Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

For some it's a system of clear rules giving rise to satisfying complexity. For others it's getting your wisdom teeth pulled during a tax audit in the midst of a messy divorce. And then there's PATHFINDER: KINGMAKER. Joking aside, this game is reeeeeal purdy! It's also a mind-numbingly repetitive "gameplay loop" of nothing but tedious skullduggery that otherwise lays there like an uncooked egg. It's still full of place-holder art and what seem to be proofs-of-concept never actually implemented. I struggled through 5 Acts on the vain hope that things would get better for surely, certainly (all the glowing reviews?!) this . . . stupefying CHORE must, at some point, morph into an enjoyable *game* - right? Something playable and not performative? This is pointy-hat wizards and pointy-eared elves - this isn't the Human Proteome Project ffs! I don't turn to stone when the sun rises, so here's my lesson learned: keep far, far away from Owlcat games...

Really good story for a fantasy. Awesome characters. But terrible gameplay ruins whole game. Unfair OP bosses impossible to kill. Pointless health potions, except the strongest ones, but these are super rare to find and expensive to buy... Gameplay is just retarded.

In short: simple but strong story. Deep characters. Nice detailed graphic. Pathfinder! Released version looks like an alpha. Yes, you are not a dead god's body, not a son of a god, not a chosen one speaking with souls. You are a adventurer to be a ruler over the land, because neighbors need a new ruler. That's AWESOME! From the very beginning you met some characters, with their behaviors. One you hate, but he's is attractive in his madness. Other too noisy, one more .... Oh, they not just characters, but CHARACTERS. Battles looks more tabletops than others CRPGs of nowdays. Actually, I prefer DnD 5, but this is personal and Pathfinder was OK too on its days. OK, enough of hoorays. There is no intuitive interface - 3-5 secs to open a tooltip on an icon(most are not self-explanative).I thought there are no tooltips at all! Devs are PF players - they don't explain anything on a gaming rules. Points? Oh. int increases other points. Expert feat. What is expert? Hmm... OK. If you familiar with BG(EE) or PillarsOfEternity PF:K interface is still unusable. It's still RAW. I've spent about an hour before start the game. I wouldn't count them all here, hope owlcat will fix most of them soon. Just read the forum if you want. Seems owlcat need a hand on testing before game will be finished. Let's help them!

Story and Characterwriting: Great, done by Chris Avellone (*****) Sounds and Background music: Great, done by Inon Zur, who also did Dragon Age Origins music among many others (****) Combat encounter design after Tutorial zone: Bad, very bad. Unbalanced to the point of no-fun. ( * ) Other game mechanics: Lacking. Resting system is annoying as you would have like a dozen of them when you just want to get from A to B. Just annoying. Put the horrible balanced random encounters on top that you almost always get when camping in the wilderness. No fun. Maps and World design: A lot of very small zones. Doesn't really feel like you are exploring a world although the overworld map is quite large. Bugs: There a quite some glitches, long loading times and minor annoyances. Some game breaking bugs have been reported. Could be a decent game after 1 -2 major patches. Combat encounters have to be completely revamped. Avoid for now until you are a die-hard D&D fan (like me). For the moment Tyranny and Pillars of Eternity 2 are the far superior games, especially in terms of character developement and combat design. Far. Far superior. And I wouldn't consider those games to be totally combat centered of even have brilliant combat design, but at least it is fun and entertaining. Can't say the same of Pathfinder - sadly.

Great story, game mechanics and music. Pathfinder rules adaption in my opinion well adapted. Some adaption was of cause necessary to integrate tabletop rules into a computer game. The game is not for casual gamers though who complain if they have to think! It can be challenging even at easy settings if you do not want to think about what you are doing. Also if you do not know the Pathfinder rules (I play the tabletop a lot) it will be tough. This leads to the next point. You have to be willing to READ. Yes, text, a lot of it. If you do not like that, this game is not for you. My only real complaint is the unusually long load screens. My game-disk is a striped array of SSDs with the access speed of DDR1 RAM. Yet even small areas show a load screen for much too long. I will recommend this game to my friends, However, I also play tabletop RPG with them every Friday for thirty years now. ;-)