After 136 hours I finished the game! I had to install a mod to help with some fights because the game can be unbalanced and it would have taken much longer if I didnt cheat. lol But what I loved about it was the story, characters and world! Easily in my top 10 rpgs, together with Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age, The Elder Scrolls and others.
I think this might be third time I attempt to play this game since I bought it originally. I just can't...It somehow manages to find a way to be unbearably annoying in one way or another. If you truly aspire to finish this game it means you have the patience of a saint.
Potentially a great game, once it´s finished. As many others have mentioned, there are a lot of balancing issues. Random encounters will potentially one shot your entire party in the first round. A lot of monsters deal permanent stat damage, that I have so far found no way to "cure", which means mu avergare dex in my party is down to about 5 after playing for two hours. Also, loading times are terribly long, there are many many many many graphics and sound bugs. The game tends to just halt for 20-40 seconds at random intervals, even in the middle of a dialogue or combat, and I´m running the game on a very high end rig. (Geforce 1070, i7-8700, 16 gb ram). At one point I thought my hard drive had actually crashed, but it was just PF:K doing it´s things. I´ve given up getting the game to run in a tolerable pace for now, and sincerely hope that the issues will be fixed, and this will not be another stone in the pile of kickstarter games, that should have never been released.
This game has a lot of potential to be something really special, particularly for fans of old RPGs like BG2 etc. The quests and characters are interesting, and the kingdom management provides some welcome variety. The combat is faithful (too faithful, perhaps) to the tabletop rules, and I would recommend not playing on anything above Normal difficulty if you aren't familiar with them. Unfortunately, despite all the positives I wouldn't recommend buying it in the current state - at present, it's buggy as hell. I've reached a point in my playthrough where I can't continue until a patch is released. This is probably something that would be a good buy a few months down the line, when the most critical bugs and balancing issues have been fixed.
Pathfinder Kingmaker is one of the best, if not the best CRPG since Baldurs Gate 2, at least for me.
There seem to be a lot of balance problems for some people, I personally didnt have any such problems and were able to clear all fights in less then 10 fights. I also havent had a single overly broken random encounter as well. Of course the Boss battles were somewhat hard, but as soon as i Had the 5th group member i basically stomped everything (normal difficulty).
The Kingdom building is a neat housing mechanic thats way more personal and deep than for example the keep in Pillars of eternity. This also means that people who dont like this kind of things will miss out on a lot of content and should think about buying the game really carefully.
I for one havent met with any game breaking bugs or any real bugs honestly so far. Will update if i come across a truly breaking bug but so far all in the good.
The only real negativ are the unbearable LODINGTIMES!!!!. Honestly how the hell do you programm a game soooooo badly that you have loding times that feel like im plaing Football manager 2004 on ps2 all over again? You want to leave the city? 1 min loading time, you want to enter a building? 1 min loading time, you want to open a simple fu*king kingdom map and click 3 buttons, then return???? 2*1 min loading time. WHAT THE FU*CK!!! seriously.
all in all great game though.