Pathfinder: Kingmaker — Definitive Edition for Xbox review — An impressively faithful recreation of the TTRPG experience

Pathfinder Kingmaker Hero Source: Owlcat Games

When Wizards of the Coast introduced the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, a fairly radical redesign of the classic tabletop roleplaying game, plenty of players wanted to stick with the version they knew best. Paizo offered them the take a chance to do that. Founded by game designers who had originally developed supplemental material for D&D, Paizo launched Pathfinder using the d20 arrangement as a base but introducing their own circuitous world, signature classes, and epic adventures.

Every bit the game grew in popularity and became D&D'south biggest competitor, it was inevitable that Paizo would want to make a video game. The D&D-based Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate remain some on the most influential CRPGs, and Paizo wanted to use the medium to both give existing tabletop players a new fashion to immerse themselves in the world while providing a gateway for video gamers to learn about its systems and setting.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which was released for PC in 2022, had smashing ambitions but a messy execution. By attempting to fully recreate the complexity of Pathfinder downwardly to some of its stranger rules, Owlcat Games created an experience that delighted many experienced tabletop players but baffled and frustrated newcomers. An early run into involving swarms of tiny spiders proved shockingly mortiferous as new players tried in vain to nail the bugs with their weapons, not agreement that swarms are immune to weapon harm and demand to be killed with fire.

The modding community developed a fashion to move the game away from the traditional isometric mechanic of existent-fourth dimension combat that can be paused to issue orders to your party of adventurers, allowing players to turn it into a turn-based RPG that better replicated the experience of navigating a fight while sitting around a gaming table.

Owlcat took all of the feedback to heart and worked on a series of fixes while besides releasing plenty of DLC that expanded the already massive game and added withal more than graphic symbol options. The culmination of that effort can be seen in the Pathfinder: Kingmaker – Definitive Edition, which as well brings the game to consoles for the first fourth dimension.

Forge your ain path

Pathfinder Kingmaker Cover

Pathfinder: Kingmaker – Definitive Edition

Bottom line: The controls are smoother on the PC, but the new version offers everything you could want from a Pathfinder video game.

Pros:

Extremely customizable characters
New plow-based organisation gives y'all full combat control
Massively long with plenty to explore
Strong voice acting and characters

Cons:

Controls designed for PC feel somewhat clunky on console
Long load screens on Xbox Ane

What I beloved nigh Pathfinder: Kingmaker – Definitive Edition

Pathfinder Kingmaker Dungeon Source: Owlcat Games

Pathfinder is my favorite TTRPG, providing a rich earth and all the crunchy systems yous could want. Pathfinder: Kingmaker is the closest I can get to playing a session of the game without needing a game chief to put in hours of prep, including wrangling four of our friends to show up on fourth dimension.

While you tin pick from a handful of pre-made characters and pretty much showtime playing, you'll want to take reward of the rich customization options, including all the standard D&D classes and races plus a host of Pathfinder specific options similar kineticists, who attack with explosive psychic energy. Even traditional options tin can be personalized past choosing archetypes, which could imbue your ranger with storm powers or turn your paladin into a bodyguard.

Category	Othercide
Title	Pathfinder: Kingmaker – Definitive Edition
Developer	Owlcat Games
Publisher	Deep Silverish
Genre	RPG
Platforms	PS4, Xbox 1
Players	Unmarried
Xbox Game Pass	No
Launch Cost	$45

Yous also have a dizzying amount of options when it comes to the higher-level game experience. You tin can tweak the difficulty in a wide diversity of ways, toning downwards enemy damage and defenses, having your fallen characters go back up later a fight rather than needing to be resurrected with expensive spells, and choosing if you want to be notified every time a decision might push button your morality in one management or another.

The options only multiply when you really get-go playing. As you might await, you'll spend plenty of time talking to both your party members and various NPCs to acquire nearly their personalities, agendas, and how they fit into the world. You've been tasked with taking downward a notorious bandit lord preying on settlers in a largely unexplored and unclaimed area known equally the Stolen Lands. All the same, you'll also wind up being pulled into conflicts that are more fantastical and have higher stakes.

