Reseñas

• gamedeal user

  May 3, 2020

  I love Pathfinder Kingmaker. I've played over 100 hours of it. But Varnhold's Lot is a very different game, and not in a way I enjoy. Pathfinder Kingmaker as a game is pretty combat and dungeon crawling heavy, but it's balanced out by lots of roleplay, exploration, kingdom management, and a wonderful cast of characters. The balanced combination makes it a super fun game for me to play. Varnhold's Lot, on the other hand, focuses very heavily on combat and dungeon crawling, far more so than the original game. A good half of the DLC is spent in one very long final dungeon. You only get two actual party members - Maegar and Cephal - and they keep leaving your party with no warning for long stretches of time. You have to rely primarily on a team of player-created mercenaries with no personality, who are your only company for significant portions of the game, and I was not fond of this. I did enjoy customizing them, but for me the characters are one of the main things I enjoy about Pathfinder Kingmaker, and mercenaries are a poor substitute. The game also heavily punishes you for playing without a guide. If you didn't know ahead of time that your two real party members were going to be unavailable at certain points, you might have built your party with the assumption that you wouldn't need another Trickery skill user with Maegar in the party; which would hurt you badly in the portions of the game where he's not available. Same if you make Cephal your only blaster/conjurer/source of Knowledge checks. The combat encounters are also much harder than in the base game - if you play this game for the challenge you'll probably enjoy it. But I play this game primarily for the story, characters, and roleplay, and as such it just got really repetitive when they kept re-using the whole "this entire room is actually an overwhelming horde of mimics!" trap over and over and I just started carpet bombing rooms with kineticist AoE blasts before entering. I did enjoy the boss fights a lot, I think they were really well designed. But the constant brutally difficult fights against generic enemies were just tedious. That said, the roleplaying moments in this DLC were wonderful - Cephal and Maegar are excellent characters, play off each other very well, and the more roleplay and dialogue focused sections of the game were really good. My favorite part of the game was a murder mystery sidequest with very minimal combat. The DLC also has a wonderful sense of humor. I just wish there was more of this, instead of focusing so much on dungeon crawling with generic mercenaries. Overall, I'd only recommend playing this DLC if you primarily enjoy Kingmaker for the combat/dungeon crawling. If that's the case, you'll love this DLC - otherwise, you'll likely be disappointed like i was.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 27, 2020

