Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

The story captivated from the very start and even without prior Pathfinder setting knowledge I was able to get my bearings. Still, the game is very unforgiving with it's timer design and enemies which use spells or abilities that drain your companions attributes forcing you to either rest or painfully try to survive with a companion that is one attribute damage away from death. The good thing is that eventually you too get those spells, however in my case I had already cleared most of the map at that point and weren't able to much use those. Characters and their personal stories were interesting on top of that with enhanced edition the reported bugs seem to be gone. However, there are some problems with it too: Some quest tips are very vague, and certain quests are also heavily railroaded. Kingdom management seems half-baked and the construction of buildings, etc. (in kingdom management) does not affect the 3D environments of your villages which you will be seeing. On top of that you don’t actually see your kingdom. Technical problems with the mouse getting blocked by 3D assets (environment or even certain dead mobs) when trying to order a companion to use throwable flasks or spells in caves or similar tight corridors. This I was able to circumvent with a camera rotation mod. Very little voice acting after the third chapter or so, however it picks up near the endgame. AI for warrior characters doesn’t seem to use unlocked abilities. During the playthrough the game crashed 6 times with 5 of those in a certain part of the endgame, but luckily, I was able to fix the constant crashes in the endgame by switching to windowed mode. In summary, flawed game with interesting premise and good story, however I wouldn’t recommend this to people new to cRPG or without patience. To those I’d recommend the Pillars of Eternity.

Won't go into too many details. I luv Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. This games graphics beats them both by a long shot. Game is huge for quests and character building. Yes, some points of the game will kick ur butt. But who doesn't like a challenge? Being a Baron is tough unless ur very familiar with this part of the game. Time is super sensitive to not getting some Baron responsibilities done in time but it only affects ur stats of your land. The game doesn't give u enough time to get everything done and still explore like an adventurer. :But u can automate the Baron part. Overall, this game was worth buying when on sale. It's a deep game with lots to do. I'd give it a 4.5 but can't so I rounded up. LOL

As a fan of tabletop gaming the gameplay is exactly what I wanted after adding turn based support! My only complaint would be the optimisation mostly for load times but it's not end of the world.

cRPGs like Pathfinder Kingmaker are a guilty pleasure for me and I've been playing them since Baldur's Gate and Fallout. Pathfinder works on an interesting variation of D&D 3.5 that I've never actually played in tabletop, so I can't comment on how faithful it is to the original. Bugs are here and there, but I haven't encountered anything game breaking in my 14 hours so far. This game reminds me more of Neverwinter Nights 2 than anything else with the gameplay style and overall feel. I enjoy the companion characters; they are well built with strong story arcs and excellent voice acting. There's nothing unique about them really, but they do stand out. The storyline is heroic and grandiose; bordering on DA Inquisition levels of personalized grandstanding; but it feels fleshed out and well constructed overall with solid kingdom building and management. The card system for managing your advisors reminds me of DA Inquisition once again, but the rest is quite unique. Combat is my biggest gripe overall or at least the overall difficulty of it. There's no sense of cohesion since one fight will be easy at level 4; then you'll enter a dungeon in the same area and fight creatures that you'd need to be level 10 to match. It's all over the place. Combat mechanics themselves are well built and very remeniscient of any other cRPG like Pillars or BG2. Spellcasting is manageable and again feels like any other D&D based game, and the typical quickbars show up with actions bound to your function and number keys; nothing we haven't seen before. Overall Pathfinder is excellent. It's entertaining and interesting all in one package with a lot of great features to set it apart from the rest of the pack. But be aware that even on the easiest difficulty it is not an easy game to break into. Leveling is long and arduous in a game jam packed full of encounters that will completely wipe your party in seconds. You have been warned, save early and save often.

pros: -complex system in place that is fun to explore and theorycraft even by itself -nice story that is not "you are literally jesus - go save the world" -harder difficulties will indeed force you to learn systems in place. "general idea" likely won't cut it. to me it's refreshing -they do fix bugs at a reasonably good pace. didn't encounter something that would stop me from progressing cons: -there are bugs. quite a bit of those. some abilities do not work at all or work when they feel like it -would love if they kept monster stats closer to pnp and solved difficulty by adding more enemies or upgrading existing ones instead of scaling their numbers. To me pros overshadow the cons. it's a game like they don't make 'em anymore.