Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Imperial Edition Bundle

Kingmaker is amazing and worth replaying multiple times for different choices and different builds. At the current version, it has much fewer bugs, especially game-breaking ones. Frequently reloading a save file may cause some bugs to occur. I am looking forward to the next generation Wrath of the Righteous.

I wouldn't normally go about writing a review for a video game, but in this instance I felt like I had to make a well deserved exception. In short, despite glaring issues at launch, the continued efforts of the developers to support their vision has resulted in a truly immersive and memorable crpg. For a single installment, the scope is unparalelled among its contemporaries, and while it may seem daunting commit to one game for hundreds of hours I can only say take my word for it, it's not a story you'd want to miss. Mandragora Swarms can kiss my ass though

I find it very unfortunate that I have to write this review because I have had high hopes for it twice and twice it has disappointed me, which is s shame because there is a lot of potential here. The engine of the game a knockoff of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, and it functions adequately running off of the Pathfinder system which is very apropos, since Pathfinder itself is a wholesale ripoff of 3.5 D&D. With that being said, the base game and combat mechanics are fine. The voice acting is very well done, the writing crisp and thematic, so why then the complaints? Well instead of building upon the strengths of BG/IWD, Kingmaker plays up the weaknesses of the engine and inserts some completely unnecessary faults. Also every quest is timed, and you will miss out on content by focusing on the important things the game tells you the timer for (and constantly reminds you are important), as the invisible timers expire on the things you were told are sidequests, but end up having major consequences. This is done to such a ridiculous degree as to make the game almost unplayable, it's impossible to manage time apart from trial, error and reloading ad nauseum. There are also numerous quality of life issues that should have been fixed in BG2 yet still persist in making the game an exercise in frustration to this day. So unfortunately the solid framework just makes a mockery of what it's based on and makes it an exercise in frustration to play. I have some hope that Wrath of the Righteous may correct these mistakes, but I cannot recommend Kingmaker to anyone except those just dying for more content in this style, and I would suggest exhausting both Pillars of Eternity and Torment: Tides of Numanera before trying Kingmaker. None are perfect experiences, but Kingmaker is the only one which is outright painful to play.

In my opinion this game is the one most resembling Baldur's Gate 2 (in a good way) out of all of the recent games of the so-called "old-school CRPG renaissance" (Pillars of Eternity 1&2, Divinity: Original Sin 1&2, Torment: Tides of Numenera etc). In scope, character interaction, combat and so on, Pathfinder: Kingmaker feels to be a worthier successor of BG2 than any other one of those games. For instance, Pillars games are a bit too overbalanced in my opinion. BG2 and now Kingmaker allow for more wacky things, which makes the gameplay more fun. I liked the story and characters a lot (note that the story truly opens up from Chapter 2). The voice acting is on point although used mostly just in the main story dialogues. The music is awesome. Graphically it's obviously not a very ambitous game, but I love the art style. Kingdom management is great part which is leagues ahead of any other similar feature in other RPGs (like your castle in PoE1, your ship in PoE2 etc). One real downside is the loading times which even on my SSD still feel a bit too long even after some work has been done on it in the recent patches. Hopefully the devs will improve this in the future patches. Small note for people not familiar with Pathinder or D&D: character creation might feel a bit overwhelming, so it might be a good idea to settle with one of the premade characters for your first playthrough in that case. To conclude, I highly recommend this game to all CRPG fans. Just remember that you can change the difficulty at any time and tweak it to your liking and you'll enjoy this game a lot.

The game-play systems are solid and the characters and story have potential but it seems to be lacking in Quality-of-Life (QoL) features and actual role-playing. In my trial run to get the hang of the game I ran into an event that I felt set the tone for the whole game. In a dungeon my party got hit with a spiderweb trap. Half the party got stuck and I was stuck staring at a screen waiting in real time for them to get free. I should not have this problem in a modern video game since this exact QoL problem was solved over a decade ago. It seems that the devs made a deliberate choice to make the game boring in certain situations and I'd rather not play a game with these "features" built in. In a table top game the DM would move past this situation with a just a few words or even sentences. What this game did was the table top equivalent of the DM forcing half the players to role a high DC until they are free and force the other half to wait for that to happen. This wasn't the first lack of basic QoL features common in both table top and video games but it was the first one I couldn't look past. I would even say that QoL features is an aspect of the table top game that this game didn't convert over well. Small basic things which won't effect things much on their own but the tedium starts to add up. This game focuses more on the technical aspects of the table top game's rule systems and less on the actual role-playing. On the first level up I was basically forced to level up the companions before I got to really interact with them. This combined with the unusually strong enemies and the unusually high skill DC basically forced me to go with mechanically optimised choices over more story themed choices. This would continue due to limited dialogue options in story events. There is a clear way the game wants you to progress and the only way I have managed to change it is through relatively high DC passes or combat, forcing me to use more mechanically optimised builds.