The moment that Kingmaker struck me

 When you realise where the real game is at!

Classic role playing games are an off-shoot of my most favourite overall gaming genre, but an off-shoot that I'm still only starting to get to grips with comprehending and understanding what I like and what I don't. My time with Solasta proved to me that whilst the style of gameplay these sorts of games engender always strikes the same rhythm as my heart, I don't fall in love with all these sorts of games. (I might be more inclined to if Solasta wasn't so damned buggy.) But one CRPG that I did pick up on a whim quite some time back and fell fully and wholly in love with was Owlcat Games' Pathfinder Kingmaker, which is a fact that would surprise no one with how feverishly I talk about Owlcat and literally everything that they're working on. I can't help it, the company got it's grip on me, and it all started the moment that the Kingmaker arrow slipped past my armour and struck me through the heart for a double-damage critical.

I'm no newcomer to the RPG genre, of course. I've been playing them ever since Mass Effect. In fact, I've played so many RPGs that their tropes and design flairs have become beats of my heart that tick along fanatically. Anytime an RPG defies those rules, my heart skips in kind. I don't think I've had so many undue palpitations regarding the role playing game structure as I did when I started playing CRPGs. Genuine winding choice and consequence that stretched so far as to enrich the character creation with it's scope? Look no further than Obsidian's 'Tyranny'! A true progression system so robust and stalwart that the game doesn't need to conjure some fake reason why the protagonist 'lost their power' between subsequent titles, because that character literally carries on in the next game right where they left off? The Original 'Baldur's Gate trilogy' nailed it. And an RPG that slaps you in the face, wrings your neck and makes you struggle for every scrap of air? Well... we'll get to that...

Kingmaker first caught my attention as yet another entry in a Youtube list of 'CRPGs you should look out for', when I was first reeling from my time playing Baldur's Gate and found myself hungering for more. It carried a premise I had heard before, and from RPG games in fact; a premise I had many times previosuly discarded as idle hogwash. Becoming King? Sounds like becoming 'Leader of the Inquisition' in Dragon Age Inquisition. And how did that ultimately shape up, again? With the player serving as the forward scout of the Inquisition who occasionally gets dragged over to make arbitrary judgement calls that ultimately effect little of nothing. I'd fallen for the 'become the leader' trope before, and the comfortable babying of RPGs from the past mollified me to this new promise. Still, the title of the game sounded okay and I wanted to try out another CRPG. I looked up some screenshots, liked what I saw and eventually bought the thing.

Right away Pathfinder demanded my attention with how the game really put the weight of it's character creator in front of you. Kingmaker doesn't simplify it's UI and menus to ease people through the creation process, because they don't want you ignoring this essential element of playing the game. If the walls of text and busy choices wards people off, then that's just fine; those aren't the sorts of people who'd be able to enjoy a game like this. Of course, I didn't understand that at first, I just believed this to be a somewhat full-on character creator that made me curious of the fuller game. I curiously wondered at exactly how important all these character classes and level-up choices would really be in the grand scheme of things, would Pathfinder's gameplay prove worthy of the breadth of it's creator? I took the complexity as a challenge; I should have taken it as a warning.

The first act of Pathfinder does not give you a Kingdom, it doesn't even give you your initial land. You need to earn that. The prologue of Pathfinder is structured like a tutorial would be structured, only the finale path leading out of that tutorial is a tough as nails battle against the bandit camp which owns the land you want. I think that was the first time the game made me aware of the fact that it was not messing around, and in fact was very willing to make you work hard for the very simplest of breaks. That very first boss battle was already having me thinking about tactical positioning and maximising movement potential, which highlighted this game as one of two styles to me. Either this was going to be one of those titles where the first levels are the hardest and everything soothes over once you become more versatile, or it was a title with a high skill ceiling and poor balancing. Then I played the first chapter.

When you get into it, Pathfinder Kingmaker has a very robust kingdom building metagame which places success and failure very much in the hands of the player at all times. You very much are the key force creating this kingdom, alongside being the most competent adventurer patrolling it's lands for dangers. Become too comfortable in one role, and you'll inevitably fall prey to the other when your back is turned. Learning this was how Kingmaker really struck me as a CRPG unlike many others, specifically for the Chapter 1 threat which you face. A simple hive of trolls that threaten your roads turns into so much more once you've endured the absolute slog-match which is the chapter 1 finale dungeon. Room after room of dangerous trolls that can only be killed under the purview of exacting specifications, all tricking you into a sense of feeling powerful so you believe that the final troll threat is manageable to your spongy arms. It is not; the game is fooling you.

The final Troll boss of chapter 1 is honestly more tough than the final boss of many entire CRPGs I've played before and since. I hoard all of my items in RPG games and love when their challenge can make me use them in the final fight; for Kingmaker I used everything I had just to beat this bloody Troll. Enlarge, Haste, Displacement, Shield of Faith; any and anything I had was sunk into fighting an enemy who could one shot pretty much anyone in my party. Honestly it was more a roll of luck, to see if my team could tank enough missed hits to burst this demon of a monster down, and it took all my effort and resources to beat. When I won I found myself spent. Emotionally and mentally. But oh-so exuberant. That was when Kingmaker made me acknowledge how much fun it can be to break through the unbreakable.

Every chapter in Kingmaker throws a new challenge at you, and depending on your composition those challenges might end up just making you feel like a badass or, quite often, will have you sweating just as much as that first troll boss. The moment the game made me split my party in the Fey Realm I felt the genuine looming doom of the possibility that I might not actually be able to do this, given that only one person in my party could reliably kill the biggest Fey monsters. But everytime that I did overcome the daunting proposition of a solid brick wall, that utmost relief made all the stress worth it on the other end. Kingmaker is a demon of a game that really wishes pain and discomfort upon you as much as possible; but when you master how to work with it, you'll feel like you mastered all the worst fantasy monsters the Pathfinder world has to offer. And any Dark Souls fans can appreciate a dawning like that.