Disappointed, but hopeful


Owlcat Pathfinder CRPGs


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So I'm about 3/4 through the game and I've decided that, although I've enjoyed the game and want it to succeed, for the time being I'm going to quit my play through, wait a couple of months for the bugs to be fixed, and then restart.

The game has a ton of potential, but there are just too many game-breaking and non-game-breaking bugs at this point - broken quests, feats/abilities that don't work, weird difficulty spikes that bear no relation to the core rules. (Overall, I don't mind the difficulty. It's challenging, and that's good, but it feels very "cheaty" when monsters have absurdly inflated stats.)

The kingdom management mechanics need to be majorly tweaked and better documented. Several times I would start a project only to be hit with a debilitating event requiring that particular advisor, and no way to reassign that advisor. You shouldn't have to rely on save scumming to work around bad game design. Once you get the larger, 2-space buildings (e.g., mage tower), you can't rotate them to fit them in the available space on your building grid. Individually, you could probably shrug your shoulders over any of these and move on, but cumulatively they're just a drag on the gaming experience.

Owlcat seems to be committed to fixing things, but it's pretty clear this needed at least a couple more months of testing and fixing. It's disappointing, but hopefully over the Christmas holidays I can start over and play it all the way through.


I have only met 1 bug since at times you get to a place start selling loot accidentally place something into the sell section, move it back before selling and now I have gone from heavy encumbrance to overencumbered with the only way to fix is to reload the autosave of you entering the area. Outside of that I'm finding it good fun just with the story level difficulty, bar 3 what the moments is good, the what the moments are Candlemere Isle with a level 5 nearly level 6 party, the Acid Slug that you encounter in one or the locations and Haralga or however you spell it with his ridiculous damage output. Oh and the crag linnorm in the cave next to the bridge.

EtG.

Scarab Sages

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path Subscriber

I was about 95% done (level 16 and in the house at the edge of time) when I had to quit. That was the only time I had a noticeable bug.

I have started a second playthrough - there were other bugs I didn't notice (mostly from failed/incomplete quests that were not important), plus now I know how not to drive a kingdom into the ground.

I'm hopeful that by the time I reach the end, either the issues I encountered will be fixed, I'll be too bored to care, or I'll start a 3rd playthrough anyway.

Mostly likely I'll go for a 3rd playthrough. I have yet to play a monk or druid, and there's all these amulet of mighty fists I keep finding.....


I only just defeated Vordakai last night, because the loading times can take several minutes at times, and because I took chapter 2 extra slow and focused on getting my kingdom stats leveled up as much as I could before I somehow triggered the Varnhold Vanishing quest line.

There's definitely some bugs, but aside from some missing items for the collection quests, I've not come across a single bug that couldn't be fixed by reloading my most recent save. For me, it's the ridiculously long load times that are cutting into my enjoyment the most, especially when something going wrong means waiting 5 minutes just to load my last save so that I can start over again. It's one thing to be set back to your last save. It's another to be set back *and* have time to go make dinner and use the toilet before you can even get started.

Scarab Sages

Indraea wrote:
I only just defeated Vordakai last night

Hey, me too!

I've hit a number of the minor bugs that have been patched out (Wings on Tristain, LOL at the irony later in the story), but so far nothing serious. My quest log, though, only has the Barbarian Invasion stuff where Amiri has like 9000 game breaking bugs, so I'm probably going to skip a bunch of days to build out my empire then wait out the big patch due in a few weeks to continue with the story. I have a solid 5 months of time before Ancient Curse Pt 4 triggers, so I can at least build 15-20 more buildings in my holdings in the meantime.


A fun Visual bug. Why does my bard have 2 swords at my hip? Oh its not 2 swords its my sword and its sheath but the sword isn't in the sheath.

EtG

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Try a flaming crossbow, where the flames spread to every other characters' equipment page picture. :)

Scarab Sages

I personally like the troll club that Amiri wields and kills things with an invisible weapon.

Scarab Sages

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path Subscriber

For a fun Bug... cast enlarge person then open up the character inventory (with PC full body portrait... you'll only see your PC's feet.....)


The lack of craftsmanship and buggy quality of the game is staggering. I hope Paizo pulls their license; this game reflects horribly on the Pathfinder brand.

Scarab Sages

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path Subscriber

I would offer a different opinion. I find the game to be amazingly fun. I didn't experience any bugs or game breaking issues until the very end, which is better than Pathfinder Society (Pathfinder play generally "falls apart" at high levels >9, so a computer game that holds up until level 14-15 is pretty fantastic for me)

I'm on a 4th playthrough, planning on going up to about level 14-15 before starting over.

I hope they license MORE AP's using this engine. The core engine seems sounds, the bugs seem to be with high level monsters (which again, is basically a feature of the PnP game), and the complexity of the story at the end.

@ Terraneaux I'm sorry your play experience was not up to your expectations, but I am enjoying this a lot.


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grandpoobah wrote:
@ Terraneaux I'm sorry your play experience was not up to your expectations, but I am enjoying this a lot.

It shouldn't have been up to *any* self-respecting gamer's expectations. They should have released it as "early access" but in doing so they probably wouldn't have been able to hornswoggle people into buying it.

As someone who's played a ton of Pathfinder, the balancing decisions were incredibly idiotic, and it looked like they added crazy unfun difficulty spikes to hide the fact that they didn't really finish the game.

It's like playing a PF game with a horrible antagonistic DM who doesn't know the rules and who cheats to cover this up.


Runelords would have been a better first try on the game. Good straightforwards adventure.


Phillip Gastone wrote:
Runelords would have been a better first try on the game. Good straightforwards adventure.

Its also gotten the most multi media coverage so far. Also, I think they were trying to get a balance between narrative and sandbox play.

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