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Where to begin? I’m not sure I can say. On the one hand, I spent all of my waking hours for almost two weekends (and much of the time during the week) playing just this game. On the other, I started keeping a text file on my computer of all the things that annoyed me so I wouldn’t forget them when I wrote this review – now I only need to figure out if I can fit them all in this review. It’s going to be a long one.
I’m a big fan of cRPGs, if you hadn’t guessed. I’d say that (alongside Souls-likes and Grimrock-likes) they’re my favorite type of game – perhaps because they are the most geared towards storytelling and mechanical complexity. At first glance, many of these games could almost be mistaken for clones of their progenitor: Demon’s Souls for Souls-likes, Dungeon Master for Grimrock-likes, and Baldur’s Gate on the Infinity engine for isometric cRPGs.
When you think of an Infinity-like, you can almost hear the same lockpicking and “secret revealed” sounds and see the isometric models of your characters with their green movement icons. And indeed, many of these trapping can be found in games from Avernum to Shadowrun. Despite this, the stories and systems found in these games are as varied as the tabletop RPG games they are inspired by. I think we can categorize these differences into three groups: system, interface, and story.
System
The most obvious difference between Baldur’s Gate, Pillars of Eternity, and Pathfinder: Kingmaker – Enhanced Plus Edition (I’m just going to call it P:K now) is the game system underpinning them. Baldur’s Gate (and many others) run on the D&D RPG system (anywhere from 2E to 5E), Pillars of Eternity has its own thing, and P:K (as you might guess) is based on the Pathfinder roleplaying system.
Pathfinder was created as a reaction to D&D 4th Edition, trying to keep the spirit of “crunchiness” that D&D 3.5 had introduced (as well as being easier to publish for under the 3.5 OGL). Though the first edition of D&D I became familiar with was 3.5 with Order of the Stick (and AD&D 2E with Baldur’s Gate), the first RPG system I played and DM’d for in real life was 4th Edition. Some time later (a little after D&D 5th Edition had come out), I started playing Pathfinder with friends from high school and I can confirm that it is indeed crunchy. I would occasionally borrow a wet erase marker from the DM so I could make a quick little spreadsheet on the battlemap to keep track of my to hit and damage modifiers. Believe it or not, that was actually fun for me.
All this to say: when I stumbled across a Pathfinder cRPG, my first thought was that it would be fantastic to have all that automatically handled and it would mean that I would have a pretty solid understanding of what was going on behind the scenes due to my familiarity with the system. While this turned out to be true, the implementation of the Pathfinder system in P:K (yes, we’re eventually getting back on topic) does leave something to be desired.
The other side of the coin of crunchiness are splatbooks – character options. Seriously, just look at the list of feats for Pathfinder. This is the first challenge in adapting a system to a cRPG – and part of the reason I think Pillars of Eternity may have a leg up on all the others, since they designed their system from the ground up. While P:K has many options (seriously) and implements those options seamlessly, it just doesn’t have the flood of material available for pen and paper Pathfinder. Perhaps I’m biased since my first thought was that I would finally play that Dhampir character I had as a backup in case my main character (Solaire) died in my high school friends’ campaign. But there’s no Dhampir race (though there is a mod to add them, and…huh…there’s a sequel and it will have them). And really, this is only bothersome because one of the very few stock portraits available in character creation is clearly an undead. This same issue came up throughout the game – from character portraits to archetypes to feats to items – though never enough to truly be more than an annoyance. For me, when it comes to portraits, I just added a thousand or so and found a good one. That being said, I’m almost surprised Owlcat Games haven’t offered something like rule expansion DLCs (though I suppose this would make more sense if campaign modding tools were available).
I mentioned items in the list of missing character creation options because Pathfinder is quite reliant on items to boost your stats. I would go so far as to say that items in Pathfinder are part of character creation/leveling. By the time I hit the endgame in my playthrough, for example, I had items increasing most of my base stats by 8-10, when some of which were only 8-10 to begin with. Trouble is, you’re entirely reliant on the items the game deems worth including – and more importantly, in the proportions the game decides to include them.
