Holy cow. Im just at a start of the game and it's really bad.

[Mythless]

The story is dumb.
So they won't make a bandit a lord because of "moral" reasons but making a totally random person, a lord who kill the bandit for a reward is totally fine? Also I'm sure that a cheap mercenary will totally fit in the role of manager of an castle and a large estates.

Companions and other npc's are caricatures. Caricatures can be good in specific way if you are a good writer but in here it's just uncompetency. It's like a highschool student wrote a script during lessons.

Linzi is like from a highschool movie univesum. "Oh hey!!!!! Im writng a boook!!!!! blah blah".
She's liking a main character for no reason,
she's writing a book about main character because "s/he LOOKS like a hero"
She using a word "hero" is very cringy. Anyway whole character is cringy.

Amiri is strong WOMAN! Men are WEAK, WOMEN are WEAK. EVERYBODY IS WEAK and I can kill anybody blah blah. That's whole character at the beggining. As someone who is considered to be strong and independent she is using mouth too much. It looks like she is trying to hide her insecurity about herself so she has to reapet "I AM STRONG WOMAN". Very boring and blant.

An idea of Valerie is so dumb I can't even... gosh....
She thinks being preatty is stupid and she is mad about anyone who say that she is preatty. Who wrote that character... somekind of ugly sjw? That's the idiotic thing I have ever heard. I wish there would be an option to tell "than spill a bottle of acid on your face you stupid b*ch". At least I would be satisfied.
And her disliking an art in general because it's useless. Holy cow, thats preatty dumb idea.

Tartuccio is the most cliche villain Ive ever seen. Just bad and boring.

During a night somekind of dryad has haunted main character about stag lord or something. I dont even remember exacly why but because of that I notice that journal is so bad it doesn't even mention this. Journal is useless in this game when it misses a lot of info.
Anyway very conveniant that she just chooses the main character for a help. There is literally no explanation why, how etc. Just totally random encounter but it happens that you want to kill a bandit lord and she ask you do to it.

Fighting is bad.
Ive just met 2 annoying encounters. First one was in a cave with spiders. For some reason super large spiders are super easy to kill but a one swarm of little spiders is immortal. So for years in isometric rpgs there was no problem to kill that type of enemy but now without any freaking tutorial to even hint it, you can't. As far as I know you must go back to shop and buy tons of alchemist fire and use them or use fire spells(too bad if you can't) to kill this "boss" which is insane when you have no problem with spiders/bandits. Great design.

Manticore encounter also is stupid. A map was filled with bodies so I tried to scout as a rogue. After spider swarm Ive already knew to be very carefull because you never know if you meet some stupid sh*it. But ofc... the encounter is scripted. So it doesnt freaking matter if you are sneaking or not, you have to fight without any warning... again great design.

If the rest of the game is like that, that you have to save scumming each fight because some stupid shi*t than I think about trying only random genereted dungeon mode.

And I don't even get to time limited quests and estate managing what I heard is very annoying.

The worse thing about a story is that it could be fixed with some good dialogues and smart story narration making it more interesting and believable even for that dumb idea but I guess it's too much for someone who is paid for doing it.

[Kurosu]

Damn you really have a reason to complain about everything/anything .

If it upsets you so much unistall and move on ( also refund if you can) . Problem solved

[NamelessOne]

The Aldori are sponsoring the founding of a new realm, they don't want a bandit lord as their neighbor, they want a puppet or ally.

And history has a kingdom founded by a mercenary. Have you heard of Robert Guiscard? He was a Norman adventurer who fought in Southern Italy and laid the foundation for the Kingdom of Sicily. At the time the area was being captured by Muslim pirates and small time warlords. Similar things were occuring in the areas that make up modern Ukraine after the collapse of the Golden Horde. For that matter the conquest of Siberia was pretty much a handful of merchants with a dubious "royal" Charter telling some Cossacks to secure a trade route for furs.

As for the spiders, that's ALL on you for being illiterate.

