Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

This game starts off what appears to be a fairly standard CRPG using 3.5E rules. After playing a few hours into Chapter 1, it gives off a vibe that this might be the next best thing to Baldurs Gate. It culminates into a decent blend of exploration, tactical turn based (or real time with pause) combat with some decent RP choices based on alignment, and a fairly decent, if shallow, cast of characters. Then once you finish up Chapter 1, the game goes to hell. Chapter 2, you're introduced to a core mechanic that pretty much makes the game unplayable to me: Kingdom Management. Welcome to a sub-game that has you managing a Barony, complete with RNG events that can basically cause your game to go into a fail state. Choose wisely, and get ready to save scum like you've never save scummed before! Remember that once choice you made 3 hours ago, with an 80% chance of success? Well now it happened while you were out adventuring, but it failed! Now your Kingdom is losing stats! Remember that one event you thought seemed logical to pursue? Now there are Trolls rampaging through your barony and your advisors are all tied up! Better cancel those projects and take a loss, you need your Advisors to put out these literal fires that are breaking your Kingdom. Why weren't you smart enough to know this was going to happen? There are too many random variables and events that pop up during this mode that can end in disaster, making the need to make dozens of hard save states at any given point a necessity. I had to start Chapter 2 over twice because I made choices or chose to pursue things that were "wrong" and came back to bite me later, causing my Barony to go into a decline. There are hard and soft time limits on your adventuring and this is a way to keep a fire lit under your behind, but it all looks good on paper, but in practice it makes for a frustrating and ultimately disappointing gaming experience reliant too much on RNG fail states.

After many hours (I can't game like I used to- adulting) I finally just finished the game. To be clear, I bought this on a whim and know nothing about the tabletop game. I'm the kind of guy who is all about the narrative in all things- I can play a game with terrible graphics with a great story but I can't play a beautiful game with a crap story. I also don't write a review unless I feel strongly about the product- good or bad. I can tell you I bought this at full price and I don't regret a penny spent. If you're one to immerse yourself in a game this story is right for you. I've read a couple reviews with complaints about originality, but let's be honest- all creative types get their motivation from somewhere. Yes, there are a couple cliches here, but far from being a problem, in my eyes they are worked perfectly into the story. You get comfortable with some familiarity and then the originality strikes. It all melds together into a strong story that is well worth your time. Yes, there are some issues, but at this point, you're going to have a great experience. The studio may not be Blizzard-large, but they listen to the community and anything that might be game breaking have been taken care of. You'll have your hardcore complainers who want only diamonds no matter what, but don't listen to them - you can get through it and you'll enjoy it. Bottom line, I fully recommend this game to anyone who likes the genre. Great storylines, realistic interactions, deep emotion and strong narrative await your purchase.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is in many ways an admirable attempt at a Baldur's Gate-style game for the Pathfinder RPG system, and at first glance it appears to be competently put together. The reason I give this such a bad score is varied, but it's mainly a case of horrible balance. At "normal" difficulty the game is so hard you might as well be playing with a Game Master who uses loaded dice. One of the earliest quests, for example, has swarms. Swarms are immune to normal weapon damage and automatically hit, and are also typically poisonous. The game does provide you with anti-swarm weapons, but these deal area damage and are likely to hit your own party. With how deadly and numerous enemies are, it's like the game expects you to rest after every encounter. The issues only become more apparent towards the late game, where enemies have insanely high saving throws and spell resistance, to the point that some fights are simply a matter of chance. For example, an enemy might have an aura that paralyzes your entire party unless they make a very difficult saving throw, but not just once, oh no, it happens *every round.* The final dungeon is the epitome of this, and also kills some of your party members if you haven't completed their side-quests. It doesn't warn you that this will happen. The game also loves to waste your time. Several quests require you to wait a set amount of time, but in some cases they are lying to you and actually require you to do certain things to progress. Oh, and they're main quests that you must do within a time limit or lose the game. The kingdom management is also terrible. You assign advisors to tasks and hope they roll high. Advisors can only work on one task at a time, most of which take two or more weeks, and you don't have access to all your advisors off the bat either. You can rank them up to make them better, but this not only takes their time, but *yours* too. My advice: mod the game *heavily* and don't bother with the final dungeon.

I'll try to make this short :). While this game had big issues according to difficulty with certain early fights, I did not encounter them at all, because they made the quests easier - in regards of information given by the NPC, items given to help you actually survive the encounter and tips. If you are a fan of the oldschool type of RPGs, where character creation and planning is a challenge itself and you want that rewarding feel of getting a level up and feeling stronger, then this is for you. While some bosses have insane dmg output, there are always ways of dealing with them. For example: !!SMALL SPOILER!!: If you fight the Stag Lord doing a frontal attack w/o checking other possibilites inside the camp, you gonna have a very hard time and most likely die a lot. SPOILER END I did not encounter any bugs, aside from some tooltip errors, where my spell has a reflex save and 2 sentences later it's a fortitude save all of a sudden. Second thing I dislike is, that we do not see the stats different weapons are using. (ATK mod, DMG mod), while veteran DnD players will know them anyway, some of my friends do not. And I'm not sure, if there are weapons out there, using some uncommon modifier like CHA or CON like in some DnD games. Why am I writing this review? Because I think this game deserves more good feedback. If you are unsure, wait for a few patches. After that you can enjoy entertaining companions, interesting quests and landscapes, almost a very good story (looking at you, time limit) and actually leveling up taking longer than getting the XP bar full :D. Cheers

Pathfinder: Kingmaker has almost everything that I've wanted in a cRPG lately. Top down isometric views, full customization of your player character, and a moderate customization of your NPC party, an almost full spell book utilizing both divine and arcane spell trees, combat and spell feats for you to select while leveling up. If you've played Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, the views of Pathfinder: Kingmaker are similar. Of course as expected Pathfinder: Kingmaker's art style is not the same as such Infinity Engine games of the 90s, but it comes close. If you enjoyed the spells and feat selections of games such as Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2, then you'll also find pleasure in Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Pathfinder: Kingmaker not only allows you to level up your party, it allows you to build a Kingdom. Without getting into spoilers, at a point you will either by good or evil actions, inherit a small Barony. You'll make decisions in your council room every week to 2 weeks on the politics, borders, military, financial and spiritual well being of your Barony. At times it does feel tedious, having to be back at your Barony every 2 weeks or else you fail your Kingdom and the game ends, no seriously if your Kingdom gets destroyed you have to start over. You can turn that off in the in game menu, but then the game feels empty. The game doesn't have as many quests as it could, and you don't always know when and where you should go. Thats where google comes in. I'm not kidding, there might be a clue that a NPC said 5 weeks ago, that you didn't write down in your journal, that you're supposed to remember where to find a hidden Gem to finish a quest. Oh and if you didn't finish that quest in time, then the quest is ruined and you can't. Owlcat Games just released a huge 2.0 update for the game, there are multiple improvements, and I've never once encountered a bug that has crashed the game, only my stupidity has ruined it for me. 4/5 because I'm still a sucker for BG1 and 2, and NWN1-2.