With a human DM, this isn’t a problem. You can have six characters that all use bastard swords (okay, it’ll probably be keen falchions), and you’ll likely find more bastard swords – or find them for purchase – in the game. In P:K, you won’t – and you’ll find a variety of weapons that just won’t help anyone in your party. This is the first of the “gotchas” that often plague cRPGs which are based on tabletop RPG systems and don’t let you upgrade/purchase/create your own weapons.
On repeated playthroughs, this is less of a problem because you’ll know – somewhat – what weapons you’ll be able to find so you’ll be able to avoid the “bad” choices (like picking scimitars in Baldur’s Gate). Still, this is something that I had hoped would have been accounted for in an item-reliant game created 20 years after Baldur’s Gate. Instead, I end up with 2 million gold and nothing to spend it on (and I would have had more, but I was pouring quite a bit into my kingdom to speed things along).
Interface
The majority of my complaints, though, are not with the implementation of the Pathfinder system but with the interface and how you interact with that implementation. From bugs to … let’s say unusual … mechanical choices to practically nonexistent NPC AI, the game is kinda a mess. Much of this might be forgiven or forgotten in a shorter game, but the 80+ hour campaign makes the little niggles all the more noticable.
Let’s start with difficulty options. Why, for example, does the “Normal” difficulty apply a 0.8x modifier to damage taken and use the “slightly weaker” stats for enemies, instead of the aptly named “normal” stats? Spoiler: it’s because many fights are poorly balanced or just plain frustrating, though this is sometimes more the fault of the Pathfinder system than it is with the developer’s choices.
Beyond that, why does turning off the speed modifier to encumbrance only affect in-map travel and not overworld travel, and why is there no option to just turn that rule off entirely? Encumbrance is an immensely unpopular rule when playing D&D, usually only noted when trying to carry around something truly heavy. The game doesn’t track arrows, so why does it have to track encumbrance? Pillars of Eternity has spoiled me with infinite carry capacity – and you know, it really proved that you lose almost nothing except meticulous inventory management in doing so. In some more survival-focused games, inventory management is a useful and even fun mechanic – but in item-heavy games where enemies drop 10 tons of trash in a single dungeon, it’s less so.
On the flip side, selling items is equally difficult. While there is an auto-offer button, it only adds non-magical, non-food, non-spell component items to the sell dialogue – which, if you’re tracking encumbrance, are precisely the items you’re not going to pick up in the first place. To move the prodigious quantity of magical (but worthless to you at that point) items you pick up, especially in the late game, you spend a good five minutes just clicking them all over after each map section. Food item, of which there are many, are another story, where the benefits you get from cooking a meal with specific ingredient quantities at camp time are vastly outweighed by the ease of just taking “rations”. This is a mechanic also seen in Pillars of Eternity 2, but there the food you picked up could also be used for your ship’s crew (and the buying/selling of such items was significantly easier).
Also similar to Pillars of Eternity (though not in a good way) is the trap detection and avoidance, or lack thereof. Just like in PoE, your party members will happily prance over giant red glowing sections of the floor to get at an enemy, and if you trigger a trap it will (unlike PoE) stick around for an unreasonably long time, even after combat. You can’t even avoid them by going into the turn-based combat mode, since a single click there counts as your entire move action, which isn’t frustrating at all (/s).
The turn-based mode of P:K is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. It is the greatest strength because going into turn-based mode turns your party from “meh” to “fantastic” – partly because you have all the time in the world to think and partly because the party AI is nonexistent. It is the greatest weakness because it doesn’t use a combat grid and it takes 10x longer than real-time combat.
In real-time combat, you don’t really have the time to micromanage your party members. But if you try (and get a little more time by slowing time with Shift-Space), you’ll quickly run into situations where the characters will, for no apparent reason, decide to just walk away (without using their five foot step because they want to invoke attacks of opportunity) from the enemy instead of attacking or just sit around and do nothing because your back row archers are just a tad too close together. And as I mentioned, the party AI is nonexistent, so they will only attack using basic attacks and refuse to use spells or healing potions. Again, I am spoiled by Pillars of Eternity which had tremendously good AI scripting and control. The only option to get control of the a situation going south is turn-based combat – which, admittedly, you can switch to at any time.
