Also based on the beta stuff how are timers in the new game?
Like are there parts of this one that are timer free where you can just take your time and do whatever?
Or is there a perpetual timer like Kingmaker?
And speaking of Kingmaker I may actually give it a whirl now that I've looked into it more. The timer stuff still turns me off but I guess messing with the difficulty can make it better.
So if I were to play a 4 person party that isn't totally min-maxed and wanted to not have to be too concerned about the timers do you think easy would be enough or would it be better to drop all the way down to story?
Also based on the beta stuff how are timers in the new game?
Like are there parts of this one that are timer free where you can just take your time and do whatever?
Or is there a perpetual timer like Kingmaker?
The beta's not done enough to know for sure. So far, act 1 is similar to KM act 1 where if you don't get certain things done by a certain date in the game calendar, then some outcomes change. I haven't seen anything like the "Season of Bloom" yearly events, though.
And speaking of Kingmaker I may actually give it a whirl now that I've looked into it more. The timer stuff still turns me off but I guess messing with the difficulty can make it better.
So if I were to play a 4 person party that isn't totally min-maxed and wanted to not have to be too concerned about the timers do you think easy would be enough or would it be better to drop all the way down to story?
It's certainly doable. The combat/gameplay settings have some pretty fine-grained controls. I think for a four-person party, I would consider reducing the number of enemies while leaving the other settings at the level I prefer for challenging combat.
Also based on the beta stuff how are timers in the new game?
Like are there parts of this one that are timer free where you can just take your time and do whatever?
Or is there a perpetual timer like Kingmaker?
The beta's not done enough to know for sure. So far, act 1 is similar to KM act 1 where if you don't get certain things done by a certain date in the game calendar, then some outcomes change. I haven't seen anything like the "Season of Bloom" yearly events, though.
And speaking of Kingmaker I may actually give it a whirl now that I've looked into it more. The timer stuff still turns me off but I guess messing with the difficulty can make it better.
So if I were to play a 4 person party that isn't totally min-maxed and wanted to not have to be too concerned about the timers do you think easy would be enough or would it be better to drop all the way down to story?
It's certainly doable. The combat/gameplay settings have some pretty fine-grained controls. I think for a four-person party, I would consider reducing the number of enemies while leaving the other settings at the level I prefer for challenging combat.
Well that spoiler just sells it even more!!!
And thanks for the answers! Good to know I can adjust it on a lot of levels.
Seems like the female mongrel romance was purpose made for Swarm that Walks.
Also I’m indifferent to romances from the writers so far as the only available women options in kingmaker ranged from annoying to people I would be outright hostile to . The clear exceptions were the twins as they both had a personality instead of a gimmick repeated in every conversation for 89 hours . The twins also just seemed pleasant to be around which is weird because Kanerah is lawful evil , never seemed all that evil to me.
Seems like the female mongrel romance was purpose made for Swarm that Walks.
Also I’m indifferent to romances from the writers so far as the only available women options in kingmaker ranged from annoying to people I would be outright hostile to . The clear exceptions were the twins as they both had a personality instead of a gimmick repeated in every conversation for 89 hours . The twins also just seemed pleasant to be around which is weird because Kanerah is lawful evil , never seemed all that evil to me.
If you appoint Kanerah as your treasurer, you'll discover that she's...
...got some problematic ideas about economics and taxation. She's kind of a weird mix of ideologies: an ultra-royalist who's sometimes a hyper-capitalist and sometimes a mercantilist.
Regardless, money seems to be the root of her evil.
Seems like the female mongrel romance was purpose made for Swarm that Walks.
Also I’m indifferent to romances from the writers so far as the only available women options in kingmaker ranged from annoying to people I would be outright hostile to . The clear exceptions were the twins as they both had a personality instead of a gimmick repeated in every conversation for 89 hours . The twins also just seemed pleasant to be around which is weird because Kanerah is lawful evil , never seemed all that evil to me.
If you appoint Kanerah as your treasurer, you'll discover that she's...
...got some problematic ideas about economics and taxation. She's kind of a weird mix of ideologies: an ultra-royalist who's sometimes a hyper-capitalist and sometimes a mercantilist.
Regardless, money seems to be the root of her evil.
