Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

I know there were some bugs of game when it first came out. But now it has been furnished and became pretty good. The only issue is that sometimes the enemy's level is unbalanced and sometimes it is deadly for your team if there is no such diffculty indicator.....So one tip save often. Except that, almost all the story, graphic and music are well.

Let's get this get out of the way. The beginning of the game sucks. The rules are convoluted, complicated, poorly explained and the UI doesn't help mitiganting that in any way. Actually it makes it worst at times. Why do we need that giant wall of text for every ability, even those that are just more powerful versions of the same thing? Which litteraly boils down to the game calculating one more six sided dice? Why dose the tell you how a Combat Manouve is calculated but not what a Combat Manouver is? How can I tell in game if that enemy counts as being flanked? Why is there no easy to read icon to undestand if the enemy is Shocked, Flat Footed, Sickenes etc etc. You get the idea, the game and the engine do A LOT of background work even just for a simple stab in the ribs, but you don't have many ways to understnd it, granted you can press Y and over the mouse over an enemy and wait a split second to see if that guy is affected by some effect but that's hardily readable. But why the 4 star then? Well because if you can go past that the game is actually very, very very very good. It's a different take on the typical PnP Fantasy story and it all shines because of the Kingdom Management system. Suddenly every single rest you take matters because more often then not you'll be in a race against time to face off story related issues that will negativly affective your barony, it keeps on your toes and the characters that up untill that moment seemed like annoying mindless meatshits or walking DPS meters actually start to become more interesting. I won't proclaim they are the best companions in any game ever, but they sure are detailed enough not at least not be annoying, and that's good enough for me. One just needs to go past the initial learning curve. In conclusion, it's a very strong PnP System adapted to a CRPG with high replayability due to its complexity and depth glued together by the Kingdom Management system.

...the last act, which was horribly paced and a read drag. I also did not enjoy the Kingdom management a whole lot, but the options basically allow to sail through this part. But the overall story, companions, combat system, and graphics are all pretty great and I'm overall pretty satisfied.

The Good: - A (mostly) great and engaging story - An nteresting (if sometimes a bit cliché) cast of characters - Real-time party-based combat, not restricted to a grid The Bad: - Parts of the story are ill-adapted to the RPG genre and more in line with what you'd expect from a Strategy game - The fixed camera is really annoying in some maps - The Pathfinder game rules sometime require a lot of micro-management during combat that does not mix well with real-time combat; even compared with the original Baldur's Gate, there at least they had partially reworked the D&D rules to make them work really well with real-time combat The Ugly: - The Kingdom Management part of the game is simply horrid, it sucks a lot of your game time into something that's uninteresting and badly designed; basically it's a mandatory (yes! it's mandatory because you can't get some endings if you put it in automatic) mini-game that shoves even more micro-management down your throat when all you want is exxplore dungeons, talk to NPCs and fight monsters In short, the design issues with this game boil down to the fact that they've tried, badly, to mesh 2 game genres together without giving a thought to how they might interfer with each other.

First, I love D&D and isometric games like this. They are AWESOME....generally... I'll say that I've not even escaped from the starting area, mostly because I've seen many glaring issues. Bugs, while rather minor, are still present so early into the game. I'll equip invisible weapons for instance. Walking, in general, is rather... slow. Moving my character feels like I'm walking through tar. Rather than briskly walking or running to my destination, my characters mozey on over rather casually... nevermind that we are besieged by an army of mercinary assassins. Get that swagger yo! BALANCE!!! The game's balance is awful... just awful... You have lots of options to adjust the difficulty, but using the "hard" mode creates an insufferable game that derives its' difficulty more to RNG (9/10 attacks seem to miss) while the "challenging" mode, one level below hard, creates an experience of "press face against keyboard and roll it around... and win". The difference between these two settings? ONE factor. You can actively see the changes between the modes (there are MANY options) and the difference between "facerolling easy" and "insufferable RNG" is ONE factor... ONE! Even beyond that, the game begins with you creating a character from many options... That's great... as long as you choose a tanky class, becaues early on ALL the companions you run into are glass cannons, so if your like me and pick a druid early on... whelp, your F***ED! Get ready to get one shot! This is all sad though, because what it is based off of is so great. Character creation is second to none in current isometric games. The voice acting is amazing. The art likewise! It's all a shame, because if the game was properly balanced it would be amazing, it's just not. Either suffer no challenge or suffer RNG. Even the first, non scripted fight is nigh impossible (taking 10+ reloads at least) simply because I couldn't roll dice well enough.