Once you do switch, though, you’ll find everything running much, much slower. In tabletop play, this is your only option (and you don’t have to manage six character’s abilities) so it isn’t as noticeable. For most fights, it isn’t necessary to control your characters tightly since you can win on basic attacks and HP pools alone. But knowing the difference is often impossible beforehand and switching midstream usually leaves your characters very poorly positioned in a game where positioning is incredibly important. Given the sheer number of fights and how much slower turn-based mode can be, it’s just not reasonable to always use the turn-based mode. But given how deadly certain encounters can be and how infrequently you know which is which, you are incentivized to use it anyway. Even I don’t have that much time.
The one true flaw in the system, however, is the lack of a grid in turn-based mode. Take a look at this situation, where I’ve cropped out the turn order indicator.
Okay: now, how many enemies am I fighting, and which of them am I engaged with? The answer: I don’t know. I’m pretty sure it’s 2.5 (there’s a regenerating troll on the ground, but not in combat), but between some of my characters being down on HP and some of my characters just being paralyzed/stunned/feared I couldn’t tell you how many of my characters were actually engaged without examining both the player portraits and the turn order indicator. I’m also not totally sure what those Fortitude saves actually meant, since sometimes the effect would happen whether or not the roll was higher than the save DC.
Just one change would have significantly improved this situation (and many others): a grid. Well, that and being able to rotate the camera, but I understand the limitation there a little better. The system already seems to know distances (e.g. the aforementioned fighters being stuck behind two archers), but the player doesn’t.
This wouldn’t solve all the problems with combat, however, since we still have the problem of balance and difficulty. While not all of this is the game’s fault (Pathfinder tends to be rather glass cannon-y at higher levels), there are still some serious issues with combat encounters. At lower levels, fights can be just too deadly and you might run into a much higher level monster than you even when all the others in the area have been manageable.
I saw people online complaining about this very thing (in my case, an enemy with a fear aura and an Armor Class (AC) above 30 in one of the first areas), where the response was somewhere between “it’s your fault for not paying attention to the clues” to “once you know about it, just avoid it.” This isn’t a satisfactory response in my opinion. Yes, there are clues that there’s a dangerous enemy in the area – but there’s a difference between a “dangerous enemy” which is what I was expecting and a “come back later or you will die” enemy. I learned this the hard way as I got myself into a situation where I had to entirely restart the game because I tend to only keep one save file going (and the autosave was overwritten when entering the fight).
That’s the next “gotcha” that sometimes crops up in cRPGs. Honestly, I wouldn’t be complaining about this except for one thing: you can’t run from fights. You just can’t leave the map if you’re in combat, and there’s no way to leave combat once you’ve engaged with an enemy, even if you are literally invisible (which, admittedly, doesn’t mean untouchable). Deadly combat is fine in tabletop Pathfinder because you can use uniquely D&D solutions to problems – outside the box thinking or, honestly, just rolling a new character.
My next complaint is one that addresses both the Pathfinder system and the developer’s reaction to it. At higher levels, fights become explosively quick – you just have such a sheer amount of potential damage output that few monsters can withstand it, so monsters get higher and higher attack bonuses to compensate. In P:K, some of this seems to have been addressed by raising ACs, using stat damage on your party, or adding monsters who are either Concealed (20%-50% miss chance separate from your attack roll) or have Mirror Image (anywhere from 33%-92% miss chance) practically at will.
Even low level encounters weren’t immune to this, leading to situations where I saw literally dozens of attacks go by (on both sides) without a hit. At one point I was in a companion quest that ended up in a duel that lasted for over 50 combat rounds because it was my highest AC/HP character against an enemy with high AC and a huge pool of lay-on-hands, so both sides could only hit on a crit. It was…unpleasant. Eventually, I turned down the difficulty just to get it to end – I see why 5th Edition introduced bounded accuracy.
