[*BAM*] HARRIM: “Could be worse…” HARRIM: “And will be. Definitely will be…” “Kingmaker” is the first “Pathfinder” video game to ever be released. There is sort of an MMO, but in a weird, unfinished place. So, what is “Pathfinder” anyway? In the tabletop world, in 2008, “Dungeons & Dragons” 4th Edition came out. To put it simply, “D&D” before this was Lego, and now they were trying to sell Duplo. I have heard rumors of some creatures who bought 4th Edition books, but most people just stuck on 3.5, or some kind of homebrew. Also not happy with 4, a different publisher created “Pathfinder”, as a kind of upgrade to 3.5. It was beating “D&D” on sales for a while – at least, until they had their 5th Edition. It’s still a top seller. My easiest definition is that “Pathfinder” is Protestant “D&D”. Or maybe Antipope “D&D”. That one might be more accurate. The systems are familiar, but sometimes, you just go “Wat?” But I never cared much for “D&D” lore, outside of some video games. I knew a little about the main setting before playing this, but it does take care of you. When a setting reference pops up, so does a simple hyperlink to learn more. I didn’t mention this in its own video, but I think that “Tyranny” was the first CRPG to do this. There is a lot of games in the genre that would benefit from that, but you need it way more this time around. “Kingmaker” is a huge game, and an ambitious one. Part traditional RPG, part city builder, part empire builder. A single playthrough can easily crack over 100 hours, so there is a lot to cover. Let’s start from the beginning. LINZI: “Our story started at the mansion of an Aldori Swordlord.” LINZI: “Drawn by the promise of a most dangerous task and a commensurately huge reward, heroes of all stripes gathered here.” There is a bandit king called the Stag Lord, who’s claimed wild territory. Whichever adventurer defeats him will be made the ruler of the Stolen Lands. And that’s it. On the technical side of starting a new game, it is extremely customizable. If you saw that glimpse of kingdom management and went “Wow, I really don’t wanna be a fantasy accountant”, you can turn that off – the empire can manage itself. This is a glimpse of, both, the game’s greatest strength, and its weakness. Out of every game like this I’ve played, it’s the closest to the pen and paper experience. So this means there will be a lot of depth when it comes to your character and choices, but it will mean that this game could be cruel. You might wonder why Normal difficulty tones down the enemies. That’s because an unadjusted encounter expects you to use every trick at your disposal. It’s not made to hold your hand. If a villager tells you not to go to the cursed Scooby Doo island… [Marv scream] …you might be another statistic. It’s worth keeping that in mind, before you bump anything up without playing it. As for character creation itself… Jesus Christ, the- okay… MADMAN VO: “All I see is blackness!” You have a few portraits to choose from when you get started. There aren’t many, and some of them will even be used by significant NPCs, only being changed around if you picked that one. Thankfully, you have a simple “Import Portrait” button. There are plenty online, and it is easy to crop one up yourself. So my main used one of the pieces from the “Total War: Warhammer” video. The check is in the mail. From here, you pick your race, your appearance, maybe your ancestry, are you left- or right-handed… When’s your birthday? Do you have any 1099s? How big is you mom’s house? The game has nearly two dozen classes, with the DLC adding one more. There are special prestige options, and multi-classing. And if that’s not enough, each usually has 3 or 4 different archetypes. This is all before picking your feats, and all your different skills – it’s an insane amount of variety. It’s like you filling forms out at the DMV were fun. I LIKE filling out these forms, instead of lying face down between the parallel parking test cones, waiting for some 9-grader to send me to shiny and chromed Valhalla in his 2006 Corolla. So I like the character creator – it’s very in-depth, and not as overwhelming as it first looks. When that’s all said and done, you can finally enter the world of “Kingmaker”. Let’s check out the visuals. For starters, I’m biased. When it comes to isometric RPGs like this, I really prefer the look of 2D or 2.5D. But 3D games can offer a lot more mechanically, like being able to rotate a camera and really explore around. “Kingmaker” is fully 3D, but strangely, doesn’t