Kingmaker is not above throwing more crises at you then you can possibly handle, leaving the events screen of my Kingdom management inundated. Taking the reins of the kingdom doesn’t guarantee a better outcome. That certainly feels like being the ruler of a troubled infant state, but getting beaten over the head with a deluge of never-ending problems is less a cool feature and more a source of stress and aggravation. The clock always felt like my enemy, and I felt pulled in many different directions. Taking a myopic view of the most pressing matters threatening the barony can lead to certain side quests expiring because they weren’t addressed in time. I’d hone in on the story, then have to watch my barony bleed from a thousand cuts as an avalanche of event cards and crises diced it up. It was in these moments that some of my sidequesting felt burdensome, and the amount of random events slamming into my fledgling state felt overwhelming. At one point I had to let nearly a year of my barony’s time tick by, stopping only to put out fires along the way lest my kingdom crumble to unrest, before a new chapter of the main storyline triggered. I’d have preferred a little less to do, truthfully, or at least the opportunity to do it all with the in-game clock being less of an enemy. Diving into the main quests as they arrive and the many, many side quests and errands available rapidly presents an avalanche of content. Your barony feels like a fledgling state in its birthing pains, under assault from within and without, and it doesn’t take much at all to become invested in its survival as greater, shadowy forces scheme for its destruction. The pacing can be disjointed by numerous delays, but Kingmaker’s story maintains a sense of weight and variety. The story of a lowly adventurer ascending to nobility and dragging a backwater barony with them to glory could easily become stale if there was nothing more to the plot, but Kingmaker throws quite a few unique and interesting stories at you over the course of its roughly 75 hour campaign. It leans into the high fantasy trappings of the setting, with magic and monsters and mystical curses, while also bringing a healthy political dynamic to the proceedings. Notably, the story is very, very good - one of the better I’ve played in an isometric RPG. Thankfully, the Pathfinder experience has some rewards for the patient. These uninteresting and frequent delays become moments of boredom far too often. It means waiting for it to load, watching your party move at a snail's pace across the impressively sized map, and stopping very regularly to fight or rest. Traversing the world map means literally waiting for your party to move across it. Getting from dungeon to dungeon, or area to area, has pitfalls as well.
Thus, I had to abandon all progress and load a save where I could re-provision before giving it another go, wiser and considerably more annoyed.
I stayed in some dungeons for hours, slogging through the same encounters and situations, dying again and again, only to conclude that I just didn’t kit out properly or bring enough supplies. Without rations, there is no resting in these labyrinths, and watching my very limited supply of rations dwindle became a doomsday clock. My worst defeats, the kind a tweak in strategy or methodology couldn’t save me from, came from being ground down by long dungeons and hordes of enemies that applied “permanent” debuffs that could only be removed by resting. My characters weren’t poorly designed or built, because I still found myself powering through many encounters well enough.
I fought too many battles in Kingmaker on repeat. In Pathfinder: Kingmaker, the party just dies, and often does so repeatedly. In a tabletop campaign, a good DM could present an interesting alternative to prevent the frustration of a complete party wipe at the very start of the evening. In an early sidequest, you encounter an enemy type that may very well defeat a party that doesn’t have the appropriate method, or knowledge, on hand to beat it. The combat encounters, dungeons, and additional mechanics like kingdom management are flawed, uneven, and wildly divergent in quality. Simply put, Kingmaker doesn’t feel properly balanced.Its dungeons are mostly poorly designed trapfests stuffed with monsters to kill and little else of interest to do, and several of its core systems conspire less to keep things interesting and more to keep progress slow. But an authentic recreation of the Pathfinder experience suffers tremendously without the guiding hand of a Dungeon Master.
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