Posted October 30, 2022
I am desperate to review Kingmaker and give it 5 stars, but I am only in Chapter 2, so I feel it's premature. Besides, others have done great jobs reviewing the game. Mortismal Gaming and MandaloreGaming both have detailed, high quality reviews. They don't quite capture how I *feel* about this game so far though. Instead, I offer that you watch the review by NeverKnowsBest and a before you buy video by HazVsRPG. They are a little gushing, but I am posting about how much I love the game. There are plenty of good critical videos out there.
[The rest is just an imcomplete rambling of how much I enjoy this game. I do offer a short summary in the last paragraph.]
I'll only share one big thing that stood out to me after some 150 hours (yes, still on Chapter 2). Very little in this game feels wasted.
I remember distinctly playing Tyranny (Obsidian is one of my top 3 favorite devs), before I was even a quarter into the game, I silently cursed under my breath: Enough of these free camping supplies already! You are crowding the inventory! I rarely needed to camp because I rarely needed any benefit from resting. In fact, due to the bonuses from randm encounters disappearing when resting, I often actively tried to avoid it. And not a single time did I need to use a once per rest skill (normal difficulty).
Then again, resting is more of a D&D thing. I remember playing Neverwinter Nights. Resting was just a button that reloaded my Sorcerer's spells and had little other noticeable effect on the game. It made me wonder why BioWare (top 3 favs) adapted resting into the game in the first place.
In Kingmaker, resting is a big deal. It of course reloads the spells of your casters, but it also costs you time. Time that during some segments of kingdom management, you may not have. I don't kid myself. As an avid strategy gamer, the kingdom management is rudimentary at best. It certainly can't be enjoyed on its own. I am deeply impressed though, but how much that seeminly awkard addition made me really think hard on how to use my in-game time and gold, resources that in most cRPGs are either not a factor at all, or you get so much of it as you play that they become irrelevant. Not so in Kingmaker, at least, not yet for me.
Oh, and gold too. Building up your kingdom costs time AND money. But those +1 gear and scrolls are not just feed for your gold grinder. I was always very excited when I switch out a regular weapon for a masterwork, or a masterwork for a +1. I have hoarded most of my +1 gear so far because two companions have yet to join me, and I don't know what they will need. And scrolls. My gosh. I can actually use them in my travels and during combat! I imagine I could always have used them in Neverwinter Nights too, but never did. I recorded what I could in my mage companion's spell book and sold the rest because I didn't need them.
Therein lies another controversial feature that makes Kingmaker great for me: the difficulty. I play on "true" normal, all the individual settings set to normal or 1x. Except kingdom management because the strategist in me would not accept a fair d20 mechanic even in a rudimentary strategy/management game; I play on easy. It is the hardest cRPG I have ever played. But neither frustrating nor unfair. Every party wipe I have experienced (very few actually) and every bad outcome in a quest or activity made me to look up what went wrong. Did I miss a buff or a spell? Did I miss preparing that buff or spell because I missed a hint given by the game? Did I not bring the right character with the right skill checks? It's almost always something I overlooked. Should I have been expected to figure it out during normal play? On a few occasion perhaps not, but this game allows up to 25 auto and quick saves.
I am not above save scumming. But I try to avoid it unless I get a bullshit roll on an important check where I had a better than 50% chance of succeeding. This game is too big for me to contemplating playing more than a couple of times, and one of them will be on Unfair difficulty, so I gotta get the most of the game experience when I can.
As many reviewers note, this is a deep game. If you can get into it, it is very rewarding. But be warned! The difficulty is meant to be high, so you need to both really embrace the Pathfinder rules and be prepared to be your own game master (meaning tweaking the individual difficulties, maybe just for a little bit, so you can get over a rough patch). The kingdom management is integral to the game's mechanic, because of how it eats up time and gold. It's not optional; if your kingdom fails, you lose. Finally, you have to at least somewhat enjoy d20, certainly be willing to live with it. There is no shame in save scumming, but if you feel compelled to save scum every little thing, there is game isn't for you. If you embrace the features that many naysayers criticizes of this game, you will have a blast like me!
There were many more valid criticisms when the game launched: bugs, balancing, etc. I feel like I haven't seen any of those in my 150 hours on version 2.7.3b (I think).
