Before reading this rant, please pay attention to the title, I want to know what I'm missing. Why do people like this game? What are your favorite parts of it? Was it your first crpg? Do you play IRL tabletop rpgs? Is Wrath of the Righteous better than kingmaker? Maybe I should just skip kingmaker and try that instead.
I don't normally hate video games, I play League of Legends and it pisses me off but I accept it for what it is. I play the new cod slop every year which I'm ashamed to admit but I don't hate activision for milking my consoomer brain.
Anyways I recently had my first taste of CRPGs with Divinity Original Sin 2 because even though I pay $70 for cod I'm too cheap to buy baldurs gate 3. My lord though am I in love. As soon as a finished my playthrough I immediately started a second which is something I haven't done in a game since I was a 10 year old with only a handful of games.
Anyways I need MORE of this kind of game so I started playing pillars of eternity which I just got free on epic, absolutely love it, not as good as divinity but still good. I saw pathfinder kingmaker and wrath of the righteous went on sale on a bundle so I picked it up and I really can't stand it. I'm especially annoyed because I constantly see these games getting shaft stroked everywhere I look online and I seriously think this is one of the worst games I've ever played in any genre, man where do I start.
I just hate it. You basically cannot play this game without quicksaving every 2 seconds. I'm level 3 and everywhere I turn I'm just running into enemies that instantly kill me and it's not even close. It pisses me off because I don't feel like I'm learning anything, the fights are so unwinnable that the only conclusion I can come to is "i guess I can't go here right now", so I try to go somewhere else and then I find a piss easy fight, then I walk 5 steps over and I run into 7 frogs that are all level 2 but do 31 damage on their first attack. So I go a different way and get ambushed by some slavers and they take my dwarf. I figure they just kicked my ass so I probably need to get strong to get him back so I go back to tartuccios sh*tty cave with the frogs and run into a bunch of level 3 skeletons that take -5 too all damage but bludgeoning... but i don't have bludgeon weapons because the slaver just stole my dwarf. On the overworld you have instant death areas right next to baby starting areas and you don't know which one is which until you've been murdered. Isn't this a table top game? I don't think this is how an actual DM would run his campaign and real players can't quicksave.
And it took me hours and hours to even get to this point because my character was walking at half speed and I had to bumble around running into level 9 areas across a river until I ran into the correct area because some ghost was haunting me. Why was he haunting me? BECAUSE HE WANTED TO TELL ME I SHOULD KILL THE STAG LORD LIKE EVERY SINGLE OTHER DAMN NPC HAS ALREADY TOLD ME I SHOULD DO SINCE I STARTED THE GAME. And they decided hey stop what you're doing RIGHT NOW you are CRIPPLED until you talk to this sh*tty ghost in case you forgot you need to kill the STAG LORD. Also why is the main quest timed? I'm already having a hard time and I'll probably have to restart my entire playthrough because I only have 50 days left and I'm still level 3. Where have 30 days gone? Well you see every time I try to go down tartuccios cave I get poisoned after every single fight and have to rest 30 years even with restoration scrolls to get my stats back. Also my characters need to sleep after casting 3 spells a piece which brings me to my last point....
I think kingmaker as a game on it's own merit is just bad. It feels very lifeless and underdeveloped compared to every other crpg I've tried and especially divinity, like man... it's not even close... But then you have the pathfinder tabletop ruleset. My pathfinder is fun to sit down and play with some friends at a table, but as the core system for a video game I think it's horrible. The fact that enemies can just roll a 20 and one shot you at any time even in the tutorial section might be part of the table top game, but it's just dumb in a video game. Having to rest after every single fight is dumb. Character building is unnecessary complicated, once you pick a class there's very few actual choices you're making just a lot of illusion of choice. So many of the feats exist SOLELY TO RESTRICT YOU AND MAKE THE GAME LESS FUN.
The weapons and armor feats exist just to severely limit what your character can use and turn most of your loot into garbage you can't use. When my inquisitor turned level 3 I was only able to choose from teamwork feats, so now to get anything out of it, I HAVE TO put a teamwork feet on another character and make them hold hands all the time.
The spells are so lame. At least what I have right now, all my magic boils down to: single target melee attack, single target ranged attack, cone attack that will probably hurt your teammates, CC that will probably fail, and party buffs and debuffs. What lamer than that my inquisitor has a spell that gives minor stat buffs to her next attack LMAO, insanely boring stuff. What's worse are the martial spells, or lack thereof... any fighter or barb character is basically just auto attack bot. Again, compare the spells and fighter abilities in this game to the magic and warfare abilities in Divinity Original Sin 2, and it's like WHY, who would want to restrict themselves to a tabletop system in a video game? It doesn't deepen the experience it SHACKLES it.