let you rotate the camera. There is a rotation mod, but some objects won’t have textures on one side, and stuff like that. Initially, it seemed like having the advantages of neither format. Despite that, the graphics really impressed me from time to time. Because, sure, some objects won’t have sharp textures, or other pitfalls, but they really take advantage of their effects, like dynamic lighting. You may not be able to swing your view around, but you can see the depth on the image. This sounds weird to point out, but I remember going “Wow, that’s some good looking water!” I mean, look how it’s foaming up on the rocks – that’s some good shader work! There are lots of effects like that that add physicality into the world. “Kingmaker” will never have the prettiest screenshots, but while actually playing the game, it’s good looking. It’s also worth mentioning the game has different times of day, different weather, and even different seasons. With as many outdoor areas as it has, that’s A LOT to factor in. I sometimes would get a feeling that an area didn’t look quite right – like they may not even intended you to see it when it was snowing, but didn’t wanna cut out that possibility. That didn’t crop up too much though. The environments can be colorful and fantastical and everything else nice. As for the characters themselves, they have a surprising amount of detail on them. Just about every piece of equipment you have is modelled on the character. It can range from weapons, to even the potions you have on your belt. Going that small is unexpected, but appreciated. Now, when it comes to art direction, this is tricky. When it comes to something like enemy encounters, you mostly won’t see anything too crazy. There are cool enemy designs in the game, but I don’t wanna spoil most of those. But you’ll mainly be getting generic fantasy enemies, because that’s what the setting is. There is a huge variety, but generally, you’ll know what to expect. This is mitigated by how much the developers just EMBRACE the setting. They went to great effort to make all the menus feel like flipping through the books. Exploring on the world map has a simplistic charm to it. Icons bounce like someone dropped it on the board. You might have a series of skill checks that are inside of a book itself, with this cool hand-drawn artwork in it. The game knows you should always have rope. ALWAYS have rope! DMs punish you for not having rope, but RPGs have been lacking. Not this time around. THEY KNOW. So players can accept the world for what it is, but, understandably, some might be bored by it. It can be gritty, but not enough to stop being an adventure. It’s hard to put into words – if you know, you know. As for sound, the ambient effects are mainly in the “gets the job done” category. On the other hand, combat sounds satisfying. You get these good, meaty thunks when you’re kicking the ass of some snake person in a beautiful meadow. [good, meaty thunks] HARRIM: “Ow.” [more meaty thunks] JUBILOST: “I’ll try.” [good, stabby-shooty thunks] Then there’s the music. This game has some AMAZING music. Sometimes, it’s the background fantasy strings you’d expect, but they incorporate a lot of different instruments into it. Like, at points, it sounds like they’re using didgeridoos, other times it can be melancholic “Blade Runner” jazz – it keeps you guessing. [Pathfinder: Kingmaker OST - False Destiny] PC: “Strike with all your might!”
[Pathfinder: Kingmaker OST - False Destiny] [Pathfinder: Kingmaker OST - False Destiny] [Pathfinder: Kingmaker OST - First World Battle Theme] EKUNDAYO: “I grant you death.”
[Pathfinder: Kingmaker OST - First World Battle Theme] [Pathfinder: Kingmaker OST - First World Battle Theme] [Pathfinder: Kingmaker OST - Capital Under Attack] [Pathfinder: Kingmaker OST - Canvas For The Gods] GORDO FRIZZ: “What’s shakin’ baby?”
[Pathfinder: Kingmaker OST - Canvas For The Gods] I do have an issue – not with the quality of music itself, but how it loops. It’s not a problem with the ambient tracks – only the battle ones. See, this was a very buggy game when it came out, and it’s had a few different editions since, and I don’t know which is which. All I know is one of the patches added the option for turn-based combat. You can switch between it and the real time with pause combat on the fly, so it’s very intuitive. The thing is, turn-based combat can take a lot longer. Some battle tracks are barely over a minute or two, and they just stop. [final notes of a battle track] VALERIE: “Stay behind me!”