  So I wrote a review about the main game about rookie GM mistakes concerning fake difficulty where it seems hard but its illusory as the solution is to either savescum or min max to become just as cheesy. It was forgivable as this was their first attempt. And this DLC comes out and they make the EXACT SAME MISTAKES ignoring all feedback given to the base game. The below review will get wordy and include numbers. If you are looking for the TL;DR the story is OK, map design and dungeon design are good, but encounter and game balance are horrendous. All below figures are based on Normal mode difficulty, normal enemies, crits, etc.. essentially attempting to match pathfinder rules. ===[ 🏃Party Composition ]=== This time the game yet again makes un-optimized story character choices. That is not only fine its the industry standard as min maxers can just make their own characters, and this game indeed lets you make a custom party. The issue is that the majority of enemies are not only min maxed to high hell but also directly hard counter your issued party composition. You start at lvl 5 and these suggested companions are laughable, except the monk which is the saving grace of the group. There's a summoning focused cleric with archery feats, no selective channel (so you heal your enemies) and a domain with an animal companion and no boon companion feat meaning it dies in 2 seconds flat. A freebooter Ranger who gives up a companion and goes dual wield with daggers. A DW shortsword rogue which can dish out some decent damage but is built suboptimally and has low defenses. And lastly a Summoning Focused Wizard. ===[ 👹Flaws in Party vs Encounter Design ]=== Now the 2 Dual Wielders, the Archer Cleric, The Clerics Pet, and the Monk Tank (The majority of the group) have a few weaknesses when it comes to dealing damage. Firstly iterate focused characters hit multiple times but for less damage so Damage Resistance (DR) is a problem and DR is thrown around like candy many fights you can look at your damage log and see them succesfully hitting an enemy for 0 damage. The second weakness is lower attack scores either from penalties or from being low BAB classes and just like the base game Owlcat thinks the only way to make difficulty is give enemies 30+ ac against a party of lvl 5-7s. That means some of these characters have between +7 and +11 bonus to hit on their highest attack meaning that the only chance they have to hit is on a 19 or a 20. Meaning the majority of the player party has around a 10% hit chance but that is before you learn about Owlcats absolute hardon for miss chance templates (20%) and every single enemy caster having Shield + Displacement + Greater Invisbility so your 10% chance then turns into almost none. Now you might be thinking ok well all that does is slow down combat make it feel more meaningful but on the opposite side of the field is rookie mistake #2 which is inflating enemy stats where they essentially cannot miss, this game gives you access to the numbers behind their success and you slowly find out that the majority of your opponents all have +10 (30) Strength (Equivalent to an Elder Elemental or Adult Red Dragon) so the enemies are swinging with around +15-19 to hit and a minimums damage of 11 and averages around 20 with most of the party other than the monk and perhaps the custom character having around 18-21 AC giving the enemy between 75% and 90% hit chance with high base damage and one shot crits. The veterans in the crowd are probably thinking to themselves "I'm just really going to have to strategize" and when you do be prepared to find out that the normal counters have been shored up. Random Skeleton Archers 2 hours into the DLC vs a party of lvl 6s have Beefed up stats and every single relevant feat (Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, Many Shot, Deadly aim, Dodge, and Point Blank Master) while still having 26+ AC and DR and their shots do not provoke while they melt your only healer in 1 turn so rushing the backline has little effect. Enemy casters miraculously also have 30+AC Shield, Mirror Image, Displacement and never provoke by casting so the customary tactic of "rush the squishy" has little effect. Enemy casters can also just flat out break the game rules casting touch buffs at range and spamming high level spells like limited use does not exist. Most of them do not use flavorful spells matching their archetype and all just use Shield, Slow, Haste, Greater Invis, Displacement, and Mirror Image. Rookie mistake #3 is handing out invisibility, extremely high stealth, or just flat out magical appearance ambushes out like candy to NPCs that normally are horrible at surprising. The large dungeon is filled to the brim with predictable but unavoidable surprise rounds where the enemies get 2 free rounds (surprise plus their ridiculous initiatives on the first turn). This can be countered by metagaming hard and sending the monk ahead to find the trigger you walk past to initiate these encounters and hope that he doesn't die due to his severely reduced AC while flat footed. Surprises are great but not when every other room is the exact same design. ===[ ☼ Mechanical Logic Flaw ]=== The above issues that heavily favor the enemies follow the idea that the player is smarter and enemy AI can be exploited. Not to mention some crazy strong things like easier flanking + outflank. That is all true but due to the nature of Pathfinder the game has additional difficulty in the form of Attrition the enemies that cannot miss and hit hard take up spell slots on your healer and for people playing with death rules those numbers means a ton of save reloads or forcing severe cheese in Last Azlanti mode. The major saving grace for the DLC is they made Potions, Wands, and Scrolls abundant so use the crap out of them. ===[ GM Experience: ]=== Extremely high AC, To Hit, and Damage values are how many, including my younger self, rookie GMs fail. Real difficulty comes from using the environment, maneuvers, encounter composition, and magic to force the players to adapt. Should your party outplay the monsters or rush the backline they should be rewarded for the tactics not be met with unadulterated cheese. To draw out fights you can have the NPCs summon reinforcements, trip your enemies, or by all means meta buff their health but don't punish your players trying to win as a GM. There are 11 years of lessons learned, encounter designs, monster stats, NPC balance, and CR calculations that were all thrown right out the window from the source material. And if someone truly set out to increase the difficulty they could absolutely do it but it would have taken time, effort, and thoughtful design over slapping +5 to everything and copy pasting a min maxed template to everything of the same archetype.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 5, 2019

