THE CURSE OF QUANTITY
Let me begin by coining a possibly new term for massive games: Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a true blogbuster. I spent a total of 266 hours with it — during which all my writing came to a complete standstill. Getting back into the groove afterward has been difficult. Those hours contained everything from some of the most enjoyable role-playing I’ve ever experienced to the agony of restarting the entire game after roughly forty hours due to an onslaught of game-breaking bugs.
I’ve played many of the titles that inspired this one, and I love them all unreservedly: Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, and Neverwinter Nights. I’ve returned to them time and again. Some rank among my all-time favorites, as do more recent successors like Pillars of Eternity and Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. While Pathfinder: Kingmaker is essential for fans of the genre, it nevertheless lands at the bottom of that list for me.
Writing about it feels like summarizing every season of a long-running, wildly uneven TV series in a single review — highs and lows alike. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Let’s hope I won’t have to relive them again. Though I probably will.
THE WORLD OF GOLARION
The game establishes a rhythm: questing, followed by kingdom management and preparation, then back to questing again. The world map is vast, dotted with countless locations, monsters, and treasures. Exploration is both surprisingly free-form and oddly aimless, with long stretches of time passing between major story beats. Eventually, the narrative escalates to involve the gods of Golarion and the First World of the Fey — a realm of savage beauty ruled by ancient beings who resent your claim to power.
The isometric perspective places you above the action, as if you were a god yourself. Control is indirect: you issue commands, your party attempts to follow them, and dice rolls determine success or failure. It’s a digital echo of tabletop role-playing.
I’ve always been conflicted about real-time-with-pause combat, ever since Baldur’s Gate. Easy encounters resolve quickly, which is a blessing. Harder ones, however, devolve into chaotic clutter, with enemies and spell effects filling the screen. Pathfinder: Kingmaker handles this no better — and no worse — than its predecessors.
Technically, the game is uneven. The character portraits are excellent, capturing each companion’s personality, and the voice acting is strong throughout. Amelia Tyler, voicing the Guardian of the Bloom, deserves special praise for her remarkable range. The music emphasizes the fairytale tone but lacks the unforgettable melodies of Baldur’s Gate or Icewind Dale. Most disappointing are the environments: though prettier than those in Neverwinter Nights, they feel similarly prefab, assembled from repeating assets. Few locations linger in memory.
ONE GAME SPLIT IN HALF
Pathfinder: Kingmaker suffers from the curse of quantity. The larger the game, the more cracks begin to show. Developed by first-time studio Owlcat Games and published by Deep Silver in 2018, it launched in a deeply broken state. Bugged side quests might have seemed minor — until players reached the final chapter, where the consequences of unfinished content rendered the game nearly unbeatable after hundreds of hours. I started calling it Patchfinder: Kingbreaker.
Owlcat deserves credit for their response. They patched relentlessly, stabilizing the game. Unfortunately, once it functioned as intended, deeper design flaws became more apparent — especially in kingdom management and encounter balance. These issues intensify toward the end and can still doom an inexperienced player’s campaign.
The game communicates its systems poorly. Time, for instance, is a critical resource. Rest too often and you won’t have time to train advisors or prepare for crises. Fail too many events and unrest grows. If unrest spirals out of control, your kingdom collapses and the game ends.
To maintain order, you must spend build points — slowly generated each week or purchased at great expense using quest gold. Since gold has few other meaningful uses, you’re effectively encouraged to convert it into build points. None of this is adequately explained in-game.
There are many difficulty options, including automating kingdom management entirely. If you’re here purely for the CRPG elements, that’s worth considering. You’ll lose the sensation of being crushed by responsibility — and not much else.
A HEART OF TRADITIONAL QUESTING
These issues bleed into the questing itself. Difficulty spikes are frequent and often absurd, particularly early and late in the campaign. Encounters arrive without warning, and only foreknowledge can prepare you. While the Pathfinder ruleset technically allows you to win almost any fight with good dice rolls, this encourages rampant save-scumming.
I’ve grown increasingly opposed to that practice. Dice rolls lose meaning if failure can always be erased. Tabletop RPGs don’t work that way. I prefer living with consequences, as in Pillars of Eternity. Pathfinder: Kingmaker actively discourages this philosophy. Random skill checks can permanently affect future boss fights, making failure not dramatic but simply punishing. Choosing not to reload is often just bad strategy.
Despite all this, I genuinely like Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Its saving grace is its writing.
WRITING TO DIE FOR
With the involvement of veteran CRPG writer Chris Avellone, the story acts as the glue holding this sprawling experience together. Framed as a fairytale narrated by Linzi the halfling bard, it’s lighthearted, engaging, and full of meaningful moral choices that shape both your character and your kingdom.
The companions are richly written and deeply integrated into the main story, each serving a vital role in governance. Their counsel frequently made me reconsider moral decisions. I even found myself invested in a genuinely compelling romance.
Unfortunately, the game’s opacity struck again when I unknowingly missed one companion entirely — Jubilost Narthropple, a gnome alchemist. I only realized this during a bugged throne room scene where an NPC addressed an advisor who didn’t exist. By then, it was too late. He was gone forever.
This kind of oversight highlights the immense challenge of designing a reactive RPG of this scale. Owlcat’s passion is evident in the writing, but they still have much to learn about encounter design, tutorials, environments, and quality assurance.
Still, I’ll remember Pathfinder: Kingmaker fondly. It’s an ambitious debut, flawed but sincere. Owlcat owned their mistakes, listened to players, and improved the game significantly. What problems remain are survivable — if sometimes begrudgingly so.
With that attitude, Owlcat is bound to grow quickly. The future looks bright for the studio, and their progress is well worth following.
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