I'm not going to lie, this review is more of an excuse to vent some of my frustrations. There's plenty to like about Pathfinder: Kingmaker if you're into cRPGs, and there are many in-depth reviews that go further into detail than I'd ever like to. So instead, I'm just going to share why I am right now dropping this game after 38 hours of enjoyable gameplay, with probably about 2/3 of the main story still to go. As the title might have clued you in, one the main draws of the game is its kingdom building/management mechanic. This essentially boils down to the player alternately holding court and then spending most of his time travelling around his lands solving all sorts of minor or major problems. The management side of this largely consists of sending your advisors (which you recruit out of your party companions) on different missions to solve on their own. There are 5 different advisor positions in total, and the game explicitly tells you in a tutorial message that you will find 2-3 possible candidtates to fill each of these positions. Now here's what happened to me: in my playthrough, I noticed that one of these positions (treasurer) remained empty, as none of the companions I had come across could be appointed to it. As I was about to enter into the next phase of the main quest, I took to Google to find out where I could find a fittingly capitalistic companion. I quickly learned that I had angered one of the potential candidates, because my ruler didn't put with his unethical behaviour. That's cool, I like that my decisions have consequences. So I checked for other candidates which should be available to me at that point in the game. And this is where learned that I had basically bricked my savegame about 20 hours ago when I explored a location near the kingdom's capital before I was prompted to do so. Because of this, I was never prompted to explore it at the right time to find a fairly essential companion and now I would have to start a new game. No thanks.