Sneaking without invisibility is useless if you know the rules. The game is pretty generous to even allow it to be used without concealment. A flying creature isn't going to miss a moron half assed hiding in tall grass.

[Kurosu]

=Mit

Fighting is bad.
Ive just met 2 annoying encounters. First one was in a cave with spiders. For some reason super large spiders are super easy to kill but a one swarm of little spiders is immortal. So for years in isometric rpgs there was no problem to kill that type of enemy but now without any freaking tutorial to even hint it, you can't.

Sure if you exlude the quest description LITERALLY telling you to bring the bombs or torches and the quest giver even giving you some of those bombs. Lol

[Dyzio]

I like it.

[Jaggid Edje]

My first reaction to the game after playing it for a few hours was that the writing was pretty much the weakest aspect of it.
I'm now near the end of the game (probably will finish today) and nothing has changed my mind in that regard.

I've really enjoyed playing it and think the OP is being incredibly over-dramatic here, but the core of his premise I can agree with.

[jonnin]

You are not wrong, and yet, you have not gotten very far.
Ill give you one tiny spoiler, for example. Val used to be a paladin for an order that was obsessed with physical beauty and she came to find it shallow and very limiting as she was valued too much for her beauty above her skill or mind etc. You learn a lot about this along the way and help her get back to a good place as time goes on.

Amiri is exactly as you said. Insecurity makes her behave poorly for a while. Here again you will learn her story and help her with the self image problems. Its tired, but every game like this the companions are neurotic and emotionally scarred and its your job to babysit them back to normal. There should be a freaking shrink class, like cthulu game, given how often we have to do this crap in every game. But the depth is there, eventually (its very slow going, and I agree with you on the introductions it feel lame).

The chimera is level 6 and a noobtrap. You can kill it early if you get lucky with grease or have a highly optimal setup, but its a fight you should avoid at first.

The spiders are ... self inflicted. You are given bombs to kill them, basically tells you "fire good". Take a caster with you and they are trivial. They are your introduction to enemy that are immune to normal damage, and there will be more of that. They are also entirely optional as the berries come before the swarms, so you can grab and run.

My take on it... this is a hack and slash game with a heavy side of 'run a kingdom'. The roleplay /story is weak. Its not quite as bad as you think because it does go a bit deeper than you have seen yet, but the main focus of this game is excessive, difficult fights that test your ability to exploit the builds to make maxed out parties, wrapped up with a simple story and the kingdom thing. The game shines a bit more in the depths mode, where the pretense of RPG and all are dropped for pure combat.

[Second Batch]

Nah

[Mythless]

Originally posted by NamelessOne:

The Aldori are sponsoring the founding of a new realm, they don't want a bandit lord as their neighbor, they want a puppet or ally.

Yes, and it still doesn't explain why they want it to be a totally random "hero". Why don't use someone trusted from their ppl as a leader and in a final to be a lord of estates. They could use voluntary mercenaries only as a meat fight to get their goals instead risking having someone worse than Stag lord. Makes no sense until you think that it's just a lazy writing to make oportunity for a player to be a lord.

And I don't think that it can't be a super bad idea of making a player deserved for this title in a story. But it would be required for a writer to think a way how to get there. How a main character starting from zero can became an important lord. This what we have got i just pure lazyness. Your character is picked for some reason for expedition and get a quest "you kill someone and you will get a castle...".

Originally posted by NamelessOne:

And history has a kingdom founded by a mercenary. Have you heard of Robert Guiscard? He was a Norman adventurer who fought in Southern Italy and laid the foundation for the Kingdom of Sicily. At the time the area was being captured by Muslim pirates and small time warlords. Similar things were occuring in the areas that make up modern Ukraine after the collapse of the Golden Horde. For that matter the conquest of Siberia was pretty much a handful of merchants with a dubious "royal" Charter telling some Cossacks to secure a trade route for furs.

Still make no sense for bunch of random ppl. The story you quoted is for sure more deep than "go kill and get a castle". It could be done better.