I’m not sure if my Pathfinder DM was just being nice (though we were running an official module, so I don’t think he was), but ability damage seemed a lot less common in my tabletop experience. Part of this is likely due to the hassle of recalculating things when your core stats change. In a computer game, this doesn’t matter – except you still die (well, fall unconscious, but there’s usually little difference) if one of your ability scores hits 0 and recovering is a slow process (unless you just turn off that option). P:K makes it abundantly clear that not having a character with Lesser Restoration will mean the game just gets harder as you keep playing through a dungeon since you can’t buy custom magic items and can’t always rely on finding potions, scrolls, or wands to save you. Another “gotcha” for the list.
My final complaints are regarding the strange mechanical choices and bugs I encountered. First off, while you can repeatedly attempt to disarm a trap (ending in either success, failure, or critical failure), you can only attempt to unlock a chest once. After that, you’re told to just come back at a higher level. Which…isn’t great. Assuming I even remember that chest is there, there’s still a chance that I’ll roll a 1 and fail to open it again.
This is a problem because lockpicking and skill checks include a die roll, rather than just requiring a certain level in the skill. In combat and some skill challenges, dice rolls make sense. In others, when you have plenty of time (or just need to reload your save and get the same outcome), it just doesn’t. You might counter that this is just how it is in pen and paper RPGs, but there you have two advantages: out of the box thinking and a DM. Can’t pick the lock on that wooden crate? Smash it open – maybe you’ll destroy any potions, but you can still get the shiny armor. Can’t pick the lock on the iron chest? Take the chest and throw it in a cart for later. Without these options, implementing the Pathfinder system straight just doesn’t make sense. Already, P:K simplified the skill system, and with many other cRPGs your success is just based on your overall level rather than a dice roll. Otherwise, it really does make sense to allow you to attempt it multiple times, perhaps with a critical failure chance. I’m just not going to remember that one chest in that one map somewhere across the kingdom without spending far too much time – even if that chest has the last piece I need for one of the special collections.
As far as problems with the game engine are concerned, there are five I want to mention before wrapping up. First, when moving around the map, sometimes your characters will move at one speed and sometimes they will move at another. I have no idea what governs this, but my best guess is that depending on when in the round you click your characters either convert their action to a move or (if you click too late) they only use their basic move. Why this happens outside of combat with seemingly no control over it, I couldn’t say.
Second, there is actually too much loading time. Between quick saves (which are highly recommended, but pause your game for 5-10 seconds), loading to new maps, and loading in and out of the kingdom interface, too much time is spent just waiting. I don’t usually make this complaint, but it really did become a time sink across 80 hours (admittedly, the game was not installed on my SSD).
Third, some dialogue is shown in pop-up windows (like you’d expect), but others are shown floating above characters. When it’s floating above characters, it can’t be skipped and can sometimes overlap other lines of dialogue from nearby. If there’s a cutscene like this before a chancy battle, get ready to sit for 60+ seconds waiting for the same dialogue to slowly show up above NPCs’ heads every time you load. I can’t really tell why it was done this way – the pop-up dialogue is perfectly serviceable and far easier to read.
Fourth, the map stutters when moving it – usually shortly after loading, but sometimes randomly. You can be trying to move the map an centimeter to the left or right and suddenly find yourself looking at a black abyss half a kilometer away from your party. Again, this may be a due to having it installed on a hard drive, but it was remarkably frustrating.
Finally, the local maps are zoomed just a tad too far in. The maximum zoom level is uncomfortably close, and the minimum zoom level just doesn’t show enough of the area. If it zoomed out by just 15% more, the maps wouldn’t feel as claustrophobic.
How do I know this? Because there’s a mod for it. This mod saved me on several occasions. It lets you turn off the encumbrance rules for good, zoom out to whatever level you desire, lets you attempt to unlock a treasure chest multiple times, and – oh, what’s this – lets you rotate the camera. Many of the other options are cheating options (statically setting your alignment is, I suppose, debatably cheating), but just these quality of life features make it almost mandatory – and once you set those options you can just forget about it entirely.
Story
At last, I can finally talk about some good points of the game again. I was not prepared for the epic adventure I started in on when I first booted up the game. Other than that fairly annoying hiccup where I got stuck on an unwinnable battle, I ended up playing straight through the weekend – looking for one more location to explore, one more battle to fight, and one more quest to complete.