[final notes of a battle track] [awkward silence] [good, meaty thunk] It’s like the orchestra got bored of the frog fight and left. Maybe the conductor is lying between the parking test cones. The game has a lot of different music (some only showing up based on your alignment), yet it’s clear they needed a few more tracks for the dungeons, or at least longer ones. A long dungeon crawl can mean hearing the same two or three short songs over and over. Even if it is good music that gets you hyped up. [Pathfinder: Kingmaker OST - Caves Battle Theme] When the game starts, you’ll have a brief tutorial, but there’s still room to make choices in it. This will develop your character, teach you the systems, and determine which party members you might start off with. From there, you enter the wider world and can mainly go about things as you see fit. The catch is that you have to defeat the Stag Lord within 3 months. Even doing everything you can at this point, this is still plenty of time. Travelling across the overworld will burn up hours. As you explore, you reveal more of the map, more paths and more locations you can visit. The game just begs you to get sidetracked. You can help out your party members, hunt animals, look for treasure. It’s what you’d expect from the genre, but more free-form. Get out and be a murder hobo! There’s no telling what you might deal with. Sure, sometimes, it’s a cursed tomb. Sometimes, it’s kobolds getting high in a meadow. However, besides just solving the problems, you’re also the future ruler of the lands. How you deal with the problems can affect future events. I mean, sure, kobolds are silly, but they’re dangerous, and can attack at random. When they start fighting strange mite creatures, you could take a side in the war. Ally with the kobolds, visit their little enclave and let them build a slum in the capital. But I don’t want any slums, so you know what? None of you are fitting in with my plans for the future! [♂ GOOD, MEATY THUNKS ♂] There is a good amount of decisions, and it’s surprising how far they can carry. Over 100 hours into the campaign, and decisions from the first 30 minutes will be brought up. Engaging with these systems is fun, and it does feel like your decisions matter. Adding onto this, there are hidden skill checks that might not pop up for your character, so there’s extra replay value in choices that you might not have known were there. It makes exploring rewarding and exciting, and also dangerous. This is where the whole “tabletop experience” part comes in. Like I said before, you’re free to visit dangerous areas, even though they’ll likely kill you. Though you could run into a random encounter while travelling. Sometimes, they’re fights, meeting random characters or travelling merchants, but you could wander into the wrong part of the woods and have a BRUTAL encounter. Now, you’re not free to travel the entire game world from the start. New regions and main quest lines will unlock as time progresses. But the regions you are in can still have encounters designed for a party a few levels above you. There will be times when you wander into hell, and you need to run away. Sometimes, you’re stuck dead, and will need to reload an earlier save. Some people are gonna hate this kind of thing, but I don’t mind failing in a video game – it’s pretty funny. If anything, failing in “Kingmaker” can sometimes be more fun than succeeding. There is a witch with a creepy scarecrow golem. Lemme just try and knock on the door from here, and, oh… [shattering glass] You’ll need to stop and rest on your travels, which means some camp management. Who’s hunting for food? Who’s cooking? Who has the first watch? Camping is helpful. People heal and rest up, you might get some buffs, and it’s most often when your party will banter and interact with each other. Again, there is a chance of failure. You can learn all kinds of food recipes for buffs. It might be even more significant, if it’s someone’s favorite food. But your cooking could be so bad, that the smell gives away the camp. Instead of a nice rest, you’re being ambushed by the undead. All because you screwed up making chicken… This is great stuff, but I do think the game can throw people into the challenge a little too fast. For example, one of the very first side quests in the game is picking berries from a cave. You get a few Alchemist’s Fire bottles to help you out. The cave has venomous spiders that drain your stats until you rest or get it healed. Your Alchemist’s Fire is for getting rid of SWARMS of spiders. These can miss, and this early on you have few tools for dealing with swarms. It’s a simple premise, but I knew multiple people who restarted here. And