Right off the bat this game disconnects you from the world and lore by having your first campaign mission forever sever your ties with a faction you know nothing about. What does that mean? Who are you playing as? What are you doing? The game doesn't think its important to explain any of this. It has a campaign that does absolutely nothing to ground you to your pilots or the conflict your in, and sometimes doesn't even explain the mission your doing which I guess is fine... because all the missions are essentially kill things with icons above them. It begs the question of why they bothered having a campaign to begin with, since it acts as a long, annoying tutorial mission... err, GAUNTLET because its 50 missions or so long. This could have been easily avoided by having you pick a pilot you liked and gain funds from missions to buy newer and cooler gear as you progress... but they didn't do that, not even in Freelance mode which is where your supposed to spend most of your time. Pilots are treated as game difficulty/rewards modifiers, nothing more. You don't feel like your playing as the pilot, you don't feel like a mercenary in a war torn conflict. It feels like a series of near identical missions because that's what it is. Combat ranges from fun when things are going your way, to flat out irritating when your stuck with the wrong tools for the job: Fleeing from swarms of kamikaze drones and getting stuck on terrain, to plinking away with the most embarrassing side guns when your main canon is out of ammo. The game encourages you to play with underpowered vehicles to earn more rewards in Freelance mode so you'll be tempted to increase your frustration levels throughout the game. Even when I threw up my hands and went heavy every match I didn't particular care for the controls and gameplay which is basically a deal braker for this game, as its all gameplay.
To its credit, the combat, crafting, skill/lvling mechanics are solid, some of it even better then Fallout! But... who cares? I don't play CRPGs for how awesome the combat is, because its not. Even at its best like it is here, it cannot be expected to prop up you're entire experience. Why? Because the setting, the story, the characters, they don't interest me. They're bland, somewhat bleak but not bleak enough to be interesting. So in short, I quickly lost interest in Fallout: boring, and would recommend you do not buy this game if you like CRPGs for the story and characters.
What an excersize in tedium. The game stresses stealth/ambush mechanics to weed out mobs to make virtually unwinnable fights winnable making a miscuculation of 1 round of attacks the difference between possible victory and team wipe. Right off the bat, you're given battles that you can't knock out enemies in one round and the enemies have more numbers, firepower and... the most obnoxious unit I've seen in an Xcom style game, the Metal Men, healer/tanks that will res enemies, even the ones all the way across the map you killed ahead of time... every battle became drawn out and annoying.
I get it, I've played all the CRPGs. Bad rolls and early difficulty are the norm... but while in Baldurs Gate and Fallout 2 you're reloading to an assassin sent by the big bad or because the raiders are using automatic shotguns... in Pathfinder Kingmaker's early game you'll be dying to trash mobs, with trash gear, rolling crazy dice with buffed stats. That... is not fun. That is the opposite of fun, and its opposite of what the early game should be doing. It should be teaching you mechanics and easing you in. Enemies will - Critical! Critical! Critical! Party Members will - Miss, Miss, Miss Player will - Reload, Reload, Reload. This isn't what a CRPG, RPG or any game should do. Feeling that the way to overcome adversity is to die repeatedly so you can learn postmortem that these enemies are beyond you, that a swarm of insects can eat 3+ vials of acid and alchemist fire without dying, that you should never even have stepped foot in this canyon breaks all immersion and sense of accomplishment.
Im a bit baffled by all of the 3 star reviews which basically share my sentiments exactly, but just coming off of Planescape Torment, the truth of the matter is. If the story isnt good, this type of game isnt good. In short, the story isnt immersive and at times, boring. The combat, like others have said, suffers from path finding, you cant buff or use spells even outside of combat, you cant rest anywhere you want AGAIN making spell casting difficult, and there's no way to competently hold agro or even switch the attention of mobs with your front line guys... so again making it difficult for casters. So instead of giving it 2 extra stars for being shiny and nostalgic... Ill recommend Divinity: Original Sin in its place, a game that was different enough from the old school RPGs but actually was interesting and unique, instead of trying to bottle the magic, but failing.
