Pathfinder: Kingmaker review

Off Topic What Else Are You Playing?
21

Thanks for your impressions.

Glad I waited to play this, after skimming some reviews even random people that normally don’t give a damn about anything outside of “it doesn’t run” were noticing it was horribly broken.
Sounds like one of those games that needs years of patching and looks like a completely different game at the end, same thing as Pillars of Eternity, and what they’re doing with PoE 2 right now.

I wish people would reject stuff like this more strongly so companies wouldn’t try to get away with it, and this is why I’m glad Crate is taking their time to finish FG.

22

It seems that the financial dangers are acceptable to a lot of these companies, I strongly doubt a little more public disapproval will have much, if any, effect at this point.

You could also argue that if the money is running out anyway, why not release what you have now? At least that way some of your work will be out there as opposed to nothing at all. An incomplete game may be of use to some people for some obscure purpose. And at least all the time spent on development will not have been a complete waste.

23

That’s a pretty big looking team for a mere $920,000. A lot of money perhaps tho for a team coming out of Moscow, Russia. Which really begs the question what the hell Chris Avellone


is doing with a largely inexperienced team. Based in Russia. /scratcheshead

24

@mamba

There is just one more detail your forgetting, GD was suppose to be tiny, the size of TQ’s first act. so two devs, some part time help. the amount that GD got really did help to allow both the game to expend, allow more people to join. And allow the game to be finished sooner. Then of course released on steam early access in chunks.

So basically, Med did a lot better in that regard, he aimed his sights a lot lower, had a tiny game, so he needed money to help finish it as a tiny game. But he changed his mind once he started to hire a few more people, including Tumbledown, (animator ) and of course Zantai.

Lets say that Crate had waited until they had the game like it is now, (minus DLC) then released it, do you think they would have made it? no, I don’t believe they would have done. Crate would have closed it’s doors long before they even got the game half way. even with the KS money, the game would not be as good, in fact, if the crate had released GD, it probably would still be small, and with a lot of features missing.

KS then steam EA really did help, but Crate itself is tiny, and the devs knew their limits.

That isn’t the same as Owlcat, they clearly aimed too high, they clearly had a huge game then asked for more money. and yes, a lot of stuff is broken, and you have to question why the later acts weren’t tested? clearly not in house. The devs set their sights far too high, and fell very short indeed.

So really, there are huge differences.

Like I said, Pillars raised a lot more, sure it wasn’t perfect, and buggy, but still, its a pretty decent game. (but I’m not a fan of 2) I think to fully finish PF, owlcat should have had something similar, or more, without the funds, the game is just a broken mess, and yes, should have been on early access.

But I wonder why they didn’t choose that route? or maybe, they didn’t, because they knew they could complete the game that way either. But it should have been the best option, at least allow more people to play it. And it might have given them the chance to at least try to polish it.

But now, one can hope they have the will power and the funds to finish it now, but sadly, I’m not so sure on that. If the reviews are remain mixed, and the devs fail to do a good job, even the money they got from steam won’t last forever. The clock is very much against them.

edit

This iis a good video review

But it does miss some points, mainly not mentioning that the game has a lot of timers. But I do agree with a lot on what the person is saying.

But yeah, the game does a very poor job of telling you anything, unless you are familiar with the PF ruleset. But even then, the encounters are poorly balanced, and some should not have been there to begin with.

But its a good video, worth a watch.

25

It seems that the devs are still blind to the problems, and still don’t understand what is wrong with the difficulty

A pretty silly response. even though they been told that the difficulty is off, and there are some great examples in that thread on why the difficulty is off. And lets not forget that the two main sliders that are suppose to control enemy difficulty, one doesn’t work as it should, and the other just doesn’t work as it should!!!

Unless they get it in their heads that the game difficulty is seriously out of whack, then I see no hope or future in this game.

26

not sure what I am forgetting here, as you say the KS money allowed them to create the game, without that it would have been a lot smaller. As I am comparing the KS money of both, I do not see how this is relevant. The KS money allowed GD to become what it is, the KS money of P:K did the same. Had they gotten less, that game also would be smaller.

Lets say that Crate had waited until they had the game like it is now, (minus DLC) then released it, do you think they would have made it?

no idea, I have no insight into Crate’s finances, but P:K had that option too, not sure why they decided against it

That isn’t the same as Owlcat, they clearly aimed too high, they clearly had a huge game then asked for more money. and yes, a lot of stuff is broken, and you have to question why the later acts weren’t tested? clearly not in house. The devs set their sights far too high, and fell very short indeed.

no disagreement here, they underestimated what was ahead of them and that resulted in too low a KS goal - or they knew it was a realistic goal as far as being able to raise it and chose it for that reason, while being too optimistic about how far it would get them

Like I said, Pillars raised a lot more, sure it wasn’t perfect, and buggy, but still, its a pretty decent game. (but I’m not a fan of 2) I think to fully finish PF, owlcat should have had something similar, or more

there is no way they would have been able to get that kind of money, had they asked for $3M I believe their KS would have ended lower than where it is now as it would have scared people off.

Still not sure why they decided against EA, what is the harm in that ?

27

All I am trying to say, there is a massive scaling difference between the two games. that is all I’m trying to say.

So another update, another hotfix, 1.04 and more bugs introduced with it, wizards cant select spells to add to their spell book, the spells are there, you can’t add them, they are invisible. also chapter 4 bugs still not fixed, even though the hotfix says they are.

character voices don’t seem to be playing either. and that just for starter.

Makes me laugh. they clearly have no quality control, seriously, they are rushing patches without even testing anything.