it is a weird choice to have this kind of specialized encounter so short after making a character. When you enter the cave, the first enemy you see are the Corolla-sized spiders. If a guy told me “Take my grenades, it will help kill the spiders”, and I saw THAT, I’d assume that’s the spider. There is even another party of dead adventurers in the cave. If you’re new to these kinds of games, it is a bit of a toss into a deeper end. But the whole game isn’t like that. It’s not a difficulty cliff or anything, but I can see how some people got thrown off. This is a game you wanna be having a few saves in. Chapter 1 is, essentially, a giant tutorial for the adventuring portion. You learn how to navigate the map, and you learn why the Grease spell’s nerfed in every tabletop setting. There is a huge amount of depth to the combat. Leveling up really is an event, and if you’re running a magic character, by the endgame you’ll have a CRAZY amount of choices. I can’t stress enough how good it is to be able to switch between turn-based and pause combat on the fly. If it looks to be an easy fight, then why slow things down? If it looks tricky, you flip on turn-based and take advantage of every action. This ends the ancient argument. The answer is “both”. You can easily spend a dozen hours in the game before dealing with the Stag Lord. When you do, this opens up the next phase of ruling. Let’s get into that. Ruling over a kingdom first means appointing staff. Your party members make for good candidates, but like anybody, they have different ideas on how a government should run. They’ll come to you with kingdom dilemmas, and give their input on it, but it’s up to you to make the choice. These choices can have a few different effects. Like your character, the kingdom itself has stats. This ranges from military might, economy, religion – all the broad areas you can think of. The better your stats, the better you can handle events. These will pop up in the kingdom menu, and take some days to solve. This is a background thing – you won’t lose any active party members. The degree of success or failure depends on your kingdom’s stats. The actual method of it being solved is also decided by the kind of advisor, and who it is personally. Here I’m having trouble with an elf supremacy movement at the border. I could send my foreign relations counselor, but she likes finding a common ground in disputes. Now’s not the time for that. Instead, the general led a military raid, followed by mass arrests. An extremely good outcome – the kingdom stats go up. But who knows how a different general may have handled it? These events aren’t always in a vacuum either, because, typically, they reflect what’s going on in the actual game world. It’s pretty neat to make a decision in the throne room, then, while playing the game, you come across a consequence of it. Even if it’s small, your choice feels acknowledged. Your kingdom will physically change over time, and how it looks is affected by your character’s alignment. Even the capital’s theme music will change on this, which is a nice touch. Managing these events aren’t the only way to buff up your kingdom – you also start building. It’s a simple grid layout, but, as cities get bigger, you get more space. Once again, your alignment and your choices can unlock new special buildings. Your city has a limited amount of space, and, to build a structure at all, you need build points. Your city gets some weekly, but you can make trade deals, or enact special projects to get more. Or you can outright buy them with gold. And, as all that develops, you unlock research projects that help you on the battlefield. These can be extremely effective, and are worth pursuing. In the early game, special items are rare, and upgrading feels really worthwhile. As the game goes on, you’ll get more and more expensive and rare items, and you won’t be needing to use all of them. Even saving for the supreme endgame items, you’ll have a lot left over, so your gold sink goes into developing your empire. It’s all a big circle. You adventure around, collecting items and claiming resources for the barony, and in turn, it makes you better at adventuring. You wipe out some threats, annex their territory, and now you have more cities to build. Where you build this city will affect its layout and its access to resources. These cities can specialize in certain resources, be added into a teleport network – it just… it keeps going. Your new towns will attract artisans with their own questlines, and if you help out with those, they can give you some absurdly strong items. And if you don’t want them, it’s just more gold for the war machine. There is even more to this, but