Enrico Poli1
Adventurer
5 out of 5 rating for Kingmaker Adventure Path
Kingmaker is controversial, but in the end it deserves a 5-star rating.
It is a great sandbox, as the party has to hexcrawl. This is also a weakness because most of the encounters will be very easy for a well-rested party.
There is a great Quest system: every installment has 8 major quests and a number of lesser quests to be completed. This is fun!
The kingdom-management mini-game is fun and, at first, interesting, but after a pair of adventures becomes broken and boring. The players could also exploit it for money = unbalanced magic items.
The mass battle subsystem is crap.
Anyway, the first two adventures are really great. The third and fourth are problematic, because, in my opinion, the balance between exploration and dungeon-crawl is no more, and the hexes are only there as a background for the final dungeons, so they lose the unique feel of Kingmaker. The fifth adventure returns to the right spirit, and then we have the tournament, and some great villains! The sixth adventure is like a fairytale! In itself is a fantastic adventure, but it is very different then all other installments of the AP; plus, the BBEG hasn't been properly anticipated.
To make the Kingmaker experience, one could just play the first two adventures of the campaign. That said, this is enough to make Kingmaker one of the GREAT Paizo adventure paths that deserves to be played once.
Kingmaker is controversial, but in the end it deserves a 5-star rating.
It is a great sandbox, as the party has to hexcrawl. This is also a weakness because most of the encounters will be very easy for a well-rested party.
There is a great Quest system: every installment has 8 major quests and a number of lesser quests to be completed. This is fun!
The kingdom-management mini-game is fun and, at first, interesting, but after a pair of adventures becomes broken and boring. The players could also exploit it for money = unbalanced magic items.
The mass battle subsystem is crap.
Anyway, the first two adventures are really great. The third and fourth are problematic, because, in my opinion, the balance between exploration and dungeon-crawl is no more, and the hexes are only there as a background for the final dungeons, so they lose the unique feel of Kingmaker. The fifth adventure returns to the right spirit, and then we have the tournament, and some great villains! The sixth adventure is like a fairytale! In itself is a fantastic adventure, but it is very different then all other installments of the AP; plus, the BBEG hasn't been properly anticipated.
To make the Kingmaker experience, one could just play the first two adventures of the campaign. That said, this is enough to make Kingmaker one of the GREAT Paizo adventure paths that deserves to be played once.