As you lot explore around a giant map, you'll come up beyond random encounters with all way of monsters, new areas to explore, and resources you can use to build a kingdom of your ain. Your time volition be carve up between traditional adventuring in the field and managing your holdings past deploying party members and other NPCs on missions in a method similar to war tabular array plant in Dragon Historic period: Inquisition or champion missions in World of Warcraft.

Pathfinder Kingmaker Kingdom Building Source: Owlcat Games

The game is based on the Kingmaker hazard path published by Paizo and combines characters and plot elements from that supplement with new elements and characters from other Pathfinder sources. For instance, the game's signature barbarian Amiri volition join your political party and want to testify her force by taking on a specially nasty boar all by herself, yelling at you if y'all try to fifty-fifty heal her. Your choices will determine which characters are willing to fight past your side and how much of themselves they'll share with you.

While all of the improvements found in Pathfinder: Kingmaker – Definitive Edition has previously been released equally DLC or patches, the panel version provides one entirely new element: turn-based combat. Developed initially as a thespian-created addon, the new functionality lets you lot see all your characters and opponents in the order they will act based on the TTRPG initiative organisation, letting y'all methodically issue commands rather than needing to furiously break to queue up the next activity.

I actually enjoyed this mechanic in tougher fights where I wanted to be fully aware of what was happening and found information technology immune me to appreciate all the little details that go into the game. Impressive graphics bring to life classic spells like mirror image, which summons replicas of your grapheme that confuse enemies. Once you have a adept grip on the fight, you tin can switch back to real-time with the press of a push and just let the solid AI practice the residual of the work.

What could be better almost Pathfinder: Kingmaker – Definitive Edition

Pathfinder Kingmaker Combat Source: Owlcat Games

The biggest trouble here isn't surprising. Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a classic CRPG, and it'southward just hard to translate that concept perfectly to consoles. While Owlcat has done a good task mapping some key functions to controller buttons, the game overly relies on a cursor mechanic that clumsily replicates the feel of playing with a mouse.

I would have preferred something akin to the action wheel found in the console versions of Dragon Age games or even a more traditional dropdown menu for turn-based mode. You can swap to an action bar that lets you coil through the abilities and items you lot've placed in that location, just that preference doesn't stay selected between turns. It's as well annoyingly hard to apply some of the menus, requiring tabbing through cards representing your characters and then notwithstanding more than cards showing functions like equipment or leveling up. The portraits look absurd, but a simpler menu system would have been appreciated.

Load screens can as well exist frustratingly long on an Xbox I, though I'thousand sure I would have a smoother experience if I was playing on a Ane 10. I'll admit a lot of this just comes down to personal preference as I spend more than of my time playing PC games, so I've invested more in my setup. The plow-based mechanic will also be available via a PC patch on the Definitive Edition's launch twenty-four hours, and I plant myself just wanting to revisit the game on my desktop to take in the DLC I hadn't kept upwards with.

Should you lot buy Pathfinder: Kingmaker Definitive Edition

Pathfinder Kingmaker Chimera Source: Owlcat Games

You should definitely play Pathfinder: Kingmaker, but if yous have a decent gaming PC, you might be ameliorate off picking upwardly the Imperial Edition Packet which has everything that the Definitive Edition does and the control scheme the game was build for. If you bought the original game when it came out, information technology's also a great fourth dimension to snag a Season Pass Package and see how far things accept come.

That said, if you have a more modern panel and don't mind the controls being a niggling clumsy, y'all'll nonetheless be rewarded with one of the most satisfyingly fiddly RPG experiences around. Owlcat Games is already working on their next Pathfinder game, Wrath of the Righteous. If they take the lessons learned from Kingmaker to heart, it has the potential to truly live upwards to the genre staples the programmer is looking to emulate.

Your kingdom awaits

Pathfinder Kingmaker Cover

Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Definitive Edition

The TTRPG experience, no game master required

Customize your characters to your center's content and explore the wild world of the Stolen Lands, challenge treasure and slaying monsters.

PC Gaming

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