I hope it conveys what a rabbit hole it is. To be fair, when visiting them, all the cities look identical, except for your capital (which is understandable, because mapping out all those variations would just be insane). Still, it’s a hugely ambitious system to have on top of a CRPG. It keeps those elements in developing your character further, which is what it should be all about. As for drawbacks, it does mean you wanna come back to your capital at least monthly. You can manage your kingdom in the field, if you’re inside your own territory, but some matters require your personal attention. Education standards, drugs in the military, necromancy and labor acts – those can all wait on the backburner. Service guarantees citizenship. One annoying element is some projects keep you stuck for about two in-game weeks. Other events can finish or pop up, but you can’t see them until this is over. You’d think you could at least stop to make some adjustments, but no – you have to time everything very carefully. While you won’t miss the most significant events, you will lose some opportunities, due to time. Most quests do tell you if there is a time limit, but some don’t. If someone ever tells you “Hurry!”, they usually mean it. If you put off some quests too long, their effects might end up on the kingdom docket. This was a lot to juggle, so at first, I was anxious I wouldn’t be able to cover everything. It turns out, “Kingmaker” is the OPPOSITE of most RPGs. The time before bad events popup related to your main quest is still very generous. What you do is knock out the objectives related to it. With that knocked out, the chapter is over, but in title only. Now you can chill, and things aren’t too pressing. Explore around, do some side quests and manage the kingdom. However, if you ignore it and problems pile on, the kingdom could fail, and that means game over. If you keep up with it, it shouldn’t be a problem, but if you consistently neglect and ignore it, it will bite later on. If someone is interested in this, but not 100% sure, it is worth turning down the kingdom difficulty. Just beware: if you put it on Automatic, you can’t go Auto… back. Autobacktic? Aw, fuck it… Remember: the game is assuming you’ll be able to skip weeks and weeks at a time. If you are caught up, that can mean weeks and weeks of nothing but kingdom management. Though, being caught up is an impressive feat. There are tons of single area unmarked quests and treasures, but you will run out eventually. I guess, then you roleplay getting drunk and resting at the inn a lot, until something happens? I’m not sure. There will be things to do even on the Effortless setting. Like in the real world, fantasy governments have a hard time convincing ancestral people that they’re in charge. HARRIM: “Why hurry? The same end awaits us all.” Being an adaptation of a pen and paper campaign, the story is laid out the same. Whether it’s a monster invasion, the undead, or a death cult, the game throws a variety of challenges at you. Throughout it all, there are hints for a big bad guy being behind some things. Ooh… I’m not gonna dig into the details of the main story. I’ll just say, if you’re wondering how a rich land was unclaimed for so long, there are answers. See, what you’re getting is mainly 6 self-contained 12-hour stories. That’s not accounting for side quests and all the unlockable areas that you can explore. Then the last hours of the game have, like, a single side quest, and mainly focus on getting the big bad guy. It’s hard to word, but, speaking generally, you play this game more for the systems than for the writing. You do have interesting party members, but, with the exception of one, you can dismiss all of them, and the game will be fine. You can even create mercenary characters and have a fully custom party. You’re given a lot of freedom to play how you want, but it does come at a cost there. I wasn’t sold on them at first, but I grew to like a lot of the companions. The issue is, once you’re done with the initial background interrogation, you don’t interact with them a whole lot, outside of their companion quests. Most of these are interesting, and, like everything else, can come up later and develop their characters in different ways. But for a game this long, they do feel condensed. Immediately after the tutorial, you can tell someone they’re “a true friend, and I trust you with my life”. That’s, eh… quick… But to allow the freedom, it has to be squished down like that. The party quests are good, but they might leave from your actions, or you can just kick them out at any time. It does make sense to put resources towards more content people will see. I do like what you get out