WotR vs Kingmaker: What was improved?

[76561199551097891]

I read some unexpected comments that wotr is much better than kingmaker.

Better for what?

[Warbird]

A lot of cool new things to try:

More classes and subclasses

Mounted Combat with lot of mount choices

Mythic Paths that totally transform what your characters can do

Potion Crafting / Scroll Scribing

Even more magical items with some that have real crazy effects

[Drake]

Yeah overall every aspect of the gameplay is pretty much better.

[Cursed Life]

Also the kingdom management part is better.

[pete3great]

The addition of mounted combat (and classes for animal companions) alone is a huge improvement, and a lot of fun. I think there are story elements that are better too, like the pacing. I like the companions a lot better too, though the ones you get later are less flexible, you're not going to hate having them around. I think playing a spellcaster is better than in Kingmaker too, mostly because of the time constraints in Kingmaker that made it hard to rest to regain spells. Sure, you're dealing with higher saves, resistances and what have you, but I still like it better.

[Moist Butt]

pretty much everything like others have said. However the story and army management trade off for kingdom management is debatable. i actually liked kingdom management more.

[Vertigo]

I will give a brief list:
1) The UI does a much better job explaining what buffs stack and do not
2) The kingdom management aspects of crusade mode actually matter aside from teleportation circles.
3) A much smaller emphasis on game timers
4) Performing tasks in Crusade mode feels much more reasonable and does not lock you down like in KM.
5) Map travel is less painful, and you can use armies to explore some areas for you.
6) Companions have more depth to them.
7) You no longer need camping supplies to rest.
8) Crowdfunded quests are actually tolerable.
9) Less bugs
10) No Darven in this game (yes, I dislike that quest so much it gets listed twice).

I would rate Kingmaker a 5 and WotR a solid 7.5.

[Schlumpsha]

Mechanics and graphics are objectively better. Story telling... not so much. That's a point which still goes to Kingmaker, I feel. The mythic path are nice and all, but their plots aren't exactly fleshed out. Double so for the late ones.

Crusade mode is in my eyes worse than Kingdom management. Mainly because of its cumbersomely shoehorning of TB army battles. Kingmaker was more straight forward and ironically enough less of a time sink.

[reidj062]

Mechanics are still crap in my opinion. I shouldn't have to constantly adjust the difficulty level and accept that 50% of my spells and attacks are going to do half damage or miss. The developers just throw numbers around at random. And no, "there's mythic levels" is not an excuse. There was the same problem with Kingmaker, and you start getting hit with creatures with insane CRs before you even get six full party members or your first mythic level. There's a 16 level wizard or some crap in the Gray Garrison- I figured it out when someone started casting finger of death. There's also still enough bugs to give Bethesda a run for their money.

Yes, I know I've logged hundreds of hours on a game I am complaining about. This game is like that girl that is absolutely crazy but is really good in bed.

[Alpha]

Playing a campaign of KM after WotR always feels weird. These things stick out the most to me:
In KM, you cant turn the map, in WotR, you can turn the map
You can name and equip your pets and they show up in the bottom bar with the companion portraits.
Mounted combat
Search option for the inventory
Teamwork feats show which of your companions already has them

I also like the Photomode they patched into WotR with some of the later patches.

[Chan]

Originally posted by reidj062:

Mechanics are still crap in my opinion. I shouldn't have to constantly adjust the difficulty level and accept that 50% of my spells and attacks are going to do half damage or miss. The developers just throw numbers around at random. And no, "there's mythic levels" is not an excuse. There was the same problem with Kingmaker, and you start getting hit with creatures with insane CRs before you even get six full party members or your first mythic level. There's a 16 level wizard or some crap in the Gray Garrison- I figured it out when someone started casting finger of death. There's also still enough bugs to give Bethesda a run for their money.

Yes, I know I've logged hundreds of hours on a game I am complaining about. This game is like that girl that is absolutely crazy but is really good in bed.

You could always spend some of those hundred hours learning how things work instead of complaining. Also I've never seen a wizard in Grey Garrison casting finger of death even on unfair I've never encountered anyone using finger of death in Grey Garrison.

[fastforward]

except that kingmaker story actually is good.
kingmaker also makes sense from the rp perspective of character building, the character starts out as a nobody lvl 1, sees an ad in the paper, that the person who rids the land of the staglord gets a job governing a particular region.
he does the deed, and becomes lord, is now level 4-6, and now has to govern. and the story unfolds into an epic adventure with non cliche antagonists. antagonists who over the course of the epic adventure become relatable, they arent just born evil and do evil because they are evil, they have backgrounds and reasoning behind it.
when trying the foil the antagonists plans its not just about the main character trying to defeat evil, no its also about defending the people who entrusted their safety in his hands.
when playing it i felt immersed in the great story.

