Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

This game is disappointing to me, mostly because it could have been so much better. The world building is good, the characters are interesting, and the core systems in place are well designed. What's wrong with it then? Well, three things. A very poor journal system, a somewhat bland story of building a kingdom, and frankly the kingdom management itself. The good: Graphics and animation are nice, and there is a lot of customization for your character. The camera angle is fixed (with zoom), and avoids being fidgety. The core system is well represented albeit with a simplified skill system that works better in this application. The basic pause/real-time combat system is almost identical to Baldur's Gate and works well. As a whole, the game is fun... when you are actually able to adventure around the world uncovering tombs and fighting monsters, etc. The bad: You are constantly being interrupted from doing what's fun (adventuring) to go and deal with your kingdom. You are bombarded with a bewildering number of random events to deal with that function like a bad card game where you have little control over the outcome. What's even worse? These events can result in failure states for your empire if one of its key stats gets too low. There is an option for an "invincible kingdom" but that feels lame as though you are missing out. In addition, the journal quickly becomes an unusable mess as nothing ever gets flagged as completed in a legible way. I got to where I didn't even want to bother with it, which is unfortunate as many events are timed, also resulting in yet another instant failure state. And finally, we have the story. It's a generic commoner becomes nobility with a few twists and turns that is decent, if uninspired. I have a feeling that DLC could be the savior for this game if it drops the kingdom mechanic and lets you just be an adventurer. The basic engine is very good. Time will tell. In the meantime, I can't really recommend the base game as it is.

A great game in the spirit of Infinity Engine (IE) games, combining non-linear exploration with a great deal of character customization. The game is broadly similar to the IE games, so I won't cover the basics of the game. However, I'll highlight a couple bullet points of why I particularly like this game. 1. Set-pieces versus filler combat: I'm playing on challenging, but I'm finding that most battles actually require me to think in order to get by them (versus fighting a hundred goblins one at a time). The battles tend to be diverse, with different enemy NPC composition or monsters with unique abilities and defenses that require different tactics to get through them. 2. Character customization and meaningful growth: Many base classes, with 3 archetypes each, and they generally play meaningfully differently from one another. Also, the game takes you from levels 1-~20 (though I'm still in the relatively early levels currently), allowing you to change your game-play as you develop you characters. 3. Non-linear with exploration and replay-ability: There's an open map with a lot to find. These locations are more dense than Baldur's Gate (1), and usually are either related to the plot or are small and have a major challenging encounter with a reward afterwards. The quests have seemingly meaningful choices or ways of solving them, leading to what would seem like significantly different outcomes, with choice A precluding quest B. Finally, the Kingdom mode complements this freedom by allowing you to make different choices regarding the game's progression. While there are a lot of reported bugs (though my slow style of play has meant that the developers seem to patch most of these bugs that faster players notice before I get to them), the developers have shown a commitment to fixing them. Obviously not ideal, but the developers have given me a great deal of confidence that the only downside to this game will be fixed.

I'm an avid D&D fan since ages (1977...), and since I've bought PF:KM I'm totally hooked ! Yes it's buggy as hell Yes devs made bad designs decisions about difficulty, all foes are on steroids+crack. And I didn't make it to the end which is allegedly 10x worse.. Yes Kingdom management is a mess But ... I can't stop loving it : the ruleset is great, it's pretty long with tons of stuff to do, character development is the richest one I've seen, you have a ton of possible party compositon and strategy, the scenario is good, being a Baron/King is cool anyway, combat is (usually) great and satisfying, dungeons are well done, NPCs are nice and have stories and quests,, even camping is a pleasure ! With some love, a good many patches, and a dawning mod scene that already offer many QoL improvements and options, it'll be an all time classic, the only true successor to Baldur's Gate !

I've had most fun since Baldur's Gate playing this game, and update by update the hotfixes have corrected most of the issues in the game. Great campaign, good implementation of the Pathfinder ruleset, lot's of choices and reactivity. Kingdom management is not as fun as it could be, and the endgame becomes a grind that would need still polishing and balancing.

This is the closest anyone came to BG3. None of the new RPG games like Torment Numenera, POE etc. brought back the feeling I had when playing BG and BG2 except this. Only D:OS2 is probably better, but different. This has the same slow pacing and progress like the old games, where every level matters, every new weapon makes a difference. It doesnt throw new and better loot at you with every encounter, so you actually dont use a sword more than three fights. It gives you the sense of acomplishment after figuring out a tough battle or gainign a new level ofter hours of play. The balancing isnt broken. You just need to carefully select your spells and weapons and strategy before the fights and suddenly, after one or two wipes, you find out that you can win the battle easily with a different approach. Yes, some mechanism might be outdated or just slow or too much hassle with a lot of micro management in the context of todays fast paced RPGs, but if you still enjoy the occasional replay of BG1 or 2, you are going to like this game a lot I think. I definitely do.