Pathfinder: Kingmaker - From Tabletop to Desktop

[Gravityqueen4life]

i find it funny that the kingdom management is always the worst part of the games. you think they would tone it down a bit after the first one.

 

[eternal dog mongler]

Speaking of Baldur's Gate 3, is it worth it? I adore the first two games, especially the second, but 3 has nothing to do with them and the sourcebooks they released prior to 3 that canonized parts of the first two games really soured me on it. Still, it's Larian, and they have a decent track record.

Just wait for it to be like 85% off on Steam. That will happen a few months after release probably.

It's...okay. Definitely not BG though. It's its own thing.

 

[Maude Snew]

Baldurs Gate 3 is a very pretty game but everything I don't like about it boils down to the 5e ruleset being complete garbage compared to Larian's own as shown in Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2. In theirs you get tons of various abilities and tools for whatever you want to use while 5e has such exciting choices as "swing sword" or "don't swing sword". Mind Flayers are underused most of the time but also it's Forgotten Realms again, a setting that is completely stale at this point.

I did refund it which hurts me as someone who loves the things Larian does. Yes, even Dragon Commander.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

I 'm still at the tutorial stage and the sequel game's writing seems pretty shit. Lots of exposition speeches about high fantasy shit. The original game opened up to just a band of people raiding the stolen lands and mostly kept that exposition in optional dialogue and notes. That and this game has Joss Whedon dialogue for the companions

Spoiler: long

The writing is shit, and it comes down almost entirely to a combination of pacing, presentation, and the actual text itself. Kingmaker had a cover story in that it was the Bard chronicling your adventures, and so it very neatly and succinctly explained why things were broken apart into chapters and allowed the game to explain a little bit to you, the player, in a way that felt organic. The intro to Kingmaker generally throws a lot at you all at once and is in itself pretty badly-paced, but its use of the glossary does an all-around good job of letting that sequence generally inform people unfamiliar with the PF setting (especially that particular module's setting) of some of the big players, and then the game opens up proper and it really kicks off.

By contrast, the intro to Wrath has some random voice saying some shit, you have absolutely no context on who your character is supposed to be or why you're there or what 'there' even really is, or what the demon horde is, or what 'normal' is, or anything... before you're thrust below ground and you get to stand around and exchange some pleasant niceties and slowly amble about as the apocalypse is supposedly going on over your head. The prologue tries to set up a lot of EPIC!!!!! EPIC!!!!!!!!!!!! setpieces that mostly fall flat because the persistent question of "why should I care, what the fuck is this, who the fuck are you?" never much gets answered. "You can get some free land if you go kick this guy's ass first" was really all I needed in that game; the lack of attention to it here makes a lot of the setpieces fall... completely flat. I only got through the prologue by a combination of knowing the prologue was weak in the first one and the fact that Cavalier gets a horse and the horse miraculously falling into a crevice and marching around in tight little spaces was a continually funny visual against all the forced and hokey EPICCCCCCCCCCCCC shit they tried to push.

As to the Whedonisms... I dunno, the first game also had character interjections, and character interjections can be good. The problem is that the overall writing for characters isn't really that strong here, whereas in the first one - like almost everything else it did, it was exceedingly competent if not amazing. While I've admittedly not gotten terribly far into Wrath before I got bored and threw it on the backburner, out of the gate the party member options to me all smack of uninteresting characters who are going to 'open up' with their deep and tragic backstories. They all feel very canned and phoned-in, and 'creepy girl with raven' was about where I got trope-oplasmosis and took a break. You don't realize how much you're going to miss the eclectic blend of dumb barbarian, glum cleric, perpetually-cheery bard, orthodox fighter, and dickass alchemist until you're stuck with a bunch of loaves of white bread and a character who is functionally omniscient so that he can make haha so funny jokes and commentary on everything inbetween telling you about his praxis. "I spent some of my childhood aboveground and most of my life otherwise stuck belowground oblivious to the world, so this is how I know everything about current events of the last few years."

Is the game pretty buggy?

Feels about as buggy as the first one, really. Half the time it's hard to tell if you're bugged out if you've just been dicked over by shit the game doesn't feel like telling you about.

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

Baldurs Gate 3 is a very pretty game but everything I don't like about it boils down to the 5e ruleset being complete garbage compared to Larian's own as shown in Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2. In theirs you get tons of various abilities and tools for whatever you want to use while 5e has such exciting choices as "swing sword" or "don't swing sword". Mind Flayers are underused most of the time but also it's Forgotten Realms again, a setting that is completely stale at this point.

