Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

Short version: It's a fantastic and deep game with minor and/or debatable limitations. Longer: version: Strengths of the game are the story (with superbly paced two-step ending) and well-written characters and locations, many of which I'll remember for a long time. I particularly appreciated the difficulty of the game, that I'd label as "rewarding" on Normal difficulty - one cannot expect to succeed with no thinking whatsoever (which was sort of the case in many recent RPGs unfortunately, which makes the enjoyment of succeeding in them low), but I haven't met a single place that would be frustratingly difficult*, although many places did require re-memorizing spells, learning new buffs, etc. One must "play" the game actively, making a decent party that works well together, and thinking about consequences of your actions, rather hoping that game designers have protected you from failure. I also liked the freedom to tackle situations in different ways (not always, but in many cases), possibility of exploring the world on your own, a surprisingly well-working mix of kingdom management and normal RPG experience. *) There are some well-known cases that have the potential to be frustrating,(early spider, or "broken" Wild Hunt). But there are hints for tackling these, and the former don't have to be fought much. And with the third, there is a fairly simple counter that clerics can do. You don't have a cleric? The game designers were kind enough to make traders sell relevant scrolls. And you can make new mercenaries, even in later stages of the game. Cons? Some bugs remain (I encountered one that ment I had to load 30 minutes back). Interactions with party members could be made even deeper. And I think that it might be communicated a bit better to the player just how important the decisions in companions' quests are in the end. Overall, I'm in love with the game and it's one I'll surely want to replay, probably several times.

Layers upon layers of gameplay to peel back; what a simply sublime experience. With the wide open map exploration and discovery of Baldur's Gate and the character creation of Icewind Dale II, this game kept me enthralled for over 200 hours. And a day after finishing it, I'm already wanting to delve back in with a completely different character and different alignment (your kingdom's alignment is tied to your own). If you're considering this title during this holiday season, you won't regret it if the above intrigues you in even the slightest. The bugs have been fixed; in all those hours of gameplay, I had a single freeze.

A game of wasted potential. My main issue was the UI/information provided, or better the lack of it. I never knew what to expect from areas/enemies and regions. No indication on the difficulty, lvl range and alignment. As many enemies are randomly OP, your only viable alternative to intence min/max, is savescuming to death after an bad/difficult encounter. Alternatively, you can lower the difficulty to make every encounter pedestrian, but in the process remove any challenge to the fights... Also the resting process is tedious and combined with the aforementioned lack of info, it is constant. The story is meh, but at least not dowright awful (up to few hours in, I cannot comment for the mid-end). The voice acting is quite bad in many cases and anoying in many others. The AI companions are cardboard clices of their classes/alignments. Some strong points (character creation process, surpricing good info on stats in character creation, effects and nice artwork etc) are not enough to make it a good buy IMHO. Even for the -50% that I got it. Tried it with mods and made it marginally better. The rogue like DLC is decent though, but I bought this game for the full cRPG experience, not a Rogue clone. I hope their next game is better, I already filed a refund claim for this.

this is a great game, characters are bland but the game play is solid. i spend hours just leveling guys to find interesting class combinations. the game introduces some table top themes like giving u text describing a scenario then you use different skills to try to overcome situations. if you like games like neverwinter nights, or balders gate than you will feel right at home with this game.

I don't know what are the problems with hands of creators of this game, but you can't even launch it properly without shamanistic dance around this game. Too buggy, launch only from times to times, gameplay is broken. Tried it after all patches and DLC's. Everything the same.