So Jubilost also has a lot of the same views in regards to taxation . The event where people are being beaten for taxes by some abadar worshiping order and he advises you to denounce them publicly but to support the tax collectors behind close doors and have them move to doing the collection at night. Haven’t tried Varhn as a treasurer yet. Maybe next run?
Seems like the female mongrel romance was purpose made for Swarm that Walks.
Also I’m indifferent to romances from the writers so far as the only available women options in kingmaker ranged from annoying to people I would be outright hostile to . The clear exceptions were the twins as they both had a personality instead of a gimmick repeated in every conversation for 89 hours . The twins also just seemed pleasant to be around which is weird because Kanerah is lawful evil , never seemed all that evil to me.
If you appoint Kanerah as your treasurer, you'll discover that she's...
...got some problematic ideas about economics and taxation. She's kind of a weird mix of ideologies: an ultra-royalist who's sometimes a hyper-capitalist and sometimes a mercantilist.
Regardless, money seems to be the root of her evil.
So Jubilost also has a lot of the same views in regards to taxation . The event where people are being beaten for taxes by some abadar worshiping order and he advises you to denounce them publicly but to support the tax collectors behind close doors and have them move to doing the collection at night. Haven’t tried Varhn as a treasurer yet. Maybe next run?
Yeah, Jubi is kind of a jerk. I've used Varn as Treasurer before, and I recall that he was pretty humane.
Seems like the female mongrel romance was purpose made for Swarm that Walks.
Also I’m indifferent to romances from the writers so far as the only available women options in kingmaker ranged from annoying to people I would be outright hostile to . The clear exceptions were the twins as they both had a personality instead of a gimmick repeated in every conversation for 89 hours . The twins also just seemed pleasant to be around which is weird because Kanerah is lawful evil , never seemed all that evil to me.
Kanerah is the kind of Lawful Evil that has a close circle of friends/allies that they are loyal to, but would do horrible things to anyone else if it advanced her goals without a second thought.
Basically, she's Liam Nesson from Taken, but you're a valuable ally/possible lover so you mostly only see the side that would share a beer at a BBQ rather than torture a guy for information before leaving them to be electrocuted.
I played the first three acts in the current beta, and it's rough in places, but it's really good. If the rest of the game matches the fun of what I've played so far and they polish things up in time for launch, WotR is going to be one of the great isometric RPGs of all time.
I never played Kingmaker at release; wasn't until like 2 of the DLCs were already out. But it was a bit of a mess at launch right?
So definitely a good idea to polish up and not have a repeat. Would really like to play this in Sept and not have it "come out" but not really able to play until 2022.
I never played Kingmaker at release; wasn't until like 2 of the DLCs were already out. But it was a bit of a mess at launch right?
So definitely a good idea to polish up and not have a repeat. Would really like to play this in Sept and not have it "come out" but not really able to play until 2022.
When I was looking up class guides when I started I saw page after page of bug complaints so yeah it was apparently a huge issue.
I'm actually feeling really cautious about Wrath of the Righteous, so I'm fully on board the developers taking as long as they need to get it right. Kingmaker was like 90% of an extremely good game but that last 10% hurt it hard; if the sequel is a more streamlined experience it could be something really special.
I'm actually feeling really cautious about Wrath of the Righteous, so I'm fully on board the developers taking as long as they need to get it right. Kingmaker was like 90% of an extremely good game but that last 10% hurt it hard; if the sequel is a more streamlined experience it could be something really special.
I’m at least confident that WotR won’t be a complete dumpster fire at launch. The first beta lacked polish and definitely had some bugs, but nothing like the sort of “corrupts your saves/prevents you from completing quests” sort of issues that Kingmaker had at its launch.
I’ve played the latest, second beta for about half an hour. It has some really good UI improvements and a few graphical improvements vs. the first beta along with some cosmetic bugs.
I never really got much further than the middle of act 2 of Kingmaker for mostly the same reason I keep bouncing off of Persona 5: the omni-present countdown timer just gives me way too much decision paralysis. The slew of permanently missable locations if you keep failing enough perception checks on the map as well as the easily ruin-able companion questlines didn't help much either.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I never really got much further than the middle of act 2 of Kingmaker for mostly the same reason I keep bouncing off of Persona 5: the omni-present countdown timer just gives me way too much decision paralysis. The slew of permanently missable locations if you keep failing enough perception checks on the map as well as the easily ruin-able companion questlines didn't help much either.