You start off on a time limit – you have three months to find the Stag King and bring him down, and you’re ostensibly in a race with another adventuring party to do the same. Once you take down the Stag King, the Stolen Lands are yours to govern as you face new challenges from every direction. The companions are likable and each has their own questline (naturally) and romance options.
I very much liked this start – and the kingdom management parts of cRPGs are a sure-fire way to get me interested (from Neverwinter Nights II to Pillars of Eternity), even though the rewards are minimal here.
Not everything is perfect here, though. Though some time-based quests are interesting, there are several points where that’s all you have or they don’t tell you the quest is time-based or they require esoteric knowledge and trial-and-error: you have to be at a place on Moonday. How do you figure out what day it is and if it’s Toilsday are you 6 days away or 4? Later on in the game – and I’m not sure if this was intentional, due to the order I did things in, or a bug – there were long stretches of time where nothing happened and I just sat on my throne and waited for projects to complete or new quests to pursue.
Quests in general occasionally have vague objectives. Sometimes it was just because I missed a clue in a document I was supposed to read, but sometimes you’re just asked to scour the map to find a specific NPC. On many occasions, I resorted to looking up the quest online to figure out where I was supposed to go. It just takes too much (real life) time to go back to every map (though it’s usually the Old Witches Hut), especially since there’s no way to even view other levels of the same map without traveling there.
The companions you have are fantastic and relatable – I can’t even imagine how many lines of dialogue they must have recorded given that there’s almost always two lines of banter when you make camp. That being said, you’re only able to talk to your companions in specific locations – which can be frustrating when a companion tells you to come talk to them even though they’re in your party all the time.
I also discovered too late that romances in the game have to be started practically immediately, as they can last for the entire game and often have personal quests tied into storyline quests. The trouble here is that, well, when you’re first starting out you won’t know who you want to romance so you’ll likely end up with no one – which is disappointing (and kinda the opposite of how an actual relationship would work anyway). On the plus side, because of this I discovered that there’s a secret ending which intrigues me.
While this last point isn’t really a true complaint, I should mention that there are only a dozen companions (plus a few other NPCs) that you can install as advisors in your kingdom, which is necessary to resolve certain situations. At one point in a companion’s storyline, I realized that I basically had to get them to stay with me (even though it meant choosing an option I normally wouldn’t have) because they were the only person available for one of the advisor positions – having never run into the other two NPCs fit for the position. For that matter, since I was playing a Bard (sorry Chezni), the start of the game was a little dicey since the first character you recruit is also a Bard (who I sadly never used after, even though I think she was supposed to be the heart of the team). I realize this is essentially saying “there aren’t enough characters,” which is why I can’t classify this as a true complaint – but it’s worth noting this is less than half the number available in Baldur’s Gate.
Conclusion
As I said in my first impression, I’m not sure I can leave this out of Tier One given the amount of time I’ve spent playing it and how I felt compelled to play more. My rule of thumb is to try for $1/hour on Steam purchases (or under $10/at least 75% off), and this has cost less than a quarter of that. At the same time, I can’t pretend that there aren’t a bunch of problems that might be deal-breakers for some (though I find it hilarious how many of the negative Steam reviews have more than 100 hours invested in this game).
To be honest, I haven’t finished the game. I am on what I believe to be the last chapter, but I just reached a point where I’ve gone everywhere on the map, and my motivation always takes a hit when that happens. With the combat getting more swing-y, I’m torn because I don’t want to turn down the difficulty but I also don’t want to spend all my time in turn-based combat and/or reloading saves. Since my quest list is looking fairly empty, it feels like a good place to stop. It’s been 80 hours since I bought it eight days ago.
Strangely, this game actually sort of feels like playing with an actual DM at points – they’re really good at some things, but just awful at others. They say that bad D&D is worse than no D&D, and I agree. But for me at least, this isn’t bad D&D, even if it is occasionally tedious. Eventually, perhaps I’ll come back to finish up my playthrough or perhaps I’ll start a new campaign with better understanding of the game (and avoiding bastard sword specialization). Either way, I can definitely see myself buying the sequel.