Well that is definitely an different experience. I am kind of a fan of the time factor and even the sleep/hunt/rations micro-econ thing too. (as it also affects time)
Although the party moaning about wanting to sleep is super annoying due to its frequency.
If I was a QA tester on the game I would have submitted a bug telling the devs to tell the NPCs to shut the fuck up. Probably waived though. By design.
I finally finished the game.
The ending areas overstay their welcome starting with The House at the Edge of Time, which is just an awful area. Terribly so. With rooms full of bullshit enemies (not to mention the bad mist puzzle)
You must either have Blind Fight to avoid gaze attacks or Freedom of Movement to avoid the paralysis of said gaze attacks, or your characters will be frozen in place for the entire fight being both helpless and useless. These enemies show up throughout the end game so it all but required.
The area boss is laughably easy though. And the first part of the next chapter is a huge cakewalk if you go 100% martial class even though they curse the holy living fuck out of you. The last area is just a mostly linear combat slog against more bullshit enemies. One of the last chests in the game has like over 30K gold in it. I am not sure what the point of it is.
Most of the game is A/B+ but the end areas I give an F. I wouldn’t blame anyone switching to Story difficulty here just to get through it.
Totally agree on the final dungeon. Enemies that can incapacitate you indefinitely are the opposite of fun. Once in a while they’re good for a scare but giving every enemy the same bullshit is just poor design. The fact that you can circumvent it with a feat, making that feat a tax to use that character in the area, makes the whole thing silly.
I imagined my characters all walking around with their eyes closed to avoid the gaze attacks.
Yeah, either a feat or a spell, or I suppose a very high Will save.
I think my priest always made the Will save (he better because he had like 30 Wisdom) while I gave both my melee characters Blind Fight. Everyone else needed Freedom of Movement casted on them. (There isn’t a communal version, but fortunately it has a very long duration at 10 minutes per level)
Rogue I’ve had a deep game in that game. How do you continue to play when it’s not fun?
Btw i agree with you completely - It just gets crazy late in.
Maybe we both oughta think about it.
I guess completion - ism?
I hope the designers know how poorly that last dungeon was received and don’t do anything like it in the sequel. I feel actual pangs of sympathy for any poor soul trudging through it just wanting to finish the game and resolve the story.
Agreed! Kingmaker gets so much so right, and a couple things so very wrong. I very much hope the devs are able to keep the amazing stuff without the baggage of the jank-ass content in the sequel.
I also just replayed it, and with most of The House at the Edge of Time content, i just played in story mode because the final bit was so silly. It was amazing up to that point, but the last bit was such a mess that only I managed some semi enjoyment stomping it in story mode, because it was so friggin lame.
Here is my best full on ‘screw you’ salute to whatever developer that thought that particular end game content was a good idea…
The conclusion to the Pitax chapter feels like a much better end point. The palace has many challenging fights without becoming completely idiotic.
I’ve finished PFKM around eight times now, so I’ve been through the HatEoT a lot. The dual phases are the worst part (look for the mirrors to figure out which phase you’re in). The enemies aren’t bad once you learn the trick to them. But yeah, it’s not a good dungeon.
All the First World and phasing stuff in PFKM is bad, imo, including the earlier stuff in the Season of Bloom.
homie…
Going Story mode for the last chapter is probably smart.
The enemy gaze attacks are saved against and they are no longer magic missile sponges. Fights are brief. It feels about equal to the difficulty of random encounters on the world map when the difficulty is set to Challenging. (because world map random encounters seem caped against like…a level 8 party and when your level 18 everything dies in under 10 seconds)
This highlights my main slap against the game. The difficulty is all over the place. (and sometimes very Bi-polar)
I have yet to beat this game. Too many builds to try.
Especially with Call of the Wilderness.
But, I am going to try to beat the Endless Dungeon DLC.
I just finished Armag’s Tomb and the coronation section and I’m waiting for something to happen. I’ve probably spent two months’ worth of time in the capital with the kingdom mgmt stuff, but so far no new quests or events. Is this normal?
Yes.
IIRC there are like two Bald Hill attack intervals without any crisis/main quest/new chapter reserved mostly for kingdom management/side quests.
After a Bald Hill attack, if there isn’t something that comes up within two weeks, you are probably on free time. And any time left until the next Bald Hill attack after completing the chapter main quest is also free.
This timing stuff should all be made plain as day to the player, not inferred or hidden. It’s a real flaw in the design.
Hidden timing, janky spikes in difficulty and crappy/puzzly/generally sucktastic endgame content are the big weaknesses in this game.
The fantastic character development, the great combat (especially in turn based mode), the huge amount of content, the depth of the enemy ranks, some fine quests and a generally good overall plot (with some patchy parts) should have in theory all combined to make this an all-time great title but the flaws drag it down from a 10 to an 8, IMO.
An 8 is still a good game, and given that this is the dev team’s rookie effort, I have to applaud. I am hopeful hat the devs will learn the right lessons for the next game. I’m keeping an eye on the next game; in theory it should be great! (famous last words…)
I only put about 10 hours into the beta but it was fantastic. I stopped playing because it was so good and a bug revealed a cool secret about a companion that shouldn’t have been revealed so I stopped playing because I don’t want anymore of the game to be ruined.
I suppose one could argue the Bald Hill attack timer is the time limit for each chapter, except when there isn’t a chapter and you are left wondering what the hell is going on. Also the Bald Hill attack and associated kingdom card literally always triggers a week or more before the timer actually reaches 0…Accept the mystery?
Decided to expand my kingdom and sit back in my throne room assigning various chores to my minions. . .er, advisors. Figured as the weeks tick by something will eventually pop up. Been about 5-6 weeks now, I can only have sex with Octavia so many times before I start climbing the walls here.
Created a neutral evil Tiefling sorcerer (undead bloodline) while playing around with the character build options, but then got to wondering if an evil play through is supported by the game much at all. Anyone give it a try?