Pathfinder: Kingmaker E3 2018 Impressions

Owlcat Games’ upcoming isometric cRPG Pathfinder: Kingmaker was showcased during this year’s E3, but unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a lot of coverage available at the moment. Still, there is this hands-on preview from RPGamer that shares a number of screenshots and paints a fairly positive picture, complete with dungeons, trolls, dwindling resources, and barony management. An excerpt:

My demo took me to a dungeon filled with trolls that had become immune to fire damage. Given that is one of the troll’s primary weaknesses, this is a problem. Maneuvering around the dungeon was easy enough, a ring formed around the party that served as its line of sight. It felt like I was only able to move the party within this range, which did prevent me from allowing my party to travel long distances after I had cleared most of the dungeon out. The characters I was given were more powerful than they would have been otherwise so combat was no problem. That is until I made a rookie mistake and spent all my resources fighting a troll and not taking care of the mage backing it up. Yes, I wiped with an overpowered party. My only defense is I’m no good at real-time with pause.

The other aspect to this game that was touched upon briefly is the player’s barony. After completing the first act of the game, players will get access to a castle to call their very own. A management sim then begins over all the land you control in the Stolen Lands. Players will be allowed to build settlements on their land which gives them access to new vendors, craftsmen, and temples. NPCs can be recruited to offer bonuses to the land but different NPCs will excel in different areas. Larger tracks of land will be able to have more settlements but as the leader of the barony, you must also serve to protect your subjects from invaders. Mishulin said that for those who don’t want to engage with the simulation elements of the game can have them automated, only requiring the player to make major decisions, but many of the game’s best equipment and crafters will be gained with this method. On the subject of difficulty, four modes will be available, each adhering to the tabletop game’s ruleset to differing degrees. Simplified rules have players take sixty percent less damage and Adapted rules have damaged reduced by twenty percent. Both of these modes prevent critical hits on the player. Core rules feature full damage, normal criticals, and deaths from major injuries. Advanced rules begin to stack the odds against the players instead. These modes are still being tweaked.