Owlcat Games made a big deal about faithfully reproducing the Pathfinder tabletop experience when they released Pathfinder Kingmaker, and I'm holding them to that. They have failed. I've played quite a bit of Pathfinder. It can be daunting for new players because there are a lot of moving parts and a lot of options, but it really isn't very hard. When I see that "core" (that is, the official rules, as close as Owlcat was able to reproduce them) is one of the harder difficulty settings, I get suspicious. When there's a popup warning about the difficulty, that leaves a bad taste in my mouth and causes me to wonder what the developer did to screw up the encounter balancing. I have both the Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous adventure paths. They don't require any advanced knowledge of the rules. What Owlcat has done is jack up the numbers (more monsters, more hit dice, higher base attack bonus, higher saves, etc.) to contend with optimized builds from charop forums that nobody ever actually plays at a real table. It seems like the developer was more interested in getting praise for difficult fights rather than delivering the tabletop experience in a CRPG. Save your money for a different game.
