Set down your dice, put away your pencils, and tuck away your books. Once you have done that, take a seat in front of your console for it’s time to dive into the world of Pathfinder: Kingmaker – Definitive Edition. Developed by Owlcat Games and published by Deep Silver, this CRPG started as a Kickstarter in 2017 and released to PC, Linux and MacOS in 2018, but that’s not what we’re here for today. 2020 is the year and we now have our console release bringing Pathfinder: Kingmaker – Definitive Edition to Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker brings us to a territory known as the Stolen Lands which resides in the world of Golarion and the greater region known as the River Kingdoms. As the game begins we quickly learn of a looming threat to the stolen lands known as the Stag Lord. Your character is offered to become Baron of the Stolen Lands if you can deal with this threat. After you, accept you’re first task is to deal with an assassination attempt on the Ruler of Restov Jamandi Aldori who was set you with this task. This is used as an introduction to the basic game mechanics and setting you up for the start of your adventure. After that you quickly find yourself out in the open world collecting clues and working towards the first goal of your adventure.
I’ve previously praised Divinity: Original Sin II for being one of the closest video game representations of what it’s like to play a game of Dungeon and Dragons or in this case Pathfinder Adventures which is based off a modified version of the Dungeon and Dragons 3.5 ruleset. Pathfinder: Kingmaker quickly took the cake for what it means to be a video game representation of an adventure from the series. With the ability to select game difficulty from “Story” to “Unfair”, you are also given a vast amount of options to tune the game to play how you wish depending on your experience as a player. You are able to create and customize your character fully just as if you were rolling up a new character sheet or you can select a premade “hero” you might recognize from the game if you play either the Tabletop or Adventure Card game from Pathfinder. Also some choices like character alignment can change overtime as you play and develop your story with your choices.
As you adventure your party can grow up to 6 characters and you fill up all those slots very quickly. Combat can be fast and fun or you can utilize the pause system to make your choices, queue up your moves, and then watch them play out in real-time. Outside of combat you are setup on a world map where you can move a pawn along different paths as you explore the vast world. The game does a great job of giving you multiple things to do and explore in the open world without feeling repetitive due to the sometimes small sized areas you get to encounter. I have had random attacks along the way, found hidden areas, been attacked by slavers and had the joy of experiencing and area through a story book style progression for that area. All of this happens before I’ve even setup my Kingdom and had a chance to see how I can expand and run it. I promise you will always have something to do with estimated game play times ranging from 80-120 hours of content.
This version of the game includes all 6 DLC packed together in this wonderful experience. I would recommend this to anyone looking to get a taste of what it’s like to enjoy the worlds our DM’s would create, but in that video game form we all love. That makes Pathfinder: Kingmaker – Definitive Edition not just for new players, but also veterans who enjoy the challenge and how closely the game plays to the rules of the tabletop version.