I did refund it which hurts me as someone who loves the things Larian does. Yes, even Dragon Commander.

Dragon Commander was actually pretty decent. Agree with the gameplay engine choice. When I play DS1/2, I always find myself looking forward to the next combat section since I love playing around with the spells/environment. Not so much in D&D/PF based games.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

It is in no way as buggy as Kingmaker. KM literally launched without the .exe, and beyond that every chapter had multiple quests that would stop progression due a bug.

I'm in chapter 5 as an azata. The writing is okay -- there's a lot of areas that could use work but I still vastly prefer it to a lot of modern CRPGs. So far the only major bug I've run into is where the game thinks one of your keeps is being sieged when it isn't, causing you to quickly and constantly lose morale. I got around it with Cheat Engine but today's patch actually fixed it.

 

[Megatardingo]

I've only been seeing wrath of the righteous let's plays but good lord are the fucking party members making my anus get boils, the fucking bazinga science woman makes my skin crawl, the homofaggot "evil" noble looks like a tarded caricature of teh evools of capitalisms, reptar is an unfunny faggot, negress prime is a cardboard, ember being the first founding member of the "retarded good" alignment and being an atheist gave me a chuckle in the way shitty kung fu movies do and the crusaders coming in only 2 flavours (retarded zealot or epic good guy rebel that doesn't pay attention to the faith) gets old really quick. All in all I give it a self-insert fanfic/book

 

[ANF]

I've only been seeing wrath of the righteous let's plays but good lord are the fucking party members making my anus get boils, the fucking bazinga science woman makes my skin crawl, the homofaggot "evil" noble looks like a tarded caricature of teh evools of capitalisms, reptar is an unfunny faggot, negress prime is a cardboard, ember being the first founding member of the "retarded good" alignment and being an atheist gave me a chuckle in the way shitty kung fu movies do and the crusaders coming in only 2 flavours (retarded zealot or epic good guy rebel that doesn't pay attention to the faith) gets old really quick. All in all I give it a self-insert fanfic/book

Just make your own party, that's half the fun in a game like this.

 

[Tism the Return]

I have no fucking clue what I'm doing and I'm having fun with WotR but the more I keep playing the more bugs I find. Nothing gamebreaking (most of the time) but it takes you out of it. I've had the infinite HP enemies bug and once two characters were left behind after doing a skill check to move into another part of the map. In turn-based mode the characters sometimes slide around when moving and attacking without using charge and you get free attacks of opportunity before the enemy does anything sometimes.

The companions are really boring, but these games were made for you to customize your own party. To me the game is way more fun like that.
The tavern defense fight can go fuck itself though.

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

Just make your own party, that's half the fun in a game like this.

I come to RPGs for the writing. If the writing is shit then the game's shit.

 

[Megatardingo]

Just make your own party, that's half the fun in a game like this.

I would if they could have some dialogue or background, but they don't. They're just nothing, like ghosts.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

I actually don't mind the party, most are one dimensional but the game is really free about giving characters an evil morality when they barely rate a neutral. Gay Aasimer Noble might earn it from stuff like the time he had himself kidnapped for a lark and then had the kidnappers killed for being mean to him but half elf noble girl and the mongrel archer girl have evil morality for fuck all reason.

I haven't really encountered any terrible bugs, currently kind of triggered because my mongrel archer girl went freebooter and since the last patch her freebooter target designation buffs/debuffs are using standard actions instead of move actions which makes them mostly useless. Also my PC resepced from dhampir to aasimer and still has negative energy healing/positive energy hurting trait somewhere that I can't find and fix with the Toy Box mod.

Currently going Cleric/Witch/Mystic Theurge with the baby angel mythic path ability, planning on going Swarm That Walks because having a party is for cowards, all you need is bugs.

 

[Buddy Booth]

I'm enjoying the game, but I'm gonna wait for a few patches to give it a serious go. There's too many things that don't work in turn-based mode, from charging characters stopping midway to touch spells randomly not going off.
So far my biggest gripe is the shitty writing of the moral choices. Agreeing with an official who's clearly off his rocker about killing a civilian is somehow lawful, simply because he's an authority figure, whereas being against summary executions based on shaky pretenses at best during a demonic incursion of the city is considered chaotic, for some retarded reason.
Also I guess the evil alignment can be summed up with "hurr me evul, you die now! zugzug!"