[Aside: if you want to try a dice based cRPG but don't like the way Kingmaker does it, I highly recommend Disco Elysium on GOG. It makes use of bad dice rolls far better than any game I have ever seen. I mean, if you have a 50% chance of beating a DC of some event, you are still expected to fail half of the time right? I hope more d20 based games will embrace what Disco Elysium did, to make unlucky rolls something that can still be enjoyed.]
[The rest is just an imcomplete rambling of how much I enjoy this game. I do offer a short summary in the last paragraph.]
I'll only share one big thing that stood out to me after some 150 hours (yes, still on Chapter 2). Very little in this game feels wasted.
I remember distinctly playing Tyranny (Obsidian is one of my top 3 favorite devs), before I was even a quarter into the game, I silently cursed under my breath: Enough of these free camping supplies already! You are crowding the inventory! I rarely needed to camp because I rarely needed any benefit from resting. In fact, due to the bonuses from randm encounters disappearing when resting, I often actively tried to avoid it. And not a single time did I need to use a once per rest skill (normal difficulty).
Then again, resting is more of a D&D thing. I remember playing Neverwinter Nights. Resting was just a button that reloaded my Sorcerer's spells and had little other noticeable effect on the game. It made me wonder why BioWare (top 3 favs) adapted resting into the game in the first place.
In Kingmaker, resting is a big deal. It of course reloads the spells of your casters, but it also costs you time. Time that during some segments of kingdom management, you may not have. I don't kid myself. As an avid strategy gamer, the kingdom management is rudimentary at best. It certainly can't be enjoyed on its own. I am deeply impressed though, but how much that seeminly awkard addition made me really think hard on how to use my in-game time and gold, resources that in most cRPGs are either not a factor at all, or you get so much of it as you play that they become irrelevant. Not so in Kingmaker, at least, not yet for me.
Oh, and gold too. Building up your kingdom costs time AND money. But those +1 gear and scrolls are not just feed for your gold grinder. I was always very excited when I switch out a regular weapon for a masterwork, or a masterwork for a +1. I have hoarded most of my +1 gear so far because two companions have yet to join me, and I don't know what they will need. And scrolls. My gosh. I can actually use them in my travels and during combat! I imagine I could always have used them in Neverwinter Nights too, but never did. I recorded what I could in my mage companion's spell book and sold the rest because I didn't need them.
Therein lies another controversial feature that makes Kingmaker great for me: the difficulty. I play on "true" normal, all the individual settings set to normal or 1x. Except kingdom management because the strategist in me would not accept a fair d20 mechanic even in a rudimentary strategy/management game; I play on easy. It is the hardest cRPG I have ever played. But neither frustrating nor unfair. Every party wipe I have experienced (very few actually) and every bad outcome in a quest or activity made me to look up what went wrong. Did I miss a buff or a spell? Did I miss preparing that buff or spell because I missed a hint given by the game? Did I not bring the right character with the right skill checks? It's almost always something I overlooked. Should I have been expected to figure it out during normal play? On a few occasion perhaps not, but this game allows up to 25 auto and quick saves.
I am not above save scumming. But I try to avoid it unless I get a bullshit roll on an important check where I had a better than 50% chance of succeeding. This game is too big for me to contemplating playing more than a couple of times, and one of them will be on Unfair difficulty, so I gotta get the most of the game experience when I can.
As many reviewers note, this is a deep game. If you can get into it, it is very rewarding. But be warned! The difficulty is meant to be high, so you need to both really embrace the Pathfinder rules and be prepared to be your own game master (meaning tweaking the individual difficulties, maybe just for a little bit, so you can get over a rough patch). The kingdom management is integral to the game's mechanic, because of how it eats up time and gold. It's not optional; if your kingdom fails, you lose. Finally, you have to at least somewhat enjoy d20, certainly be willing to live with it. There is no shame in save scumming, but if you feel compelled to save scum every little thing, there is game isn't for you. If you embrace the features that many naysayers criticizes of this game, you will have a blast like me!
There were many more valid criticisms when the game launched: bugs, balancing, etc. I feel like I haven't seen any of those in my 150 hours on version 2.7.3b (I think).
[Aside: if you want to try a dice based cRPG but don't like the way Kingmaker does it, I highly recommend Disco Elysium on GOG. It makes use of bad dice rolls far better than any game I have ever seen. I mean, if you have a 50% chance of beating a DC of some event, you are still expected to fail half of the time right? I hope more d20 based games will embrace what Disco Elysium did, to make unlucky rolls something that can still be enjoyed.]