Originally posted by NamelessOne:

Sneaking without invisibility is useless if you know the rules. The game is pretty generous to even allow it to be used without concealment. A flying creature isn't going to miss a moron half assed hiding in tall grass.

It's a game. If you want to be literal here and go outside of a box which is computer game than look and all perspectives.
A human being would be able to see much more further than 10meters like in game.
I think a human would spot a big flying creature from much much far away (like even few kms) much easier than the creature spotting him hiding using terrain. My argument is still valid. The encounter is just stupid because devs just throw a hard enemy in your face at the start of adventure. It's just bad design.

Originally posted by Kurosu:

Sure if you exlude the quest description LITERALLY telling you to bring the bombs or torches and the quest giver even giving you some of those bombs. Lol

I did. Do you know that 7 bombs is not enouh? And imagine that I was thinking about using torches but I sold them or threw them away somewhere and the inn owner doesnt sell them. And even if I bring with me much more bombs for hundreds of gold I would never assume to use it one a little swam of spiders. Like I said from a gaming industry perpective, we were taught that big ass spiders are bigger danger and little swams can be easly beaten. But in this case you are totally suprised that a typical generic mob is behaving like a first boss of the game.

Originally posted by jonnin:

You are not wrong, and yet, you have not gotten very far.
Ill give you one tiny spoiler, for example. Val used to be a paladin for an order that was obsessed with physical beauty and she came to find it shallow and very limiting as she was valued too much for her beauty above her skill or mind etc. You learn a lot about this along the way and help her get back to a good place as time goes on.

The way you descriped her is totally fine. Without playing a game I would assume that the character is cool. But her dialogue shows her much more extreme side where she weirdly became offended like a 9 years old kid for being complemented. And bizzare hate for art is also cringly childish intolerating. Seems like "i dont like it, i dont understand it so it must be useless and stupid for sure".

Oh and i forgot one little detail. She is an atheist but I don't understand how this word can even work at dnd world. Atheist is someone who doesn't believe in existance of gods but in here gods are much more real with all those cleric's super powers. I understand an idea of character abbadonning gods because she doesn't believe in what they are representing but i think it's a bad choice to use "atheist" for describing her persona. Makes me feel that it's just poor writing skills and writer couldn't find better word like "antitheist".

Originally posted by jonnin:

You are not wrong, and yet, you have not gotten very far.
Amiri is exactly as you said. Insecurity makes her behave poorly for a while. Here again you will learn her story and help her with the self image problems. Its tired, but every game like this the companions are neurotic and emotionally scarred and its your job to babysit them back to normal. There should be a freaking shrink class, like cthulu game, given how often we have to do this crap in every game. But the depth is there, eventually (its very slow going, and I agree with you on the introductions it feel lame).

That's what i'm saying. I am at the begginning. I assume that characters will develop but the start of it, is bad imo. Meybe i am more complaing about the execution rather than general ideas for characters. I would like to get good execution of simply ideas, than the other way around.

Originally posted by jonnin:

The chimera is level 6 and a noobtrap. You can kill it early if you get lucky with grease or have a highly optimal setup, but its a fight you should avoid at first.

I would tolerate a noob trap if it was avoidable. But it was scripted. If I charged the chimera on my own and died that it would be my choice. Besides it, it would be ok. Which is weird in a way because they had to script the encounter. So they had to think about what they are doing. If they just putted the chimera in editor standing there, everything would be fine but they decided to write a script to f*** you up.

Originally posted by Second Batch:

Nah

Yeah

[Swordman_Red]

Originally posted by Mit:

Originally posted by NamelessOne:

Blah-blah-blah

Description of the location literally warns you about chimera, why did you go in there if you were not prepared to face it?
Definition of the "atheism" is different in DnD and Pathfinder. You are clearly not aware of it.
You are a consumer raised by modern gaming industry: self-righteous, self-important and unattentive. It brings great joy to my heart when people like you get trashed by this game and come to whine about their crushed ego here.