The two things to know about Kingmakers timer is that
1) The timers work in spans of months and years. Exploring and questing works on days, so you don't really have to worry about that. It's the kingdom management that actually eats up the timer.
2) After you finish each main quest, the remaining time on the timer just becomes free time. You can immediately do them as soon as they show up without worrying about losing that time.
2) After you finish each main quest, the remaining time on the timer just becomes free time. You can immediately do them as soon as they show up without worrying about losing that time.
Except finishing main quests just starts new timers.
2) After you finish each main quest, the remaining time on the timer just becomes free time. You can immediately do them as soon as they show up without worrying about losing that time.
Except finishing main quests just starts new timers.
No it doesn’t. The next main quest will start at the designated time no matter what you do.
2) After you finish each main quest, the remaining time on the timer just becomes free time. You can immediately do them as soon as they show up without worrying about losing that time.
Except finishing main quests just starts new timers.
No it doesn’t. The next main quest will start at the designated time no matter what you do.
Then it really doesn't give you enough time to build up your kingdom at all, which is its own serious problem. By act four or five I there was no possible way for my advisors to meet the DCs they were asking for. I thought I just sped through the earlier chapters and didn't loiter doing kingdom management along the way, but it turns out the game just punishes you for doing anything other than leveling your councilors.
2) After you finish each main quest, the remaining time on the timer just becomes free time. You can immediately do them as soon as they show up without worrying about losing that time.
Except finishing main quests just starts new timers.
No it doesn’t. The next main quest will start at the designated time no matter what you do.
Then it really doesn't give you enough time to build up your kingdom at all, which is its own serious problem. By act four or five I there was no possible way for my advisors to meet the DCs they were asking for. I thought I just sped through the earlier chapters and didn't loiter doing kingdom management along the way, but it turns out the game just punishes you for doing anything other than leveling your councilors.
That's more a product of Kingmaker being a poorly balanced game that doesn't explain it's mechanics rather than with the timer. There's plenty of time to do everything. The game is just designed for those DCs to be tight on the default difficulty.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
I never really got much further than the middle of act 2 of Kingmaker for mostly the same reason I keep bouncing off of Persona 5: the omni-present countdown timer just gives me way too much decision paralysis. The slew of permanently missable locations if you keep failing enough perception checks on the map as well as the easily ruin-able companion questlines didn't help much either.
At least in Persona the time only ever moves when you choose it to.
I shoulda known how much this would affect my enjoyment of the game but I started it the other day. And man, it's just like every aspect about one of these games I'd normally enjoy gets detracted from because I know I have a limit. I have this big old map where just moving between places and exploring would be awesome but that just takes time and since it's all just blind exploration(which would normally be fun) it's so hard to even decide to go too far off the path.
I get that's a me thing but man... I just can't even get too into the story because as soon as I'm in control I feel like I'm just focused on hitting objectives instead of just getting immersed in it and trying to get as much lore as I can.
You have more then enough time to do everything just wandering around , there huge multi month “downtime” where you are waiting for the next story beat and can explore or build up your capitol etc. just think of the stuff you don’t find as things that add replay value.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
The biggest issue is how little is explained with kingdom development.
Also locking the Aviary behind the Wildcards DLC was such a bad move. The building solves a huge problem with kingdom development and absolutely needed to be in the base game.
There was a point somewhere around Act 5-6 (pre-Pitax, I think) where I had like a full year's worth of time to blow through with development projects.
I don't particularly like the way they went about the city-building in Kingmaker but, as someone who typically abhors time limits myself, I didn't find it much of an issue.
It also doesn't help that KM was balanced around the assumption that people would break the game over their knee, so anyone who doesn't do that can get quickly left behind unless you play on near minimum difficulty.
I never really got much further than the middle of act 2 of Kingmaker for mostly the same reason I keep bouncing off of Persona 5: the omni-present countdown timer just gives me way too much decision paralysis. The slew of permanently missable locations if you keep failing enough perception checks on the map as well as the easily ruin-able companion questlines didn't help much either.
