Pathfinder: Kingmaker

 PC
User Score
7.4

Mixed or average reviews- based on 598 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 402 out of 598
  2. Mixed: 82 out of 598
  3. Negative: 114 out of 598

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  1. sundog005
    May 23, 2020
    4
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Cannot recommend this without mods...if you buy it check out Nexus for some game fixing mods that rescue it... as usual it seems lately with many RPG's. The default companions are irritating aswell like PoE and PoE 2. My advice make your own party and don't worry about the *companion stories* they mostly aren't worth the effort of doing and the XP for them is skippable. My personal pet hate is the half orc sadist sorc....
    Sledgehammer difficulty spikes are apparently Owlcat's idea of making the game more challenging as well, severe absence of subtley in writing and design like i said get some mods to smooth the ride if you are determined to finish the game...i got as far as the *EVERYTHING in the Universe is trying to destroy your Kingdom!*, events and got tired of it personally. I mean whoever is behind all those over the top, even if you win you lose problems has to be some godlike mofo....at this point you can have the Stolen Lands it ain't worth the hassle, i'm off to play an actual good game :p...Sorry to say it but this is what happens when you give a big potential project to an amateur outfit like Owlcat.    … Expand
  2. kt6193
    Sep 27, 2018
    4
    There's no huge fundamental issues with P:K, just a bunch of small things that begin to add up to a less than enjoyable experience at times.

    I'm about 2 to 3 hours in the game (not counting the 2 hours I spent making my character), and have experienced just as much frustration as enjoyment. Overall I can't give this game a bad rating as there are definitely fun and awesome things about    There's no huge fundamental issues with P:K, just a bunch of small things that begin to add up to a less than enjoyable experience at times.

    I'm about 2 to 3 hours in the game (not counting the 2 hours I spent making my character), and have experienced just as much frustration as enjoyment. Overall I can't give this game a bad rating as there are definitely fun and awesome things about it. Like I mentioned, I spent 2 hours making my character, but that was completely by choice. You can blaze through the character creator super quickly if you want (even by just choosing a pre-made character), or you can sit back and read about everything and choose, change your mind, consider other options, etc etc.
    After the creation I noticed one of the very trivial issues with these types of games: while the voice acting is great, there is no narrator. This results in having only part what's typed out said. You'll have typed out dialogue that features speech, narration, and then more speech, but due to the lack of a narrator you'll just hear the voice actor, and tiny pause about a second, and then the voice actor again. This causes the player to either have to read the narration super quickly (often while the voice actor is speaking) or waiting till the audio is done so they can go back and read the narration. I resorted to turning off voices to fix this issue as I'd like to get the whole picture of whats happening...not just what's being said.
    The next two issues are somewhat related to each other. The camera is fixed to an exact angle. I've personally always hated this as it quite literally hides things. Specifically this fixed angle—along with the fog of war—effectively hid the only way to progress out of the building my party was in. We walked down a hall way and into a room with a puzzle involving swords (don't worry I won't spoil anything) and couldn't see the door we could open due to it being hidden by the fixed camera angle. In similar isometric CRPG where you can rotate the camera this problem would never have happened for obvious reasons: the rotation of the camera! Because of this not only did I think we HAD to complete this surprisingly tough puzzle to progress, but I also became completely lost and confused when I eventually finished the puzzle and still was stuck in this building. Eventually after watching a few youtube let's plays, I found the door that was hiding in plain sight. This would be fine if the door was supposed to be hidden but when you spend 20 or 30 minutes looking for a door that you'd see in 0.1 seconds with a rotating camera that's no longer the player's fault....
    Lastly, and very briefly I experience a camera lock issue where I couldn't pan the camera in any direction and the only way to move it was to double click a character's portrait. So if they ran off the screen you'd have to double click each time they ran off the screen... A complete restart of the game fixed this issue though.

    All in all It's roughly worth it's base asking price of 39.99. I personally wouldn't bother with the more expensive special editions you can buy, but at the end of the day it's your money.    … Expand
  3. night4
    Sep 25, 2018
    4
    Pros:
    -Character creation. Everything here is amazing except the extremely limited number of portraits and the fact that elves can't have beards.
    Cons: -Crashes. Crashes on startup, crashes on exit, crashes sometimes otherwise. -Graphics. It's ugly and the characters look like they're from 20 years ago, even with all options on high on a great gaming pc. -Too similar to Neverwinter    Pros:
    -Character creation. Everything here is amazing except the extremely limited number of portraits and the fact that elves can't have beards.

