Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is an RPG with very old-school sensibilities. That has its advantages - character customisation is very deep, and there's a wide variety of different builds you can come up with. Skill choice, alignment and roleplaying actually matter, and there's a lot of very interesting choices to make in the main plot (and some of the sidequests). However, the game is also rather unforgiving. There is very little hand-holding, and nothing to prevent you from painting yourself into a corner. If you go into an encounter unprepared, you'll just lose. I'd say that the game is "tough but fair," but unfortuantely it REALLY goes downhill towards the endgame. Let's just say that you should take the Blind Fight feat for every character if you want any hope of ever completing the final dungeon. And probably keep Death Ward handy. And Mind Blank. And Freedom of Movement. And Delay Poison.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker takes inspiration from classic pen & paper based CRPGs like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights 2. This means if you have played any of these games you will feel right at home. The combat is executed in real-time with pause, it's tactical and party based. It follows the classic formula with very little to add. It also inherits the pseudo open world style world map. Where it differs from the classic formula is it's kingdom building aspects. The game has a system that could be favourably described as a very light version of a turn-based grand strategy game. Less favourably as a glorified idle game not unlike the ones that can be found on social networks. But it does what it is supposed to do which is to make you feel like you're the actual ruler of your kingdom. All of these aspects work when taken seperatly. However, when combined the whole thing implodes. This is because the game's main quests have deadlines, some of which are not obvious to the player. This means you never actually get to do what you want to do and always feel pushed in the direction the developpers want you to go. It can not be stressed enough how detrimental these deadlines are to both the idea of an open world game and to the idea of a kindom simulator. Want to build your kingdom? Nope, gotta do the main quest. Want to explore your lands or do some sidequests? Nope, gotta do the main quest. Now! This is made even worse by the fact that everything takes at least twice as long as it should. Combat feels sluggish, the UI responds too slowly, too many unnecessary loading screens. In short the game just loves to waste your time. In the end it was a nice idea but nothing more. The execution is severely lacking and even the Enhanced Edition cannot remedy that. Weak 3/5 stars. Only buy/play if you've already played all of the classics and all of the other spiritual successors like Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 and Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2.

So I was amazed by this game. Immersive, character creation felt like creating a character for the tabletop game and so on and so on. So I thought to myself, yeah lets make that feel like actually playing Pathfinder and so customized the difficulty options accordingly, still leaving it to relativly normal. So I create my Ranger since I just like that class and start the game. Playing the prologue it's fun and all and based on my decisions I end up with 3 additional party members. A bard (which I assume will join automatically), a fighter specialized on tower shields (one can always use a tank) and a barbarian. So I continue my quest for a while, I win sometimes I fail sometimes and I'm having a blast. And then the game just shits on you with a "random" encounter that is just forced on you. It's guaranteed to show up, no matter your level or what party members are at your disposal. And they are just crushing me everytime. No speech option or anything. Other than fighting you could give up a party member but that forces the evil alignment on you. I know this is supposed to be a real campaign like they actually did in the tabletop. But if I'm playing the tabletop ME AND MY FELLOW PLAYERS CHOOSE OUR CLASSES ACCORDINGLY. It's not based on decision what characters I have. You make sure you have a healer, at least one mage and some fighters. THrowing random characters at you like the game does MAKES NO DAMN SENSE. I ended up with fighters only mostly based on my characters alignment and some shitty speech options (Also apparently I COULD have had more characters but I made the wrong decisions and had the wrong skills/Alignment. So yeah, because of that I'm basically screwed. All I can do is start over because I can't even leave the area without triggering the encounter. The game is basically shitting on you for choosing the wrong playstyle. Sometimes games like that reward certain playstyles but it should never punish one like in this case.

I was tired of the watered down "Diablo"-esk games. They weren't RPGs. I know that RPGs don't always translate well onto the PC, but PF:KM does an incredible job. I'm a huge Elder Scrolls fan, this is different. Not all the monsters will be easy. You won't be able to kill every monster you face. You might die because there is a boss hiding a cave that you can't handle. If you rage quit because the game beat you, I'm sure you have other problems in life. Yes, I got caught in a dungeon without food - couldn't rest and had to do it over. Shame on me for not having my act together. Watch a few videos on tactics and DO IT AGAIN! Get better! Make your characters more powerful! Pro-tip: casters are just as powerful buffing the peeps up front as they are chucking fire balls from the back. Enjoy the stories! The game is full of puzzles. It's FUN! If I wanted it easy, there are a few other games that are just that. But I wanted a REAL RPG - with REAL RPG rules and weapons and spells (OH MY!). Oh, the classes!! ..and the MULTI-CLASSING! How much damage does that ax do? 2d8 - perfect. Not sure why you missed that bandit? Hover and it SHOWS YOU THE ROLL! Glorious. Get the mods. Put a sweet picture in from the web. Trick our your peeps. Reading some of the reviews it sounds like OwlCat has listened and incorporated some of those improvements into their game. Even without the mods there were things very different/better in July 2020 than in 2018. WORD of CAUTION: don't put the kingdom on auto to start. There are things/quests that you won't be able to do AND you can't turn auto off. Would buy again. Can't wait to work through the game and hit the DLC. It is worth every penny.

Every engagement feels like a stat check and there is no room to play around and disengage. You either win really hard or lose very hard and reload. I feel that when I got to know the game better, experimented with different classes and team compositions - it didn't help much. Since the battle shifts only between easy win or hard loss, it feels you can never engage unbuffed, because you need every little bit of numbers to win the stat check. Thusly, in early game, you will be refreshing a lot of 1 minute per level buffs. The DLC random dungeon suffers real bad from this and is built around 'boons' that you gain by exporting progress from previous characters, which is boring. The campaign is OK, for one playthrough, because there's some exploration to do, which is hindered by running back to the throne room, even if you disable the kingdom management. At one point you can kill a dragon and claim it's treasure, which you get in 'kingdom points' to build things in your cities, but why can't I have gold and if I feel like it, exchange the gold to said points? Overall, I feel like the game's design is fighting itself. It's trying to be an adventure, but it's also a carefully balanced coaster ride with cogs and strings on every corner.