Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

Campaign ongoing. This is an excellent CRPG, for every fans of pathfinder or classic rpg like baldur's gate. For me, if Pillars of Eternity 2 is very good, Pathfinder Kingmaler is excellent (even if more "conservative") ! A surprisingly good combination of RPG and kingdom management (not yet perfect, but I love it). The dev team is making a huge work to patch bugs, bravo to them !

There are some in-game kingdom management options that can permanently cripple your several dozen hour spanning playthrough, specifically speaking the game lacks proper developer foresight for lawful and non-good alignment characters, as far as the in-game advisor system goes. To explain the issue to those not in the know: the game offers a meager number of 3 possible councilors (a type of advisor) across the whole game. Holding at least one is paramount to a functional kingdom and not hitting permanent game over. The problem is that two of them are permanently missable characters from early-mid game, and third can be permanently lost later on. First is only available at the very start before the game has even introduced kingdom management gameplay, and to make matters worse, their advisor role is unknown to the player as well when they're making their choice. Recruiting the right one who happens to be a councilor type advisor is a pure 1/3 coin toss. Second is only available later on in one specific point in the story where there's no way to assume the character in question is going to be an advisor: in fact unlike other advisors she isn't even given a voice or a portrait to denote her importance and recruiting the character requires you to pick the most forgiving goody two shoes option in the quest involving her, which goes against any lawful or non-good player character modus operandi. Nothing alludes to the hostile character in question of being statescraft-related either. 1/4 coin toss in this case as far as quest choices go. The character isn't even good aligned, yet getting her services requires you to act one. As for the third: later on you lose the only councilor you are guaranteed have, and are again forced down the goodie two shoes path to regain his services or break your playthrough permanently unless you happened to luck out at the start of the game. I'm fine with punishing games. What I'm not fine with is unpredictable coin toss decisions.

I've actually completed this game unlike some of the other reviewers. Most "cRPGs" coming out these days are soulless husks, nothing more than nostalgic trickery, but not this one. Strengths: - Role-playing capability – much, much more than any video game RPG since Fallout: New Vegas in 2010 - Faithful adaptation of Pathfinder ruleset with understandable changes made - Diversity in character builds, enemy types, equipment, spells, feats is nearly unparalleled (only Neverwinter Nights series and The Temple of Elemental Evil are comparable, Neverwinter Nights series still being the best) - Best implementation of certain D&D-based classes to date, such as Sorcerer and Arcane Trickster - Finally we get Alchemist, Magus, and Mystic Theurge in a game! Too bad they are gimped by the level 20 cap of Pathfinder - Combat is arguably more tactical than the likes of XCOM - Very good strategy gameplay in the form of barony/kingdom management, not just some half-assed uninteresting implementation but comparable to actual strategy games - Good bang for your buck at $40 for an 80-130 hour game, DLC is not yet overpriced either - Six-person party, can even create your own companions if you’d rather not use the premade characters - Best difficulty customization ever, thorough gameplay customization too - Outstanding UI, best inventory I’ve ever seen in a party-based RPG - Best resting system ever - Excellent creature design - Outstanding support from the developers. This game is really their baby. They are always fixing bugs and addressing balance issues. Weaknesses: - Bugs - All of its writing falls short of excellence yet isn’t terrible - Illogically limited and gimped Raise Dead/Resurrection spells, only used for reviving fallen companions in combat - Isometric only, and can’t rotate camera for some reason - Horrendous balance issues - Environment not interactive/destructible enough - Unimpressive visual style for the most part - No multiplayer - Pathfinder's level 20 cap

I've been playing video games for nearly 30 years. I have never been as frustrated with a gaming experience as this one. There are good moments in the game, but the insane difficulty spikes toward the end game, extremely limited options to the core advisor system, and rushed pacing of the game detract from what might be a solid RPG experience. After HOURS of attempting the final boss battle, I had to give up and uninstall the game. I play games for the story, not the challenge. I naively thought that a game which gave me a "story" difficulty mode would not require rogue-like trial and error, pinpoint min-maxing, and/or flat out exploiting the game engine to complete the narrative. If I wanted any of those things, there are FIVE other difficulty settings which cater to varying degrees of difficulty. Why give me the option to play my way if you're just going to railroad me into a hardcore experience to finish a story I invested 60+ hours in? The advisor system is incredibly disappointing. For a game built around managing a kingdom, you are left with such incredibly limited options as to who will fill your various advisor posts. Due to some of my gameplay choices, I had two advisor positions completely unfilled. I get the devs added a way to put created Mercs in those roles, but my created characters were mute and it completely broke my immersion. And, considering you lose the game if enough poor kingdom choices are made, this is a huge oversight. Finally, I hate being forced to make choices at an artificially accelerated pace. There's a shot clock running in the background which prevented me from fully exploring the game. I get wanting to create a sense of urgency, but when doing so prevents you from exploring in an RPG setting, it's incredibly frustrating. I have never wished so much to have my time and money back. I feel like I have wasted my time on a brutal bait and switch. DO. NOT. BUY. unless you enjoy dark souls-like difficulty.

I wanted to love this game so much. I'm a big fan of old-school CRPGs and PnP RPGs like D&D and even Pathfinder itself. While this game is very faithful to Pathfinder, it is so buggy! I mean REALLY buggy! I'm talking Bethesda Fallout 76 levels of buggy! And inline with Bethesda with each new patch, some bugs are fixed, but they introduce new ones. At the time of writing we are on version 2.0j. However the version log only goes up to 2.0h, so there are two patches which we do not know what is going on, and to make things worse, the DLCs are no longer compatible with the game! The developers own DLCs do not work with an up-to-date game! Now that's a bug that Bethesda would be proud of. If you notice, I am talking very little about the game, and alot about the bugs. But that is because you will be spending more time bug-fixing than playing the game. Between long load times and game-crashing bugs, you will be playing very little of the game for your time. I keep checking back to see if bugs are fixed, but it is still unplayable.