The Gaming Den

D3 is pretty easy for the most part.

Grim Dawn is fairly complex. Especially with the devotion constellation system. Theres a lot of spending and unspending with that if you're looking to max out a build.

You can get through normal at least with any build as my early access gunslinger sorcerer made it through with a build that was outdated by over a year. And a friend of mine roflstomped his way through by picking up a rifle and grabbing Cadance (every 3rd hit hits stupid hard)

On the subject of Diablo style ARPG's, I really like Path of Exile. It's got some great ideas (skills based on FF7 materia style gems instead of class, every single "currency" item is usable for crafting), but it feels obtuse and bogged down in subsystems and is thus brutal to learn . That being said, I like obtuse and obscure, so...yeah.

Path of exile was interesting, but I dislike the cobbled-together aesthetic it has. That's not meant as a slam against the design as it does look good, I'm just not down with it.

My big issue with Path of Exile is that the entire enterprise seems excessively tailored to the sort of obsessive who doesn't think the game starts until you're level 55+ and waist deep in what normal reviewers used to call post-game content. The passive skills are fairly specific and so stupidly powerful that best practices involves locking yourself into a build or even a single specific attack virtually from the outset even as an untwinked newbie. There's just not much incentive to experiment within the confines of a single character when you can plausibly have passive double Chaos damage or whatever before you've even finished Act 1.

So who is playing Pathfinder : Kingmaker?

It is good game mostly (never got past Act 2 yet though), there are phrethla of bugs in acts 3+ I've heard.
They also treat normal a Hard, Easy is actually normal compared to the PnP version (seriously, you can compare a Troll on Normal and vs Easy and it is +4 in every statistic [+2 Str bonus, and +2 dam for example even if using ranged). This is each mode above easy (so a Troll in Insanity is +6 stat, +6 derived stat, thus more than+12 bonus effective, so AC goes from 16 in Easy to AC 25 in Insanity; while Bite would increase from 8 hit to 17 hit).

Just weird that Normal isn't the PnP version, but their game so it is fine. I mean, you do get 20 point buy so that could be why.

So to actually play the PnP you'd have to play easy for a regular game, Normal for a challenge (which confused the fans on Steam), Hard mod is Insanity, and Insanity is basically hell on earth.

They regularly try to put out hotfixes/patches so they seem to actually care which is good.

Some things aren't explained well like how to see pet stats (push C after selecting it). Also Ranged Sneak attacks work if target Flanked in melee (only requires 2 foes, even if adjacent, surrounding target)

So sneak attack is better than regular PnP.

Arcane mark isn't a spell so Magusi must use Touch of Fatigue for their at will, but Shocking gasp still works beautifully.

Pets are pretty amazing because they expand your encumbrance. Gathering everything you find and selling it is pretty needed for money at times.

Most useful skills are Perception, Thievery (open locks/traps also stealing events but mostly traps), Persuasion, Know Nature (cooking/Hunting/Nature knowledge), Athletics (combines Climb/Swim) for certain events, Mobility for fighting defensively bonuses, Stealth for sneaking,

Occasionally, UMD if there is something you can't cast. Here and there need Know Arcane or religion. Also world for local/Nobles

You usually don't personally need good Persuasion as the one with highest in party rolls theres, but there are a few moments when main characters persuasion matters.
Everyone's Perception is rolled so try to have everyone have an okay one. Some places are only found if roll good.
There is one chest in Olegs that you need 1 rank Trickery in main character to open, but nothing major just a little money/gear.

But yeah, fun Exp making character and playing for me.

How much is it based on Pathfinder rules? For that matter how many of the options (and assorted dumpster diving clutter) are there?

How much is it "the Infinity Engine" for people used to that? If someone has played BG2 will they basically know everything they need to know about the controls and peculiarities of the engine?

How visible are things? This is a problem with my vision, but there are places in BG2 where, largely because of the drawn backgrounds, I had no fucking clue where I was supposed to go and what was a surface to walk on. And the Underdark had a lot of encounters where there were 5-10 drow, 1-2 of which were casters (important enemies) and the rest were warriors (effectively a Mirror Image spell for the casters) and I had trouble picking out foes and seeing what was going on.

It's pretty Close on the Pathfinder rules.
Dumpster diving is there but limited, every Class has 3 subclasses.

As someone who is not really familiar with Pathfinder, I find it very difficult to get what every subclass does.
Edit: Meaning what does this subclass do differently than the others.

Visibility is pretty bad, the tabulator key is your friend to see where something is.

From what I've read about Kingmaker, you have a somewhat limited number of classes (8 or 9 plus prestige?), they couldn't manage the NPC AI from the 90's (cast these types of spells/be offensive or defensive/etc.), it's still full of bugs from the beta, and the designers probably couldn't spell CR, let alone use it properly. Also, the companion NPCs are garbage, but that's so your PC is even more impressive in comparison.

That information came from the internet, so there are probably exaggerations there. I'd still suggest the cautious "wait until it goes on sale in a few months/a year so they have time to get their shit together, then read reviews."

Kingmaker has the core classes from Pathfinder, and then every class has three subclasses that basically share half the features of the base class, so really like 30+ classes. Sorcerer bloodlines are each basically a different class, so add like 10 more.

The difficulty spikes are pretty bad though, and anything not optimized is going to have a lot of trouble. I restarted after hitting Act 2 because I realized that just letting my NPCs take more levels of the class they start with was a terrible idea. I changed the Bard to an Alchemist, the Barbarian to a Two-handed Fighter (subclass), and the Inquisitor into a Rage Barbarian (subclass) and things seem fine now.