[InEffect]

can't believe so many take an obvious troll at face value.

[NamelessOne]

They asked for a random outsider because their own citizens are lining up on different sides for a civil war.

The historical guy I'm talking about was literally a random guy from Normandy and his mercenaries as the locals were too weak and fractious.

People tend to not look up, and in game the distance penalty for spotting enemies is sizable. The enemy also has more than a couple of levels on the PCs.

7 bombs is enough, if you use the right throwers. They have AC 17 touch, so you want to have a high dex character toss the.

[Swordman_Red]

Originally posted by InEffect:

can't believe so many take an obvious troll at face value.

Can't help it, it was a long time since last spider swarm's mention.
And again, nowadays you can't be sure, industry has brought up new generations of players, who are actually this stupid.

[Kurosu]

Originally posted by Swordman_Red:

Originally posted by InEffect:

can't believe so many take an obvious troll at face value.

Can't help it, it was a long time since last spider swarm's mention.
And again, nowadays you can't be sure, industry has brought up new generations of players, who are actually this stupid.

Dont forget that people are used to hand holding , which kingmaker doesnt do.

[Mythless]

Originally posted by InEffect:

can't believe so many take an obvious troll at face value.

nah man. You are a sad troll. You could at least be funny instead writing your nonsense with zero input.

Originally posted by Swordman_Red:

Description of the location literally warns you about chimera, why did you go in there if you were not prepared to face it?

It's sad I have to explain it to you what I wrote. I said that I was scouting. Using actually a mechanic that should prevent that kind of situation. It can't be much more obvious, at least not more obvious than your fanboyism for that game.

Originally posted by Swordman_Red:

Originally posted by InEffect:

can't believe so many take an obvious troll at face value.

Can't help it, it was a long time since last spider swarm's mention.
And again, nowadays you can't be sure, industry has brought up new generations of players, who are actually this stupid.

Can't help it that some ppl are using arguments and some ppl like you are pure fanboys with zero critical thinking who swallow everything that modern companies produce.

Originally posted by Kurosu:

Originally posted by Swordman_Red:

Can't help it, it was a long time since last spider swarm's mention.
And again, nowadays you can't be sure, industry has brought up new generations of players, who are actually this stupid.

Dont forget that people are used to hand holding , which kingmaker doesnt do.

Oh yea... The game is totally not hand holding you with that arrows on map making you go only specific direction. LOL.

Originally posted by NamelessOne:

7 bombs is enough, if you use the right throwers. They have AC 17 touch, so you want to have a high dex character toss the.

You see, the problem is there is no way to know that until you charge, try to kill it, miserably die and load a game to make a new tactic. That's the problem. And that's a bad design for an RPG. Because I should be able to somehow estimate of enemy power and how many ammunition should i get. Should I check every encounter that way by scum saving? I think not. It's just a bad design.

I stuck to this example because this type enemy is generally always a weak type. After killing dozens of bandits and huge spiders without blinking I should be able to smash those spiders with my boots without a problem. There is zero indication of how this enemy is strong and resistance to any dmg type than fire. A freaking trolls from icewind dale were 100x more easier that this and also had a specific mechanic to kill them with fire. At least if it was a troll it would be reasonable.

Like I said, huge manticore smashing my ass -> ok, sounds reasonable
little stupid spiders soloing my team -> not ok
At manticore encounter is just deffrent type of problem.

And seven bombs arent enough. Because bombs has too low dmg. You have to spend on quite some to kill it while your tank spams health potions. Meybe on normal or easy it's doable that way but ad higher dif this swarm is a freaking sponge.

[brunskajuru]

Well, I like the game, the mechanics, I have no problem with the writing so far, there sure is room for improvement and development on all accounts but I'll leave my own review for when I actually finish the game.

What I would like to point out on your post is that you seem to be angry at how they designed a game and repeatedly call it dumb, stupid etc which indicates that you ain't here to discuss, but rather to flame the forum.