I put 118 hours into P:K and loved it! I never got to the endgame. I don’t think I was close to seeing everything, but I certainly got my money’s worth! Kingdom management is the weakest part of the game. Don’t get carried away building stuff in your towns.
Because it’s not fun or because money is better spent elsewhere?
I really wanted to like the Kingdom management, because it pushes all my gameplay buttons, but it just isn’t fun. Trying to put my finger on where it fails, I think it’s three things:
- The main parts of the gameplay (i.e., the “missions”) which move the factors significantly, are heavily RNG based. I’ve only played on easy (where the success chances definitely don’t match reality), but I can’t imagine it would be any fun to play it on a setting where you typically have 40-60% chance of success. You literally have no choices to make here (other than which councillor you want - which is frequently no choice at all - you’ll often only have one to chose from, and where you have multiple, one will frequently be so superior that the decision is a foregone conclusion).
- The deterministic parts (town building) have a minimal effect so there is no gameplay purpose to it and no real skill.
- The stats don’t really matter and there are no trade-offs. Diplomacy vs Militaristic? Economic powerhouse vs cultural beacon? It makes no significant difference that I can see - and you can max everything out anyway.
There’s just no gameplay involved in this aspect of the game - it’s all just a convenient drain to throw your loot into.
Edit: It’s a pity, because in general I like the game. It’s definitely the closest to a BG experience I’ve had since the original.
Because money is better spent elsewhere.
Ok thanks!
You need to build stuff in every village so that they can be upgraded to a town and then you can build the excellent teleportation circle.
Still enjoying this game but still early. Restarted a sorcerer, in chapter one, around level three. But I’ve been reading through this thread and I’m wondering whether the early serious issues with this game have been fixed. I’m talking about progression blocking bugs, late game difficulty spikes, and that the kingdom management layer is unfun busy work. What’s the status of this game now that it’s had a few years to marinate?
I played through the first time maybe 6 months ago. No late game (or any) progression bugs encountered, and I did every area, side quest, and some of the DLC (Varnhold). Late game difficulty was no issue, I think they modified the balance of that House at the End of Time dungeon that was an issue early on. I didn’t have much trouble with it, Val could still tank fine and Ekun blew things away as usual. My main was a Kineticist though, and they’re a bit overpowered. It may still be more annoying, depending on what you are. But you can rest as often as you need, so a Sorceror should be fine. And you can hire additional mercs if you need to rebuild your party (I didn’t need to). I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought the final chapter was excellent, really pulled the story together and was a great end.
Kingdom management is still poor, many choices don’t really matter (city layouts), and you need to consult a guide to know what you need to shoot for (Divine 3, Arcane 2 or something like that, to unlock teleportation circles). No way to know that by just playing. Or Econ 6 to unlock the tax choice, which gives you plenty of funds. Or the fact that you’re supposed to unlock new regions as fast as possible, so you can do the fedex side quests for the artisans, so the artisans start showing up giving you free items, which you sell for gold, which you use for kingdom BP. It’s really still a “rich get richer” design, where if you’re ahead of the curve, you’re fine and it’s easy, if you fall behind, it can be a death spiral. Maybe they added catch up mechanics, I’m not sure. You’re not missing anything interesting though, if you just set it on Easy or Effortless. I had it on normal, but I did look at a guide for Kingdom management (one on gamefaqs).
I think the 4th thing that’s an issue with Kingdom management is that all the mechanics are hidden. There’s no way to know that Econ 6 unlocks an important tax decision, or something else unlocks a quest to annex another region. Or that there are teleport circles you can get, if you have Divine 3 or Arcane 2 or whatever it was. If you could see what unlocks what, you could make some strategic decisions. As it is now, you need to look at a guide, or multiple playthroughs. But as you said, you can unlock everything anyway, so it doesn’t matter terribly much.
It’s the most fun I’ve had with a fantasy RPG other than Dragon Age since the Baldur’s Gate series. On pause at the moment since I got some new games, but I’ve reached chapter 5 and haven’t seen any issues yet.
Set Kingdom management to easy (or effortless) as everyone says. That way, the only way you fall behind the curve is if you ignore it entirely.
