Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition

Great story, game mechanics and music. Pathfinder rules adaption in my opinion well adapted. Some adaption was of cause necessary to integrate tabletop rules into a computer game. The game is not for casual gamers though who complain if they have to think! It can be challenging even at easy settings if you do not want to think about what you are doing. Also if you do not know the Pathfinder rules (I play the tabletop a lot) it will be tough. This leads to the next point. You have to be willing to READ. Yes, text, a lot of it. If you do not like that, this game is not for you. My only real complaint is the unusually long load screens. My game-disk is a striped array of SSDs with the access speed of DDR1 RAM. Yet even small areas show a load screen for much too long. I will recommend this game to my friends, However, I also play tabletop RPG with them every Friday for thirty years now. ;-)

I havent gotten very far yet so ill update as i get further into the game. -Char customisation is abysmal and wierd looking,making them look like bobbleheads with wierd hairstyles. lack of portaits is just bad especially since i can have the same one as important npcs early on -Combat feels like a massive fuck you if you rolled caster -Poor to no information about diffrerent scools of magic if i choose focus casting or specific class build (Empyreal sorcerer etc) -Travelling the map with a timer hanging over my head when its a massive slog is not fun + music and voiceacting so far is great and maps looks nice and vibrant Be ready to have a wiki/guide open as you do this if youre not familiar with dnd I only know dnd through other games like NWN and baldurs gate wich doesnt help mutch other then knowing some schools of magic or being familiar with alignment system or types of dragons.

The most common complaint about the game is that it is too difficult, and too close to original pathfinder rules (which are difficult). That's correct, but it also throws a lot of scrolls, wands, potions stat boosting items and gold at you to help you solve all of that. Autopause/slowmotion mode is there for a reason. In any case this issue is completely eliminated by the fact that the game has one of the best difficulty tweaking available. You can literally control damage done to party by .1 increments, use weaker critical strikes option which eliminates the overpowered pathfinder crit scaling (which negative reviewers on multiple review sites are complaining about), and adjust stats for hostile creatures (slightly weaker/stronger,much weaker/stronger etc.) You can change whether encumbrence is a thing, you can turn on injuries instead of deaths and so on. If every person who left a negative review for this game would get over 'hardmode pride' like i did, and tweaked it to their liking, this game would probably be a 4.9/5 After finding party members, an introduction chapter in which you become a baron of a piece of cursed land you will discover a game that's an amazing mix of stortelling, kingdom/town management, exploration, adventure, character development, and combat. What's great about it is precisely the fact that if any of those things stand in the way of your fun, there's an option to make them less relevant and focus on other aspects. Another unique thing about this is that the world is nothing like the boring tolkienesque high fantasy - it's still the dnd fantasy world filled with magic, secrets and supernatural, but it's gritty,cursed land where gods are wretched lunatics with too much power, rulers have their own agendas etc. Playing a neutral or evil character is also completely incorporated. Townsfolk can riot against you, prominent neutral characters can run away or betray you, or work for you.etc. solid5/5wouldwrite10xlongerreviewifgogletme

There are several issues here. The biggest problem can be summarized as the game is simply a bit of a jerk. It feels like a DM designed the encounters wanting to kill their players (that is NOT the goal of a good DM, his role is to make fun). A great example is an early encounter of your lvl 2 party involves running into a spider swarm in a cave on a fetch quest. In Pathfinder rules, spider swarms can only be hit by splash weapons. If you don't have splash damage, you'll do a lot of 0 damage to the swarm with your swords or arrows and get killed. Most players will die fighting. You were given splash flasks, you probably didn't put them in your quick slots though. So, you'll have to reload after you get team killed. That kind of design simply is not fun. You don't save scum the tabletop game. Some other general problems: - Lack of direction for low level party, many places you stumble upon are too hard to win against. - Lots of loading and some levels are extremely small housing just 1-2 encounters/areas. - Encountering enemies you can't possibly deal with early on (i.e. you can run into a random fire elemntalwhile just travelling about). - Stupidly buffed enemies. I played on normal or challenge at the time and randomly stumbled upon 2 goblins vs my 5 person lvl 2 party. This should be a stomp per rules, one had 25 AC. That's dumb, took like 40 attempted hits to kill him. - Poorly designed NPC companions, while many enemies have buffed up stats and bonuses your companions are not min-maxed instead being more designed around flavor. For example, the barbarian has only +1 dex (basically a joke), there's 2 wizard companions, one is an evil melee caster build and another is a wizard/rogue that has 8 con (basically guaranteeing no HP) . It is inconsistent that your companions be so non optimal relative enemies. - Following above, designing your own team is expensive costing lots of gold unless you do it at level 1.

I think the two most important things to take away from my review are regarding bugs, and balance. TL;DR... it's fixed. I see some reviews from 2018 complaining about bugs, some stating "avoid until it's fixed". Well, it must be fixed! I haven't encountered any issues. I have also not seen any real balance issues. Random encounters while traveling tend to be easy, and if you explore areas that are in your "starting area" later on down the game, you'll feel fairly omnipotent. This is to be expected. I've had to re-do a handful of combats after rushing in with reckless abandon, but that is also expected. Balance seems good, to me. I'm playing on normal. I was also warned before running into swarms that you need to use AOE damage on them, or magic. I'm not sure whether that was just on a loading screen tip, or if it was elsewhere as well. So... seems like the developer has fixed those issues, as called out in a seemingly rather significant patch ("enhanced edition"). Good for them! So, without those issues, how is it? For me, it's great. It reminds me of Baldur's Gate more than any of the other cRPGs that have been coming out (Pillars, Tyranny, Divinity). I enjoyed Pillars ad Tyranny both, but this is much closer to the experience I was looking for. I couldn't get into either Divinity game... I wanted to like them both, but they didn't hold my attention at all. If you're not aware, Pathfinder is very similar to AD&D 3.5. If you're familiar with that, you'll feel quite at home. If you're familiar with most any D&D game, it'll be fairly straight forward and you should be pretty comfortable with the spells and abilities. If you're NOT familiar, I'd recommend looking up some builds online and picking one you like, to start. The amount of options for character creation can be a bit overwhelming. Or wing it, you can always respec later! Thanks for reading... I hope you pick up the game, and enjoy it as much as I do!