wotr is completely opposite: you wake up in the middle of Kenabres market square (could be a beach) being treated by the highest ranking defender of the city, some trablalala.
the character is level 1 but he is in the middle of some demon infested land, nobody in this city can be level 1, no inexperienced character could have made it there.
Lets say i am being too picky about this but lets say the character has made it to the city and got injured right in front, why is he not brought to a hospital, or being treated at the gates directly, no they bring him to the middle of the market square where festivities are supposed to happen. Makes sense.
Also his wound is not treated by some random low ranking cleric nobody, no this great dragon, who is the biggest defender of the city treats the wound.
A dragon who has never seen our character before. It feels like this has been put in the game so that the player forges a bond with this character and feels sad when he gets one-shot in the cut-scene shorty after (the cut scene is the best thing about wotr).
I felt surprised but not sad or anything because, I didn't get to experience any great deeds done by this "high ranked" dragon commander hero trablalala. That death meant nothing to me.
Same goes for the city itself
I didn't get to experience the city it its non destroyed state, so when moving trough the ravaged streets of it i didn't feel sad or anything. For me it was how Kenabres always was.
The game-play in there: move trough the area to find all the loot and get all the xp from enemies to become strong enough to face the next enemies.
the kingdom mechanic in kingmaker sometimes felt like a chore, but it felt immersive, it felt like this is what a governor of the stolen lands has to do, no way around it, with cool choices and an additional challenge with rewards.
The crusade mechanic doesn't add anything to the game, its a way worse version of HoM&M, worse in every way.
The mythic paths with their alignment restrictions font make any sense, why cant I be a chaotic evil dragon? Arushalae gets to be a good succubus, but the main character cant be a good demon? Why?
I had to restart my game because apparently being an Inquisitor and Trickster at the same time doesn't work. I didn't know about the alignment restrictions of the mythic paths at character creation and even when selecting the trickster path it wasn't shown, I literally had to restart my game after playing for over 20 hours because of poor design choices.
I could have played my inquisitor trickster, but to do it i would have had to pick the dialogue options not because those were what i would want to choose, but because of the alignment shifts they would give me. Not immersive and not very RP. Not very RP at all.
So i started a new game, and suffered through the whole first acts again, liberated Drezen AGAIN. Crushed the Demons everywhere on the map in a few weeks. (it was a few weeks, still have the save), a deed that could have not been achieved by anyone before, because apparently they all didnt put enough points into int or something, maybe they all died before getting access to the haste spell. 3 or was it 4 crusades? What were they doing the whole time.
I could have marched on and defeat the enemies anywhere but instead I got sent into some devil city, with this mechanic where buildings and terrain change depending on the direction the camera is turned. Great Idea, if it would have been actually properly implemented, but it wasnt.
I havent seen much of the city because I had to use the map to move trough it. I would turn the camera the proper way and click on the map, because else the points where I would actualy want to move were obstructed, The view was obstructed all the time, it was simply annoying.
Seeing the city emerge from the depths for the first time felt cool, the moving buildings as well, but having to keep the camera in a particular angle all the time was simply terrible.
It was not a puzzle it was a chore.
And then there is the companions in WotR, the only bearable companion I have met was Nenio, and maybe Ember, all the others were terrible. The drunkard Paladin. The Gnome Hellknight commander. The master tracker assassin who is tracking a dragon that will eat him alive if it werent for the player. The Thiefling Tiefling, this pun itself is a crime worth a -10 rating deduction. Daeran and Camelia, i kicked those two out of my group after having the second convo with them. Unbearable.
Kingmaker had Harrim the depressed cleric, his personality alone was good enough to carry him trough the whole game despite his terrible attribute point distribution. Valerie, Linzi, Amiri, even Ekundayo, so much more personality than anything WotR has to offer.
And the Ui is still bad, if I close my inventory having selected the option sort by weight, when I open it i still want it to be sorted by weight, i don't need the unsorted option at all.
Why does my animal companions picture gets hidden every freaking time. Why does the game put any new joining partymember in the front line in the formation screen?

Kingmaker is a RPG in baldurs gate 2 style, WotR is sort of a hack and slash powerful charactergod building simulator.
It doesnt feel like both games had the same people responsible for the story.

[Cursed Life]

Originally posted by reidj062:

Mechanics are still crap in my opinion. I shouldn't have to constantly adjust the difficulty level and accept that 50% of my spells and attacks are going to do half damage or miss. The developers just throw numbers around at random. And no, "there's mythic levels" is not an excuse. There was the same problem with Kingmaker, and you start getting hit with creatures with insane CRs before you even get six full party members or your first mythic level. There's a 16 level wizard or some crap in the Gray Garrison- I figured it out when someone started casting finger of death. There's also still enough bugs to give Bethesda a run for their money.

Yes, I know I've logged hundreds of hours on a game I am complaining about. This game is like that girl that is absolutely crazy but is really good in bed.

Git gud

[76561199551097891]

Originally posted by fastforward:

Kingmaker is a RPG in baldurs gate 2 style, WotR is sort of a hack and slash powerful charactergod building simulator.
It doesnt feel like both games had the same people responsible for the story.

Seems you wasn't aware that:
{LINK REMOVED}https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Kingmaker_(adventure_path)

Modules from 2010, the video game is from 2018 and mostly fully based on those modules. In fact each time it's stuff out of the modules the writing quality drops down somehow.

Seems that wotr didn't benefit of such modules writing, but I would not have except the writing would end weak. And I won't comment it as I didn't played wotr but start parts that didn't look bad for the writing (but was for the combats).