History YMMV / PathfinderKingmaker

* DesignatedEvil: One of the issues with the game's alignment system is that what qualifies as evil can be questionable and forced. It makes sense being a tyrant or an AxCrazy murderer would be the evil options, but sometimes options are labeled Lawful Evil when they feel like they shouldn't be. For example; arresting Sartayne is considered Lawful Evil, but said character was cursing weapons and putting people's lives at risk out of revenge, making it odd that punishing a criminal activity is being labeled as "evil".

** Gaining the masterpieces from your Artisans is nothing but one huge GuideDangIt. They have to be recruited early, their personal quests solved, and your kingdom must reach the highest mark on multiple stats. Adding to this is [[TimedMission the time limit]]. Do their requirements too late and you wont have enough time to receive their masterpieces during later chapters. And their personal quests ''also'' often involve general alignment weirdness. While most of the masterpieces are indeed quite potent if the player has characters who can make use of them, a few aren't aligned with any of the named [=NPCs=] at all.

** Gaining the masterpieces from your Artisans is nothing but one huge GuideDangIt. They have to be recruited early, their personal quests solved, and your kingdom must reach the highest mark on multiple stats. Adding to this is [[TimedMission the time limit]]. Do their requirements too late and you wont have enough time to receive their masterpieces during later chapters. And their personal quests ''also'' often involve general alignment weirdness. While most of the masterpieces are indeed quite potent if the player has characters who can make use of them, a few aren't aligned with any of the named NPCs at all.

*** Also, many dialogue choices are overly restrictive: in one of the craftsman sidequests, there's a legitimate argument to be made that trying to arrest the villain should be a Lawful Good option under the circumstances rather than Lawful Evil, to say nothing of situations like brokering peace between both the mites and kobolds and later [[spoiler:the Aldoris and Surtovas]] requiring a Neutral alignment on at least one axis: Certain conversation options are locked, requiring a specific alignment to select them. Worse, some of those alignment-locked conversations determine whether several important [=NPCs=], even potential advisors, live or die. Want to save [[spoiler: both Jhod and Kesten]] but aren't Lawful? Want to recruit [[spoiler: Vordakai]] but aren't Evil? You're screwed.

* GoddamnedBoss: Tartuccio at the end of the Old Sycamore Mines isn't outright hard, since he doesn't have a lot of HP, his minions aren't outright super dangerous, and he moreso just relies on a ZergRush to overpower the player. However, Tartuccio almost always opens the fight by casting Fireball, seemingly aiming specifically for the PlayerCharacter. If the player rolls initiative wise higher than him, he can be dealt with quickly, but if not, he can wipe out your team in one turn without much you can do about it. The only saving grace is that he can be baited into wiping out his minions and himself if someone gets into melee range of him, but he can still be an extremely frustrating fight if the player can't do anything to prevent him from casting Fireball.

** The "Research into the Nature of Curses" projects are a thorn in many players side. They take so much time to complete but also you receive multiple of them during the game, locking your Advisor out of doing anything else for a while if you plan to do all of them. This would be fine if there were different options for which Advisor can perform it, but the vast majority require your High Priest or Magister, and only a few allow you to chose from either to perform it. While you do get bonuses from them, it only is in Divine and/or Arcane, meaning if the player doesn't need those, you don't get much out of it. To top it off, you need to do each one to get the secret ending, meaning you have to somehow find time to do each project during a playthrough.

* ThatOneSidequest: The Kickstarter-backer-written "Deal with the Devil", for setting the backer's CreatorsPet devil-worshiping pirate against an expeditionary force of LawfulStupid and [[DudeWheresMyRespect incredibly rude]] Hellknights, {{railroading}} you to side with the CreatorsPet because the rewards are so much better. It's telling that many playthroughs end up with the Baron(ess) wiping out ''both'' sides out of pure spite.

* ComplacentGamingSyndrome: An unusual example, in that it's more of a problem for people familiar with the 3.X game system, but the Kineticist class, which [[spoiler: both of the DLC companions have]], is very outside-the-box compared to the rest of the game, requiring a very different mindset and resource management attitude. It can unlock great power in the right hands, but it's tempting to either ignore it or just take the boring powers that enhance its skills or basic attack.