    Cons:
    -Crashes. Crashes on startup, crashes on exit, crashes sometimes otherwise.
    -Graphics. It's ugly and the characters look like they're from 20 years ago, even with all options on high on a great gaming pc.
    -Too similar to Neverwinter NIghts, in a bad way.
    -Extremely unoriginal
    -It should be turn based
    -Resting is tedious and unnecessarily time consuming.
    -Inventory management is ridiculous and unnecessarily time consuming
    -Too difficult/expensive to create your own group

    Edit: The game is just loading screens and small, bland, empty wilderness areas with nothing there. It's not fun, and I've enjoyed every D&D based game ever made.

    TLDR: The game feels like playing with a pedantic, punitive GM who is deliberately trying to suck all the fun out of it.    … Expand
  4. Artmaton
    Oct 10, 2018
    4
    To understand this game you should get deeper into it. I spend 70h of Gameplay on it right now, and normally I would quit but I work in QA and thats why I move forward. Why I mention this? It's because game at current stage in not finished product. You got a ton of bugs, Check issues section on Steam it got over 2500+ posts. Some are minor like display of something, but others are likeTo understand this game you should get deeper into it. I spend 70h of Gameplay on it right now, and normally I would quit but I work in QA and thats why I move forward. Why I mention this? It's because game at current stage in not finished product. You got a ton of bugs, Check issues section on Steam it got over 2500+ posts. Some are minor like display of something, but others are like quests not working, characters roaming around without your interaction, spells vanishing from character, skills not working, missing descriptions and a ton of other things. For example so anticipated feature of building a kingdom is only partial at the moment, After building up and investing in my city it got high level and still looks like village full of peasants, so the video showing graphical advancement of your city was fake. At moment this is not implemented, one of major features of game which was advertised on video is not in game, and you still pay for it. The list goes and goes on, developers are trying to hotfix a lot but often with one fix they provide new defects. Its obvious that this game is lacking of good Testing team. I paid for it regular price and I'm not satisfied with result, and I must say that game has a huge potential but at this stage it should be called Beta, not official. Maybe if there would be a Modification tool for community, people would fix and improve game by themselves. For now I would wait around 2 months till everything gets fixed before buying it. I spend days playing rpgs when I was younger, finished BG, Icewind, Gothic and other multiple times with different ways but currently Pathfinder is the most bugged game which I have seen.
    Have a nice day.    … Expand
  5. sunnycorax
    Dec 26, 2018
    4
    This game has so much promise and started out addictively fun. The battle system is trash. The encounters are exercises in patience and frustration. Complete unbalanced mess. I wish I could have made it to the actual management part of the game that is in the title but I couldn't help setting at some of these quest missions setting dumbfounded at what it was that this game wanted me to do.This game has so much promise and started out addictively fun. The battle system is trash. The encounters are exercises in patience and frustration. Complete unbalanced mess. I wish I could have made it to the actual management part of the game that is in the title but I couldn't help setting at some of these quest missions setting dumbfounded at what it was that this game wanted me to do. Enemies with high spell saves, DR given out to enemies like it is **** candy. Healing castings that works but your party member immediately dies after being healed because **** you that's why. Never before in a game has auto-save and quick save been such a companion...on normal difficulty. There is challenging and then there is brutally unforgiving. This game revels in handicapping the player and tossing them into fights in which luck has more to do with you beating an encounter than any level of skill, planning, or equipment. I found myself on main quest modules hammering save before each fight and load several times as my party gets wrecked with not a clue as to why. This game reminded me why I hate the idea of random encounters in game and in D&D when I play it. It is like a D&D game ran by the most chaotic evil DM on the face of the earth. There is plenty good here but the gameplay kills every bit of fun that the opening hours of play seemed to glimmer with. I want to like this game but as it stands right now it is garbage. Redeemable? Yes. Playable? No.… Expand
  6. Mnobody
    Sep 30, 2020
    4
    If not for performance issues, I could rate this an 8.
    On PS4
    This game is a buggy crashing mess at least. I can honestly say I haven't had a play experience yet where I didn't get at least 1 crash or fatal glitch that forced me to stop playing and restart everything. Characters sometimes get stuck, bounce through walls, or just annoyingly get in your way. Just moments before this    If not for performance issues, I could rate this an 8.
    On PS4
    This game is a buggy crashing mess at least. I can honestly say I haven't had a play experience yet where I didn't get at least 1 crash or fatal glitch that forced me to stop playing and restart everything. Characters sometimes get stuck, bounce through walls, or just annoyingly get in your way. Just moments before this review, I got the familiar save error (i.e. there becomes no way to save a game), so had to close the game and restart again. Load times are another pain in the ass and average 1+ minute.