At least in Persona the time only ever moves when you choose it to.
I shoulda known how much this would affect my enjoyment of the game but I started it the other day. And man, it's just like every aspect about one of these games I'd normally enjoy gets detracted from because I know I have a limit. I have this big old map where just moving between places and exploring would be awesome but that just takes time and since it's all just blind exploration(which would normally be fun) it's so hard to even decide to go too far off the path.
I get that's a me thing but man... I just can't even get too into the story because as soon as I'm in control I feel like I'm just focused on hitting objectives instead of just getting immersed in it and trying to get as much lore as I can.
There's a few different time limits, but the one that seems to stress everyone out (including me, before I understood how it worked) is the timer for the "An Ancient Curse" quest. The Fandom wiki has a pretty good overview of it that contains spoilers. Non-spoiler TL;DR: its basic mechanics are...
1. The first step of the "An Ancient Curse" quest starts in Chapter 2. There's one step for every following chapter, too (I think). At the start of each step, a timer that counts down to when something bad will happen to your barony starts.
2. The quest warns you when there's two weeks to go before the badness happens.
3. The warning is a bit misleading: the two week mark is when bad shit (but not the ultimate badness) starts. You'll need to assign advisors to deal with negative barony events ASAP at the two week mark.
4. The two week mark is also the earliest you can take your party to the special map location in order to stop both the negative barony events that just started as well as the ultimate badness coming in two weeks.
5. Some time after you stop the badness, the story for the chapter commences. This isn't necessarily an immediate transition, but there is one step for "An Ancient Curse" per story chapter.
6. You have between the time that you stop the badness for the current step of "An Ancient Curse" and the calendar start date for the next step to do the chapter content and whatever else you feel like doing. For most chapters (maybe all of them, after the second) this is a really long time and you'll run out of everything to do except kingdom management well before the next step of "An Ancient Curse".
So basically, for each step of an "An Ancient Curse", just do what you want to do until the two week warning (most/all steps will show days remaining well in advance of the two week warning, so you'll always have an idea of how much time you have left when the countdown is in progress), assign advisors to handle the negative events (there are three at most, to start with) and then hustle to where the quest tells you to go and do what you need to do. After that, you'll have lots of time to play the story and explore the map. Really, it's kind of only possible to run out of time to do two things before the end of story (minor spoilers):
1. Completely level up your Kingdom/Advisors to 10. This is because leveling up an advisor is a two-week barony event that requires Baroness to participate, which is two weeks your Baroness can't be questing. There's no penalty or effect on the main story for not leveling up all the way. The worst that happens is that Kingdom events get harder to complete as the game progresses and there's some minor throne room story moments you'll miss out on.
2. Finish all the Curse research projects: these take an absurdly long time. There are 15 curses and you need to research 13 of them for a secret ending:
romancing Nyrissa
.
Also, as -Loki- mentioned, there are some buildings that make Kingdom time management easier:
1. The Aviary, which lets you deal with Kingdom events when you're not in your capital.
2. Teleportation Circles/Mage Towers, which let you teleport between your Barony's towns.
So, always build those in all your towns, and try to space your towns out across the map.
Finally, if you just don't want be stressed at all with Kingdom events, you can use the Kingdom Resolution mod. It works great. My last playthrough, I used it to reduce the resource cost of event resolution and the time required to complete level-up projects. That was enough that I never failed any events, was able to research everything, and completely leveled up all my advisors.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
It also doesn't help that KM was balanced around the assumption that people would break the game over their knee, so anyone who doesn't do that can get quickly left behind unless you play on near minimum difficulty.
Eh, I’ve been playing it on Normal without too many problems, and this game is my only experience with Pathfinder. It’s biggest hurdle is getting players into the habit of pre-buffing. If you know what Communal Delay Poison, Communal Resist Energy and Death Ward do, and know to use things like Bless and Heroism before fights, you’ll get through Normal without needing to make broken good characters.
And to me, that’s how it should be. Normal should be doable with understanding of the mechanics but not to the point of knowing all of the ways everything interacts to make min-maxed absurd characters. That’s what harder difficulties are there for.
