Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

Kingmaker is a game that reads phenominally in concept, and everything looks great on the outside, but then you push the boat into it's maiden voyage, and it floats and it looks great... but then it suddenly collapses and you're left trying to figure out why. Time. Time and Difficulty are why. Pacing: Kingmaker seems to have absolutely abysmal problems with Pacing. The game always has a timer to hurry you into the next objective they want you to complete, and for the particularly knowledgable players, you can skip a lot of side content... but said side content also includes COMPANIONS, which you NEED for the Kingdom Management aspect of the game. Oh, you killed those Trolls really fast, good for you! Now you've been locked out of two Companions and also an Advisor. You get three choices for each slot, but if you don't say Yes to everything an Advisor asks of you they'll quit, which can be DEVASTATING (It's VERY easy to be completely locked out of Councilors and Ministers because four of the six options are OPTIONAL) Oh, and it takes 1400 days to max out all of your kingdom stats... Not even build times, quests, or anything else, just telling your councilors "Hey, stop being lazy and do the job I hired you for." ten times over... EACH! Difficulty: This game swings on the axis of Braindead or You're Dead with very little in between. This depends on your difficulty but a lot of the enemies are using spells that can absolutely destroy you on lower difficulties. I didn't encounter many 'Save Or Die' spells, but I sure found a lot of 'Enemies placed stupidly close to traps so my companion AI will run straight into them.' that turn out to be variants of Lightning, Fireball or Finger of Death. I also take major issue with Class Alignment restrictions as a mechanic but that's a personal/storytelling gripe. Ultimately, I cannot recommend this game to anyone because it will never be fixed in the ways it needs to be.

So today I finished the game after a very long time. In itself this game is not a bad game, but unfortunately some things are not well thought out and not implemented correctly. Many ideas are nice but the implementation makes the game extremely unattractive. That's why this game is not so popular. Kingdom management with time pressure is an example of how a game is deliberately made unattractive. In addition, the game is extremely complicated but unfortunately it doesn't make sense, it's absolutely pointlessly complicated. There are hundreds of devices out there, but 80% of them are unusable and many of them don't work at all. Many different spells have the same symbols, so you have to read carefully each time whether it is a specific spell you need or something else that has the same symbol. Many talents, skills and abilities are described so complicated that you need 2 semesters of studying the game to play the game optimally. This game is rarely fun but often frustrating. It's a shame actually, this game has a lot of potential but some people deliberately wanted the game not to be popular like BG2 or something like that. At least the game is no longer buggy and the graphics are ok. But if someone still wants to play the game, I recommend playing with some good mods (around 15). Without mods I would stay away from the game.

I am a big fan of crpgs from the D&D style system, and this is almost no exception. Almost. You get to run a kingdom, after all, plus all the usual derring do. However, the game is simply not complete. You are buying 3/4 of a game here. Some of the relevant lowlights include: - Multiple (most) NPC personal side quests are unable to be completed due to glitches, ruining the end of the game - Journal/quest log not ergonomic, often impossible to navigate or make sense of - Party can be trapped in a dungeon with no way to rest or heal, forcing to replay 2-4 hours of dungeon crawl - "Story mode" difficulty (enemies deal 0.2x damage) still has encounters that culminate in party wipe - More than half of all kingdom quests cannot be completed due to needless time constraint - There is no AI for spellcasters - they will simply stand there and do nothing unless micromanaged - Incredibly minor errors and oversights in kingdom management can result in permanent penalties, only removable by spending 6 months' revenue on a party - An entire act of a 6-act story can automatically become a "failure," with major in-game consequences, because of a dialogue that doesn't trigger correctly. - Countless minor bugs, like NPCs changing toons, names, miswritten dialogue, conversations that won't trigger, quests you can't attempt, gear you can't use, spells that don't work as advertised I'm about 200 hours into the game, in the final dungeon, and they did such a bad job I'd rather uninstall than try to make myself keep save-scumming (on the easiest difficulty) through this. If there was any prospect of reward, sure, but the game is literally written such that indispensable party members are murdered off-screen because of a programming glitch that they don't seem to intend to fix. This is a great idea, and a lot of it is really fun. But my experience: I invested 200+ hours in a game, only to have it ruined by bugs in the final area, and the company is not fixing ANYTHING. Do not buy.

I honestly tried my best to enjoy this game and I will probably still finish it because I am stubborn. But my God does this game not want you to play it. Or at least it doesn't want you to play it as a role playing game. Before I got to the endgame, I would have given it 3 stars because it has massive problems, but I was having fun with minor hiccups. The balance was trash the entire game and you HAVE to metagame, min-max, and reload constantly for the CHANCE to succeed in an area. Like you HAVE to know the layout and what enemies are in an area to even have a chance at winning. Which means you have to go to an area and die so you can reload and position and buff your characters specifically to fight this random new type of creature that is immune to essentially all of the spells, weapons, and abilities you used before this point. This game is not setup for you to actually do what your characters would do and it gives you absolutely no reason to prepare for anything. You just have to magically know that the room you are about to walk in has 15 level 24 fey demigods and also a level 29/30 one while you are level 17. Because this game hates you and it wants you to suffer. Compared to the likes of Pillars of Eternity and even freaking Neverwinter Nights 2 from like 20 years ago, this is just unacceptably flawed. I would strongly recommend a pass unless it is heavily discounted or you just like slogging through dungeon crawlers with a timer.

I played the enhanced Version, after August 2020. There are no bad bugs anymore. So dont get afraid by the older reviews, which say its almost unplayable... it is a wonderful game. I played Pillars of Eternety, Divinity Original Sin 1+2 but Kingmaker beats them all in my view. Major point: the story... it made much more sense to me than for example DOS 2. I also liked the new round based fighting mode and got really fond of my companions. I felt like 20 years ago, when i was playing Baldurs Gate.