Game Review: Pathfinder - Kingmaker

There is something truly special about sitting around a table with friends, having fun with role playing games. Playing those kinds of games, you create a story together. You experience joys and tragedies that are unique, ones that only you will know. The quiet moments and the loud, based on the choices you make. Pathfinder: Kingmaker (PF:K) is based off of the tabletop game ‘Pathfinder’, which itself grew out of a Dungeons and Dragons ruleset in 2008, and shares a lot of the same roots, but has flourished in its own right since then. Now, it’s left the tabletop and has been brought to the PC as a complete gaming experience. 

If you’re a fan of the Baldur’s Gate series, Pillars of Eternity, or other isometric party based role playing game, or if you’re a fan of the Pathfinder tabletop game, this is a must for your game list. If you’re anyone else, this game is still worth a look. There is a lot here to like. Developed by Owlcat Games, PF:K offers a rich and deep role playing experience for veterans of the genre, while allowing newcomers to jump in and play without needing to know the specifics, letting them learn as they go. 

PF:K came out in 2018, but the folks at Owlcat Games have continued to provide DLC and free updates since then, and their most recent update elevates the game to what it was always meant to be. Sometimes in order to go forward, you need to go back to the basics, and that’s what they’ve done by adding the option to make the game turn based. Moving the game closer to the tabletop experience may sound reductive, but instead it allows for a greater appreciation of the game’s versatile mechanics. 

The game starts with you creating your character, and as you play you can add more characters, “companions”, to your group (11 in the main game, and 1 more with the Wildcards DLC), though you can only bring up to 5 companions with you as you adventure. Companions have their own goals, personalities, and optional side quests, and come with pre-selected attributes, but you can level-up these companions however you would like. You also have the option of hiring generic companions, who lack dialogue or personality, but offer a blank slate that you can create from the ground up to fit your play style if you don’t like the premade companions. 

In line with most other aspects of the game, character creation is crammed full of content. The team at Owlcat Games has taken an immense amount of detail straight from the Pathfinder system and ported it to this game. While those familiar with the tabletop RPG might not find everything they’re familiar with, you can still select from 8 races (9 with the DLC) and a mind boggling 15 classes (16 with the DLC), plus 7 additional prestige classes. The game also allows you to multiclass with only a few restrictions, so you can mix and match the classes however you want. This translates into a truly astounding number of player options, making each character unique to how you want to play. Newcomers to the genre shouldn’t fear, however, as the game can also generate a suitable character for you, giving you a good all around set-up for whatever class you want to play. When you’re ready to try making your own choices, the game

will also give you detailed descriptions of what each choice does, and even highlights options as particularly good or particularly bad for whatever class you’re playing, but it never stops you. If you think you can build a unique character that goes against type, the game allows you the freedom to make those choices and try new things. 

Story-wise, you are the game’s protagonist, and you’ve joined an expedition into a region called the Stolen Lands. Once there, it's a race to defeat a figure called the Stag Lord and claim the region as your own Kingdom. This fight comes surprisingly quick in the story, and soon the player will find themselves managing their kingdom, with all of the politics, intrigue, and battles that such a task entails. If this sounds like too much work, kingdom management can be automated for those who just want to go exploring and adventure. For those who want the challenge of holding your own Barony, there is plenty there to dig into: from managing trade relations with neighboring factions, claiming new territory for your growing Kingdom, or hunting robbers and killing monsters plaguing the roads. This game has a little something for every kind of player, similar to its source material of tabletop roleplaying games, which prize freedom and choice as their main staples. 

The most frequent type of gameplay, however, is combat, and fighting falls into the three standard fantasy categories: melee, ranged, and magic. Here is where the introduction of turns really makes a difference. The game as it came out in 2018 allowed players to pause and issue orders, but if left unchanged, combat would play out in real time. This mode is great for players new to the genre who might use a character with fewer complex abilities. If you’re playing a fighter with a sword and shield, or a greataxe, this mode lets you swing away and take down enemies quickly. If you want to keep things simple and not have combat drag on, this is definitely the way to go. For more advanced players, the real-time aspect can be a chore, especially where you’re constantly forced to pause the game so you can activate special powers or cast specific spells without getting overwhelmed searching for the right button to push. With turn based mode on, every character or enemy in a combat gets to take a turn, and will have a certain number of actions they can use. Some actions take a whole turn, while others can be combined. Veterans of the Pathfinder tabletop game will be most familiar with this mode. For some of the more complex classes, this is a thankful addition and is pretty much necessary. For example, while playing the Magus class, I found that in the real time mode it was almost impossible to tell if I had actually cast my spellstrike ability, which is a main feature of that class. Once I activated turn-based mode, it was very clear what I was casting and whether it was successful or if it had missed my target. It’s great to see how one of the simplest ideas from PF:K’s tabletop roots has allowed its players to experience its new, rich details in a way that was simply missing on launch. 

At a time when quarantines and lockdowns can keep us indoors and away from our friends, PF:Kis a great substitute, and it’s a deep and compelling game on its own. If any of this sounds like your kind of game, I can’t recommend it enough.

Pathfinder - Kingmaker on Steam

-The Clever Coyote