Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

The game is good overall. Nice story, good characters(someone may say they aren't deep enough though), kingdom management is interesting, visual design is great. There is just one simple problem - you can't enjoy all that because game is broken. Many main quests doesn't work properly, balance is terrifying, gamebreaking bugs, e.t.c. Current state of game is beta at best.

I nearly missed this great game because of the negative revievs. While I share some of the criticisms I really enjoyed the game up to now. I believe that many of the negative reviewers have expected another type of game. This is a classic CRPG in the tradition of Baldur's Gate. The game does not stop you if you want to enter a dungeon which is too difficult for your party - you should just leave after noticing that it is too hard. I died a lot of times during a boss battle, went away, made two experience levels and returned. I beat the boss on normal difficulty on the second attempt. The game expects that you learn the Pathfinder system and make yourself familiar with the abilities of you chars. For new players this may be boring or too confusing. I played a lot of DnD in the past, so I had little difficulty to get into the game, but again, this may be boring for other players. The story is fun up to now, introducing several interesting and likeable characters and of course your quest to become a king (or a baron in the first step). I expect some story twists in the future, but believe that the story is not as complex and fascinating as in Pillars of Eternity. The implementation of the alignment system is great - your main char can choose dialogue options which represent a certain alignment (e.g. lawful good). Your alignment then shifts a little bit to the alignment of the chosen option. So, good characters may choose evil actions sometimes, but may end up being evil after many little steps. The mail reason why I give five stars for this game is that it feels that the game designers really cared for little details and a great atmosphere. This may be an unpolished gem, however, it is a real game for players who like classic CRPGs.

There is much that is good to say about this game, but there are also a myriad of annoyances and one absolute deal-breaker for me. First, let me say I am a grognard; I cut my teeth on Advanced D&D 40 years ago and seen the evolution through 3rd Edition in various CRPGs over the years, so the system itself holds few surprises. The good: Interesting story; good use of alignment-based decisions and xp awards based on skill checks; nice balance of adventuring and kingdom management (when I have to decide whether or not to keep a spiffy new magic item or sell it for build points so I can enhance the stability of my nascent kingdom, the meta-game is right where it should be), nice soundtrack, good art, intuitive interfaces, good number crunching under the hood. Look, I have 100 hours logged in one campaign, so there is a lot to hold my interest. the okay: NPCs are okay (good voice acting), overall graphics are adequate (spells are not all that impressive). Game ran very smoothly for first 60 hours. The annoying: The inventory system. Stop moving my items around! You cannot effectively lay out a pattern for inventory items in the group stash, because it will be overwritten every time you add a new item or you swap out characters. Bugs: There are many apparent bugs in the Event/Project cards. Or maybe they aren't bugs, but the game is giving wrong/incorrect feedback. Poor encounter scaling -- way too many early encounters feature opponents who are too strong. Sure, I can dial back the damage my heroes take, but the flavor is all off. If I have to save scum until I make a saving throw more often than once a session, something is off. The deal breaker: The incremental corruption of my save games. Not, "the file won't load" corruption, but inventory items disappearing, events/projects no longer registering as completed, game progress halted due to key events not triggering. I have had to abandon my 100 hour campaign; hence the title of my review.

I love a good cRPG but unfortnatley Pathfinder is not good. Everything is good until player becomes a Baron. From that moment onwards there is a management/strategic part with OK-ish features but quests become singificantly unfocused and ill balanced. But the greatest sin of this game is lack of good communication with the player. Those who are more familiar with D&D rules will probably feel comfortable. We who are not and are willing to learn are pushed back by this game and flood of weird and hard to understand rules. There are bugs but combined with what I said it makes encounters frustrating. Once player gets comfortable with the party, game throws difficulty spike without any reason. On one side my people in barony requere my help and I MUST do a particular quest only to discover it is too high encounter and I need to hope for a random encounters on a road to level up. Loading times will be boring time waster unless game is installed on SSD. It is really mind blowing experience when advisor comes back with his mission being succesful yet as a result player receives several negative points (i.e. community, loyalty and military). Why if he was succesful? Why some advisor actions imedietly lock player into waiting this mission to be completed by an advisor and not telling him this will happen? Why locking player in such situation in the first place? When it all comes together it becomes more of a chore for a newcomer into D&D world rather than fun which makes me sad. Just a bit more communication with the player, slightly better pacing and encounter balancing in given quests would improve this game trmendeously. Also some quality of life improvements and bugs fixing should be done.

This game had a horrible, buggy launch but the dev team has been trying to fix the game since then. There are a lot of things that old school CRPG players are going to like in this game. Of all the CRPG's released in the last couple of years I think I've enjoyed this one the most (that includes Divinity Original Sin 2 which is a better game but not imho a funner game). The only problems with the game are the bugs and some minor balancing issues. The balance issues can be fixed with mods or setting difficulty down to lower settings. The bugs are the main problem and there are a fair number of them. So far, knock on wood, I haven't had a game crash but I have experienced a fair number of graphical issues and other weird problems. Also some of the quests maybe not working properly. This game would be an easy 5/5 if not for the bugs. If you're looking for a really fun CRPG then this is a good pick up especially if you can get it on sale. You do need to have some tolerance for bugs and some patience. Also save often.