** Anything with regeneration. Figuring out what kind of damage you need to kill something with Regeneration ranges from fairly standard (most fantasy gamers know a troll's weakness) to obscure (crag linnorms, mentioned in a loading tooltip) to GuideDangIt (the primal shambling mound, which isn't mentioned ''anywhere'' beforehand). There is a function for pulling up a monster's stat block if the characters can meet the skill thresholds to identify it, but [[LuckBasedMission the dice gods can be cruel]], and it's not exactly the most intuitive thing in the world. Then there's making sure you actually have it available when you need it. Most people eventually just keep something with ability damage or level-draining capabilities available, as both bypass Regeneration's death immunity.

* LowTierLetdown: Valerie has very sub-optimal stat allocation for a martial character. Despite being a Fighter, her Strength sits at 14, her Charisma (usually a dump stat for Fighters) at 15, and her Constitution at an unnecessarily high 19. While she would seem to be meant to act as a StoneWall [[note]]Her Constitution score and initial feat selection pretty much prepares her for Stalwart Defender[[/note]], the lack of [[DrawAggro aggro drawing]] mechanics in ''Pathfinder'' makes such a role unreliable. It's almost necessary to multi-class her into something else to make her usable, [[GameplayAndStorySegregation even though doing so may not fit her character]]. Adding to the annoyance, her absolute best multiclassing option -- Kineticist/Kinetic Knight -- [[BribingYourWayToVictory is only available as paid DLC]]. One of the more popular mods for the game goes so far as to make the Vindictive Bastard archetype from Paladin, simply because it better fits her stats and background than Fighter.

** Will O'Wisps. Once you know their tricks (they go invisible at will and attack using area-of-effect electric-damage spells or touch attacks, and are immune to most magic) they can be countered with a selection of relatively low-level buffs and debuffs like See Invisibility, Glitterdust and Mass Resist Energy, but if you wander into a pack of them unprepared you will face some hurt. Some of the more advanced versions often have fear spells as well, which can scatter your party and make them wander away into other encounters... which can be countered with a ''first-level spell'' that you can hoard a gazillion scrolls of quite cheaply.

** The games' encounter balance and EarlyGameHell has been considered frustrating to some players, especially those who are new to the Pathfinder ruleset or isometric cRPGs like ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'' in general. The game does have adjustable difficulty, but even on Normal mode you can experience a few sudden Total Party Kills. Even someone experienced with the system won't have much luck; comparing the stats of any given enemy to its stats in the original adventure reveals the game's version to be ''farcically'' overpowered. Enemies that average 5-10 damage in tabletop deal 20-30 here, even on Normal. On top of that, you only start off with four party members in total, and getting a full party requires fighting very difficult fights for the parties level and size.

** The games' encounter balance and EarlyGameHell has been considered frustrating to some players, especially those who are new to the Pathfinder ruleset or isometric cRPGs like ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'' in general. The game does have adjustable difficulty, but even on Normal mode you can experience a few sudden Total Party Kills. Even someone experienced with the system won't have much luck; comparing the stats of any given enemy to its stats in the original adventure reveals the game's version to be ''farcically'' overpowered. Enemies that average 5-10 damage in tabletop deal 20-30 here, even on Normal.

