Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

As someone who has both DM'd and played in Kingmaker tabletop campaigns, the story in this game has been considerably tightened up and is generally more coherent than the original Adventure Path, which was easily one of the worst parts of the AP. The characters here are stronger, more time is taken to explore motivations, and in general it benefits from being in a CRPG, where the standards for writing are more rigorous. Unfortunately, the game capitalizes on little else. Adapting the Pathfinder ruleset to a CRPG is already inadviseable, but it managed create an adaptation that perpetuates some of the worst wargamer-y, rules-lawyer-y design stereotypes that have stained D&D's reputation for decades. Pathfinder works as a tabletop because there's a Gamemaster to manipulate rules and circumstances based on the party to both accommodate and challenge them. With the removal of the GM, the game must be run Rules-As-Written, which means a lot of little assumptions made by the tabletop rules become problems that compound each other: Magic loot is frequently unsuitable to what the party needs and uses, particularly if anyone uses rare, unusual, or exotic weapons A fair encounter can turn fatal in an instant because of a bad roll at the worst time. The 1d20 mechanic is notoriously swingy and leads to random difficulty spikes if a GM isn't there to react accordingly. Some threats can only be countered by certain spells and potions, but you have no meaningful abililty to do recon and therefore no meaningful opportunity to prepare. Et cetera. The result is a game that is extremely non-adaptive and where tense moments and overall story pacing are ruined by having to repeat fights or entire sections because of bad luck. Which is a shame because the story is so good. The game would have been better served by building its own rules from scratch which evoked the feeling of Pathfinder's, but were better suited to the constraints of a CRPG, like HBS did with Shadowrun.

This is a great RPG in BG style. In my opinion the story and dialog are better than Pillar of Eternity or Torment: Tide of Numenera as those contain too many verbose and lore-dump dialogs, There are many choice and consequence and quite open storyline. Many compain about this game difficulty. Well, old RPGs are much more difficult than this and there is a thing called difficulty setting. Lower the difficulty down if it's too hard for you. For me, it is a fresh breath for an RPG to challenge you nowaday, with all AAA RPGs' hand holding with no challenge. There are bugs, but every game, RPG specifically have bugs at launch because of their complexities. Even Baldur's Gate still have unfixed bugs until today after 2 decades. The devs are the quickest in the industry to fix bugs. There are daily patches. They are great!

Do you want to spend more time on lead screens than playing a game? Play Pathfinder! Do you want to spend more time trying to figure out what all the gobbledygook on the camping screen is than actually exploring? Play Pathfinder! Do you want to wander around a world map aimlessly while trying to find a decently scaled place to actually win an encounter and solve a quest? Play Pathfinder. Do you want a resource management game and not an RPG? Play Pathfinder. Do you want timed quests in a game that requires you to rest almost as much as you stare at load screens? Play Pathfinder The combat is boring. Pause, hit, pause, cast, pause, his, pause, hit, pause, hit. Die. The AI sucks, so if you wish to have any control you will have to turn it off and then pause constantly. While I hate games that completely scale to the level of the character this is ridiculous! And seriously... those load screens. Half of my time is staring at them. UGH! It seems like it's in beta still. Save your money and wait a while. This game is pretty bad right now.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is about as enjoyable as a session with a rules lawyer. That is to say, if you ever wonder who the rules lawyer in your group is, and you enjoy this game, likely YOU are, in fact, the rules lawyers, putting adherence to what is supposed to be a guideline over a fun, rewarding session. Chances are, though, you've never recognized the vehement spite that underlies each exchange your table has with you, so this review won't deter you in the slightest. For those who want to spend more time playing than loading, and more time experiencing than reloading due to min-max enemy builds and whacked out RNG, this game can go to the bottom of your wishlist until a community such as The Circle of 8 does for this game what was done to Temple of Elemental Evil--fix an elephant's phlegmy load worth of bugs and undelivered potential.

I\ve read a few reviews before I bought the game and turned out they were a bit wrong. If you loved Baldur's Gate I or BGII you will love this game also. It is really scratching that feeling of venturing the wilds like BGI, while also having similar quirks of Dungeon & Dragons system. I am sure that many D&D fans are used to the fact that the best part of fights in this kind of games are cheesing them (using specific mechanics to "break them" in a way) and this game has a lot of that :D. The Pathfinder rules which are translated quite faithfully from the rulebook are sometimes a bit of a burden like for example there is soo many types of weapons that it's very hard to find a meaningful upgrade for the one you need (that is a problem when you have a specific talent). The combat system could be seen as complicated by newcomers, but I remember Baldur's Gate to be Stupidly "brutal" in the beginning as well. Once you adjust to the system and to the fact that this is not a Hack&Slash type of game you will start to enjoy it tremendously. Story-wise I really appreciate what Owlcat studio has done, a story is simple to follow yet rich in details and unexpected turns. It is a mix of Game of Thrones + BGI venturing the old ruins + a bit of typical D&D old-fashioned adventure. Also worth noting the fact that the game is very looong and if you take your sweet time enjoying it or trying to pursue every interesting choice or build it is absolutely MASSIVE (there is a lot of RPG and kingdom related choices for Good and Evil characters). Please mind the fact that the game was made by the smaller publisher and mostly kickstarted so with the game of this scale it was bound to have some rough start (bugs) but as of today I didn't encounter any game breaking bugs and game is getting a steady amount of fixes from the developer.