Pathfinder Kingmaker is better than Baldur's Gate

[Baxander]

Change my mind.
Or fight me.

 

[Atlet]

Baldurs Gate 2 with SCS is top 3 rpgs ever. And Pathfinder is even better. Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire tho remains GOAT.

But, Woke of the Righteous might become the best ever.

 

[Sentinel]

Fighting a cripple would land me in jail.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

buildfags BEGONE

 

[AdamReith]

Gave this game another go over the weekend. It's got pretty combat and that. is. it.

BG has the music, the sense of adventure, characters you don't want to choke to death, a story where you actually care what's happening, a realm that doesn't just exist to make busy work for you.

In BG you feel like a hero, in Pathfinder you feel like a janitor, one that everybody hates despite them bending over backwards to keep things running.

Anyway, no, I didn't really care for it this time either. Thanks for asking.

 

[Oberon]

Pathfinder Kingmaker felt like an overly ambitious project that couldn't quite deliver. Varnhold's Lot was really great though, and gives me a lot of hope for WoTR.
Kingmaker's party members were cancer, but with such a robust character creation system it was fun creating a full custom party instead.

 

[Delterius]

BG has characters you don't want to choke to death

No.

 

[Tavernking]

I have no nostalgia of playing Baldurs Gate 2 back in the day, I played it a few years ago. It's clear to me that without nostalgia goggles, Pathfinder Kingmaker is the better game.

 

[smaug]

I disliked the later parts of Kingmaker, but I made it to Chapter 6 at least and spent 300+ hours on it.

I finished BG once and got to CH3 in BG2 before giving up.

So, Kingmaker but Baldur's Gate had the better art style and enemy diversity.

 

[Contagium]

I've played through BG 1&2 multiple times, including expansions. Kingmaker has it's merit but in no way, shape, or form did BG have some abhorrent concoction like kingdom management to weigh the entire campaign down. I didn't even mind kingdom management until near the end of the game where it went beserk . Beamdog couldn't even fuck Baldurs Gate up enough to have it be brought down to the level of Cuckmaker.

I'll fight you, too

 

[HoboForEternity]

I have no nostalgia of playing Baldurs Gate 2 back in the day, I played it a few years ago. It's clear to me that without nostalgia goggles, Pathfinder Kingmaker is the better game.

agree. i played BG 2 in 2013 while it was enjoyable PKM beat it in most aspects

 

[jungl]

My friend that illiterate in DnD I got to play baldurs gate he almost beat it. He quit kingmaker after he got his kingdom. Problem with kingmaker everything is extremely low effort, copy pasted maps. No interesting locations other then the cyclops tomb and tons of jank of the bad variety. Walking to your throne room. Bad itemization. Its simply not a good video game experience.

 

[Bah]

BG has characters you don't want to choke to death

No.

The best part of doing an evil play through is killing Jaheira, and then when Minsc goes berserk, killing him to.

 

[Raghar]

ELEX is better than pathfinder.

 

[curds]

BG has characters you don't want to choke to death

No.

Yeah, wtf. Baldur's Gate has literally the most annoying ensemble of characters in any RPG that I've played, except maybe kotor.

 

[Cryomancer]

Better than BG1? Yes. Better than BG2? No. Only on character creation.

 

[Galdred]

I really liked kingmaker until I got into the kingdom management part, and it was the thing that had got me excited in the first place, being a birthright fan...

 

[deuxhero]

Kingmaker has turn based combat, so the OP is correct.

Also it says Baldur's Gate, not Baldur's Gate II, and BG1 is a mess in all sorts of ways. It literally has entrances you can't see, even though your character should, and hides quests behind them. Kits weren't added till the second game, so character customization is limited (especially if you consider how dualclassing works means you're crippling a character in the sequel if you try it in the first game). Most companions are barely present past their introduction and quest (if any), while half of them are useless even in iron man (you can only recruit them in the last chunk of the game but they come at stupidly low level), and few have substantial personality.