The RPG side of the games biggest issue is you won’t get through without save scumming. You just don’t know when you need to put up Delay Poison, Resist Energy or Death Ward until you get hit with something that is hard countered by them, and then you really do need to reload.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
You have more then enough time to do everything just wandering around , there huge multi month “downtime” where you are waiting for the next story beat and can explore or build up your capitol etc. just think of the stuff you don’t find as things that add replay value.
Well I don't replay games so that doesn't do anything for me.
But it's good to know that maybe I don't need to be concerned. But then again It's still a bit of a question mark because people play games very very differently and I've seen plenty of stories of people needing to restart the game over not being set up enough for where they are and such and also you can ask two people how long it took them to do everything in a game and can get such drastically different times that it's hard to really know.
You have more then enough time to do everything just wandering around , there huge multi month “downtime” where you are waiting for the next story beat and can explore or build up your capitol etc. just think of the stuff you don’t find as things that add replay value.
Well I don't replay games so that doesn't do anything for me.
But it's good to know that maybe I don't need to be concerned. But then again It's still a bit of a question mark because people play games very very differently and I've seen plenty of stories of people needing to restart the game over not being set up enough for where they are and such and also you can ask two people how long it took them to do everything in a game and can get such drastically different times that it's hard to really know.
Also, a hundred and fifty hour RPG with significantly difficult combat is not the kind of thing you replay easily.
But yeah, I don't think I'd agree that you're really swimming in time. I mean, I had time. But I also cheated so I couldn't actually fail any kingdom building rolls by like mid chapter 3, because otherwise I was regularly rolling 30% chances on events that blocked an advisor for multiple weeks, so I had time because I always got events done in the first go.
It also doesn't help that KM was balanced around the assumption that people would break the game over their knee, so anyone who doesn't do that can get quickly left behind unless you play on near minimum difficulty.
Eh, I’ve been playing it on Normal without too many problems, and this game is my only experience with Pathfinder. It’s biggest hurdle is getting players into the habit of pre-buffing. If you know what Communal Delay Poison, Communal Resist Energy and Death Ward do, and know to use things like Bless and Heroism before fights, you’ll get through Normal without needing to make broken good characters.
And to me, that’s how it should be. Normal should be doable with understanding of the mechanics but not to the point of knowing all of the ways everything interacts to make min-maxed absurd characters. That’s what harder difficulties are there for.
The RPG side of the games biggest issue is you won’t get through without save scumming. You just don’t know when you need to put up Delay Poison, Resist Energy or Death Ward until you get hit with something that is hard countered by them, and then you really do need to reload.
I mean, I think this says a lot about Kingmaker's balance; in most similar RPGs, if you prebuff and bring abilities that specifically counter enemies then you'll smash through their difficult difficulty. In Kingmaker you've got to do that just to be able to survive.
Maybe my memory is hazy but my experience with Kingmaker was absolutely that it is noticeably more difficult than its peers.
Prebuffing is not fun! It's bad game design! This is something Kingmaker convinced me of. All that stuff should just be passives or auras. Short-term high-intensity buffs are fine, but the hours and daylong stuff should just be automatic. Part of the reason I'm enjoying Pillars of Eternity 2 so much right now.
Prebuffing to that extent is bad but I don’t think it’s a bad concept . It’s when every 10 minutes you have to cast delay poison communal , barkskin , mirror image , blur , holy aura , divine shield , enlarge person , reduce person , legendary proportions , stone form plus whatever individual buffs and potions that it gets tedious . I honestly buff kill as much as possible on that floor and then go back to each room looking for treasure or story . Then I camp go to the next floor and do it again.
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Why hello Camellia.
Also based on the beta stuff how are timers in the new game?
Like are there parts of this one that are timer free where you can just take your time and do whatever?
Or is there a perpetual timer like Kingmaker?
And speaking of Kingmaker I may actually give it a whirl now that I've looked into it more. The timer stuff still turns me off but I guess messing with the difficulty can make it better.
So if I were to play a 4 person party that isn't totally min-maxed and wanted to not have to be too concerned about the timers do you think easy would be enough or would it be better to drop all the way down to story?
It's certainly doable. The combat/gameplay settings have some pretty fine-grained controls. I think for a four-person party, I would consider reducing the number of enemies while leaving the other settings at the level I prefer for challenging combat.
