Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

It breaks my heart not to immediately recommend this. I was worried this was going to be Pillars with a Pathfinder coat of paint, and am delighted by how faithful an adaptation it is! It's not 1:1, and there are some notable class omissions (Gunslinger and Summoner I get, Cavaliers lose a lot without mounts, but Witch and Oracle should have been doable), but you're still given an impressive amount of options that rivals the complexity and depth of the tabletop experience... if you only have the Core Rulebook, Advanced Player's Guide and Ultimate Magic, but that's honestly the most you can ask in reason. Writing and characters are certainly on par for the genre too. I had a rough experience with an early boss, and it sounds like most people do. It reduces a lot of damage, and you might not have stumbled upon those two magic-users that can actually use offensive spells yet. I was ready to dust myself off and carry on, but then I read more reviews, and it seems like the issue doesn't get better. Your heroes will do virtually no damage to an enemy, and even your tanks will be dead before you can figure out why. What's worse is random encounters don't seem to adjust well to your party's level either. If there *is* a simple fix here, I think it's adding an option to remove damage reduction from enemies, but it sounds like it could use a bigger fix than that. I hope to see a *major* balance patch in the future. Until then, I'm certainly gonna keep playing, but this is gonna be save-scum central and I don't super-enjoy that. (On a positive note, I actually love the camping mechanics. A lot of people say they're a pain, but it's not that hard to buy a few days of rations from Oleg, and then put the characters in the roles where they have the biggest numbers. Good to see a cRPG not just say "sure, naptime, whatever". Only thing that might help is an estimate on how many days of travel to get to a destination.)

Truth be told, I don't know anything about the board game. This out of the way, This game Pathfinder has everything to sooth a player needs for its genre but 2 points, 1 of which is a huge caveat. 1) There are way too few character portraits. I don't care if the budget was included for it or not. Character creation is a big requirement for this type of games and that was an extremely cheap move that smells "wait, maybe there could be more portrait for a coming DLC"? 2) The biggest problem of all is the shear number of patching. RPG games and closely surrounding game genres. The game is definitely WORTH BUYING but this is NO game gold release, this is at best a BETA HOT FIX stage; therefore buy it and leave it for a month or 2, if not, don't buy it and wait for a month or 2 while "they fix bugs" and perhaps you will remember the game exists.

Pathfinder Kingmaker has the makings of a truly fantastic game, but it needed another year in development. The game currently suffers from numerous bugs (both major and minor), but the real problem is that the later chapters feature appallingly bad game design. The first issue is that the difficulty is all out of wack. The enemies you face seem to assume you will always have an optimized party that's also buffed to the gills. If you use a less hardcore team, expect to die a lot. In theory this can be compensated for via the difficulty slider. But late game even that breaks down because the difficulty slider only tweaks the damage and attack bonus/AC relative to the NPCs. That doesn't do much when NPCs will spam powerful status effects faster than you could dispel them. This is made exponentially worse by the game's second issue, its penchant for 'Guide Dang It' quest design. Hidden information and unwinnable quest states abound. Seemingly innocuous decisions can completely hamstring you 30 hours later, sometimes severely. I'm no stranger to this design philosophy, but it needs to be done very carefully. Kingmaker has done so very poorly. Specifically, the game is very long, meaning the amount of time wasted is enormous. The other problem is that it really undermines the 'roleplaying' aspect of the game, because some choices are much better than others but there's rarely any way to guess that ahead of time. There are a lot of good parts to this game. The plot works well, and the companions are surprisingly well done. Unfortunately, that makes the shortcomings all the more frustrating, because I want to slog through in the illusory hope of finding a satisfying ending. Someday, I suspect the bugs will be patched and walkthroughs will make it possible to avoid the many, many pitfalls in the story. When that day comes, I'll try to re-evaluate this game. Until then, Pathfinder Kingmaker has to be counted as an extreme disappointment.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is an RPG with very old-school sensibilities. That has its advantages - character customisation is very deep, and there's a wide variety of different builds you can come up with. Skill choice, alignment and roleplaying actually matter, and there's a lot of very interesting choices to make in the main plot (and some of the sidequests). However, the game is also rather unforgiving. There is very little hand-holding, and nothing to prevent you from painting yourself into a corner. If you go into an encounter unprepared, you'll just lose. I'd say that the game is "tough but fair," but unfortuantely it REALLY goes downhill towards the endgame. Let's just say that you should take the Blind Fight feat for every character if you want any hope of ever completing the final dungeon. And probably keep Death Ward handy. And Mind Blank. And Freedom of Movement. And Delay Poison.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker takes inspiration from classic pen & paper based CRPGs like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights 2. This means if you have played any of these games you will feel right at home. The combat is executed in real-time with pause, it's tactical and party based. It follows the classic formula with very little to add. It also inherits the pseudo open world style world map. Where it differs from the classic formula is it's kingdom building aspects. The game has a system that could be favourably described as a very light version of a turn-based grand strategy game. Less favourably as a glorified idle game not unlike the ones that can be found on social networks. But it does what it is supposed to do which is to make you feel like you're the actual ruler of your kingdom. All of these aspects work when taken seperatly. However, when combined the whole thing implodes. This is because the game's main quests have deadlines, some of which are not obvious to the player. This means you never actually get to do what you want to do and always feel pushed in the direction the developpers want you to go. It can not be stressed enough how detrimental these deadlines are to both the idea of an open world game and to the idea of a kindom simulator. Want to build your kingdom? Nope, gotta do the main quest. Want to explore your lands or do some sidequests? Nope, gotta do the main quest. Now! This is made even worse by the fact that everything takes at least twice as long as it should. Combat feels sluggish, the UI responds too slowly, too many unnecessary loading screens. In short the game just loves to waste your time. In the end it was a nice idea but nothing more. The execution is severely lacking and even the Enhanced Edition cannot remedy that. Weak 3/5 stars. Only buy/play if you've already played all of the classics and all of the other spiritual successors like Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 and Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2.