Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

While the game has a lot of promise and does some make some interesting changes to the CRPG template, it is full of bugs and unfinished content. Frequent crashes, broken abilities and traits, graphical glitches, and information screens that display programming code instead of formatted content -- the game is just not done. It also suffers from a severe lack of polish. Many quests are unclear and often break or get stuck. The game also has some of the worst balance problems in any RPG I have ever played. The current state of the game is bad enough that I literally went back to the site to double check that I had not bought a game in early access. With a few months of additional bug fixes and balancing this will be a great RPG that might rival some of the classics. But I would recommend waiting until the developer completes that process before buying.

I do own another edition of the game on GOG. 4.6/5 I loved "Planescape", played 10 000 hours "Baldur's Gate", tried many RPGs since then. AAAs ended up disappointing me, and i stopped bothering 10 years ago. I played "Original Sin" I/II, "Dragon Age: Origins", "Fallout NV", "Wasteland", some others. While those are worth your while, i had to buy Kingmaker in 2021 to really find what i was looking for. You can play this game in so many different ways, it makes me dizzy. "Pathfinder: Kingmaker" showcases a living world, with people, stories, fates. It adressses perfectly what a proper RPG should be like: it is about how the world itself lives. Not about the 'underlying mechanics and lore', like "Pillars of Eternity". Oftentimes, details will change depending on which order you do things. You may miss some you never knew about and then find out the next time you play. Dialogues change depending of what you did before. You can recruit bandits to be your "tax collectors", or simply end them. You can be righteous, or you can slander, exploit, steal, swindle, kill or lie. You can recruit 'beneficial' (to you) a**holes in your government, or get rid of them for the sake of justice. But the game never presents you with any 'ideal solution'. At times, you may have to choose the 'least bad'. Life is a lot like this and this makes this world relatable. The game is long (1100h for me so far. I really take my time trying stuff, experimenting, reloading...The DLCs are worth it). There are so many ways to build a character, it takes time to figure out the kinks of Pathdinder's system. But at the same time, it is not mandatory to try. Straightforward builds are efficient, fun, can be played right away, and are not the 'least effective solution'. Itemisation is good, progression is fulfilling, exploring is rewarding, replayability is high. Many basic tasks are not uselessly automated, although i miss BG's special arrows. I can only recommand it to anyone looking for an actual RPG

It took me a long time to pick up this game because of warnings about timed quests, something I hate (I'm one of those guys who spends hours exploring the map). After some research I discovered that all the problems in this game were solved by the community with the help of mods. Once that was done it became one of my favorite games! So I leave here the mods I'm using, all of which can be downloaded for free from Nexus Mods: - PTBR Pathfinder Kingmaker Traducao (translation of the game into Portuguese); - Bag of Tricks - Cheats and Tools (various functions, use to pause timed quests); - Arcemi Pathfinder Kingmaker Editor (use to edit Portraits easily); - Amazing companion portrait replacer (several portraits to make allies prettier).

The good first: 160h of play, great turn-based combat experience (haven't tried real-time), epic journey from simple mercenary to legend, lovely characters, good writing. lots of BG vibe. Not a fan of kingdom management, but I must say it kinda makes sense in this game. The bad now: it is absolutely impossible to have a smooth experience without constant googling: when the journal is telling you "Wait for stuff to happen", it is imperative that you google what needs to be done to avoid a game over due to (sometimes hidden) timers. Had to reload a couple of times (loosing a day of playing) because a timer shows up and it turns out there is no way I am gonna make it (that long kingdom project wasn't optional after all!). Even worse, you are supposed to explore a lot to figure out where to go, which would be normally great except that exploring itself requires time (in-game-days) and takes you closer to the impending gameover. Overall this turns an excellent game into a stressful experience. It also goes without saying, a lot of optional content cannot actually be accessed, because if you go after that, well, game over. That said, the core game does deserve to be played, especially if it has been a while since you last cast high level spells like "Horrid wilting"... If you decide to give it a try, I suggest to turn the kingdom to invincible in the options, but do not turn kingdom management off.

With another 3-6 months or so in the making, this game could be worth 4 or even 5 stars, but not at this point in time, even with the first big patch having hit. Pathfinder looks and sounds great (when it does, not all dialog is voiced), and it offers a massive game world and a huge amount of character stuff to muck about with. But it sure seams like Owlcat have bitten off more than they can chew with this one, or maybe they needed to release one or too quarters early. The game could really have used that time, and on all fronts, too. Your sidekicks all start out interesting until you notice that they don't really have much new to say after the exposition in act 1. Fireside banter, too, is repetitive in the extreme. The game overall appears much better balanced, now, after 1.1, but the final two acts are still an unholy mess of soulcrushing b.s. Far too many class abilities and iconic spells did not make it into the game. Kingdom management is tedious instead of fun and rewarding. The game does a pi s s poor job at communicating to the player which feats belong together, it straight up recommends bad options and tells you not to take good ones (e.g. greater spell focus). There is no spell list in the game that would allow you to make an informed decision as to your specialist school of choice, does not inform you with regards to a class's BAB progression, etc. This list could go on. And for all those players who made the wrong choices during level-up because they were quite literally left in the dark by the game, there isn't even a respec option *slow-clap Add to that having to go through multiple loading screens at every turn, each of which taking 30-60 seconds, bugged quests that have far-reaching consequences that will only become plain much much later, spontaneous casters without the ability to swap spells - at all! - , not being able to change so much as your outfit colors after character creation.... I could go on if there was more space here. Wait 4 GptY