Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

So I was amazed by this game. Immersive, character creation felt like creating a character for the tabletop game and so on and so on. So I thought to myself, yeah lets make that feel like actually playing Pathfinder and so customized the difficulty options accordingly, still leaving it to relativly normal. So I create my Ranger since I just like that class and start the game. Playing the prologue it's fun and all and based on my decisions I end up with 3 additional party members. A bard (which I assume will join automatically), a fighter specialized on tower shields (one can always use a tank) and a barbarian. So I continue my quest for a while, I win sometimes I fail sometimes and I'm having a blast. And then the game just shits on you with a "random" encounter that is just forced on you. It's guaranteed to show up, no matter your level or what party members are at your disposal. And they are just crushing me everytime. No speech option or anything. Other than fighting you could give up a party member but that forces the evil alignment on you. I know this is supposed to be a real campaign like they actually did in the tabletop. But if I'm playing the tabletop ME AND MY FELLOW PLAYERS CHOOSE OUR CLASSES ACCORDINGLY. It's not based on decision what characters I have. You make sure you have a healer, at least one mage and some fighters. THrowing random characters at you like the game does MAKES NO DAMN SENSE. I ended up with fighters only mostly based on my characters alignment and some shitty speech options (Also apparently I COULD have had more characters but I made the wrong decisions and had the wrong skills/Alignment. So yeah, because of that I'm basically screwed. All I can do is start over because I can't even leave the area without triggering the encounter. The game is basically shitting on you for choosing the wrong playstyle. Sometimes games like that reward certain playstyles but it should never punish one like in this case.

I was tired of the watered down "Diablo"-esk games. They weren't RPGs. I know that RPGs don't always translate well onto the PC, but PF:KM does an incredible job. I'm a huge Elder Scrolls fan, this is different. Not all the monsters will be easy. You won't be able to kill every monster you face. You might die because there is a boss hiding a cave that you can't handle. If you rage quit because the game beat you, I'm sure you have other problems in life. Yes, I got caught in a dungeon without food - couldn't rest and had to do it over. Shame on me for not having my act together. Watch a few videos on tactics and DO IT AGAIN! Get better! Make your characters more powerful! Pro-tip: casters are just as powerful buffing the peeps up front as they are chucking fire balls from the back. Enjoy the stories! The game is full of puzzles. It's FUN! If I wanted it easy, there are a few other games that are just that. But I wanted a REAL RPG - with REAL RPG rules and weapons and spells (OH MY!). Oh, the classes!! ..and the MULTI-CLASSING! How much damage does that ax do? 2d8 - perfect. Not sure why you missed that bandit? Hover and it SHOWS YOU THE ROLL! Glorious. Get the mods. Put a sweet picture in from the web. Trick our your peeps. Reading some of the reviews it sounds like OwlCat has listened and incorporated some of those improvements into their game. Even without the mods there were things very different/better in July 2020 than in 2018. WORD of CAUTION: don't put the kingdom on auto to start. There are things/quests that you won't be able to do AND you can't turn auto off. Would buy again. Can't wait to work through the game and hit the DLC. It is worth every penny.

Every engagement feels like a stat check and there is no room to play around and disengage. You either win really hard or lose very hard and reload. I feel that when I got to know the game better, experimented with different classes and team compositions - it didn't help much. Since the battle shifts only between easy win or hard loss, it feels you can never engage unbuffed, because you need every little bit of numbers to win the stat check. Thusly, in early game, you will be refreshing a lot of 1 minute per level buffs. The DLC random dungeon suffers real bad from this and is built around 'boons' that you gain by exporting progress from previous characters, which is boring. The campaign is OK, for one playthrough, because there's some exploration to do, which is hindered by running back to the throne room, even if you disable the kingdom management. At one point you can kill a dragon and claim it's treasure, which you get in 'kingdom points' to build things in your cities, but why can't I have gold and if I feel like it, exchange the gold to said points? Overall, I feel like the game's design is fighting itself. It's trying to be an adventure, but it's also a carefully balanced coaster ride with cogs and strings on every corner.

It didn't take me long to realize that this is an unapologetic Dungeons and Dragons game. I took my level 2 party 3 jumps away from the home base and discovered a troll. I thought to myself, "Hey, this will be fun." 6 one-shots later, and I realized that I could stumble my way into encounters I wasn't mentally prepared for, nor had the levels to even survive. Every single aspect of the game was trying to kill me in horrid ways, and I couldn't coast through "Normal" mode. There are new mechanics that are so much fun. For example, they've implemented a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book / narration style to navigate through various story points, combined with an authentic D&D skill system. I.E. You feel like there's an actual Dungeon Master staring you down when you say, "I want to follow them through the forest," and the DM replies, "Ok, give me a Nature Check." Combine this with a map system for navigating the environment, and you actually feel like you're playing the table top version. There are problems, however. There's very little handholding for new pathfinder players. I can foresee a lot of people getting very frustrated and refunding the game. There's no way the game tells you you might be outmatched. I.E. I had no idea that Troll was going to thoroughly stomp me into a fine paste. They could have had the narration say something like, "This place is dark and scary for you. It might be a good idea to return back when you are more powerful." There are bugs. I have had one CTD. And I keep getting loading screen hints to use commands with a {NULL] button binding. And the one that really pissed me off was that you're able to "hire" a custom character for a lot of money (early game) which was necessary for survival, but then that character (and the money) just disappeared after you got new story-characters. Over all, I recommend it! I do hope they polish it up, though.

At first I had issue with some aspect of the game with regards to encounters felt level designed which I don't mind in a shooter but can't stand in an RPG. Then I had issues with the over the top super scrubs. I am all for difficult encounters but WTF was with the super kobolds & mites? These are suppose to be the weakest monsters in the game and I was seeing them with god stats. I ran into a level 5 Bandit wizard/sorcerer with over 50 hit points that means this wizard rolled perfect 6s for all his hit dice AND had a con of at least 20. To top it off I got through the tough levels made it the kingdom stage and right off the bat I get a screw you even that caused my kingdom to implode every day. Which would have been fine but this fired when I picked some choice in kingdom screen that caused my kingdom to fast forward in time. Bad event fires but instead of letting me pause the fast forwarding and go deal with the problem and then resume when finished it, forced me to continue all the while each day I lost kingdom stats which killed my kingdom. Thing is not all choices on the kingdom screen causes you to fast forward in time and it isn't like there was an alert or anything I started it and poof the days just rolled by. other time I start something and nothing happens I can leave the kingdom screen do stuff and come back and see the result. Too many aspects of this game felt like a "Frak you" from the developers. I didn't get the feeling I was being taken on a journey of discovery with the devs, I felt more like I was in conflict with them and they were trying to piss me off. The game just isn't fun and it isn't difficulty I love BG which was notoriously hard but they did it in a way that didn't feel like it was the player vs them, and if you can into weak monsters they were weak not magically god like. I wouldn't recommend this as it was simply frustrating and UNFUN to play which is the worse thing for a game to be.