of the characters – it’s just very thin for such a long game. And there are parts that still feel undercooked. You can go through a romance and marry someone, then say “Go away!”, and they go “Okay.” Is NOTHING sacred? I guess, you can have a court battle arc for the estate back then. The game could be shorter. Some of the final areas are clearly running out of steam. Maps are reused here and there – it can’t really keep up. I wouldn’t mind it being trimmed a little bit, if it improved the pacing. There’s only so much content budget they had. Overall, the main quests are fleshed out, and account for a lot of different playstyles. I was blown away at some of the people I could make allies as an evil character, compared to a good one. From time to time, some side content can have alignment choices that seem off. This one guy was cursing an artisan’s weapons to make them evil and corrupted. He does this out of revenge, and wants to keep her as some kind of slave. Arresting him is Lawful Evil? It’s certainly an odd one, but in games this big, it’s to be expected sometimes. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen in main quests, which are well- Oh, God, I forgot about Darven… [Susumu Hirasawa - Hai Yo] Darven’s quest is… Eh… It- It’s brief… I felt like a passenger in my own body, but only… only for a little while. Without greater context, playing the game, it is incredibly bizarre. Knowing the context, it is now incredibly funny. A diehard order of lawful knights barge into your town, beating up everybody, looking for Darven. You have no way of just kicking them out. You can side with them against Darven, but you will get absolutely nothing. Darven is a half-elf That Guy’s Original the Character. He is a heartbreaker who makes deals with Satan, he’s also making his own city, and he winks, while giving you lots and lots of money. It turns out, there was a crowdfunding tier to make your own main quest for the game, and this was it. So I can only assume the developers just didn’t want to mess with his vision? The entire quest is about how cool Darven is, and you get lots of money for being his friend and helping him. Playing the game blind, this was incredibly frustrating and confusing, but now it’s… it’s just pretty funny. If I put a character in a game like this, it would be like a rope salesman, and not… not this. He just teleported behind someone to stab them… I… I forgot that was in the clip… 🤣 Oh no, how am I gonna finish this? Ahem, that was a hiccup, but, up until that point, I thought most of the main quests were great. The only part I hated was near the end – The House at the Edge of Time. This encounter is… a horror story. For one, it’s incredibly repetitive. You face tons of enemies that paralyze you, if you don’t pass a Will save. There are plenty of buffs and spells you can use to mitigate this, but the House has enemies that can dispel your buffs as well. It’s also possible that not all your party members made it to this point. You actually have an option of going outside and hiring new party members, so you could craft a team specifically FOR the House. Which I wouldn’t wanna do in the finale, but it does save you from getting stuck here. The House itself is kind of a maze, but it also has two dimensions. Depending on whether or not someone has a magic lantern equipped to their belt, when you go through fog, you’ll end up in a mirror reality of the House, which… looks nearly identical. A few mirrors move around, and you have even more enemy encounters in this new dimension. But you need to keep shifting around, because you’re in a scavenger hunt for keys. You can teleport yourself into an ambush, with no time to properly buff up. You can sneak someone into a room to grab an item, and they’ll get automatically ambushed. It’s an unbelievably tedious experience. It doesn’t surprise me so many people quit here. This room… Do not fight in this room. This is another example of my “they could have cut things down” angle. It could be more tolerable without the mirror aspect. As it is, it gives you way more enemy encounters, but by using the same maps. This is the one part of “Kingmaker” I found to be truly terrible. [good, meaty thunk x6] The other main quests are nothing like that, and well worth your time. In fact, most of what the video’s been showing is side quests. There is a lot to find, and “Kingmaker” is at a good level of polish. From what I understand, the launch wasn’t like that, and it was a “New Vegas” situation. Occasionally, I would see a character fall through the geometry, and just hang out under the floor. Moving the camera far out of the way and back seemed to fix that. This happened twice in maybe 150 hours