Embark on a journey that transcends the bounds of life and death with a loyal band of companions at your side. Evil lurks in a war-torn keep, and the souls of trusted companions must be sacrificed to unearth it. To uncover the truth, you must win the throne.
CONTAINS SPOILERS Well, I'm $8 poorer and a feel a little like I was taken. While the story and characters had great potential (especially the election, becoming Lord, etc.), it was squandered when it didn't have to be. When I started playing I imagined that I would become King, have absolute power, and be able make arbitrary descisions that would affect the community. But the only thing I ended up being able to do was appoint my Hand and my Banner, and everyone would call me 'Lord'. Big deal; it was like becoming owner of the bar in the OC, all I did was get 50 gold every now and then. I couldn't kick anyone out, raise prices, etc. I also have some character complaints; while the henchmen seemed interesting, and their voices added some flavor, I didn't quite feel that they had the depth of that the henchmen in HotU did. One redeeming quality of the mod is the replayablity and the variety of choices you have in your quests; I know that someone will always complain about linearity, but Kingmaker has a decently developed plot. Not excellently, but decently. However, I was somewhat puzzled by the continuity of some of the quests; for example, when I convinced the halfling woman to regain her position in the trading guild so she would vote for me, the bartender in the other bar wouldn't speak to me, even though I hadn't spoken to him yet. Also I could free Stiletto before I talked to Southpaw. I'm not sure exactly how to fix something like this, but in the official campaigns most quests had you interacting with all parties before a resolution. But the main reason I felt that it was a waste of money was the 'verification' that I had to undergo whenever I wanted to load a game. It annoyed me to no end; when I play a game like nwn I tend to reload saves often, if for nothing else than to repair the annoying henchmen bugs that Bioware hasn't fixed yet. I'm not fortunate enough to have constant access to the internet, and I paid the money, why should I have to undergo it? Seriously, $8 is too much to pay for something like this in my book. If there was no internet verification, I might spend the money on PMs just to get a good mod that was relatively bug-free and officially supported. I've put up with the numerous bugs in nwn because it was a good game, but this is beyond slight inconvenience.
Posted by JR at on03/02/05
A tight enough little mod with halfway interesting plot. But it's almost too annoying to play with its constant hijacking of the narrative with cutscenes, NPCs who will literally chase you down to force you into dialogue, the countdown time factor, etc. etc. Not to mention the ridiculous lags to boot up and save due to the CD key-checking. I made it through, but I had way more exporting my PC to play in the many higher-quality mods available for free from fans on this site. When you can go play something like "Foreboding in Sylvani" or "Tortured Hearts," why drop even eight bucks on a supposedly "premium" mod?
Posted by SaraJT at on02/25/05
I enjoyed this quite a bit, except for the ID verification. A fun mod to play around with, because you really can take several routes through it.
Posted by Oroborous at on02/24/05
Truly excellent work. I've replayed this module at least four times and enjoyed it more each time honestly. Well worth a couple of dollars.
Posted by Hennessy at on02/16/05
I feel so conflicted! On the one hand, I really enjoyed the mod. On the other, I'm really hungry and I want pizza.
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