* LowTierLetdown:
** Valerie has very sub-optimal stat allocation for a martial character. Despite being a Fighter, her Strength sits at 14, her Charisma (usually a dump stat for Fighters) at 15, and her Constitution at an unnecessarily high 19. While she would seem to be meant to act as a StoneWall [[note]]Her Constitution score and initial feat selection pretty much prepares her for Stalwart Defender[[/note]], the lack of [[DrawAggro aggro drawing]] mechanics in ''Pathfinder'' makes such a role unreliable. It's almost necessary to multi-class her into something else to make her usable, [[GameplayAndStorySegregation even though doing so may not fit her character]]. Adding to the annoyance, her absolute best multiclassing option -- Kineticist/Kinetic Knight -- [[BribingYourWayToVictory is only available as paid DLC]].
** Jaethal, for one simple fact - she's Undead. Since ReviveKillsZombie in this setting, this means she can't be healed by the party's most dedicated healer. Any healing she receives has to be a single-target Negative Energy spell, which is a fairly major burden when in the middle of a dungeon crawl. Fortunately, she can heal herself if you pick her spells correctly, has access to a HealingFactor through one of her Judgements, and the ''Enhanced Edition'' added potions of Inflict Wounds to serve as healing potions (which is also the ''only'' thing they can be used for). She's also the absolute best companion to bring along to fight Vordakai, since [[YouCantKillWhatsAlreadyDead the fact she's undead means she's immune to the widespread death effects in that chapter]].
** Tristian. While his romance is generally considered the deepest and best-written out of any of them and he's an ''amazing'' councilor he is also considered one of the mechanically worst party members due to being an Ecclesitheurge. This means he can't use armor or shields, giving him the same pitiful defense as your mages while having none of the damage-mitigating abilities that mages get like Mirror Image, Blur, Displacement or even native Mage Armor. While he is the best healer in the game bar none, has many powerful casting options, and gets some great story powers later on, he is also the most likely party member to ''need'' healing due to his fragility. He does, however, make for an amazing Mystic Theurge when combined with the Empyreal Sorcerer archetype (as both casting stats now run off his gargantuan Wisdom score)... [[MagikarpPower Provided you're willing to back-bench him while he catches up in levels]].

* ValuesDissonance: Siding with the people against the moneyed interests, and granting your realm political liberties and a proto-constitution [[spoiler: leads to a revolt that has to be put down with bloody force rather than ensuring they feel loyal to a government where their voice is heard]].

* AntiClimaxBoss: While his tomb is considered a great dungeon-crawler, Vordakai himself is a disappointing boss. With the staple party buffs, he'll usually go down in a few rounds. The only thing that might give you difficulty is [[spoiler:Tristian teleporting out halfway through the fight, if he was your only healer, and even then Vordakai will still be weakened enough that you should have no trouble cleaning up without Tristian.]]

** Anything with regeneration. Figuring out what kind of damage you need to kill something with Regeneration ranges from fairly standard (most fantasy gamers know a troll's weakness) to obscure (crag linnorms, mentioned in a loading tooltip) to GuideDangIt (the primal shambling mound, which isn't mentioned ''anywhere'' beforehand). Then there's making sure you actually have it available when you need it. Most people eventually just keep something with ability damage or level-draining capabilities available, as both bypass Regeneration's death immunity.

** The Kingdom Management mode can be extremely challenging even on "Easy" if you get a series of bad rolls when resolving events and don't invest almost all of your energy into raising adviser stats.

** Tristian. While his romance is generally considered the deepest and best-written out of any of them and he's an ''amazing'' councilor he is also considered one of the mechanically worst party members due to being an Ecclesitheurge. This means he can't use armor or shields, giving him the same pitiful defense as your mages while having none of the damage-mitigating abilities that mages get like Mirror Image, Blur, Displacement or even native Mage Armor. While he is the best healer in the game bar none and gets some great story powers later on, he is also the most likely party member to ''need'' healing due to his fragility. He does, however, make for an amazing Mystic Theurge when combined with the Empyreal Sorcerer archetype (as both casting stats now run off his gargantuan Wisdom score)... [[MagikarpPower Provided you're willing to back-bench him while he catches up in levels]].

** Gaining the masterpieces from your Artisans is nothing, but one huge GuideDangIt They have to be recruited early, their personal quests solved and your kingdom must reach the highest mark on multiple stats. Adding to this is [[TimedMission the time limit]]. Do their requirements too late and you wont have enough time to receive their masterpieces during later chapters.