    As for the story itself and the gaming elements, its excellent. Managing a kingdom, building towns, and seeing the progress is satisfying. The leveling systems are a bit interesting, though way too much for my tastes (really need 10+ schools of magic? 20+ classes?). Playing melee is the opposite experience as main builds learn almost nothing in skills. There are many questionable/terrible design choices along the way, like having limited control during battles, having commands ignored, etc. The crap battle management ( maybe a PS4 issue) makes issuing commands as fun as juggling broken glass bottles - all I can do is crank difficulty to 0 and let the crap AI auto everything. Even the equipment system is trashy as "more powerful" items seem to make no difference other than cosmetics.    … Expand
  7. Steyraus
    Jan 30, 2021
    3
    It startsout really good butvall falls apart when you hit the open world. With glitches, awkward combat , ridiculas ballancing, you encounter almost invincible swarms and high level bosses just steps from the begining area. It throws yoi completely off the experiance.. Every side character has thr same damn story. Was not happy in their home town because life is hard fot wahmen and wahmenIt startsout really good butvall falls apart when you hit the open world. With glitches, awkward combat , ridiculas ballancing, you encounter almost invincible swarms and high level bosses just steps from the begining area. It throws yoi completely off the experiance.. Every side character has thr same damn story. Was not happy in their home town because life is hard fot wahmen and wahmen are amazing so they went off to lives on the streets and run around the wilderness.… Expand
  8. gaynorvader
    Jan 7, 2022
    3
    Great underpinnings let down by horriffically poorly written code and text, bizarre design decisions and awful UI.

    This is the kind of game I should love, but I find myself barely tolerating. They all but force you to play a cast of insipid characters with painfully one dimensional personaities tied to the terrible D&D alignment system. You are all but forced to assign these poorly    Great underpinnings let down by horriffically poorly written code and text, bizarre design decisions and awful UI.

    This is the kind of game I should love, but I find myself barely tolerating. They all but force you to play a cast of insipid characters with painfully one dimensional personaities tied to the terrible D&D alignment system. You are all but forced to assign these poorly optimised slobs to help run your kingdom too.

    The difficulty is stupidly harsh for how bad the NPCs you are given are, meaning you more or less have to min max to play the game on anything harder than easy. Stupid given that it's run off a very complicated D&D 3.5e clone called Pathfinder which is never explained in the game and basically relies on you having system knowledge and spend time googling to find out what spells exist, etc to plan your build.

    The UI for the kingdom management is terrible, never showing relevant info, making you dig around to do anything and pointelessly locking you out from making changes on some tasks. The UI for combat is glitchy and painful to use, the turn based mode ocaaisionally just not letting you use a character's turn for no reason. The dice roll DCs often lie, with stuff like 17 AC needing a 16 to hit with a +10 or the floating text laughably floating up saying something like "20 vs 9" and that somehow failing a save, or the inverse. The randomiser has some backend fudging going on where you will commonly see your characters rolling 1s and critically missing and enemies commonly rolling 5/5 16+s to hit you.

    Text has poor grammar, misspellings, and wordy paragraphs of stodge to waste your time. You are frequently railroaded into decisions, or made to make decisions that make no sense because the developers don't even understand the alignment system they insisted on using. Skill DCs are set far too high, being commonly failable even with min maxed characters, leaving no room for rp. Much of the issues are met with the refrain "Just cheat to fix that" from the community, which is mind boggling.

    Overall, this is a terrible effort at a crpg, but is at least pretty, with some nice music and a reasonable adaptation of the Pathfinder system for a video game. It's just a shame it's so badly put together. I have no idea how it scores so highly, and can only surmise that the Paizo fanboys are out in force, making excuses for one of, if not the first video game adaptation of the popular tabletop system. Or maybe people that kickstarted it trying to delude themselves that it was worth the money?    … Expand
  9. Gette
    Jul 4, 2019
    3
    The game is simply too imbalanced.
    Despite during the kickstarter promise a game that present tabletop, the game designer decides to cut experience by 2/3. Yes you only get 1/3 exp or lower as you're supposed to get, which later turns to 1/10 then 1/100.
    Then, the designer decides to increase enemies stats irregularly. You get to fight BAB + 17 enemies at EASY mode around level 8 as    The game is simply too imbalanced.
    Despite during the kickstarter promise a game that present tabletop, the game designer decides to cut experience by 2/3. Yes you only get 1/3 exp or lower as you're supposed to get, which later turns to 1/10 then 1/100.

    Then, the designer decides to increase enemies stats irregularly. You get to fight BAB + 17 enemies at EASY mode around level 8 as MAIN QUEST, ALONE. There are also miscellaneous power ups for random mobs.

    I know my pathfinder and D&D but this game is just Diabolo/Divinity pretending to use pathfinder rules where gears triumphed over characters. Sucks I backed it :(    … Expand
  10. suitejesus
    Dec 1, 2018
    3
    Starts off great, a true RPG..... until you run into a game crushing bug. You can easily but 50-60 hours in to all of a sudden find out you can't even finish the game. My first play through I made the mistake of trusting the developer comments about setting kingdom management to the auto mode. I found the idea of constantly assigning advisors to meaningless tasks to be a burden after aStarts off great, a true RPG..... until you run into a game crushing bug. You can easily but 50-60 hours in to all of a sudden find out you can't even finish the game. My first play through I made the mistake of trusting the developer comments about setting kingdom management to the auto mode. I found the idea of constantly assigning advisors to meaningless tasks to be a burden after a dozen hours in, so I set the option to auto which specifically states in the menu option that your kingdom CANNOT FAIL in the auto-mode, which is great considering once you click this option you cannot undo it. After all, maybe I just want to adventure around my lands instead of manage it. Well, guess what? 50 hours go by and all of a sudden I get a game over screen because my kingdom has crumbled, and there is absolutely nothing I could have ever done about it. On top of this, you will have countless missions you cannot complete if you happen to select dialogue choices out of order, happen to have the wrong companion at any given time, or sell items you didn't know you were supposed to keep. You want a customized party to compliment your play style? Hahahaha..... too bad, here are a bunch of pregenerated companions with horrible stat allocation that you will have to babysit in order to stay alive. Or you can buy mercenaries for an absurd amount of coin, but then forego some of the MAIN GAME content. Sadly this game had great potential, but the execution of the game is horrid.… Expand
  11. Cyberevil
    Dec 28, 2020
    3
    To summarize this game in one sentence: Critical socjus does unbalanced RPG that gets annihilated by a broken kingdom management sim doing piggyback.
  12. Sepherim
    Mar 24, 2020
    3
    Pathfinder: Kingmaker es la historia de una promesa rota. La promesa es que va a ser un buen juego, y es lo que parece en un principio: una historia no espectacular pero con cierto interés, y un mundo abierto donde ir desarrollándote como quieres. Y una vez tienes tu baronía, pues mejor todavía, construyendo, desarrollando, etc. Todo ello en un sistema de combate (Pathfinder, al fin y alPathfinder: Kingmaker es la historia de una promesa rota. La promesa es que va a ser un buen juego, y es lo que parece en un principio: una historia no espectacular pero con cierto interés, y un mundo abierto donde ir desarrollándote como quieres. Y una vez tienes tu baronía, pues mejor todavía, construyendo, desarrollando, etc. Todo ello en un sistema de combate (Pathfinder, al fin y al cabo) sólido. Pero esa promesa se va truncando a medida que vas jugando. Primero, el sistema de alineamientos es terrible, y te obliga a hacer cosas para gestionarlo (si, como yo, juegas un paladín o clases similares), como hacer cosas "Legales Malvadas" porque necesitas puntos en "Legal" y no hay opción "Legal Buena" (y literalmente, te pone de que alineamiento es cada acción posible en una escena, pero no suelen estar todos representados. Y a medida que sigues avanzando en el juego, la trama se va volviendo cada vez peor e incluso llegan quests que carecen de todo sentido, como A Devil's Bargain, que es una basura de historia. Pero peor todavía, a medida que avanzas se van acumulando los bugs y problemas, hasta que el juego es literalmente injugable: salidas a escritorio, problemas de mecánica (como no poder seleccionar cosas), eventos del castillo que se buguean y no permiten avanzar... y, al menos en mi caso, finalmente bugs que evitan que se inicien las quests principales (la de los bárbaros para mi) lo cual implica que pierdes la campaña. Todo eso añadiendo errores graves de diseño, como la selección de consejeros que, para ciertos puestos, es absurda y malísima y te deja sin consejero en un puesto clave durante una buena cantidad de horas porque si.

    Gráficamente el juego es normalito, el sonido cumple sin sorpresas. Pero todo el resto es un desastre. Un 3.    … Expand
  13. Lifwerne
    Sep 16, 2020
    3
    I love RPG:s and this is the first time i've actually quit after a few hours. It's just boring. No immersion. Story is bad, music is obnoxious most of the time (had to turn it down), the table top rules just doesn't work in a PC game, it's just annoying.
    The game is not voiced as good or as much as Pillars of eternity, Dragonage, Wasteland 3 or anything like that. The UI is very confusing    I love RPG:s and this is the first time i've actually quit after a few hours. It's just boring. No immersion. Story is bad, music is obnoxious most of the time (had to turn it down), the table top rules just doesn't work in a PC game, it's just annoying.
    The game is not voiced as good or as much as Pillars of eternity, Dragonage, Wasteland 3 or anything like that. The UI is very confusing when choosing skills etc.
    The movement is slow and clunky. Mind you Pillars of eternity also suffered from terrible combat trying to imitate Baldur's gate which was just good for it's time, but it was worth it for the immersion, voice acting, story, characters and humor. Etc.

    It's just a bad game. I doubt it would have gotten any better had I continued to play it. Maybe they had a really low budget or something. Sad, becuase I thought it would be something more like Divinity OS or such. It's just not on anywhere near that level.    … Expand
  14. dontadow
    Oct 1, 2018
    2
    The game could have been a solid rpg, but it's mawed by trying to stick too close to a tabletop rpg but yet use computer game tropes.

    Tabletop rpgs are turn based, and yet the game decides to be real time. The result is a cluster. Monsters are not properly balanced for all party makeups, and the game does not allow you to choose who joins you in the beginning nor does it tell you that    The game could have been a solid rpg, but it's mawed by trying to stick too close to a tabletop rpg but yet use computer game tropes.

    Tabletop rpgs are turn based, and yet the game decides to be real time. The result is a cluster. Monsters are not properly balanced for all party makeups, and the game does not allow you to choose who joins you in the beginning nor does it tell you that a specific party makeup is neccessary. This game is the MMO of CRPGs without the experience of game designers who know how to make fun, tactical battles.
    To make matters worse, the AI for your comrades is nonexitence. You will spend a lot of time pausing and giving orders to your player. If you have played games like Pillars, Divinity, Dragon Age, where you don't have to micromanage party members, you'll miss them sorely.

    FOr those who manage to make the right party, and choose the right choices in the game, (i say right b ecause the game uses tabletop random encounters that range from things you can handle to things grossly out of your level ), then you wil have fun. However, there's 33 percent of people who've bought this game who the game has screwed.

    The only way to play the game is to min/max and power game. Making choices from a roleplaying point of view will cause you. Case in point, when the intro is happening u are gathering your starting party membres. However, you have chances to save certain people and change your alignment. If you don't choose evil, you will find yourself without an arcane magic user which is required (becaue of aoes ) for several encounters.
    Of course, nothing in the game will tell you that. You will spend 30 minutes fighting a spider swarm before you google things and realize that someone who has the srd figured out that the creature needs magic to attack. Well, here's the problem, no where in the game does it hint to how to hurt spiders.    … Expand
  15. Quakespeare
    Sep 30, 2018
    2
    In a game that was hyped for potentially great writing, the very first things you read in this game, in the character creator, are things like:

    "Everyone around target must succeed on a Fortitude save or become Nauseated for 1 round per 2d6+4 damage that alchemist bombs usually inflict. " There's no explanation what "2d6+4" means (I googled it; it means "6-16". Seriously.), nor what    In a game that was hyped for potentially great writing, the very first things you read in this game, in the character creator, are things like:

    "Everyone around target must succeed on a Fortitude save or become Nauseated for 1 round per 2d6+4 damage that alchemist bombs usually inflict. "

    There's no explanation what "2d6+4" means (I googled it; it means "6-16". Seriously.), nor what a "fortitude save" is. You're bombarded with literally 300 word spell descriptions, full of cryptic spell descriptions that are indecipherable to anyone but an actual tabletop D&D player - and even then the length of the descriptions is preposterous.

    If that's the first thing they're showing a new player, I have no interest in the rest of the game.    … Expand
  16. Bluehydra
    May 29, 2021
    2
    Pathfinder miss-marker
    The game needs a serious overhaul when it comes to combat. fix the quest breaking bugs where quest doesn't trigger completely. fix to abilities cancelling due to animation freezes

    I can't recommend game that release 2018 and still have game-breaking issues
  17. Hecatoncheires
    Sep 29, 2018
    2
    Maybe in one Year the Game is really cool like Poe .But now the customers are the Beta Test for the Game.EA or work on the Game longer maybe the smarter choise.Now the Steam Review and support for the game is dropping
  18. Magalha
    Oct 5, 2018
    2
    Despite being sold as a full release, it clearly is an early access tittle, keep your distance for at least 6 months.
    Has great potential, but the developer's "vision" about difficulty is to lazily just break a d20 system by doing flat increases to the enemies stats almost reducing encounters to pure RNG, making players have to rely on save/load on every encounter, and even when    Despite being sold as a full release, it clearly is an early access tittle, keep your distance for at least 6 months.
    Has great potential, but the developer's "vision" about difficulty is to lazily just break a d20 system by doing flat increases to the enemies stats almost reducing encounters to pure RNG, making players have to rely on save/load on every encounter, and even when travelling on the map, since you can get forced into encounters way above your level/abilities and there isn't any way to flee. While it's still plagued with several game-breaking bugs and the devs are slowly fixing them, it'll take a while for it to shine as much as it could.    … Expand
  19. KIlravock
    Oct 4, 2018
    2
    I have played the tabletop RPG since it began and was looking forward to a computer version I could play solo. I was hopeful, but after a very short time...greatly disappointed. Icewind Dale (ID) CRPG series was a long time ago, yet Pathfinder kingmaker demonstrates minimal advancement. in fact in PK, you can only create one character but years ago in ID you could create your entire partyI have played the tabletop RPG since it began and was looking forward to a computer version I could play solo. I was hopeful, but after a very short time...greatly disappointed. Icewind Dale (ID) CRPG series was a long time ago, yet Pathfinder kingmaker demonstrates minimal advancement. in fact in PK, you can only create one character but years ago in ID you could create your entire party of six.

    In PK you're given a choice of some pre-generated characters to come along with you that you can level up, but the developers obviously missed that character creation is one of the most fun aspects of these games!

    However, the absolute worst aspect of the game is the time limit. You must do "X" by a certain date or the game is over. "X" was not obvious to me as I started exploring the world and getting total party killed by spider swarms, single trolls or a handful of were-rats depending on where I stumbled upon.

    I never saw anything to do with setting up or running a kingdom, as the "timer" ran out on the game. By the way...that timer continues to count down even when you're resting or spending time constantly swapping out armour of your party members in order to rest and avoid fatigue.

    In real-time I played about 10 hours and lost the game. In game time....it is a fantasy calendar...I obviously spent three months. Half of that was either travelling from A to B and resting/changing clothes.

    I play Skyrim, different kind of game, with no issues. I loved Icewind Dale, Temple of Elemental Evil...all great. How to fix PK? #1 is to remove time limit. #2 is to allow character creation for your entire party from level one.

    I bought this on pre-order. 10 hours later it's game over...failed? I'll shelve this until it is fixed.    … Expand
  20. Leandhart
    Oct 15, 2018
    2
    There are very few redeemable features to this game.

    Given the sheer amount of bugs, this game should have stayed in early access, releasing this as a full-fledged product is practically making buyers into testers. At every corner, it feels like the game is far from finished...from minor text errors to bugs times a thousand, unpolished game mechanics, extreme poor balancing of    There are very few redeemable features to this game.

    Given the sheer amount of bugs, this game should have stayed in early access, releasing this as a full-fledged product is practically making buyers into testers.

    At every corner, it feels like the game is far from finished...from minor text errors to bugs times a thousand, unpolished game mechanics, extreme poor balancing of minions/boss difficulties, to poor quality of life/game design...it doesn't matter if the story would have been epic, the process to get there has been unnecessarily torturous and this makes the game as a whole one thing = bad. *Do not buy unless it is on sale or many months down the line when they finally fix it to playable levels.*

    There are many other games made by small companies that did it right, rather than this one that did so much wrong that it feels like they didn't care for it's fans or customers. In my 20 years of gaming I have rarely seen a screw up of this magnitude.    … Expand
  21. Wolfstorm321
    Jun 17, 2019
    2
    Horrible game, each minute on the map I have to listen chit chat from the characters, where they talk about themselves, its very, very annoying and the worse aspect of it all (the talk is so bad that it made the player looks like a retard). Combat is terrible (9 in 10 times you see "miss" on the screen, meaning the characters fight like children), the quests are pointless, there is noHorrible game, each minute on the map I have to listen chit chat from the characters, where they talk about themselves, its very, very annoying and the worse aspect of it all (the talk is so bad that it made the player looks like a retard). Combat is terrible (9 in 10 times you see "miss" on the screen, meaning the characters fight like children), the quests are pointless, there is no story, you keep exploring the map in circles. The only good thing were the classes, those were fine, with diversity of builds, but unfortunatelly the devs spoiled the game with bad writing, annoying and useless talk (which is not immersive, quite the contrary), bad combat and a stupid AI. Wasted potential.… Expand
  22. JP78
    Aug 23, 2020
    2
    Not a fun game. It's boring due to the board game rules being followed so strictly. So, as the board game relies on dice rolls, the game also does and instead of being a Tactical/strategic RPG, it becomes a game based on luck. Good presentation, bad game mechanics.
  23. Odal
    Nov 30, 2021
    2
    One of the very few RPG:s I actually stopped playing. It had nothing going for it. The voice acting is bad, the characters are not special, the story is meh and the combat is bad well.
    There is just nothing going for this game at all. Confusing leveling system which is more annoying than anything.
    When you play good RPG:s like Divinity Original Sin 2 and then come to this, it's just    One of the very few RPG:s I actually stopped playing. It had nothing going for it. The voice acting is bad, the characters are not special, the story is meh and the combat is bad well.
    There is just nothing going for this game at all. Confusing leveling system which is more annoying than anything.

    When you play good RPG:s like Divinity Original Sin 2 and then come to this, it's just not worth your time.    … Expand
  24. F1_is_WWE
    Mar 20, 2022
    2
    Kingmaker faithfully adapts the pen and paper game to the video screen. This was seen by many as a huge plus - there is an in-depth tried and tested game system, rules, and adventure. But unfortunately what works with pen and paper doesn't work on a pc game. Yes, the rules are deep and you have hunderds of options for building you character - the only fun part of the game. But combat is aKingmaker faithfully adapts the pen and paper game to the video screen. This was seen by many as a huge plus - there is an in-depth tried and tested game system, rules, and adventure. But unfortunately what works with pen and paper doesn't work on a pc game. Yes, the rules are deep and you have hunderds of options for building you character - the only fun part of the game. But combat is a boring chore where you do the exact same moves every single fight and just mindlessly click away. Especially if you turn it to turn based mode, you'll see just how mindless and slow the game actually is.

