pathfinder ruleset, b) enjoy timed quests and c) are basically RPG masochists. So, it seems their target audience is rather narrow.

I don't really understand your apparent allergy to modding. There are many games that can be significantly improved with mods, e.g. Bloodlines, Oblivion. Neverwinter Nights had a fairly crap built-in campaign, but was kept alive for many years beyond its expiry date by fan-made content. Pathfinder looks very close to being a great game that I would want to play, except for perhaps a couple of things. If you enjoy the game as-is, that's great, but if someone else feels they would enjoy it more with a couple of mods, why is that a problem?

I think I'll probably keep an eye on it for now and see if any such mods appear. Otherwise, I might wait for the sequel and see if they scale back on the 'sadism'.

Well, by Mr. Sawyer admission Kingmaker was sold better than Deadfire, which had been woke to the brim. Owlcat Games Kickstarter of Wrath of the Righteous was considered a huge success by Kickstarter standards, gathering slightly more than $2 million dollars. So it seems to me there is enough audience for this game at least for Owlcat Games to be afloat.

Also, they are not an AAA studio from California with atrocious developer's salaries. They work and live in Moscow, Russia, so they can afford to avoid all-encompassing dumbing down of games in pursuit of sales.

IMHO, there are mods - and mods. QoL mods, community bug fixes and other improvements are always welcome.
However, removing some parts of a game, changing design ideas, making the game "more accessible" destroys the experience for me. I think that the game should be played as intended at least once; so, for example, if you mod out time restrictions for your first ever Kingmaker run my opinion would be that you would decline yourself the experience you've paid for.

If one likes a game so much that s/he wants to play it again and again, then adding quests or a complete overhaul is understandable. However, Kingmaker is quite a long game, so may be after the first 2-3 runs the player will switch to something else.

I surely hope they will not. However, under pressure of negative reviews they nerfed some especially devious encounters in the first 3-4 hours of Kingmaker. So who knows.
On the other hand I am glad that you have made informed decision. Good luck with other games!

Well, there is a difference between buying a game and enjoying it. Does the game openly advertise that it has (a lot of) timed quests and the equivalent of a self-described 'sadistic DM'? Would it have sold as well if it had done? Were the devs clear up front during their kickstarter campaign that they were intending to be sadistic DMs and try to deliberately screw the player?

It sounds like a game that ought to have a big red warning sticker on the front it, to make people fully aware of what they are buying. Perhaps a lot of people who bought it didn't like it, hence all the bad reviews.

It's not the timed quests that I'm concerned about. Several people now have said the timers are very lenient, which seems fair. The main thing I'm concerned about now is what I am hearing about the game killing off companion NPCs in the later chapters. And I think that discussion goes beyond dumbing down and handholding in video games. Obviously, RPGs exist outside of video games and killing off player characters arbitrarily is one of the biggest RPG DM-ing 'no nos'. Any tabletop DM with even an ounce of experience would know that, if they do that, then pretty quickly they are going to end up with no-one else to play with.

So, you like it if a DM arbitrarily kills your character, just because they feel like it? Does that float your boat?

If the devs make design decisions that negatively affect players' enjoyment of the game, which they don't advertise up front, then imo they should expect negative reviews.

Thanks! I like to do my homework :-)

First, I would like to draw your attention to the difference between companions and the main ("your") character. This is a single player game, everybody who is not the main character are NPC's. The main character goes through the whole game; the companions are... more complicated. However, I am not going to spoil anything; you already have somewhat skewed opinion due to the bunch of end game spoilers that were presented to you.

Second, if there are no consequences of bad decisions at the table I would not have enjoyed such sessions. Death is a natural part of adventurers' life, and it should be handled like this if someone tries to role play an adventurer.

Enjoyment is subjective. Kingmaker requires that a player reads all the information presented to him, immerses himself into the world, understands his role in the world, and makes proper conclusions.

The same is true for the companions: if the player doesn't like them, doesn't pay attention to them, doesn't use them in quests then why not just send them away? It is possible in-game. On the other hand, if some companions are the part of the player's core team then IMHO it is quite natural to help them solve their problems, and as the result they will be with the player when most needed. For me it adds immersion and connects me to the game; other people can and do have different opinions.

The same is true for tough encounters. I am not playing Ironman on my first run, so for me trial and error provides fun learning experience. It is much easier to write a negative review than to learn why this particular foe beats this particular party to death. To each his own.