The Pathfinder: Kingmaker developers have been teasing an announcement for a few weeks now on social media, and it looks like today is that day.
Some background - Pathfinder: Kingmaker was a Kickstarter (I think it was Kickstarter) success story, and I was all in from day one. I loved the game, I still love it, though my first attempt at completing it failed due to some nasty late-game bugs. The entire game was a disaster from my perspective, but they were able to really polish it up post-release and put some extra, fantastic content in - including a rogue-like dungeon crawl mode. I really need to get back to this and try to complete it with a new game at some point
So here we have an announced sequel, and it isn’t even using crowdfunding, so I think that speaks well to the success of Kingmaker. This pleases me greatly, as those guys really went above and beyond with that title post-release.
Anyway, I’ll skim this article and bullet-point the highlights as I go.
The studio vows they learned a lot from Kingmaker, and will launch a much more polished title this time.
Moving to a new part of the world for this story, Worldwound- a demon infested wasteland. I assume someone that knows the Pen and Paper setting, such as @ArmandoPenblade, could elaborate on this a bit.
Darker visual style sounds like. I really liked the bright, cartoony 3D look of Kingmaker, so I’m not convinced this is necessary, but the art on this PC Gamer article looks great so I’m not overly concerned at this point.
At launch we’ll have two more classes (presumably we keep the existing classes launched and later introduced from Kingmaker), as well as the pen and paper’s Mythic Progression system - letting you select from 6 different mythic classes, including a… excuse me, I dropped my monocle … lich.
One new class is a Witch - spells, hexes, a familiar.
The other new class is an Oracle - holy spellcaster type.
The article mentions the kingdom management layer. I’m not sure that’s part of this new game, which is itself based on another module. The kingmaker module was all about managing a kingdome. Are all Pathfinder modules such? Is this one? Does anyone know?
No release date yet!
EDIT: Full announcement:
Kickstarter:
EDIT 3/12/2020: Kickstarter was successfully completed (wildly so).
Definitely in, I loved the first 3 chapters of Kingmaker though I too ran into game stopping bugs. I haven’t gone back because I wanted to see if the city building part ever became worthwhile, which apparently it did not?
I don’t think so, but it was never something I hated or anything. It was fine. My second attempt at a play through (which I bailed on as just then Pillars 2 put a turn-based mode in, and I haven’t returned in earnest since) I set it to “do this stuff for me” mode and that seemed to “fix” it, in my opinion, so it was just advancing the story and getting you to dialog bits.
Excellent.
If they do something like the kingdom management, I hope it will be made a lot more streamlined and/or actually important for the game.
I found it mostly annoying and with little to no payoff. It was basically just a money sink.
This is another one that goes in my “caution” pile regarding hype. I generally liked Kingmaker, but the bugs were terrible and I have never really enjoyed the clumpy combat in any of these RPGs going back to Baldur’s Gate.
Golarion - it’s the name of the whole world fwiw, the area this is set in is the Worldwound - was sort of designed in such a way that if you wanted to run certain types of campaigns, there was a geopgrahical area to accommodate you. I don’t just mean “I want to run a high seas camapign, so I need an ocean and some shore”, although that’s obviously part of it. But they sort of “themed” areas accordingly. I don’t really know the Worldwound except that it exists and demons, but I think the whole “darker” thing is probably just in keeping with the theme (which is “demons bad, trying to eat everything” one assumes). I think Warhammer is probably the comp.
Hexes are basically a form of class power. They’re a mix of self-buffs and debuffs. Very powerful.
It’s spontaneous divine caster (a la sorcerer). In Pathfinder fasion they get some interesting class powers.
No, but many modules can easily have a kingdom management layer added in. I kind of think it will show up here because it’s partly the shtick (one hopes they can make it better this time, though). Glancing at the AP description there’s a city to be reclaimed.
Super psyched! I love PFKM. I’ve finished it twice, and now I’m deep into my third play-through on Hard. Phoenix what? No thanks, I’m busy killing trolls and leveling up.
The kingdom management stuff was really rough on my first play-through, but on the second after they’d patched it a lot and I learned a lot about how it worked, I thought it was fine. At least on Easy. And now with patch 2.0 they added a “bonus” mechanic you use to increase your chances of success by 5 points.
My only complaint about PFKM is I don’t care for all the First World / Fey bullshit. I also love playing a Paladin and smiting demons, so Wrath of the Righteous looks well suited to my tastes!
Can’t wait. It’s probably gonna be a 2021 release, which sucks.
While you may be right, the good news is they did a lot of the ground work already wrt things like the engine and I would think, quite a few art assets. Though this could be quite a bit more ambitious than PFKM, and they mentioned wanting it to hit the ground very well polished, so maybe 2020 is unrealistic. I suppose “when it’s done” is the correct answer, even if it’s the hard one. :)
Definitely not, but there’s certainly a metagame players and GMs can dive into. I’m curious what we’ll see; the PnP module series by the Wrath of the Righteous name included some special, mythic abilities characters would get, but no kingdom to manage. Basically think of it as a crusade against demons (including mass combat).
FYI - Golarion is the name of the planet, with various continents. These demons come from Worldwound, which is located on the continent of Avistan in an area north of the kingdom you managed in Kingmaker.
I adore Kingmaker. Of all the attempts at recapturing the Baldur’s Gate magic over the years, it’s the one that I felt comes closest. Very hyped for this, though would rather see the kingdom layer eliminated entirely.
this is AWESOME news. I’ve barely scratched the surface of P:K but as soon as I finish my Dreadfire run I’m back there. So this is more great gaming on the way. What’s not to like???
I actually read that as the author of the article is assuming there will be some Kingdom management. We should find out tomorrow, one way or the other, I suspect.
