Disclaimer: I've completed this game on Steam, clocked 70 hours for a single complete playthrough. TL;DR: This game is a must for everyone who loves Fallout 1&2 and old-school CRPGs in general. The name of this game is a bit unimaginative and it made me a bit suspicious that it might be some low-effort Fallout knock-off, but boy was I pleasantly surprised. Obviously this game is heavily Fallout 1&2-inspired, but it stands on its own firmly. The Soviet flavor is fresh and interesting for this kind of a game. NPCs have well-developed personalities and interesting dialogues. Combat system and RPG mechanics are quite similar to Fallout 1/2's ones, but it's definitely not a bad thing. Graphically this game is obviously not very ambitious, but it's decently looking and immersive. There are no voiceovers apart from the narrator in the intro and the outro, which is unfortunate but understandable with indie budgets. It's quite a large game, I clocked ~70 hours for a single complete playthrough. I haven't encountered any bugs whatsover (a problem often plaguing indie projects of such size), which is definitely a pleasant surprise. To sum up, I recommend this game to every Fallout 1&2 fan, and to all people who enjoy CRPGs in general.
In my opinion this game is the one most resembling Baldur's Gate 2 (in a good way) out of all of the recent games of the so-called "old-school CRPG renaissance" (Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2, Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera etc). In scope, character interaction, combat and so on, Pathfinder: Kingmaker feels to be a worthier successor of BG2 than any other one of those games. For instance, Pillars games are a bit too overbalanced in my opinion. BG2 and now Kingmaker allow for more wacky things, which makes the gameplay more fun. I liked the story and characters a lot (note that the story truly opens up from Chapter 2). The voice acting is on point although used mostly just in the main story dialogues. The music is awesome. Graphically it's obviously not a very ambitous game, but I love the art style. Kingdom management is a great part of this game which is leagues ahead of any other similar feature in other RPGs (like your castle in PoE1, your ship in PoE2 etc). One real downside is the loading times which even on my SSD still feel a bit too long even after some work has been done on this problem in the recent patches. Hopefully the devs will improve this in the future patches. Small note for people not familiar with Pathinder or DnD: character creation might feel a bit overwhelming, so it might be a good idea to settle with one of the premade characters for your first playthrough in that case. To conclude, I highly recommend this game to all CRPG fans. Just remember that you can change the difficulty at any time and tweak it to your liking and you'll enjoy this game a lot.
In my opinion this game is the one most resembling Baldur's Gate 2 (in a good way) out of all of the recent games of the so-called "old-school CRPG renaissance" (Pillars of Eternity 1&2, Divinity: Original Sin 1&2, Torment: Tides of Numenera etc). In scope, character interaction, combat and so on, Pathfinder: Kingmaker feels to be a worthier successor of BG2 than any other one of those games. For instance, Pillars games are a bit too overbalanced in my opinion. BG2 and now Kingmaker allow for more wacky things, which makes the gameplay more fun. I liked the story and characters a lot (note that the story truly opens up from Chapter 2). The voice acting is on point although used mostly just in the main story dialogues. The music is awesome. Graphically it's obviously not a very ambitous game, but I love the art style. Kingdom management is great part which is leagues ahead of any other similar feature in other RPGs (like your castle in PoE1, your ship in PoE2 etc). One real downside is the loading times which even on my SSD still feel a bit too long even after some work has been done on it in the recent patches. Hopefully the devs will improve this in the future patches. Small note for people not familiar with Pathinder or D&D: character creation might feel a bit overwhelming, so it might be a good idea to settle with one of the premade characters for your first playthrough in that case. To conclude, I highly recommend this game to all CRPG fans. Just remember that you can change the difficulty at any time and tweak it to your liking and you'll enjoy this game a lot.