Well that spoiler just sells it even more!!!
And thanks for the answers! Good to know I can adjust it on a lot of levels.
I am glad that sounds awesome because KM has some of my favorite video game music in recent memory.
Also I’m indifferent to romances from the writers so far as the only available women options in kingmaker ranged from annoying to people I would be outright hostile to . The clear exceptions were the twins as they both had a personality instead of a gimmick repeated in every conversation for 89 hours . The twins also just seemed pleasant to be around which is weird because Kanerah is lawful evil , never seemed all that evil to me.
This—this looks really cool so far.
If you appoint Kanerah as your treasurer, you'll discover that she's...
Regardless, money seems to be the root of her evil.
So Jubilost also has a lot of the same views in regards to taxation . The event where people are being beaten for taxes by some abadar worshiping order and he advises you to denounce them publicly but to support the tax collectors behind close doors and have them move to doing the collection at night. Haven’t tried Varhn as a treasurer yet. Maybe next run?
Yeah, Jubi is kind of a jerk. I've used Varn as Treasurer before, and I recall that he was pretty humane.
Kanerah is the kind of Lawful Evil that has a close circle of friends/allies that they are loyal to, but would do horrible things to anyone else if it advanced her goals without a second thought.
Basically, she's Liam Nesson from Taken, but you're a valuable ally/possible lover so you mostly only see the side that would share a beer at a BBQ rather than torture a guy for information before leaving them to be electrocuted.
I don't love April Fools' Day stuff, but the artwork for this one is fun.
I played the first three acts in the current beta, and it's rough in places, but it's really good. If the rest of the game matches the fun of what I've played so far and they polish things up in time for launch, WotR is going to be one of the great isometric RPGs of all time.
To which I say: fuck yeah, Owlcat. Take all the time you need to work out bugs & issues, and add polish. We're happy to wait for a high quality game.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
So definitely a good idea to polish up and not have a repeat. Would really like to play this in Sept and not have it "come out" but not really able to play until 2022.
When I was looking up class guides when I started I saw page after page of bug complaints so yeah it was apparently a huge issue.
I’m at least confident that WotR won’t be a complete dumpster fire at launch. The first beta lacked polish and definitely had some bugs, but nothing like the sort of “corrupts your saves/prevents you from completing quests” sort of issues that Kingmaker had at its launch.
I’ve played the latest, second beta for about half an hour. It has some really good UI improvements and a few graphical improvements vs. the first beta along with some cosmetic bugs.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
The two things to know about Kingmakers timer is that
1) The timers work in spans of months and years. Exploring and questing works on days, so you don't really have to worry about that. It's the kingdom management that actually eats up the timer.
2) After you finish each main quest, the remaining time on the timer just becomes free time. You can immediately do them as soon as they show up without worrying about losing that time.
Except finishing main quests just starts new timers.
No it doesn’t. The next main quest will start at the designated time no matter what you do.
Then it really doesn't give you enough time to build up your kingdom at all, which is its own serious problem. By act four or five I there was no possible way for my advisors to meet the DCs they were asking for. I thought I just sped through the earlier chapters and didn't loiter doing kingdom management along the way, but it turns out the game just punishes you for doing anything other than leveling your councilors.
That's more a product of Kingmaker being a poorly balanced game that doesn't explain it's mechanics rather than with the timer. There's plenty of time to do everything. The game is just designed for those DCs to be tight on the default difficulty.
At least in Persona the time only ever moves when you choose it to.
I shoulda known how much this would affect my enjoyment of the game but I started it the other day. And man, it's just like every aspect about one of these games I'd normally enjoy gets detracted from because I know I have a limit. I have this big old map where just moving between places and exploring would be awesome but that just takes time and since it's all just blind exploration(which would normally be fun) it's so hard to even decide to go too far off the path.
I get that's a me thing but man... I just can't even get too into the story because as soon as I'm in control I feel like I'm just focused on hitting objectives instead of just getting immersed in it and trying to get as much lore as I can.
Also locking the Aviary behind the Wildcards DLC was such a bad move. The building solves a huge problem with kingdom development and absolutely needed to be in the base game.
I don't particularly like the way they went about the city-building in Kingmaker but, as someone who typically abhors time limits myself, I didn't find it much of an issue.