* TheScrappy: Darven is by far the most hated character in the game, owing to his status as a OfficialFanSubmittedContent character who reeks of CreatorsPet from the person who created him. The issue largely is due to the game railroading the player into agreeing to help him, despite him being a pirate who constantly lies, and is working with a powerful devil, yet choosing to go against him is treated as the morally wrong thing to do. This is already annoying, but the game fully expects you to like him in spite of this, as the game treats him as a friend of the player, and he is given cool abilities that make him special. The fact he is written and meant to be taken seriously hurts too, since if he was intentionally unlikable, or at least written in a way that was meant to be funny, nobody would really care, but because he is written to be as serious as the rest of the game, he instead is widely disliked for all these factors. Since he only exists because someone donated a huge amount of money to the game, he's looked at negatively for just existing.

* TierInducedScrappy:
** Valerie has very sub-optimal stat allocation for a martial character. Despite being a Fighter, her Strength sits at 14, her Charisma (usually a dump stat for Fighters) at 15, and her Constitution at an unnecessarily high 19. While she would seem to be meant to act as a StoneWall [[note]]Her Constitution score and initial feat selection pretty much prepares her for Stalwart Defender[[/note]], the lack of [[DrawAggro aggro drawing]] mechanics in ''Pathfinder'' makes such a role unreliable. It's almost necessary to multi-class her into something else to make her usable, [[GameplayAndStorySegregation even though doing so may not fit her character]]. Adding to the annoyance, her absolute best multiclassing option -- Kineticist/Kinetic Knight -- [[BribingYourWayToVictory is only available as paid DLC]].
** Jaethal, for one simple fact - she's Undead. Since ReviveKillsZombie in this setting, this means she can't be healed by the party's most dedicated healer. Any healing she receives has to be a single-target Negative Energy spell, which is a fairly major burden when in the middle of a dungeon crawl. Fortunately, she can heal herself if you pick her spells correctly, has access to a HealingFactor through one of her Judgements, and the ''Enhanced Edition'' added potions of Inflict Wounds to serve as healing potions (which is also the ''only'' thing they can be used for). She's also the absolute best companion to bring along to fight Vordakai, since [[YouCantKillWhatsAlreadyDead the fact she's undead means she's immune to the widespread death effects in that chapter]].
** Tristian. While his romance is generally considered the deepest and best-written out of any of them and he's an ''amazing'' councilor he is also considered one of the mechanically worst party members due to being an Ecclesitheurge. This means he can't use armor or shields, giving him the same pitiful defense as your mages while having none of the damage-mitigating abilities that mages get like Mirror Image, Blur, Displacement or even native Mage Armor. While he is the best healer in the game bar none and gets some great story powers later on, he is also the most likely party member to ''need'' healing due to his fragility. He does, however, make for an amazing Mystic Theurge when combined with the Empyreal Sorcerer archetype (as both casting stats now run off his gargantuan Wisdom score)... [[MagikarpPower Provided you're willing to back-bench him while he catches up in levels]].

** Jaethal, for one simple fact - she's Undead. Since ReviveKillsZombie in this setting, this means she can't be healed by the party's most dedicated healer. Any healing she receives has to be a single-target Negative Energy spell, which is a fairly major burden when in the middle of a dungeon crawl. Fortunately, she can heal herself if you pick her spells correctly, has access to a HealingFactor through one of her Judgements, and the ''Enhanced Edition'' added potions of Inflict Wounds to serve as healing potions (which is also the ''only'' thing they can be used for).

* AuthorsSavingThrow: At launch it was impossible to both complete Tristian's RomanceSidequest and get the best ending for Amiri: you had to pick one companion quest or the other to complete first in "The Twice-Born Warlord", sacrificing the other. This was [[ScrappyMechanic so hated]] that Owlcat changed it in a patch.

* TheScrappy:
** Darven is by far the most hated character in the game, owing to his status as a OfficialFanSubmittedContent character. He suffers from being a DesignatedHero because the game tries to make him seem right despite being a liar and a pirate, going against him is treated as the morally wrong thing to do despite by all accounts it being the exact opposite, and the character is so nonsensical in how he is written that he feels out of place in the games story, ranging from having unique powers and abilities, to how he is in a pact with a powerful Devil. The fact he is written and meant to be taken seriously hurts too, since if he was intentionally unlikable, nobody would really care. Instead his character reeks of SelfInsertFic, which considering he only was made because MoneyDearBoy reasons, left many to hate his character.

