Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

After 25ish hours of trying to like this game, I have to give up. The difficulty on "core rules" level is off the charts. I have no idea what they consider "core rules" but random goblins sporting 26 AC when you best your lv 2 fighter has is +7ish to hit after buffs it out of line. I"ve gone from one encounter to another and save scumming seems to be the only way to accomplish anything so far. Tool tips suggest running from tough fights and coming back later, but you can't run from anything and you get pitiful xp from random encounters, so I am not clear on how you are supposed to level up to return to these fights. Ignoring random encounters that can present you with unwinnable fights (that you can't run from), even the set encounters can face you off with unwinable fights and there is nothing short of going into the encounter and reloading when you lose to indicate that something is beyond you. For the life of me I can't find any "tactic" to handle some of these things. The game seems to be based around the assumption that you are going to just go in and die to learn anything about the encounters. This would almost be better suited as a "roguelike" with disposable characters where constant death is an expected part of the gameplay. This game has stopped being a grand adventure about the birth of a kingdom and has become a farce about GLaDOS saying "don't mind that pile of clone corpses, I'm sure you'll do better against this leopard than the first five did."

I believe the title itself is prettty self-explanatory, it is a shame that such a game has been released with so many bugs... But well the team is trying to fix issues patch after patch; they should have beta test it more thoughrouly instead of rolling it out like that. What a shame, the kingdom building plus the RPG side is something that I dreamt to play, the kingdom managemnet is very enjoyable and the city building is also a nice add-on. As for the story of your companions, I think that there are still improvement to be made to have a better depth in these characters. A storyline in a BD/Witcher style would have been more than welcome. So I leave the two stars for now as the game is pretty much full of bugs, but I won't hesitate to change the rating as soon as it becomes more playable.

This game has been the most fun I've had since Baldur's Gate was originally released. Has a fun story with mulitple options to follow it through. Lots of character choices and so far the replay value is very high. The game, when released had many issues, but over time those have been worked out and better game play options setup. Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 all had similar release issues and look at them now. This game is proving to have the same background support. Looking forward to more things from this publisher.

Having played all the original CRPGs -- Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, etc. -- I very much wanted to like this game. Unfortunately, the combat is so unbalanced even on easier difficulties that playing the game just becomes a tedious bore and a time waster. Reluctantly uninstalled it. I suppose for those who have no jobs or family or any other important demands on their time and who are willing to repeat the same fight two or three times in order to win it, this might hold some appeal, but for everyone else, I would recommend skipping it.

I'm really loving it! Everything is fitting together: The combat system is great, story is good and offers VERY many different options and alternatives, all skills are actually useful, companions are believable, the strategical kingdom development works great, and there are many options to make playing more comfortable (e.g. auto-loot). Can recommend it for anyone who even remotely likes RPGs.