 

[Road Work Ahead]

I actually don't mind the party, most are one dimensional but the game is really free about giving characters an evil morality when they barely rate a neutral. Gay Aasimer Noble might earn it from stuff like the time he had himself kidnapped for a lark and then had the kidnappers killed for being mean to him but half elf noble girl and the mongrel archer girl have evil morality for fuck all reason.

I wouldn't exactly call ritual murder for some spirit and leading people into the clutches of demons so you can eat them not evil. Both Camelia and Wenduag earned their evil alignments

 

[Oddjob OTP]

I wouldn't exactly call ritual murder for some spirit and leading people into the clutches of demons so you can eat them not evil. Both Camelia and Wenduag earned their evil alignments

Yeah, but they almost never actually fit their alignment at any other time. They both actually act hard neutral with slight evil leanings in Wendaug's case. It's the equivalent of a Priest of Pelor who just acts like a murder hobo in tabletop- their alignment is told not shown. At least Gay Aasimer Noble acts like a petty cunt all the time even outside of his backstory. The good characters at least voice pro-good opinions even if they don't actually care enough about things like me announcing my intent to send in a suicide squad armed with demon bug pheromones to fuck with demon controlled fortress.

 

[ShoFuKan]

>Blackwater dungeon.
>Specialized dungeon where enemies need to be killed with element (Lightning).
>Okay, find 2 call lightning wands so no biggie, can easily incapacitate them and move along.
>Unlock the door to the molten chamber.
>Door shuts behind my party.
>RULES OF NATURE.
>3 Greater Kalavakus Maruders and 2 Incubi.
>All immune to electric. Only way to kill is with an adamantine weapon.
>The only weapon with that property at this point in the game is the glaive that Shauton used.
>But... Can be banished, except that Kalavakus have +11 will save and DC for banishment is 20.
>Burn through about 8 scrolls that my character and Ember alt cast but eventually kill em.
90% of pathfinder is bless, heroism, enlarge person and you can sweep through. 10% is a dungeon like this with so specific of a way to kill them that you will mess up and have to look online for it.
You can also damage their CON skills to kill em. Cami there has a rapier with -1 con on hits, so it takes 10 - 20 hits to kill one that's prone, could coup de grace but forgot about that.
Also bag of tricks in Kingmaker had a way to custom build a weapon, wish that was in here because creating specialized gear for stuff like this makes the pain hurt less.

 

[Spergetti]

I think the title of the thread needs to be updated because we're quickly approaching a point where Wrath of the Righteous discussion is going to take up more of the thread than the Kingmaker discussion.

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

Decided to switch over to Tales of Arise for a jrpg fix. Would would have guessed that standard anime tropes would make for better party members than this game?

 

[Helvítis Túristi]

>Blackwater dungeon.
>Specialized dungeon where enemies need to be killed with element (Lightning).
>Okay, find 2 call lightning wands so no biggie, can easily incapacitate them and move along.
>Unlock the door to the molten chamber.
>Door shuts behind my party.
>RULES OF NATURE.
>3 Greater Kalavakus Maruders and 2 Incubi.
>All immune to electric. Only way to kill is with an adamantine weapon.
>The only weapon with that property at this point in the game is the glaive that Shauton used.
>But... Can be banished, except that Kalavakus have +11 will save and DC for banishment is 20.
>Burn through about 8 scrolls that my character and Ember alt cast but eventually kill em.
90% of pathfinder is bless, heroism, enlarge person and you can sweep through. 10% is a dungeon like this with so specific of a way to kill them that you will mess up and have to look online for it.
You can also damage their CON skills to kill em. Cami there has a rapier with -1 con on hits, so it takes 10 - 20 hits to kill one that's prone, could coup de grace but forgot about that.
Also bag of tricks in Kingmaker had a way to custom build a weapon, wish that was in here because creating specialized gear for stuff like this makes the pain hurt less.

Did they remove cope de grace? That used to let you kill anything as long as you kept doing it until the enemy died. That's how I killed enemies like the lindworm and etc. in the first game.

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

Did they remove cope de grace? That used to let you kill anything as long as you kept doing it until the enemy died. That's how I killed enemies like the lindworm and etc. in the first game.

Nope. Spam slumber hex and go to town.