At this rate, the game is going to get more and more slammed. they should never have released it in this state. And on top of that, they should start using the beta branch, but for some odd reason, they not doing that either, so we are lumbered with broken patches after another.

Great way to ruin the studio’s name, and rep. So I am having major doubts on this studio, and their aim to make the game great, when they just making so many amateurish mistakes like this.

Bottom line is, avoid the game like the plague.

wish I could refund, damn wish I could.

revised score

5 /10 and dropping.

28

that sounds pretty game breaking… might be best to wait until 1.2 or whatever and play something else in the meantime :wink:

29

announcement from a dev

Dear community, here’s the update to the hotfix!

Unfortunately, there is a problem with the Windows version of the hotfix we’ve just uploaded. While the Mac and Linux versions function properly, the Windows build doesn’t have 80% of the fixes we’ve implemented since Monday. For those who want to know the details, the main issue is that at character generation and level-up UI, the list of spells have become invisible. The list is still there, you can still use them and click on them, but you cannot really see them except for the tooltips.
This happened due to a bug in our infrastructure, and, while we’ve already tracked it down and dealt with it, it will take several hours until the issue is completely resolved. As we speak, the servers at our studio are compiling the correct version of the hotfix for Windows. Once again, this issue should not concern our Mac and Linux users – as far as we know, all is fine in their versions of the hotfix. We are very sorry for the inconvenience, and we’re doing our best to get it right this time.

Seriously, the windows market is their biggest slice, and they mess up like this? the more the reason to use the beta branch. Sure they on it, and will upload another. but seriously, what a joke.

But yeah, give this game a wide birth for a bit.

30

my 2 biggest issues with the game are

the resting mechanic, I mean seriously you have to rest way to much. So tired of hearing I’m Hungry or a rest is in order don’t you think.

and then after killing The Stag Lord you progress into a Pop-up managing game. Seriously The kingdom building aspect is horrible as it is right now.

Expedition: Vikings had both of these aspects in their game, but they weren’t as blatantly obnoxious aboot them.

31

Daaaaamn.

And yeah, this mess is probably due to Deep Silver, they have a really, really bad habit of forcing games out on the market well before they’re fully finished. That and DS don’t allow dev’s to use Early Access iirc.

32

Deep Silver left a bad taste in my mouth with what happened to Ascaron after Sacred 2 which was a good game I thought though some crashing for some people. And then Sacred 3 had nothing to do with the other two games almost (I didn’t play or purchase mind you) and I’m assuming Deep Silver was still involved with the game. I didn’t research exactly what happened with Sacred 2 but this is the second time (reading here) that I am hearing bad things about Deep Silver.

33

Deep Silver bought the rights to Sacred after Ascaron went bankrupt over Sacred 2. DS had nothing to do with the first two Sacreds afaik.

Sacred 3 is to Sacred 2 what Diablo 3 is to Diablo 2, just somewhat more extreme. It basically is an improved version of Gauntlet rather than a dumbed down version of Sacred, just with Sacred classes.

The game got a bad reputation because the Sacred fans did not like that change, similar to what happened with D3. As a game it might be a bit boring, but technically I cannot really complain about bugs, unlike what is happening with P:K. To me S3 is an ok game, not a good successor in spirit to S2 and a dumbed down ARPG, but better than say Gauntlet despite that having better ratings (from not disappointing fans)

I guess Deep Silver is a publisher just like any other in that regard, some games work out, some don’t :wink:

34

Yes I didn’t want to relate or claim things that didn’t happen. I just remember the name DS from being sad that Ascaron went out of business and sad that Sacred 3 didn’t get made into what I wanted which was a large world ARPG with closed servers and a friendly/cooperative community rather than a competitive community. There was no item economy essentially and that made no reason to hoard items/wealth so players would help each other with items for free particularly in hard core mode. I liked that aspect. Like you say Sacred 3 had the seraphim character but it was a different type of game. Imagine Elder Scrolls 6 gets made into a gauntlet remake! People wouldn’t like that and why use the lore for such purposes.

35

Didn’t Deep Silver publish the S2 expansion, Ice & Blood? I seem to recall having to jump through a myriad of hoops in order to get that downloaded and installed here in the US.

36

It’s part of Nordic now which probably won’t help either. Nordic bought Koch Media last February. They did the Sacred 2 Fallen Angels expansion.

37

Ah, perhaps that was it. Such a shame, S2 was a great game. If they could have taken it forward with better tech and character customizations, they could have a game in the D2/TQ/GD echelon of ARPGs.

38

Nordic has been on a bit of a buying spree. I read that they also bought the IP for kingdoms of amalur from the state of Rhode Island last september. Although the actual game is still owned by EA which is confusing, but anyway. All that buying of old games and such, I don’t see how it’s a viable business model. I suppose them owning the rights is better than a US state owning them (the story of how that came to be is interesting but too long to go into here).

39

Very nice to take things off topic, carry on!!! :smiley:

Small update, new hotifx for PF, 1.04, fixes some stuff, but guess what? it breaks some stuff as well. And introduces some more bugs!!

New major patch is been delayed until next week, (probably for the best) but it makes me shdder on what it might end up breaking.

Act 4 seems more bugged as usual, kingdom management is still broken, (auto kingdom management doesn’t work and ends up making your kingdom fail)

So anyway, will update when the next patch hits / breaks.

This is one buggy, botched game!

40

Well, they’ve put TQ on mobile, TQAE out and also made an expansion for it and now it’s available on all the consoles too. If they’re doing similar with other old games maybe it’s working for them. :undecided:

Yeah I read about that on wiki a while ago. What a mess. Still lucky for us as some of the devs from 38 studios ended up at Crate. :slight_smile: