Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Definitive Edition

 PlayStation 4
User Score
5.1

Mixed or average reviews- based on 50 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 16 out of 50
  2. Mixed: 14 out of 50
  3. Negative: 20 out of 50
Buy Now
Buy on

Review this game

  1. Your Score
    0 out of 10
    Rate this:
    • 10
    • 9
    • 8
    • 7
    • 6
    • 5
    • 4
    • 3
    • 2
    • 1
    • 0
    • 0
  1. Submit
  2. Check Spelling
view
per page
  1. Jalal76
    Sep 8, 2021
    7
    Pathfinder Kingmaker PS4 Pro: A realistic accounting of the game’s performance on PS4 Pro

    TLDR: Buggy, but imminently playable and quite enjoyable, if you’re patient with it. For a long time, I held off buying Owlcat’s Pathfinder Kingmaker for the PS4. The terrible player reviews, the game breaking bugs, the unplayable state of the game and a developer that seemed to have moved on to    Pathfinder Kingmaker PS4 Pro: A realistic accounting of the game’s performance on PS4 Pro

    TLDR: Buggy, but imminently playable and quite enjoyable, if you’re patient with it.

    For a long time, I held off buying Owlcat’s Pathfinder Kingmaker for the PS4. The terrible player reviews, the game breaking bugs, the unplayable state of the game and a developer that seemed to have moved on to a new release, all had prevented me from buying this game. Until desperation for a new console CRPG made me cave and buy it anyway. And then I was pleasantly surprised by the state of the game.

    So pleasantly surprised that I feel that some of the reviews online are old and maybe even unfair and not representative of the current state of the game on PS4. I decided to counter the uninformative or flat-out outdated reviews that are prevalent. I want to give you a truthful and realistic perspective of someone who knew the game was flawed but bought it anyway and found I could play it and enjoy it. This writeup is meant for the buyer that wants to buy this game but is on the fence, and just wants a realistic breakdown of what to expect if they shell out the cash for Kingmaker. If that’s you, then read on; this was my experience.

    Playtime: 141 hours on a pure lvl 20 Aasimar Monk I called, Wun Saitama! Don’t hate my bad names.

    Quest Breaking bugs: none found or experienced, though the second last quest area (in the First World) can burn in hell.

    Black Screen on game launch: 3
    Comments: Just shut the game down and restart it.

    General Crashes: 21
    Comments: Mostly because I tried to load a new area whilst the game was still saving. Waiting for the game to fully save then loading into a new area solves the problem. Most frequently found when shifting into Kingdom management mode from the throne room or the main map. Twice the game crashed while loading. Thrice, a crash was preceded by a frame rate drop.

    Frame Rates: Great in the beginning of the game, average in the later stages, but very, very playable. Lead to three crashes though so suggest a quick save

    Playtime lost due to crashes: Average 4-5 min only.
    Total playtime lost: about approx. 1-1.5 hours of progress over the full playthrough.
    Comments: Because I was saving frequently I only ever lost avg. 4-5 min of play. I had 1 auto save slot, 1 quick save slot, 3 manual save files. With frequent and clever saving, I was never more than 5 min or so of progress behind after a crash. Not game destroying at all and I was able to recover any lost progress easily and then move on. In a 12-hour sitting, I would average a crash or so, and sometimes none, sometimes 2. Nothing that made me descend into pure gamer rage, damage my own property and write badly composed tirades against this game and its devs online.

    Slow Loading
    Comments: Well yes. Especially towards the end of the main campaign. They do get slower. But egregiously so? Anthem levels of loading speed? Absolutely not. I will suggest you take that sip of water, double check to make sure your phone has the right guide opened (don’t lie! You know you will play this with one eye on the guide), have some snacks and there you go, loadings over. Let the murder hobo-ing commence.

    Story, Gameplay, DLCs etc: Quite good. Pathfinder Kingmaker is no instant classic, but I will rate this game’s story, character creation and gameplay, top notch. Not legendary “S” tier, but a solid “B plus” overall and an “A” for the effort and love for the Pathfinder franchise that’s on display. For more details, please refer to your game reviewer of choice.

    Final Thoughts: I’m not talking No Mans Sky levels of redemption here, Pahtfinder Kingmaker did have a rough, buggy launch. But Owlcat have done a decent job of patching together a fun and playable game here that you can safely and confidently enjoy on your PS4 without too many bugs getting in your way.

    There you have it. A realistic breakdown of what it was like to play Kingmaker. I hope I was able to inform your purchase and have a great day!    … Expand
  2. setpol
    May 22, 2021
    5
    Absolute trash. The most crashes I've ever seen in a game since Cyberpunk, and it's not even close.

    Loading? Crash. Saving? Crash. Finish a hour long battle and about to clean up the last of the weak opponents? Crash. It would be okay if the difficulty didn't swing from insane to a cake walk. The only thing that carried me was a single grease spell since it's pretty broken. Have a    Absolute trash. The most crashes I've ever seen in a game since Cyberpunk, and it's not even close.

    Loading? Crash. Saving? Crash. Finish a hour long battle and about to clean up the last of the weak opponents? Crash.

    It would be okay if the difficulty didn't swing from insane to a cake walk. The only thing that carried me was a single grease spell since it's pretty broken. Have a character with 27 ac? Doesn't matter. They'll just get hit 1000 times and die anyways. Bethesda makes a less buggy game than this trash.    … Expand
  3. Thaksin
    Jun 21, 2021
    5
    Хорошая игра, но слишком сложна для казуального прохождения (для кого-то будет плюсом).
    Я люблю настольные ролевые/приключенческие игры, так же я находился в восторге после "divinity original sin 2", но желая продолжить подобное, но уже в другой вселенной и другим сюжетом, не получил этого.
    Была распродажа в PS Store, так вот мне повезло взять ее и Pillars Eternity 2. Сейчас играю в    Хорошая игра, но слишком сложна для казуального прохождения (для кого-то будет плюсом).
    Я люблю настольные ролевые/приключенческие игры, так же я находился в восторге после "divinity original sin 2", но желая продолжить подобное, но уже в другой вселенной и другим сюжетом, не получил этого.
    Была распродажа в PS Store, так вот мне повезло взять ее и Pillars Eternity 2. Сейчас играю в "pillars" и получаю искренне удовольствие, после того как забросил pathfinder.
    Мнение оставляю для оценки и помощи, всего наиграл в нее ~17 часов, но не смог оценить по достоинству, даже думал начать заново играть в divinity, но смог открыть для себя "столбы вечности".    … Expand
  4. TheWaffle
    Mar 14, 2021
    7
    It's an enjoyable RPG experience, but unfortunately the joy of the table-top doesn't translate very well into a computer game. The real-time and free movement systems are a jarring break from the tactical combat of the TTRPG. Melee fighters cram into combat and fights are over in a blink. The turn-based option is better for tough fights, while real-time can be used to steam-roll easierIt's an enjoyable RPG experience, but unfortunately the joy of the table-top doesn't translate very well into a computer game. The real-time and free movement systems are a jarring break from the tactical combat of the TTRPG. Melee fighters cram into combat and fights are over in a blink. The turn-based option is better for tough fights, while real-time can be used to steam-roll easier battles.

    The real problem with this game is that it has abandoned most of the role-play of Pathfinder and funneled everything into combat. There are very few opportunities to solve problems or win a fight using outside-the-box thinking. It's hard to lay an ambush or traps, and thus-far the diplomatic options are limited. At 12-hours in, I can count on one hand the number of meaningful dialogue choices that I've made. And the game relishes its random encounters, even loading you into a new map just to battle 2 goblins.

    This game also, isn't very friendly to newbies. Unless you've played the table-top version, a lot of the mechanics are going to be a mystery unless you read every little highlight that pops up. Except for my table-top experience, I wouldn't have known about the flanking bonus and the shooting into melee penalties. There's no tutorial or visual prompt for those things.

    The game also suffers from the lack of a game master. On the table top, the GM can hand-wave away some annoying problems "I'm not going to make you roll 20 times, you eventually make it out of the spider's web", but on the PC the computer freezes your character in place with their -8 DEX penalty and forces you to wait for that character to roll a 20 to get out.

    The visual bugs are the strangest problem, since they should have been so foreseeable. But instead, large portions of the isometric maps are hidden behind walls, while you're funneled along narrow cave passages. And enemies in encounters will spawn into the black fog on the edge of the map. They really should have put more thought into the map design to avoid these issues.

    Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a decent time-waster for fans of Pathfinder lore and gameplay, but it fails to replicate the tabletop experience or to improve upon the core system. Divinity OS I and II leave this game in the dust.    … Expand
  5. Amalo
    Dec 17, 2020
    5
    It's a great game, and I have it both on PS4 and steam. But on PS4 it's got way too many bugs. I have to save much more often (which takes forever) because the game is constantly crashing. And not having access to the user mods the PC version offers is disappointing. Would be nice to have mod access like Skyrim or fallout 4
  6. Crytzch
    Apr 6, 2021
    5
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I'm a console gamer exclusively, so the wait for this to come from Steam to PS4 has been a long one. Was it worth the wait?

    Well, kinda.

    It's easy to tell that this was ported over from a desktop. A lot of the in-game features were clearly designed with MAK in mind - I'm thinking of a specific quest that requires you to meet someone somewhere on a Monday (Moonday), collapses your kingdom (and, consequently, your playthrough), and offers no in-game mechanic to track what day of the week it is. PC? Hover your mouse over a clock. Console? No joy whatsoever. The game crashes roughly every two hours worth of gameplay, and they still haven't fixed the early-game bug that freezes your entire system because you pressed square at the wrong time. The controls are ponderous, and the combat shortcut bar is ridiculous to set up because it resets after every quick save or manual save.

    Having said that, I'm a tabletop junkie and a lot of the combat from the Pathfinder pen-and-paper translates. It's cool to see the monsters from the Monster Manual, it's fun to build your character and to see what you can do with it (and the ability to completely rebuild your character -almost- at will is legendary), and the storyline is fun. You'll dump a lot of time into managing your kingdom, but that will play out into some pretty great quests. You'll have to really, really manage your resources (I found out late-game that there's a finite amount of healing potions and camping rations in the world after I squandered them all in early encounters), but that's part of the fun.

    tl;dr - I liked it, but it's broken. It's not unplayable, but it's damn close. I've rage-quit a couple of times but I find myself picking the controller back up a day later and getting back in.    … Expand
  7. Ainnocentgamer
    Dec 13, 2021
    6
    Played it on ps5. The game sucks you in and before you know it you are playing for hours. It has a lot of content, maybe a bit too much. Easy 100-200 hours.

    Reasons for only a 6 are: long loadtimes. They get longer as the game progresses, even on ps5.
    Crashes: game crashes a lot. Atleast once every 2h, worse it crashes a lot on save loading and quick saving making you lose a lot of progress.
  8. ZXSth
    Nov 8, 2020
    5
    The few CRPGs that have been ported to consoles have a mixed reputation when it comes to technical performance and adapting the user interface accordingly - we've seen these issues handled quite well in the Divinity: Original Sin series, and rather poorly with the Pillars of Eternity series. Unfortunately, Pathfinder: Kingmaker falls into the latter category, and is arguably even moreThe few CRPGs that have been ported to consoles have a mixed reputation when it comes to technical performance and adapting the user interface accordingly - we've seen these issues handled quite well in the Divinity: Original Sin series, and rather poorly with the Pillars of Eternity series. Unfortunately, Pathfinder: Kingmaker falls into the latter category, and is arguably even more prone to annoying technical hiccups than Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire was on consoles, and that is saying something.

    The foremost concern worth addressing here is the fact that approximately every hour (or possibly even every half-hour), it is likely that you will attempt to save your game, and be promptly booted to the PS4 home screen. The load times are also nothing to scoff at, either - while such screens are not as plentiful or long-lasting as those of the console version of Deadfire, they do the game no credit. Furthermore, in areas of the game where more than approximately 10 NPCs are present, the game's framerate dips to abysmal levels - I have personally been in areas where the game was running at 3 FPS. On its own, this last detail would be rather egregious - combining that problem with the fact that such framerates are usually a precursor to a game crash makes Kingmaker an unbelievable slog when faced with high volumes of enemies.

    Kingmaker would be a solid CRPG were it not for these aforementioned technical hiccups, but the rather infuriating way the "kingdom management" system has been implemented doesn't help the game's case. Even without the bugs and possible crashes you may encounter while trying to constantly return to your town on the world map (a requirement for many of the kingdom management events), the whole process of having to complete arbitrary busywork within a given timeframe doesn't create the sense of urgency one might get from Majora's Mask, for example. Instead, it feels like someone is nagging you to complete some inconsequential chore, thereby tearing you away from your adventures in looting and slaying.

    What this game gets right is the level of customization available to each character. There are numerous classes, a vast array of weapon types and the ability to dip your feet into any of these 16 classes any time you level up, which offers a nigh-infinite number of permutations for each individual character. There is something a little less well-conceived about this system than Deadfire's multiclass system, but the sheer variety Kingmaker's class system offers is awesome. And while I was annoyed at some of the more archaic reliance on the Pathfinder tabletop's ruleset (i.e. Paladins being required to maintain a Lawful Good alignment), I would argue that the way both Kingmaker and Deadfire handled their class system made for a far more enjoyable experience (in this sense, at least) than that of Divinity: Original Sin 2's. A shame, then, that the latter was an infinitely more technically stable experience.

    I urge you to curb your desire to play Pathfinder: Kingmaker on PS4. This is a game so rife with technical issues that it will likely leave you infuriated at the fact that you are unable to enjoy the great product buried beneath an avalanche of poor performance and constant crashing. There may come a day when Kingmaker gets its kinks ironed out enough to be a much less painful experience, but the sheer depth of the issues I have seen here lead me to believe that such a herculean task will take Owlcat Games far too long to do. This game is further evidence of a serious issue the video game industry has with releasing buggy, unfinished products, and such practices can (at least partially) be quashed by you not buying such games.

    Like its fellow console-ported CRPG, Deadfire, Kingmaker will live on in my mind as a tragic example of a game that could've been so much better if given more time in the oven, so to speak. What we are left with, unfortunately, is outright brutal levels of unmet potential.    … Expand
  9. Drkyjo
    Aug 31, 2020
    5
    I'd really love to give this game a 8 or better. Unfortunately there are a ton of bugs and issues where the game crashes. When it's working as it's supposed to though, this game is amazing. Plays like a TTRPG and has great depth to the story and character creation.
  10. SMK1000
    Aug 9, 2023
    7
    I loved this game, felt like my DnD adventures brought to life with a great story, gameplay and characters but the CONSTANT game crashes nearing the end game are abysmal.
  11. repinpalpalich
    Apr 12, 2023
    7
    Game is great but a few technical problems make it worse
    - slow loading/saving
    - game crashes after playing 2-3 hours

Awards & Rankings

81
#81 Most Discussed PS4 Game of 2020

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
74

Mixed or average reviews - based on 17 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 17
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 17
  3. Negative: 0 out of 17
  1. Worth Playing
    Jan 4, 2021
    65
    Seasoned tabletop players and those who are willing to invest the time and effort into learning the systems could sink their teeth into this one if they're willing to look past its buggy warts, but Kingmaker doesn't offer enough different or intriguing content to win over someone who isn't already invested in this system and world.
    Read full review
  2. GameMAG
    Oct 24, 2020
    50
    If you were looking forward to dive deep into Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Definitive Edition on consoles, you probably should change your plans. At least for the time being, while the devs are trying to fix their game. Meanwhile, if you still crave that classic role-playing experience, just get yourself Pillars of Eternity or Divinity: Original Sin.
    Read full review
  3. SpazioGames
    Oct 17, 2020
    79
    Thanks to the new turn based combat and the added DLCs, the console version of Pathfinder Kingmaker is on par with the PC one, and comes recommended for all RPG fans.
    Read full review
See all critic reviews »