Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

После прохождения великолепных pillars of eternity и tyrany душа требовала "добавки", и после недолгих поисков решил преобрести вот это нечто. Ну и сразу же игра начала блестать своей кривой оптимизацией и технической составляющей. Первая же загрузка, как и все последующие, в начальное меню длилась около 5 минут (установил её я на ssd). В самой игра встречаются постоянные просадки частоты кадров (на Geforce RTX 2080). Постоянные баги разной степени ядрености, порой встречаются те, из-за которых пока ты не перезапустишь игру - дальше не продвинешься. Конечно, все бы ничего, да только игре, на минуточку, два года! Разработчики за два года после релиза не удосужились оптимизировать свою поделку и выпилить баги. А запилить платных DLC в общую стоимость самой игры - это пожалуйста. После всего увиденного у меня только один вопрос к разрабам - Вы это что, серьёзно? Выкинули в магазин игру и забили на неё, и так сожрут? Дальше что то рассказывать о ней смысла не вижу, так как техническая часть отбивает все желание проходить дальше напрочь. Пожалел, что преобрёл не в Steam, там хоть есть возможность вернуть деньги.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is an odd beast. It does a lot of things right, but stumbles just much as it succeeds. I especially liked the first 20-30 hours. The quests and the writing is decent. There are lot's of sensbile dialogue options for the various alignments which is always nice. The companions are likeable, though not as well written as say Pillars of Eternity 1's best characters. The areas are rewarding to explore and there are always quests or loot waiting to be found. I was not familiar with the Pathfinder ruleset, but it shares a lot of similarities with D&D 3.5. Baldur's Gate veterans should feel right at home. Later in the game though, it feels as if there is too much of everything. The map becomes littered with points of interest and Kingdom management gets really tiresome. Travel times get longer, as well as loading times (lol). More and stronger enemies means you have to rest more which means you have to spend more time not actually playing. There are quite a few options to streamline the game somewhat (putting Kingdom management on auto, lots of individual difficulty settings,...), but the game can still drag a bit. There is also a time limit in basically every chapter. The deadlines aren't super tight and leave enough room for sidequests with time to spare, but can get in the way if you just want to explore without care. There are also still a lot of bugs. I encountered nothing game breaking, but they are still annoying when they pop up every now and then. The UI is also in dire need of streamlining. It's servicable, but cumbersome and often fails at communicating information to the player. Overall the game is at its best when it doesn't try to be anything unique. With streamlined Kingdom management and a better technical performance, Pathfinder would have been an instant classic for me. As it is now, it's still a very good cRPG and probably my favourite one in recent memory. Certainly worth a try for fans of Infinity engine games.

The creators describe this game as "explore, conquer, rule". Let's analyze those elements here. The exploration part is great: nice terrain, nice variety, lots of going on. The conquest part is good: OK combat system, good scaling difficulty, though dependant not only upon a slider scale, but also upon your ability to create good characters and a good party. Here lies the first problem: I know Pathfinder world a bit and I had a lot of problems to properly create and manage my characters due to complicated, unatractive way of doing so, which also lacks proper explanation and description for your options. For players not knowing anything at the beginning it's going to be a nightmare. Don't get me wrong: I love the variety and amount of options you have, but the system feels extremely overwhelming at first. The story is OK: good in the beginning, weaker till the end, but never keeping you on your toes really. And the rule part is seriously lacking here: development is dull and uninteresting, managing advisors is tedious, stories aren't good either. The only redeeming part is shopkeepers providing you with awesome items under certain conditions, but that could be incorporated into the game through quests. I feel that this "ruling" part is underdeveloped at best, and should be left off completely at most. If you're starting, jst turn it all on auto manage and you'll be better off. Overall, this is a good game, deserving 4 stars IMO, but not 5, since it's never truly great.

I like the general gameplay structure and i like some of P/Ks rather unique additions to the Crpg formula. Im not going to complain about the visual design (which is charming) or the soundtrack which is well executed and mirrors other modern and older crpgs well. What i cannot stand is the awful writing. Virtually everything from flavor text, journal entries, item/npc descriptions, companion dialogue or player dialogue is horribly written. Its not just that its pulpy and cliche and utilizes every tired trope under the sun. I dont care that much about that. Its just that its plainly bad. it makes me cringe. it almost offends me with how bad it is. and if it isnt making me grind my teeth its just boring. i expected at least BG1 or NWN quality of writing. most fanfiction is going to be better than this game. while the game does offer some reactivity to your actions or dialogue choices, the dialogue choices you get are just awful for roleplaying. often you get just two or a few lines to choose from which are all assuming a certain personality with certain motivations which you didnt give your character yourself. and the choices you get are not varied enough to compensate that. the writers just love to put words in your imagined characters mouth. this is a mistake i didnt expect from a game where i am not playing a premade character. the dialogue choices are also very binary. you get to choose between being a valiant knight in shining armor or an evil baby eating grunt with a cheese eating grin. i get that these sort of roleplaying issues happen from time to time in a lot of rpgs even classics but its usually not a permanent issue. its a shame really. i was willing to overlook a lot of the flaws others complain about but writing like this belongs in a Uwe Boll movie. go on and make up your own mind but dont say you werent warned.

But this one game breaking bug keeps happening that corrupts my entire save. It's always at this one part and I can't continue to play. I have to start a new game if I want to play. That being said, I hope noone else experiences this, it is awful and they don't seem to have any intention of fixing it.