Recent reviews by Lex

I really wanted to like this game.

For context, I bought this game after finishing (and enjoying) Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. I started a new file in Kingmaker with default difficulty/settings, hoping to experience a somewhat similar CRPG with a unique underlying ruleset. Pathfinder rules are new to me, though they are more relatable to my tabletop D&D experience than PoE was and that seemed like a positive.

Unfortunately I had to stop playing this game relatively early on. I don't think it was respecting my time as a player. I don't mind being challenged, but I do mind tedium. This game is unfortunately slavishly devoted to the ruleset, to the detriment of modern CRPG standards and player experiences. Let's talk about some of the examples:

Post-prologue, I begin exploring in earnest, heading to a trading post to solve some immediate banditry problems, before moving on to the wider world. I stop at the nearest point-of-interest marked on the map. A manticore devours my humble party quite deftly. Neat. I guess I'm not supposed to visit here yet. Now, this isn't the first time a game has thrown a high-level enemy into a starting area. In isolation, this would be in poor taste, but forgivable. But as far as I can tell, this is simply the norm for the game. You will encounter enemies you are unable to deal with, and you will have no indication of the challenge of an area or enemy until they crush you, forcing you to reload and prepare differently or return much later at a higher level. Frankly, this isn't the experience I want in a game anymore. I don't think its unreasonable for a quest or an area or an enemy to include UI indicating a rough level of appropriateness for your current party. Did I fail to kill the manticore because I didn't buy "manticore repellant" at the shop? Or because it's five levels higher than my current party? Or am I just bad? I actually have no idea, because there's no feedback in any of the systems hinting that any of those possibilities are more likely than the other.

The next quest you get in the first outpost involves retrieving berries from a cave filled with spiders. This topic has been well-covered by other reviews so I will try to be brief. Some of the spiders are "Swarms", which cannot be harmed by traditional weapons (like swords or bows). Unfortunately I have no real agency over my party at this point. I have no access to AoE spells. The quest-giver did helpfully provide me with some flasks that can damage the spider swarms when thrown. The quest giver did not mention that those throws can miss or deal minimal damage, resulting in me running out of flasks while mid-combat (which cannot be escaped). Don't worry, I have some torches in my inventory and those apparently work on swarms. I equip the torches and watch my remaining living party members swing at the swarm. Miss. Miss. Miss. 1 dmg. Miss. I did eventually defeat the spiders without wiping, but not before my largely melee party was covered in STR debuffs that now meant I was too encumbered to leave the zone and head back to the road.

Am I angry that a game asked me to plan ahead and hinted that I should do so? Am I angry that I need to change my tactics to accommdate a specific fight? No, not at all. But I am frustrated that this is the experience within the first couple of hours of the game. There's no difficulty scale-up present here. We go from a relatively mindless prologue to a series of contrived and abrupt challenges. Was this really the best place to introduce swarms to the player? I don't think so. Did I feel clever for watching my party slowly swing torches at nigh-invincible swarms of spiders, per the hint I was given? I can tell you that it was not particularly compelling gameplay.

This game accurately models weight/encumberance and its effects on fatigue and travel. I'm sure some people love this. I have to say, coming fresh off of PoE where they basically ignore encumbrance completely, I found the Kingmaker system to be a time sink. You'll spend a lot of time resting as you travel in this game. That process requires consumable camping supplies. Those supplies weigh more than anything else you own, so you can't carry too many at once. If you do, you can't really loot anything. You're not only forced into a loop of resting constantly, but also having to return to civilisation to restock on camping supplies constantly. Fundamentally, I didn't feel like these systems were additive to my experience. More often than not, it just felt like they were wasting my time. But admittedly, this is more of a subjective point.

Finally I reached my breaking point. I was continuing along the critical path, chasing our in-game rival. I made some fairly innocuous choices and followed him after an encounter. I arrived in a new location I had never visited before, and experienced a brief Kobold scene. I cleaned up some Kobolds and tried to leave the area. I could not leave. See, the world map knows I had never been here before, so no connecting roads are present. I clicked on every nearby point of interest, but no path could be found. I returned to the encounter map. There was no way to traverse back to the place I had originally come from. I reloaded. No change. Online, I found some examples of others in the same broken position. The only advice was to reload an earlier save. I sat and stared at the screen in disbelief. How have I soft-locked my progression on the critical path during the first handful of hours? How has this never been fixed? The first 20 hours of any game should be some of the most polished time you experience. I'm genuinely terrified to proceed at this point because I don't want to risk wasting more of my time on a new problem that amounts to "just reload an earlier save".

I think it's interesting that ~85% of players have completed the Prologue, but only ~51% are making it to the next major story beat (establishing the barony). Think about that. A huge percentage of players are bouncing off this game in the first ten hours. Is that a coincidence? I was really optimistic before I started playing. Apparently, that's not an uncommon feeling.

Now, this is absolutely a good game for some players. This is perhaps the hardcore no-hand-holding experience they've always wanted. The experience I described was very negative but there was so much here that seemed promising to me. I wanted to really get into the class and combat systems. I was engaged in the limited world-building I had seen so far. Ultimately I'm just disappointed that it isn't the game I thought it was.

Total War as it was meant to be played.

I approached this game as a longtime fan of the Total War series, but with serious skepticism about the Warhammer Fantasy setting, which I was completely unfamiliar with.

I was surprised to find that the setting was compelling rather than derivative. I was completely drawn into the story, history, and characters and spent much of the first week researching the lore in my moments outside the game.

The fundamental success of the game is in how it refreshes core Total War series tropes. Battle is significantly affected by the introduction of single-entity Monsters, flying units, and the magic system. RPG elements like the quest battles, gear, and skill-point building for Lords are welcome additions. The gameplay, while simplified in some respects, has never been more unique at a faction level. Each faction is aesthetically and mechanically different to a degree completely foreign to past games in the series. Strengths and weaknesses are pronounced, and they inspire dramatically different strategic and tactical choices for each (something which never felt very true in past Total War games).

I'll take a moment to comment on the topic of DLC, as it seems to polarize most reviews: I find the policies to be completely fair. There are hundreds of hours of enjoyable gameplay to be had in the core game. I'm closing in on 70 hours and am only working through my second playthrough of the grand campaign. Alongside each DLC release, the game receives free content in the form of unit, hero and Legendary Lord additions. Whether each DLC is worthwhile is a question for each individual and their interests and budgets. But I firmly believe this DLC policy should not influence one's decision to purchase the very complete and very enjoyable base game.

I would easily recommend this game to any fan of Warhammer, any fan of Total War, and any Strategy game enthusiast looking for something new.

The greatest player-driven-narrative grand strategy game that will ever be made.