There's a few different time limits, but the one that seems to stress everyone out (including me, before I understood how it worked) is the timer for the "An Ancient Curse" quest. The Fandom wiki has a pretty good overview of it that contains spoilers. Non-spoiler TL;DR: its basic mechanics are...
1. The first step of the "An Ancient Curse" quest starts in Chapter 2. There's one step for every following chapter, too (I think). At the start of each step, a timer that counts down to when something bad will happen to your barony starts.
2. The quest warns you when there's two weeks to go before the badness happens.
3. The warning is a bit misleading: the two week mark is when bad shit (but not the ultimate badness) starts. You'll need to assign advisors to deal with negative barony events ASAP at the two week mark.
4. The two week mark is also the earliest you can take your party to the special map location in order to stop both the negative barony events that just started as well as the ultimate badness coming in two weeks.
5. Some time after you stop the badness, the story for the chapter commences. This isn't necessarily an immediate transition, but there is one step for "An Ancient Curse" per story chapter.
6. You have between the time that you stop the badness for the current step of "An Ancient Curse" and the calendar start date for the next step to do the chapter content and whatever else you feel like doing. For most chapters (maybe all of them, after the second) this is a really long time and you'll run out of everything to do except kingdom management well before the next step of "An Ancient Curse".
So basically, for each step of an "An Ancient Curse", just do what you want to do until the two week warning (most/all steps will show days remaining well in advance of the two week warning, so you'll always have an idea of how much time you have left when the countdown is in progress), assign advisors to handle the negative events (there are three at most, to start with) and then hustle to where the quest tells you to go and do what you need to do. After that, you'll have lots of time to play the story and explore the map. Really, it's kind of only possible to run out of time to do two things before the end of story (minor spoilers):
2. Finish all the Curse research projects: these take an absurdly long time. There are 15 curses and you need to research 13 of them for a secret ending:
Also, as -Loki- mentioned, there are some buildings that make Kingdom time management easier:
2. Teleportation Circles/Mage Towers, which let you teleport between your Barony's towns.
So, always build those in all your towns, and try to space your towns out across the map.
Finally, if you just don't want be stressed at all with Kingdom events, you can use the Kingdom Resolution mod. It works great. My last playthrough, I used it to reduce the resource cost of event resolution and the time required to complete level-up projects. That was enough that I never failed any events, was able to research everything, and completely leveled up all my advisors.
Eh, I’ve been playing it on Normal without too many problems, and this game is my only experience with Pathfinder. It’s biggest hurdle is getting players into the habit of pre-buffing. If you know what Communal Delay Poison, Communal Resist Energy and Death Ward do, and know to use things like Bless and Heroism before fights, you’ll get through Normal without needing to make broken good characters.
And to me, that’s how it should be. Normal should be doable with understanding of the mechanics but not to the point of knowing all of the ways everything interacts to make min-maxed absurd characters. That’s what harder difficulties are there for.
The RPG side of the games biggest issue is you won’t get through without save scumming. You just don’t know when you need to put up Delay Poison, Resist Energy or Death Ward until you get hit with something that is hard countered by them, and then you really do need to reload.
Well I don't replay games so that doesn't do anything for me.
But it's good to know that maybe I don't need to be concerned. But then again It's still a bit of a question mark because people play games very very differently and I've seen plenty of stories of people needing to restart the game over not being set up enough for where they are and such and also you can ask two people how long it took them to do everything in a game and can get such drastically different times that it's hard to really know.
Also, a hundred and fifty hour RPG with significantly difficult combat is not the kind of thing you replay easily.
But yeah, I don't think I'd agree that you're really swimming in time. I mean, I had time. But I also cheated so I couldn't actually fail any kingdom building rolls by like mid chapter 3, because otherwise I was regularly rolling 30% chances on events that blocked an advisor for multiple weeks, so I had time because I always got events done in the first go.
I mean, I think this says a lot about Kingmaker's balance; in most similar RPGs, if you prebuff and bring abilities that specifically counter enemies then you'll smash through their difficult difficulty. In Kingmaker you've got to do that just to be able to survive.
Maybe my memory is hazy but my experience with Kingmaker was absolutely that it is noticeably more difficult than its peers.