Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Imperial Edition Bundle

Story and game play are good. Character build and leveling are great. Bonus for combat can use either real time or turn based. Yet the game is unfinished the addition of "events" and kingdom management drag the whole thing down. The concept is excellent but execution failed. There is very little explanation or help in how the system works, which stats help what roles. The system does not walk you through the steps for building. Then there is a lack of connection. When you reach certain targets the next step does not appear. The worst part is the timed negative events. At least 2 of them have no clear explanation of why they are happening when. Checking the game boards these events are supposed to encourage movement along, but the triggers are not aligned with other events or game play. Nor do they give guidance on how to resolve (where to visit or what quests lines to complete). Even though it is a great game I cannot recommend it due to the kingdom management execution - fix that and the game would be great (I think it can enhance the game play).

The developers decided to add turn-based combat mode to the game, which introduced tons of bugs 2 years after release. After a hotfix to fix these, they broke save games... Excuse me, dear developers, are you just doing ad-hoc updates now whenever you "feel like it"? Are you even testing what you're releasing? I've loved this game for a long time, but you just wiped half of my saves and introduced bugs that weren't there before. Why couldn't you let this game rest?

I'm an RPG fan, mainly focused on tabletop RPGs, but I fell in love with Pathfinder Kingmaker. Starting with positives: - difficulty is done very well, there are many options, so you can tailor the experience to yourself - enjoyable learning curve of how different rules interact with each other - tooltips on terms, which people might not be familiar with (like deities, cities, countries, etc.) - story is well written, unexpected at times, and amount of choices for each alignment is giving this great replayability value. Lore is great, you can spend a lot of time delving into intricate details of the world As for negatives: - initially there was no turn-based combat, which for a pathfinder rule-set based game is IMO a flop. Real-time combat just is not it. Thankfully, Devs listened to the community! - initially there were a lot of bugs, but currently I encountered only three after 4 months of playing: a) in turn-based combat a character will sometimes move to attack, but then stop after walking up to an enemy and do nothing b) in bigger battles, initiative que gets stuck. Both this and previous problem can be fixed by quickly pressing T two times (which turns off and on turn-based combat) c) if you don’t assign an advisor to a problem with Mendev crusaders, then you won't be able to complete the quest related to them (there's no scripted encounter, that you should get) - evil alignment playthrough could get some love, as the game leans heavily towards Lawful Good I don’t get complaints about time restriction on quests, as I had plenty of time to do all of them (I failed one due to bug mentioned above). If you’re running out of time, then you didn’t pay enough attention to the quest. I’ve played this game for the last 4 months, with my wife playing alongside me on another PC. It was great fun, especially comparing outcomes of our different choices. It’s definitely not the last time I come back to Stolen Lands, even though I’ve completed the game a few times already

I picked this up with the implementation of turn based combat, as Divinity Original Sin 1 & 2 got my hooked on that, and Pathfinder: Kingmaker can't hold a candle to Divinity Original Sin. Graphical style is good, if slightly unimaginative. Graphic fidelity is maybe a 6. User interface and explanations are very poor, to the point they are detrimental to the user experience. For some strange reason there is no camera rotation, so you can spend whole fights not being able to see what is going on besides the outlines through walls. Character creation and stats are overly complicated and detrimental to the user experience, yet even with all the abilities and stats combat is very dull and 1 dimensional.

While I was disappointed I couldn't find a good heir to the Black Isles era, I didn't know there was a team building a game like Pathfinder. It uses the same mechanics as Baldur's Gate : an adventure game with plenty of RP mechanics, especially with plenty of "hidden" check rolls. No game reach this level yet. Larian is far behind, Obsidian lack something really epic, Bioware is too far from its early standards. The big studios seem unable to offer a proper RPG, probably because their fan base don't know much about it and prefer action games. It is flawed. There's plenty missing, but they did a massive job to enhance game mechanics. First, your kingdom : either you leave it to the AI, either you manage it. Finally, we have a heroe with a proper fortress to manage. Too bad interactions with other characters are not that rich there. But otherwise, it feels right and good. Beware, some challenges can be difficult if your roleplay is "good" or "evil", "neutral" management seems to be way easier. Fighting. At last, a good turn-based game with pause that looks like Baldur's Gate. Even more interesting as Pathfinder as a pretty good set of rules, and uses character building closer to Nerverwinter Nights. This combat system is the best : you still have turn-based mechanics, but it is way more dynamic, making fighting even more tactical than classical turn-based game. Buff yourself, fight, debuff ennemies, buff again, fight,... There's a lot of ways to improve your attack rolls and dispatch ennemies, especially the strongest. Finally a game that gives challenge : you need your brain to overcome the normal difficulty. And that feels good. For once, a normal mode with challenge. Multiple endings depending on your choices. And I won't spoil you, you can litteraly skip a whole chapter with smart decisions. The hardest chapter. And without breaking the story and the role you played. A very fine job, hopefully most lessons will be learned for Wrath of the Righteous