 

[Ulysa]

I loved PK but thinking about the kingdom management, overwhelming itemization and that dreadful final map, I can't bring myself to replay it.
Baldurs 2 ... I have to constantly fight every few months not to replay it.

But I'm happy this discussion exists. Man, it's been more than 20 years.

 

[Endless]

The Old Codexers who grew up with Fallout, Baldur's Gate, etc can't seem to admit that Pathfinder and Underrail have a chance at Dethroning some of those games in the future.
I think over the next 10 years you'll see those games develop into a classic status.

I also want to point out how hilarious it is that the Boomer Codexers use "it very buggy" to describe why Pathfinder is bad when half the games in the Codex Top 10 have this problem.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Better than BG1? Yes. Better than BG2? No. Only on character creation.

I guess I mostly agree with this. One thing is for sure - PK came the closest to actually emulating the good parts of old RTWP crpgs, even surpassing them in some important aspects. All the other attempts don't compare.

 

[ArchAngel]

I like BG1 more. I like PKM more than BG2. But BG2 had awesome mage battles, still better than any other game after it.

 

[Thac0]

I advocate for seeing Pathfinder Kingmaker as two halves.
Why? Because Pathfinder Kingmaker is almost as long as both Baldur's Gates combined, and the second half off the game is significantly less polished and finished than the first half.
The only question is where to draw the line. Someone in shoutbox (I think Lagole Gon ?) suggested that Pathfinder goes to shit after Vordakai, which is a sensible line for me aswell, since after Vordakai the Hell Knights quests starts, which may go down in history as the worst quest out of any rpg. It will forever be a memorial to the follies of letting kickstarter backers write your quests.

Pathfinder Kingmaker first half is really good, if you cut it from the bloat and the baggage of the second half it surpasses Baldurs Gate.
In the second half however the sidequest quality drops off a cliff, dungeons feel weird and underdesigned, the kingdom managment progresses from bearable to agonising and the difficulty becomes a joke even on unfair anyway. So Pathfinder Kingmaker second half is clearly worse than both Baldurs Gates.

Now how does one compare a game with a fairly inconsistent quality like PF:KM to one which is across the board high quality like the BGs? For me the allrounder wins, since if a game has a 10 hour segment that is just shit you have to slog through 10 hours of boredom.

 

[CoronerZg]

Gave this game another go over the weekend. It's got pretty combat and that. is. it.

BG has the music, the sense of adventure, characters you don't want to choke to death, a story where you actually care what's happening, a realm that doesn't just exist to make busy work for you.

In BG you feel like a hero, in Pathfinder you feel like a janitor, one that everybody hates despite them bending over backwards to keep things running.

Anyway, no, I didn't really care for it this time either. Thanks for asking.

I liked Pathfinder for the most part, but something always did bothered me about it... and you're spot on, it's the sense of adventure. Kingdom management (besides being tedious as it is) forces you to go back to your kingdom all the time and because of that you can't really get that amazing feeling of adventure BG gives you (your foster father is dead and now you're alone in the unknown world). Instead you do feel almost like a janitor going from one "task point" to another, then back to your kingdom hub. And that also makes the world feel very disconnected. The Varnhold Vanishing chapter shows you a glimpse of that unrestricted feeling of adventure.

And then there is narration...

I mean this


and then this ...is a /thread by itself really.

 

[AdamReith]

In BG I never remember sighing and going to the motions as I fought yet another Yellow Ferocious Wyvern, or a regular model of an Owlbear they increased the size of so it filled the screen.

Compared to Diablo, Pathfinder might be an improvement but it fails at world building too hard to be considered a contender to BG1.

If you just want to wander the world killing shit and collecting +2 belts and rings of protection then it's a pretty good time.

Yeah I hate the tone of Linzi's journal (including the text adventure stuff, very badly written too)- but I complained about that stuff last play through.

Turn based combat is well implemented and it is great to have the option but its very clear the encounters weren't designed with it in mind. I started off TB for the first couple of hours but had to ditch it again after those infinite centipede encounters, would love to see this system used in a game designed around it.