Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

This game heavily favors enemies unless you adjust the difficulty until the enemy's stats become worthless. Playing on "Normal", you'll be constantly missing while the enemy will be constantly hitting you. The only method of leveling the playing field is to go into a battle to see what enemies you are up against, reloading and then buffing yourself appropriately. The enemies have high AC and often have some form of damage reduction laid on top of it. In general you want your heroes to hit about between 60 to 70 percent of the time, but in this game it feels more like 40 percent. I've had too many encounters where one enemy is getting pummeled by six characters for multiple rounds of combat, only for one or two attacks to hit. The random encounters also vary heavily. Running into an inescapable CR14 encounter with a level 6 party is unacceptable. As a PC and DM of Pathfinder for six years, it's not okay to make every encounter APL+2. On top of that, the encounters don't give the appropriate amount of XP for their CR rating. The resting forces you to always forage for food unless you have a specific ration item in your inventory. It doesn't matter if you have 20 piles of meat in your inventory or 15 entire chickens, you're still forced to forage for food unless you have that ration item. You're especially doomed if you are in an underground location that locks you out of leaving until you finish it. You're not allowed to rest here because you can't forage for food so that means you can't replenish health of your abilities. Great. Finally, the game is awful at explaining its mechanics to the player. This information should be clear, especially to people completely unfamiliar with Pathfinder rules. If I have to whip out my own physical Pathfinder books, you've done a bad job at explaining. Overall, the game is very solid but the unbalanced combat ruins the experience as you progress through the game.

I picked up this game after watching a youtuber play it (CohCarnage) and it looked like he was having a lot of fun. I had read other reviews that scored it fairly low however I put it down to personal opinions and decided to give it a try myself. I enjoyed about 3/4 of the game. The story was good and the gameplay was a lot of fun. There were a few minor gripes such as no ability to reroll my character and I felt that the movement speed was too slow. I ran into a few bugs but I joined the party late and most of the game breaking bugs had been squashed. I took part in Kingdom Management to try run a decent kingdom but found that no matter how hard I tried to keep my kingdom running smoothly I could never make them happy (they were stuck on stable and constantly fell into worried even though I solved 99% of the problems). Eventually I turned it to auto as I wasnt enjoying it and felt what I was doing was pointless. Everything fell apart towards the end of the game for me. In my opinion the spawns were too unbalanced and the enemy saving throws were way too high making my main character feel almost completely worthless (sorc). I didnt enjoy the maze/puzzle section in the first world and after a while I gave up trying to figure it out myself and relied on youtube players to guide me. It was just taking too long and felt tedious to fight mass spawns of tanky enemies while trying to figure out where to go. The final act of the game was even worse as a spellcaster as my character actually became completely worthless and I had to count on my melee characters to carry me all the way to the final boss. I thought the story ended okay and I was happy to see the outcomes of the choices I had made during my playthough at the end of the game. I have rated it fairly low but I would give it a 2.5 out of 5 if I had the option. If you are a fan of CRPG's I would recommend the game after a price drop.

Great atmosphere, story and gameplay for cRPG players. The game was very unbalanced after release for a while but its really good now.

Oh cool, another infinity engine like game. Having loads of fun with this one. Reasonable little story that lets you side quest your little feets off. Nice graphics and effects, sounds goes well with it. Overall pretty good. Certainly get it on sale :)

There have been many attempts tp capture the magic of Baldur's Gate, but all fell a mile short. That was until now. Pathfinder: Kingmaker captures that BG magic in spades and takes it another 5 yards. You can tell in your first hour of play that the developers have put their heart and soul into this game. It's just wonderful.