Pathfinder: Kingmaker has some nice portraits, I just wish there were more

If you make your own character in Pathfinder: Kingmaker it's a long process, with tons of class varieties to choose from as well as the nitty-gritty of feats and skill points to get into. But the hardest part for me is selecting a portrait.

This is the face that's going to represent you for the next 50 to 100 hours. They need to fit both the personality you're imagining, the race/class combo you've chosen, and ideally not be holding totally the wrong kind of weapon. If they manage not to look like one of those "cosplayer pulling a weird face" portraits from Baldur's Gate that's even better.

Kingmaker's characters are a decent bunch, with plenty of personality. Some of them make me want to roll up a new character just to play them. It's a shame there aren't more.

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Fortunately, you can add your own custom portraits. Here's a mod that gives you over 90 of them. There's also a thread for them on the Owlcat Games forum.

Kingmaker also has some great quest illustrations, drawn in a sketchbook style that makes them look like they came from an RPG supplement or a choose-your-own-adventure book. In-game they're the work of Linzi, the halfling bard who keeps your journal for you so you don't have to write it yourself, which is a nice conceit. (I know, Dandelion in The Witcher did it first.) She's certainly got the look of those toothy Pathfinder goblins down pat.

Finally, there are the monsters. The world of Golarion is inhabited by most of the textbook D&D monsters, but as you can see from the concept art there's been some effort put into making them look evocative. That's especially true of giant subtypes like the three-armed demon-giant crossbreed called the athach, but even the basic owlbear's a winged beast on all fours that looks much less goofy than the standard model.

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This art's the work of Valeriy Vegera, Akim Kaliberda, Vyacheslav Safronov, and Sergey Gurskiy, all of whom can be found on Artstation.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.