If you familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, then you probably heard of it’s competitor Pathfinder system, which was never been made into the video game before, and only existed on the tables as a Board game. Besides that, this is also an old school RPG, similar to the Baldur’s Gate, so if you expecting easy win, then you are wrong.
Consequences… shmonsequences...
As a long time Fallout fan, I miss the freedom of speech in video games, and ability to do whatever you want, and I even forgot about it, and jumped into the game as a good mage. But after the prologue I ended up with people pissed at me because of what I said, and my decisions brought me to the point were only villages most idiots are the one, who willing to join me on my scouting mission. This means that almost each dialogue can be turned other way at any point. Even though you have to create temper of your character in the beginning, it shapes throughout the game, based on your decisions.
It’s your typical fantasy.
According to the developers, Chris Avellone (his name means less now), worked with them on the story and the lore of the world. But don’t expect something original, this is your typical fantasy world, but it’s done properly. Every dialogue is smooth, and feels natural, even grounded in some way, with a little bit of comedy here and there. You won’t feel like they dropped a truck of information on you, which is actually cool considering how many dialogues is in the game, you won’t feel confused or lost.
Speaking of confusion, in the beginning you have to create your character, and you literally can spend hours doing this (took me 1 hour), but no one stops you to go casual way and skip reading skills and etc. The interface doesn’t help at all, but you will get used to it. And this might be the main problem of the game. Like everything else - video games evolve, and become more accessible, but Pathfinder: Kingmaker feels like it’s been in the time capsule for 20 years. But it’s not for me to say it’s good or bad, maybe we feel like that because we got used to easy stuff, maybe a little tweaks to the interface could have actually helped, who knows, but it’s definitely better than in Pillars of Eternity.
10 hours later.
Although I appreciate the inclusion of the “Active Pause” in the Real Time game, it actually can be a negative point. Yes, you can plan every fight in the beginning of the battle, but when it’s all kicks in, the ability to pause simply ruins the dynamic developers intended to do (otherwise they should have made it turn based), or tapping Pause to see how fireball gets closer and closer to your character without being able to do anything in time to defend makes active pause pointless.
Description on some of the skills will make fights even more confusing. Keep in mind, everything is in real time, and when you get the skill that will be active “after the turn ends” you basically don’t know when this is gonna happen. And you can tell that this comes from the Pathfinder Board Game, without rethinking of how it will play out in the video game, which has no turn based system.
Is it good or bad?
After the 10 hours with the game you will discover that there is more to do than you thought. There is Kingdom you have to oversee, and other factions with which you can be friends or enemies, or even “frenemies” for a short time, to get rid of the common enemy. The campaign of the original board game carefully transferred into the video game adaptation, it even might be the most accurate conversion, besides mentioned flaws. Maybe virtual game master could have covered all the confusion, but it’s still the better experience available right now.
If you are not scared by the fact that this is an old school cRPG, and you don’t mind wasting a lot of time on things that you can do in minutes, sometimes seconds, in modern RPG games, then it’s definitely - yes. Otherwise you will feel that the game asking too much, and doesn’t entertain you well enough to keep playing it, but that’s the beauty of this games.