Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

I've spent 488h on this game. I remember I playedit for whole September, I was gone from family life, my girlfriend crying and begging me to stop playing it. I couldn't. Despite all the bugs at early release, game was amazing. I rolled some weak character, thinking probably it doesn't matter. Mistake, I was destroyed by most of enemies, somehow struggled untill act 4. I skipped some optional quests. Mistake, I basically couldn't play past act 4. I didn't put to much attention to my kingdom. Mistake, it was destroyed, I had to turn off managment to continue playing. First time game did this to me, that for poor choices I was punished so hard, and I liked it, some challenge at last. I rerolled to stronger class and finished the game. Most of annoying bugs were fixed by that time. Doing it all again with different class wasn't boring at all. Now I fear this game, knowing that replaying it is not boring at all. I may start again... tldr; Game is challenging, story is immersive, bugs are fixed by now, huge replayability potential. Imo, the best of the three other RPGs (Pilars and Divinity).

I know the PF system well and I like how this game is playing for me (2 days in). I am not a fan of the real time pause-to play and I would have preferred turn based like DO:S , but for D&D 3.5+ and PF players this game tries to recreate all the rules well. I had a few crash bugs and some hard encounters. I dialed down the difficulties so enemies do not have a higher AC/HP/BAB and it's been ok. There is absolutely no hand holding on this game. If you go into an area that is higher you will get pummeled. Merciless but hey i love PF.

I'll keep it brief as the debate around the difficulty is ongoing and sources should be easy to find. The game at its early stages is an imbalanced mess that would not pass certification in a serious company, it waivers between unchallenging and impossible, combat often devolves into reloading quicksaves because there is no other way to progress. The game does not offer you any solutions to this and dumps you into the game without the required classes to complete many encounters satisfactorly. The devs seem to think everyone having issues is playing on hard or higher, but in my experience there exists only two kinds of players: those that picked a class that instantly defeated the starting areas and those that didn't and their experience is based almost entirely around this. The game might be true to the vision of the developers, or it might be legitimately broken; hard to tell. Regardless I would only recommend this game to someone who enjoys 'slamming your head against the wall' difficulty or metagaming as standard. I have not played a worse CRPG, and I simply do not have the time or patience to invest frustration into "It gets better later". Review liable to change if the developers decide to add core rules, or at least a medium between "easy" and "normal", for the two are not descriptive of their challenge levels at all.

Gameplay: 10/10 - The adaptation of the Pathfinder rules is amazing, with so much of the versatility and tactical options making their way through. On top of that is a kingdom management sim with a plethora of options and strategies. Games with this much depth are very rare. Graphics: 7.5/10 - The graphics are good all around, but lack a little detail. This is mitigated by the limited zoom. Lighting effects are very good, and everything looks as it should, but nothing so far has stood out and really wowed me. Music: 7.5/10 - Pretty typical orchestral fantasy music, but good. Some of the tunes, such as the main theme, are quite good. Each piece fits the mood quite nicely, and as far as video game music goes, it's above average. Story: 8.5/10 - So far the story has played out quite well. It's not had any major twists so far but you can tell that a fair amount of talent has gone into the writing, thanks to Chris Avellone. There have been a few small twists and I can't wait to see what comes of them! Fun Factor: 10/10 - Few games draw me in as much as games based on the d20 rule set. Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 are my favorite games of all time and Knights of the Old Republic comes in near the top. Add to this a Kingdom simulation (another genre I love,) and I have a feeling this game will draw me in over and over, especially if they continue to add to it in the future!

Pathfinder: Kingmaker, a first computer CRPG from the Pathfinder setting, is a welcomed injection of D&D goodness that has been eluding PC fans since NWN2 and its addons. The game starts strong and has very addictive gameplay. All archetypes you have been longing for are here - strong but stupid barbarians, dwarven clerics, evil sorcerers, naive bards, and so on. Kingmaker is a classic D&D RPG game in every sense of the word. If you've been waiting for a "new" Baldur's Gate, your wait is over. Everything that made old PC D&D games is here, and more - now you have a kingdom to manage, which is a nice addition. So why only 3 stars, you ask? Well, there are two main reasons why. First of all, the game seems hell-bent on wasting your time. Insanely long loading times everywhere you go - maps are tiny or small-ish, certainly not huge dungeons, so why does loading take so long on a system with 6core CPU and a SSD? The game is not a technical marvel by any means, so I just don't understand why it loads... sooo... slowly. As if that wasn't enough, there is an unskippable animation every time you start the game up. There is no way I know of for you to exit your kingdom capitol quickly (you have to go through several locations and loading screens to go adventuring), your characters' movement speeds are insanely slow, and so on... Half my playtime is comprised of boring back-tracking, waiting for my chars to slowly trek across a map, waiting for loading to finish, getting out of capitol, etc... The second problem is that difficulty is all over the place. What this means in practice is that you will be plowing through encounters 90% of the time and then, for the remaining 10%, you will get your ass kicked no matter what you do. There is no in-between. It's either wreck them or get wrecked. My suggestion to the developers: optimize loading, give player option to leave capitol instantly and to speed up animations, tweak difficulty. Then it will be a 5-star game.