    The story is alright, again you are presented with many different options on how you want to build your kingdom. But then you find out that the developers are highly biased towards "Chaotic Good" choices and disapprove of you choosing any other decrees. At one point my lawful character supported freedom of speech and this was counted as a chaotic action - what? Plot is linear and you aren't given much choice.    … Expand
  25. TruthSeaker
    Aug 11, 2023
    2
    Supported them on Kickstarter. Hoped that they will deliver
    They didn't.
    Why 2? That's the amount of corrupted save files(ruined playthroughs) I got in 6 months.
    Absolutely terrible.
  26. Apokalipsis113
    Feb 13, 2022
    1
    FIrst half of the game not bad, Second half is bad. Ending is the worst piece of **** I've ever seen. **** story. Terrible level design, Horrible game balance. 10/10 regret for buy this miserable trash,
  27. Valko
    Oct 25, 2018
    1
    I was hoping this time new promising game from Ru/Cis team will be a masterpiece, something better than we had before from ru/cis devs, but...We wanted the best, but it turned out as always (c)
    The game was and is swarming with bugs and glitches, it has several new patches in a week even after 1.5 month. It's hard to play at least several hours withour regular crashes or critical bugs.    I was hoping this time new promising game from Ru/Cis team will be a masterpiece, something better than we had before from ru/cis devs, but...We wanted the best, but it turned out as always (c)
    The game was and is swarming with bugs and glitches, it has several new patches in a week even after 1.5 month. It's hard to play at least several hours withour regular crashes or critical bugs. Moreover despite all that someone from dev team recruited incompetent brainless community moderators who ban everyone on Steam discussions whose point of view they don't share. For example I was permabanned for statistical data about game revenues per country. If you like Saudi Arabia or North Korea you can risk to communicate there. Or if you feel nostalgic for old forums where forum owners could ban everyone they didn't liked.
    In the end I can't recommend to buy PF: Kingmaker in it's current state, best choice to grab it with 75% discount during some sale much later.    … Expand
  28. coredumped
    Oct 14, 2018
    1
    If you like reading the word "miss" on your screen, this is the game for you!
  29. stanrm
    Oct 10, 2018
    1
    epic bugs and as of now the game is broken....worst RPG game I've ever played
  30. OleBergstedt
    Oct 24, 2018
    1
    Sadly, this game is a scam. It has huge potential but by all Desperation for a new cRPG, one should not ever Support the way this game was published. Small summery:

    Kickstarter asking for 500k, got ~900k - Devs knowingly released the game in an utterly broken state because the ran out of Money - reminding they nearly took twice as much as they asked for and cut A LOT of Content. The    Sadly, this game is a scam. It has huge potential but by all Desperation for a new cRPG, one should not ever Support the way this game was published. Small summery:

    Kickstarter asking for 500k, got ~900k - Devs knowingly released the game in an utterly broken state because the ran out of Money - reminding they nearly took twice as much as they asked for and cut A LOT of Content.

    The devs are simply not competent enough to ever finish this game. They release Hotfixes every 3-4 days which break significantly more than they actuall fix.

    They did NOT learn from releasing this broken game in a rush, now they try to fix it in a rush. They are simply bad coders.

    Sad for the massive potential.    … Expand
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Awards & Rankings

19
#19 Most Discussed PC Game of 2018
100
#100 Most Shared PC Game of 2018

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
73

Mixed or average reviews - based on 33 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 33
  2. Mixed: 18 out of 33
  3. Negative: 0 out of 33
  1. CD-Action
    Feb 13, 2019
    75
    Pathfinder: Kingmaker offers an interesting world to explore along with satisfying combat, and the first half of the adventure is top-notch old school fun. Unfortunately later the game loses its momentum and becomes boring. Anyhow, it’s a solid RPG that should keep Baldur’s Gate’s fans happy for many hours. [12/2018, p.86]
  2. Games.cz
    Jan 15, 2019
    80
    A great adaptation of the original Pathfinder gamebooks. The story is sidelined by tough tactical combat - its steep difficulty may be daunting to genre newbies, but D&D veterans will be delighted. There are technical problems, yes, but those are overshadowed by refreshing kingdom management and interesting companions.
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  3. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Dec 31, 2018
    80
    RPG for the hardened. Get used to loadings and getting lost in the rules, get ready for an ok storyline - and in the return you will enjoy a deep level of challenge and great management of your own kingdom. Obsidian has a new competitor. [Issue#290]
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