The bugs are getting addressed at a fair clip, but certainly there are still some big ones hanging around. Yesterday's patch, for example, cleared a bug where increased difficulty was adding to monster attribute stats AND monster saves separately, so monsters were always making saves because they'd been boosted twice.

Iduno wrote:From what I've read about Kingmaker, you have a somewhat limited number of classes (8 or 9 plus prestige?), they couldn't manage the NPC AI from the 90's (cast these types of spells/be offensive or defensive/etc.), it's still full of bugs from the beta, and the designers probably couldn't spell CR, let alone use it properly. Also, the companion NPCs are garbage, but that's so your PC is even more impressive in comparison.

That information came from the internet, so there are probably exaggerations there. I'd still suggest the cautious "wait until it goes on sale in a few months/a year so they have time to get their shit together, then read reviews."

It has all core classes, plus Alchemist, Inquisitor, and Magus, and each class has 3 archetype options.

NPC AI is limited, you're best off manually controlling them but you can tell them to spam an ability or auto attack nearby targets if you like.

Bugs are being addressed. There have been some serious ones, but the progression blockers seem to be gone now (I'm almost at the end of the game, and I've seen one serious problem that was patched the next day).

Difficulty is weird. Different people report on it differently, and many reviewers refuse to include the settings they were using. The game gives a lot of options for tweaking difficulty if you want to change anything, but I haven't had any problems on challenging using each character's default class (except for Prestiging Octavia into Arcane Trickster). The game's been pretty straightforward, with a few tactical challenges that required me to step back and prepare different spells to counter threats.

The companions are fine. The only one I'd say that's off is Valerie, who is a tower shield fighter (Ex-paladin in her backstory) with high Charisma. You can multiclass her into something more useful, but building someone to focus heavily on defense is reasonable in a video game where you actually can manage enemy attention.

It's kinda hilarious how easily you can find guides that enthusiastically endorse Valerie as Best Tank even as the people I know personally gnash their teeth and demand she receive a balance pass. Her attributes are distributed pretty badly but clearly the DM took pity on the newbie that pitched the character concept and slapped on extra Con until they had more point buy than everyone else in the party. I do figure a class change could make her work, although personally I rolled a wizard because obviously and decided that the lag she'd get on acquiring new spells would be intensely annoying if I made her a sorceress, so I skipped her in favor of other people. At gunpoint I'd make her into another Eldritch Scion beatstick despite Regongar being better.

BTW, Flask Avengers are back:
Sneak attack works with alchemist flasks like acid or alchemist's fire.

Haven't tried Bombs yet, but will test soon.
When fighting Viscount who has 35 AC (27 touch AC) I found this out.

Slade wrote:BTW, Flask Avengers are back:
Sneak attack works with alchemist flasks like acid or alchemist's fire.

Haven't tried Bombs yet, but will test soon.
When fighting Viscount who has 35 AC (27 touch AC) I found this out.

Sneak Attacks works with anything that requires an attack roll, which includes all spells that require touch attacks. Octavia is really freaking good.

Pretty much. My pure wizard and Octavia have been carrying the party. My DCs are set to "Eat shit" and then she sets all the nice people on fire.

How the fuck does any kind of tactical combat game leave out basic crowd control spells like grease and black tentacles? There is literally almost zero for AE crowd control options (there's sleep but obviously that falls off quick, and spontaneous casters can't swap out spells known so it's a dead spell for them) and you're always outnumbered and unable to get good positions beyond "pull them to the party out of line of sight/line of effect" which I had to do for the Stag Lord because that fight is just full of bullshit.

I haven't touched the game, but with a glance at the wiki I see glitterdust, web, stinking cloud, deep slumber, and rainbow pattern. I have no idea how effective those are in the game. When it comes to CRPG's based on tabletop games, the act of implementation tends to radically alter balance. They're all at least worth investigating, I'm sure - and probably some more I missed.

Due to lack of grids, setting up web and stinking cloud is almost impossible without accidentally having your companions slam into it too. Pathfinder's Glitterdust has a new save every round to remove the blindness.

You can retarget spells any time before casting is completed, which makes it a lot easier to land crowd control. Web in particular is extremely effective, and remains a strong crowd control option for most of the game.

What would be great is if misclicking slightly didnt turn your spellcast you were trying to redirect into a canceled spellcast crossbow attack.

The "new save every round" is not an apocalyptic nerf to the spells that received it. It's obviously not ideal, and you should choose action denial which is as action/time-consuming to shrug off as possible, but if you blind 2-3 enemies for 1-2 rounds each, you are almost certainly coming out ahead. Unless blind sucks, as it sometimes does in videogame adaptations, because reasons.

But anyway, yeah, aiming AoE's in real-time is stupid and I hate it. It's how pretty much all of these games work, though - all the way back to Baldur's Gate - so you just have to learn to do it. I really wish we could have another ToEE. Divinity Original Sin proved the turn-based format was commercially viable, but no, we've got to make every single fucking one of these things exactly like it was Baldur's Gate because reasons. Divinity Original Sin probably sold ten times as many copies at 50 bucks as Pathfinder Kingmaker will at 40, but no, we've got to do what Baldur's Gate did for the remainder of eternity.

I'm with dsm, I would murder peope for turn based.

Or at least have it be a fucking option <.<

Yep. I'd kill for a Divinity game written by pretty much anyone else.