playing the game. An event log bugged out in one session, I saw an NPC freaking out on the terrain, and sometimes, the game would call me the queen… Nothing crashed or was game-breaking, so these are minor enough that I usually wouldn’t show them. Seeing as how the game did have a buggy nightmare launch, I figured it would be good to show where it’s at now, and it’s not a problem. So how about the DLCs (which are each about $6)? They’re simple, so I’ll briefly go over them. “Beneath the Stolen Lands” adds a large dungeon to the game. It has new items, some randomization, and a guy who looks suspiciously like Patches. It’s an okay run in the main game, but getting the true ending to it requires some convoluted searching around, and some of the fights can be messy. The thing is, they added it in the main menu as a roguelike mode. You can make a party just for it, or go solo, and see how deep you can go. Not only is it a good way to test character builds, but it ended up being a lot more fun than I expected. It’s more than solid addition at that price, and does feel like getting an extra game. “Varnhold’s Lot” has a parallel campaign to the main game that you make some characters for. It adds 18 new class feats, new items, and promises to affect your main game. The actual effects it has are… pretty minimal. There’s also an ideal time to start it in the campaign, which you wouldn’t know. The linearity of it also doesn’t play to the strengths of the game. I’ve never been much of a fan of RPGs having this brief side content one shot DLC. Replaying these games, I never wanna touch them again. This is the same deal here, and it is a good price for an 8 hour campaign, but, eh… It’s not essential. “The Wild Cards” adds tieflings as a new race, a new companion, a new class and a new quest line. This is more what I like to see: new content that integrates well into the main game, to the point that you wouldn’t know it’s DLC. If you get them all bundled in a sale, it’s a solid deal. The main game will be on sale for about $10 for the next week or so in the pinned link. The main game with all the DLC will be about $16. For what this game has, that’s a steal. Even when that’s over, it’s still a solid recommend at full price. It’s a big game, and highly replayable. Not to mention, it’s the developer’s first game. This is unbelievably ambitious for that. Parts of it aren’t in complete harmony, and it does feel stretched at the end, but, wow, this is one hell of a debut game. There is a sequel in the works, and it looks to be polishing up some mistakes that “Kingmaker” had. That’s one I’ll be keeping an eye on. What’s here is great if you like pen and paper adventures and encounters and all the systems and don’t care too much about the finer details of the story. It’s a decent one, with many choices, but we’re playing in a dangerous genre for comparison. I’ll see you next time for… well, I’m really not sure. It might be a disaster. [RA-AWR] Tim farrons dog: “Thoughts on doing a video for “Sins of a Solar Empire”?” I actually desperately wanna do a video on one of the mods for it, but I’ve just been waiting for it to update, so that’ll be coming. I’m not sure about the base game though. Brian Andrews: “Any plans to return to “Elite: Dangerous”, with “Odyssey” coming out?” I know I’ll play it – I don’t know about a video yet. If it’s, like, significant enough, I might, but if it turns out to be a very bare bones update (which I don’t think it will), then I might not bother. 1upist: “How do you take your steak?” Medium rare. I get the people who will go more rare, but “well done”… I don’t understand you, people. Harry Westmoreland: “Have you been following “Total War: Warhammer 3” news?” Actually, not as closely as I’d like, because I’ve been so busy the past week or so. I am curious to see how different the Chaos god armies will be, since we saw some of, like, the… the Chaos Spawn, and they look like the old ones. So I hope they’re more differentiated than that, but… you never know when it comes to CA. Six races on launch is a lot of slots to fill. I’ll do something on that if I can. Alright, that’s it for now. SERSTAN: “Now get out!”
The part talking about Darven and his quest is hilarious.
I was just going to call his creator a troll but he had to pay actual money for this crowdfunding tier to put your own character in the game so probably not.
I played Kingmaker for the first time after all the patches had come out and put 140 hours into reaching credits. It's by no means a flawless game. There are balance and pacing issues throughout. I still enjoyed it, though, and there aren't many other options when it comes to combination CRPG/Kingdom Building games.