* DifficultySpike: If you've been breezing through the game, The House at the Edge of Time throws a lot of tanky, powerful enemies at you that would slaughter you without the best min-maxing or lowering the difficulty. To make matters worse, it’s at the tail end of a hundred-plus hour game, and [[FakeDifficulty none of the difficulty is genuine]].

** If hundreds of angry reviews are any indication, many players dislike the Kingdom Management system in general for being a luck-driven shell of a 4X mode, where success has little impact on the campaign's difficulty or plot (until very late into the game), while failure ends the game entirely.

*** Also, many dialogue choices run into MoralDissonance: in one of the craftsman sidequests, there's a legitimate argument to be made that trying to arrest the villain should be a Lawful Good option under the circumstances rather than Lawful Evil, to say nothing of situations like brokering peace between both the mites and kobolds and later [[spoiler:the Aldoris and Surtovas]] requiring a Neutral alignment on at least one axis: Certain conversation options are locked, requiring a specific alignment to select them. Worse, some of those alignment-locked conversations determine whether several important [=NPCs=], even potential advisors, live or die. Want to save [[spoiler: both Jhod and Kesten]] but aren't Lawful? Want to recruit [[spoiler: Vordakai]] but aren't Evil? You're screwed.

** The CharacterAlignment system.[[invoked]]
*** The LawfulGood[[invoked]] alignment for Paladins is ''extremely'' strict. ToBeLawfulOrGood needs to be done in equal measure, otherwise they can fall by picking "Good" too many times since, unlike the tabletop version of the game, the AI keeps meticulous track of what options you've taken, while most GM's would show leniency. Thankfully, later on Owlcat decided to implement buyable-if-expensive Scrolls of Atonement so any alignment-restricted class that fell out of their alignment can get their powers back, and during the ''Wrath of the Righteous'' Kickstarter, the Owlcat leads admitted this wasn't handled especially well and that in ''Wrath'', a lot of morality options will be single-axis to prevent Paladins from having to be LawfulStupid to maintain their alignment without intervention (although the nature of the alignment chart in ''Wrath'' resulted in the problem recurring anyway).
*** Also, many dialogue choices run into MoralDissonance: in one of the craftsman sidequests, there's a legitimate argument to be made that trying to arrest the villain should be a LawfulGood[[invoked]] option under the circumstances rather than LawfulEvil, to say nothing of situations like brokering peace between both the mites and kobolds and later [[spoiler:the Aldoris and Surtovas]] requiring a Neutral alignment on at least one axis: Certain conversation options are locked, requiring a specific alignment to select them. Worse, some of those alignment-locked conversations determine whether several important [=NPCs=], even potential advisors, live or die. Want to save [[spoiler: both Jhod and Kesten]] but aren't Lawful? Want to recruit [[spoiler: Vordakai]] but aren't Evil? You're screwed.

* FoeYay: It's quite obvious that Jaethal and Tristian [[TeethClenchedTeamwork cannot stand each other]]. And yet, Jaethal can say quite a lot of lines to or about Tristian that are rather suggestive. For one she makes more than one comment on how beautiful he is. At one point she tells the player that she would be delighted to "redeem" him with her faith (her faith being the worship of a hedonistic undead goddess). She'll even ''stroke his hair'' if [[spoiler: [[CradlingYourKill he dies by her hand]] at the House at the Edge of Time]].

* DifficultySpike: If you've been breezing through the game, The House at the Edge of Time throws a lot of tanky, powerful enemies at you that would slaughter you without the best min-maxing or lowering the difficulty. To make matters worse, it’s at the tail end of a hundreds-plus hour game, and [[FakeDifficulty none of the difficulty is genuine]].

* DifficultySpike: If you've been breezing through the game, The House at the Edge of Time throws a lot of tanky, powerful enemies at you that would slaughter you without the best min-maxing or lowering the difficulty.