Are you saying it was wishful thinking coupled with jump-to-conclusions? I’m shocked! I would never!
Oh, well. bangs head against brick wall
[Edit] It could be that it’s Steam itself that is causing the issues. After all, right now, Kingmaker is the primary game I’m playing on Steam, and Steam is often just open in the background even when playing other games, browsing, etc. I’ll have to watch more when it happens to see what else is active.
New console patch yesterday, it fixed the music issue and the hotbar issue, which is awesome.
They also fixed this,
I was exploiting the shit out of that with Ekun. Stealth up, fire a shot, get off a full attack’s worth of arrows when the surprise round starts. It was an auto delete of any monster in an encounter.
That’s actually why I stopped using him. It was so massively unfair, but I couldn’t stop myself.
Now that Octavia can sneak attack with AoE spells I don’t need Ekun as much anymore. Any difficult fight gets an empowered, maximized Chain Lightning to kick things off. That’s good for about 170 damage to all monsters in a 30 ft radius. That unlocked at level 10 of Arcane Trickster. She can stealth too! (with a +20 for being invisible)
Ekun: 170 damage to 1 monster to start, vs Octavia 170 damage to most monsters to start.
I want to love this game at times, and then it hits my 5th-level party with multiple level 11 random encounters and I rage quit for a few days.
One of the worst parts for me were those floating skulls with lightning damage that completely wrecked my party. Only once I googled it, did I figure out a way of counteracting that.
I burned out on it. There’s a lot to like and I’m interested in a sequel but eh… I got annoyed by the stupid timers on Octavia/Reg so restarted my game and rushed back through to catch up with where I was initially. I got back to where I was but just kind of ran out of gas at that point, didn’t have much of a desire to fire the game back up. That’s no entirely a knock on Kingmaker specifically, I oftentimes have that problem with single player games.
Still, there were annoyances that kept coming up that kept knocking down my enjoyment. I was also pretty annoyed with the… I can’t remember the name of it. Verdant Grove? Where you go alone to meet with the nymph. I came prepared but let’s just say my main character was horribly ill-equipped to deal with it at the time, going the Mystic Theurge route. I was very week and had little to no ability in Mobility and Athletics so it just made it a really annoying setup. I eventually got through it but there were just of things like that that continued to grate to the point where I just uninstalled the game. Don’t force me into situations alone with only my main character when it’s not very tuned for different classes. I was building my character based on the party I had around me.
Interested in a sequel, especially if they learn from what I view as some game design mistakes. I did have quite a lot of fun for a little while there.
Yep, I agree. The game has loads of promise, but is hampered by some horrible miscommunication / or just structural balancing issues. If you go through once and figure out mechanics and concepts, the second run would be a lot better, but I’m not interested in investing a hundred hours just to LEARN a game.
The kingdom management was also odd, as I thought the “events” were extremely critical and important, so I sent off my whole council putting down those “emergencies” and never got around to leveling up. Thus the time ticked by and later on I was rather trapped in some tough fights as I hadn’t levelled enough.
Anyway, last time I played I just started the Pitax chapter and I’m not sure I’ll go back and actually finish the game anymore…
You can blow this quest off for a long time. Maybe forever. I usually go at level 8 or so.
I don’t think I ever went on a previous playthrough, and I may not on this playthrough, even though my MC is in much better shape to solo it this time. (Level 10 ranged slayer)
There are certainly encounters where you have to cheese or save scum some. I try to roll most of the game blind, which has gotten me into some shit. See Vorakai’s Tomb, I had to start that whole section over because I was woefully unprepared. In the game’s defense, it warns you to bring rations.
The Verdant Temple encounter is bullshit, but you’re not supposed to win, you’re supposed to run away. If you’re a squishy with no physical skills (because why would a wizard train athletics or mobility???), you’re fucked. Again, in the game’s defense, the quest log says to bring invisibility potions. I think those asshole Redcaps can see though invisibility, though.
Yeah, that was my situation. Except I was multiclassing for Mystic Theurge so I was even weaker than normal (3 cleric 3 sorc or something like that) Didn’t have anywhere near the athletics/mobility to climb out and unfortunately other than the hydra, it seemed like most everything else was able to see through invis potion just fine. So going out the front door wasn’t great.
Not exactly great design since if you have some athletics/mobility is a cinch. Once you figure that out, anyway. I’m just not a fan of having a party-based game, making a character to fit that party, and then set up a scenario where you need to go solo. Especially early on in a ruleset where casters are really anemic to begin with.
Wasn’t gamebreaking or anything, just one of the many things I found were a bit clumsy and just wore me down over time, souring me a bit on the game.
I’ve bounced off this game hard many times, but finally sucked it up past the kingdom management and HOLY COW this is a lot of fun…
Until the two-universe mansion near the end. I am so tired of Wild Scouts and Ghostly Guards, both of which I can beat, but take forever between fear and immunities and it just sucks the life out of the pacing of the game.
My characters are level 16, and I looked at a walkthrough to see how much I have left. Is it okay for me to say ‘I won’ at this point and shelve it, or is there a great payoff to getting through the slog?
I thought the payoff was pretty great… It has the best Fallout-style ending of any RPG I’ve played.
Did you give Shyka the crown? That’s a secret ending that will skip chapter 8… Though I think chapter 8 is pretty great.
If you didn’t take the Blind Fighting fighting feat, you can also counter the Wild Scout’s ability with Freedom of Movement buff.
This game runs great on the Series X. High frame rate, loading times are way, way better. I had it on an SSD before on the Xbox One, and it would still take like 60 seconds to quick save or load a new zone. Now it takes around 10.
Currently rolfstomping the Tenebrous Depths, because I never got to it. My party is level 17. My melee chars all have movement boots and can run around the map. My MC is finally useful as a front line priest, and has a great AC and attack bonus. Plus I can rip people’s hearts out with Death Clutch. Ekun has a bow now called Mirror Bow which doubles his attacks per round and frankly I don’t know what the DM was thinking with this weapon.
Guys wtf Linzi is dead. Like, perma dead. No more bard buff auras. I suppose it doesn’t matter all these fey are immune to her spells.
She has been replaced with Amiri, who wields a glaive called Incorruptible Petal which is ungodly. Only downside is she doesn’t crit much with it.
Her death was a ‘novel’ twist of fate.
I just saw that the Mods added both the Investigator and the Spiritualist. I’m not sure which class to play, but since I’m going to do the dungeon, maybe I’ll do both!
This post is pure gold, thanks for writing it up! :-)
Got this on the steam sale. Not sure how I missed it before as its right up my alley. I read back in this thread and so many of the comments ring true…like how can PEOPLE LIVE in a land where so many incredible monsters are just wandering around. Got a random encounter with so many wyverns they were stacked up deep surrounding me 360deg, and another with a couple of epic (massive, rabid, whatever) Air Elementals. But I love it!