It's one of those things where if you're not sure if it's for you then it's definitely not, but if it seems like exactly your kind of thing you'll have a very good time with it, despite having a fair few complaints by the end.
Pathfinder as protestant DnD is very good.
Mandalore fits that perfect space for me on YouTube. All the games he reviews look interesting to me, but I know I'll never get around to playing them. I don't feel I'm missing out by watching his videos.
I've played a lot of games with a heavy reliance on RNG, to the point where I'm kind of desensitized to it by now. I'll still get a bit annoyed by a string of bad luck, but I never get to the point of raging or thinking that the rolls are loaded.
Until I played this game. I know enough about statistics to know that human perception of statistical trends cannot be trusted, but I have never had the dumb monkey part of my brain scream so loudly at me that I'm being cheated. And I have to just sit there reassuring myself that, "No, no, it's totally normal that none of my characters rolled above a 5 on their attacks this turn... It's fine..."
I would highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys real options and roleplaying different character builds. I got it a few days ago and I cannot agree enough with how much this game plays to the strength of providing you with options for character building and role playing.
In fact I honestly think he kinda undersells how big of a deal the 4 subclasses for each class are in making the character play differently. I ended up making a cleric since I like having my MC as a buffer/leader in these types of games (very nice as a change of pace from the “guy/girl with sword” MC you get in most JRPGs) and the 4 options are “typical cleric”, cleric that leans more into the physical swing a mace side for a frontline healer that can take a hit and use touch spells safetly, “summoner cleric” that just directly asks their god to send an angel down to deal with the problem, and “white mage” cleric that gives up armor for better spell casting. Then there are the different gods and their domains. Long story short ended up with the white mage cleric worshiping the good god of the hunt and hearth, which meant I got an animal companion and proficiency with longbows. So instead of the typical mace wielding, medium armor wearing cleric my character was healing and buffing while shooting a bow from the back line in robes while his wolf kept enemies from getting near him alongside the front line fighters.
Also unlike say PoE2 this game actually uses the full tabletop leveling system so you can totally have your fighter dip into the alchemist: vivisectionist subclass to get a strength boosting alchemist formula and sneak attack or take a few levels in the “sacred huntsman” subclass of inquisitor (think vampire hunter for the church but with this subclass you bring a hunting dog... or wolf or giant lizard) to give them an animal companion.
Which I did, in regards to the “sacred huntsman” for everyone. My party has a literal pack of wolves following them around. This game is awesome.
I will eventually make time for a second full playthrough, I thought it was wonderfully deep and it ended up being my personal favorite compared to it's contemporaries that I've played in DoS1+2 and PoE1+Deadfire. In terms of character building I think it's second to none (save possibly NWN though PF is definitely more expansive) which is ultimately the biggest hook for me, seeing and learning all the new classes and archetypes and feats and spells and item properties was like the best NWN expansion/module I could have asked for. On top of the myriad story and kingdom choices I'd like to do differently I really just want to play with more classes and builds and party compositions.
Man, I loved this game, but I couldnt get myself to finish it. He's not kidding when he said the game is long, by those final few hours I was just trying my hardest to get through it as quickly as possible until I was hit with the realization of "I dont give a shit about the BBEG, I'm not having fun." And I just stopped playing. I was probably maybe 30 minutes away from the ending at that point and just couldnt be bothered.
Didnt help that the combat at that point had gotten ridiculously easy for me. The Kineticist class is broken as fuck in the game.
Heads up, this game is fantastic but the PS4 disc version is broken and won't install half the time. Especially on ps5. I contacted Deep Silver and got a "we know we might patch it one day" kinda response.
My favorite thing about kingmaker was briefly touched on, but I want to really highlight it. The character interactions when camping add so much depth in the game. The characters themselves are very similar to the kind you'd find in BG2. Just fantasy tropes with a slight twist, but their constant interaction creates memorable character moments that bring them to life. It's a fairly small thing that adds to the illusion that I'm so surprised no other game had done before.