You need your Magister leveled up to Arcane II (40 points) to get teleportation circles, but before that you need Divine III (your priest) levelled up. Worth getting those two done as early as possible, so that you can teleport between villages/towns and your capital - place those villages in strategically smart locations (usually near the far border of the region) so that you can zip around the map without too much delay.
And @Dikadar is right about the obtuseness of most of this info. Reading a guide is useful to avoid frustration.
Been plowing along in this one and ran into what to me feels like a bug.
The quest is An Amusement for the Nobles, pretty straightforward, kill some beasts a couple hops over from the lodge you picked the quest up at. Simple enough, or so I thought.
So cleared the map:
Bagged three heads of the beasties supposed to kill:
Thing is, I can’t get back to the lodge to collect the reward and end the quest because the game for whatever reason continues to list the hunting grounds as the place I need to complete even though I’ve killed literally everything there is to kill (including for that matter my hunting competitors):
I’ve run through all of this twice just to be sure I’d not goofed something up with the same exact result. Suffice to say I’m done with this quest (and very nearly done with the game based off this).
Here’s my question (and I very much hope the answer is no): Is this quest required to be completed in order for the main story to continue?
If I recall correctly, Ekun’s personal quest also uses the Hunting Lodge. Do you have Ekun and can you do any of his quest? If so, that might get you back to the lodge.
I don’t think the quest that seems bugged is critical to the main game, but it’s been a while now since I played. There are a lot of time-sensitive quests in the game and it may be that too many rests happened in there. What does your journal entry for it say?
My second or third quit of this game was due to losing the Hunting Grounds due to a hidden timer running out. Not sure if that happened to your, but it’s a possibility.
I’ve not been using him, but pretty sure he’s back at home base so I could add him and see what happens.
If it’s not critical I might just plow on if dragging Ekun along doesn’t do the trick.
Journal entry says the following, which to me looks odd because it clearly shows I’ve killed all three:
So how do you ever know if a timer has run on a quest? Does the game tell you and I’m just missing it?
Well that quest says “We’d better hurry - the other hunters won’t wait for us!” which I guess is supposed to inform the player that there is a time limit but I don’t recall ever being given any kind of actual timer. That’s why I called it a hidden timer.
And IMO it sucks and helped ruin the game for me. Don’t necessarily listen to me: I loved aspects of this game but ultimately grew to hate it. I tried playing it 4 or 5 times before giving up the ghost. Hidden timers were my number one complaint, along with difficulty spikes and lack of feedback on certain key things. However, my view is a minority view - the majority of players here enjoyed it, and didn’t find the problems I mentioned game breaking.
But, I think there is a pretty good possibility you got bit by a hidden timer based on your description. If the Hunting Grounds is gone, well that is what happened to me.
To clarify, Kingmaker has both displayed timers on some things, and also some hidden timers that are not displayed. I pretty much hate all hidden timers always everywhere and forever so that’s a big problem. But most players here managed to enjoy the game so…
Yeah I’ve enjoyed my time with it but have to admit I find the idea of hidden timers baffling because there’s no agency to it as I have no visibility. Huh, I’ve got real life if I’m in the mood for a bit of random failure thank you very much.
As for telling me better hurry up that’s just stating the obvious because I already know other hunting parties are out trying to hunt down the same beasts I am. That doesn’t suggest to me I’m on a clock.
It makes no difference though I went back to the castle to see what had developed and sufficient time past for the quest to fail. So it must not be a deal breaker to the main story.
I’m chalking it up as a glitch and moving on. I went straight from the lodge to the hunting grounds which took me all of 4 hours travel time, no one got there any faster than I did.
And here’s the kicker on the time thing: it took almost two weeks once I returned to the castle to trigger the fail state for the quest.
So to end where I started with this comment, I agree timers (even if that was or wasn’t he issue) which are hidden from the player makes for bad game design. I mean like really really bad.
I put over 250 hours into this game and never beat it once. In contrast, my 300 hours in PoE2 yielded quite a few completions.
Was that because it’s so long, or did you start over and over and just never push thru a run to the end?
I’ll admit I’m finding it to be a long one, I’m at what I guess is the beginning of Ch 3 and I’ve spent 50+ hours.
Start overs, bugs, crashes, etc. And I really disliked its dungeon designs, and heard that actually gets worse deeper into the game, so basically said f(ck it.