Posted November 04, 2024
I recently played Wizardry 8 (2001), wherein, characters will automatically swap from ranged weapons to melee based on their proximity to the enemy; whether they are in range to use melee or not.
I have fond memories of playing Diablo 2 (2000), where players can switch between weapon sets at the press of a button.
Who can forget the E3 featuring Genji: Days of the Blade, and it's giant enemy crabs and real-time weapon changing?
So imagine my surprise when I load up Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and discover 10 minutes into the game that even though there's four different weapon slots to equip various weapon sets, there's no actual way to change weapons during gameplay. Instead, it's necessary to go into the inventory menu, and click on the little roman numeral icon next to the weapon set, then go back into gameplay.
Meanwhile, there's a button dedicated to switching between turn-based, and real-time with pause combat mode? No way to fit that into a menu, I guess.
So I look up the sequel, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, thinking, surely someone on the development team managed to play their own game for ten minutes, just as a test, or a lark, and realized leaving critical components of functional control schemes out of a game a person is expected to play upwards of 50 hours on a single playthrough, might be a bad idea.
Am I on some serious, hardcore, heavy-metal, mind-altering illicit substances or are all the people giving this game positive reviews looking at a game with features in the UI that there's no way to use, that have been core components of game functionality for at least the last 25 years, leaving the game with a broken, nonsensical control scheme, because the developers seemingly didn't playtest their own game for 10 minutes, and saying 'yeah, this is fine. 5/5'?
I have fond memories of playing Diablo 2 (2000), where players can switch between weapon sets at the press of a button.
Who can forget the E3 featuring Genji: Days of the Blade, and it's giant enemy crabs and real-time weapon changing?
So imagine my surprise when I load up Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and discover 10 minutes into the game that even though there's four different weapon slots to equip various weapon sets, there's no actual way to change weapons during gameplay. Instead, it's necessary to go into the inventory menu, and click on the little roman numeral icon next to the weapon set, then go back into gameplay.
Meanwhile, there's a button dedicated to switching between turn-based, and real-time with pause combat mode? No way to fit that into a menu, I guess.
So I look up the sequel, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, thinking, surely someone on the development team managed to play their own game for ten minutes, just as a test, or a lark, and realized leaving critical components of functional control schemes out of a game a person is expected to play upwards of 50 hours on a single playthrough, might be a bad idea.
Am I on some serious, hardcore, heavy-metal, mind-altering illicit substances or are all the people giving this game positive reviews looking at a game with features in the UI that there's no way to use, that have been core components of game functionality for at least the last 25 years, leaving the game with a broken, nonsensical control scheme, because the developers seemingly didn't playtest their own game for 10 minutes, and saying 'yeah, this is fine. 5/5'?
