Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

To be clear, I expected a difficult, old school isometric DnD game, its what I signed up for. But this... it is so close to being good it just hurts. The first chapter is excellent, choices, consequences, multiple paths got me excited! But this is like an hour of play at best. After that it falls completely off the rails. The quest tracking messes up, the quests are 50/50 impossible or well balanced. You get no real information with which to make descions... Try the geographically closest quest? Triple your level with permanent damage you have no way to cure (even if you have the right class to cure it, which is not guaranteed, you need a higher level to access cure). Try to follow the vague, unquested story directions? End up suddenly fighting a monster TEN TIMES your level. If there is an escape mechanic, I couldn't find it. It felt like playing with a terrible GM who wants to kill you and claims it's "Fair" because they wrote everything down in advance and there WAS a way to survive, you just didn't guess it, despite there being no real clues. Uninstalling in disgust. I gave it two stars because it at least runs, and is a game.

As someone who has both DM'd and played in Kingmaker tabletop campaigns, the story in this game has been considerably tightened up and is generally more coherent than the original Adventure Path, which was easily one of the worst parts of the AP. The characters here are stronger, more time is taken to explore motivations, and in general it benefits from being in a CRPG, where the standards for writing are more rigorous. Unfortunately, the game capitalizes on little else. Adapting the Pathfinder ruleset to a CRPG is already inadviseable, but it managed create an adaptation that perpetuates some of the worst wargamer-y, rules-lawyer-y design stereotypes that have stained D&D's reputation for decades. Pathfinder works as a tabletop because there's a Gamemaster to manipulate rules and circumstances based on the party to both accommodate and challenge them. With the removal of the GM, the game must be run Rules-As-Written, which means a lot of little assumptions made by the tabletop rules become problems that compound each other: Magic loot is frequently unsuitable to what the party needs and uses, particularly if anyone uses rare, unusual, or exotic weapons A fair encounter can turn fatal in an instant because of a bad roll at the worst time. The 1d20 mechanic is notoriously swingy and leads to random difficulty spikes if a GM isn't there to react accordingly. Some threats can only be countered by certain spells and potions, but you have no meaningful abililty to do recon and therefore no meaningful opportunity to prepare. Et cetera. The result is a game that is extremely non-adaptive and where tense moments and overall story pacing are ruined by having to repeat fights or entire sections because of bad luck. Which is a shame because the story is so good. The game would have been better served by building its own rules from scratch which evoked the feeling of Pathfinder's, but were better suited to the constraints of a CRPG, like HBS did with Shadowrun.

Игра неплоха, но не доработана, местами нет логики (крылатые персонажи не умеют летать). Баланс непонятный или отсутствует, НО работает в положительную сторону (этим игра выделяется на общем фоне). Система магии неплоха, но я бы добавил несколько вариантов: магия крови, магия теней, демонология (как ветвей воплощения(призыв и подчинение), разрушения (увеличенный урон призванным), преграждение (изгнание)), биомагия (постоянное изменение персонажей (неубираемые крылья, дублирование органов (сопротивление ядам), изменение кожи (улучшение сопротивлений), замена глаз для зрения в темноте, дополнительные конечности или органы зрения), доработанная некромантия (поднятие мертвецов из трупов так, чтобы они не исчезли через некоторое время). Обрадовала и огорчила кинетика: отсутствует телекинез. Мало рас (тех, что есть для меня не хватает плюс нет некоторых любимых и гибридов). Разочаровало отсутствие ремесел у главного героя и спутников. Ветка колдуна (чародея) имеет часть общих бонусов с веткой магуса (драконье наследие в обоих). В общем игра порадовала, но я надеялся на лучшую систему магии и большую вариативность.

Хорошая игра с множеством интересных квестов, отличной музыкой и хорошими персонажами, но до сих пор встречаются баги способные запороть сотни часов прохождения.

This is a great RPG in BG style. In my opinion the story and dialog are better than Pillar of Eternity or Torment: Tide of Numenera as those contain too many verbose and lore-dump dialogs, There are many choice and consequence and quite open storyline. Many compain about this game difficulty. Well, old RPGs are much more difficult than this and there is a thing called difficulty setting. Lower the difficulty down if it's too hard for you. For me, it is a fresh breath for an RPG to challenge you nowaday, with all AAA RPGs' hand holding with no challenge. There are bugs, but every game, RPG specifically have bugs at launch because of their complexities. Even Baldur's Gate still have unfixed bugs until today after 2 decades. The devs are the quickest in the industry to fix bugs. There are daily patches. They are great!