  Not bad. Pros: - Nice side story - Interesting wizard companion Cons: - Linear - Maegar goes from cool guy to shmuck Finished it in maybe 10 hours. In still not certain if its worth the price but would probably buy it again.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 2, 2020

  Sorry, but as much as I wanted to love this, it just doesn't work. I'm railroaded into a specific scenario path, have key characters taken from me at arbitrary times, and get stuck in a dungeon of forever where I just get tired of fighting oozes. It doesn't help that they didn't bother to create portraits for any of the new characters or create any actual options for the dialogue. I think I ran into 2 trees where my choices really mattered. Some that would have mattered required that I create a diplomatically centered character as I was forced to deal with them by myself. Very disappointed.
• gamedeal user

  May 24, 2019

  Much more narrow in scope. This is an adventure that leads you by the hand. The excellent writing and voice acting carries it. You can't help but care about the fates of your companions. It's quite challenging too. All in all I would absolutely recommend this to anyone who doesn't mind an adventure that is a lot more linear than the main quest.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 4, 2021

  There is a fine line between challenging and frustrating; unfortunately Varnhold's Lot falls entirely on the frustrating side of things. Unlike the main story, where you can usually postpone a fight until you level and gear up for it, in Varnhold's Lot you are railroaded into plenty of extremely difficult encounters, which you might not be prepared for. And the only options are to completely deplete your spells and scrolls or to reduce the difficulty. Add to that the choice to remove crucial party members in the final dungeon, and this DLC often strays into extreme frustration. Two checkpoints in the dungeon removed my two primary damage dealers, leaving a party of four with now less useful cleric and bard. Add to that, no merchants to replenish your raise dead scrolls, and the final dungeon turns into a festival of save-scums, which is not my preferred way to play. The balance is terrible, even the first zone is full of level 13 ogres, while your party is only level 5. In sum, Varnhold's Lot is a half-baked unbalanced side-quest that is much weaker than the main story.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 5, 2021

  It had an interesting story and then a long dungeon crawl at the end. The game forced me to take 2 NPCs and build 4 of my own. In the last dungeon of constant ambush's, OOZE's and Mimics they remove the 2 key NPC's leaving you with your 4 characters. Worse even the 2 key NPCS took any loot you put on them before hand, or even a chance to unequip them. I grew bored with the constant dragging combat after that and lost interest quickly.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 17, 2023

  Absolute joke that you don't get prompted to jump to DLC during the campaign (and there is specific point where you are supposed to do it), or that you need to do that yourself in the first place for that matter, instead of DLC being integrated into the game.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 8, 2019

  I really liked this DLC! I read reviews saying that it "ruins" your main playthrough and that someone "didn't want to go back after starting the DLC" This wasn't the case at all for me. I'm not a Pathfinder veteran by any means ( I only have about 35+ hours on my main playthrough ) but I actually had fun making a separate character and some custom companions as well and the DLC was actually pretty good. It has a good story that occurs during the events of chapter 2. You pretty much play the role of a companion even though you control everyone in the fights, so traveling around the map is automatic and resting is too. I appreciated this because the DLC didn't feel too open or throw too much at you to do. It was very straight forward. The dungeon is awesome as well. I played this right after chapter 2 [spoiler] Right before you go on the hunt at the lodge [/spoiler] and it honestly worked really well, that way it didn't interfere with what was going on in my playthrough at the same time during chapter 2 and I didn't feel rushed at all to get back and finish it. It's a good DLC for a good price. It kept me thoroughly interested throughout. More Pathfinder is always a good thing, so if you're a fan go for it!
• gamedeal user

  Jan 6, 2021

  This is honestly not that good. I would give it a neutral recommendation if I could, because there are some good ideas and design in few places, especially in the last dungeon (which has problems of its own too), but overall the DLC feels like a small piece cut from the original campaign, only worse and on rails. Unless you're a hardcore Kingmaker completionist you can safely skip this, and even then, the DLC campaign has almost nothing to do with the base game and little to no effect on your kingdom from the main story. It's not terrible, but generally a lot poorer than the base game, so I can’t recommend it.