Over the last few days i have been streaming while playing the game since launch and the Dev team has released patches to fix problems very quickly and now i have a game that runs/plays fine. The problems i did have have been fixed and my thanks to the Dev's for there speedy patches.
The game itself sends me back to the old days of IWD, BG, NWN and more recently PoE etc. If you are a fan of those games you will enjot the rich storeyline and gameplay set in the Pathfinder world. This is my first time playing Pathfinder and i am enjoying the D&D 3.5 ed ruleset. Multi-Class caracters are awesome and make for interesting party setups.
You can leave NPC's and the Kingdom set to Automatic or you can get into the nitty-gritty yourself and make the world how YOU want.
Recommended.
I'm not far into this and can tell it will be one of the best. Yes it needs polishing and there are bugs, but the developers deserve a buy now to support their sheer ambition - its like they've taken all of the things I wanted when playing RPGs from the past 20 odd years and focussed entirely on the good stuff.
It's hard, and the rules are complex - but in a good way, like they've actually evolved the genre, instead of just making pointlessly complex rules that do nothing. And classes actually stand out now because of how well (and how much) of the Pathfinder rules are in the game.
If you take RPGs even slightly seriously you have to buy this game.
I was looking forward to playing this game and my expectations were really fullfilled the first time I started playing. I think the graphics are decent, the music and especially the voice actors are really well done and I very much like the ruleset with its many options. The difficulty is punishing (especially on the first version of the game, got toned down quite a bit now). What really is a big issue for me is that this product overall seems unfinished. There are huge updates which need to be downloaded weekly, and I am facing severe stability issues with the game causing my pc to bluescreen. After reinstalling everything is working but because of the update policy I had to do this 3 times now, each time loosing my progress. I never had this problem with other games. For me as a pre-order buyer this is a big issue with a aside from that quite good game, hence the bad rating.
Ok, maybe the game was broken at launch, but at the time of this review, after having spent 2 dozens hour in it, I can say it's one of the best RPG around.
Everything polished, the campaign looks ginormous there's some real roleplay bits in it :) (not just bashing)
If you enjoy games like pillars of eternity 2, you should love this.
The great: graphics; atmosphere; character development/writing; the whole first portion of the game is really outstanding!
The good: Interesting little "choose-your-own-adventure" moments add spice; combat mechanics are mostly solid
The bad: spikey difficulty; large section of the game has a "kingdom-management" element that is truly un-fun. Travel & resting mechanics are truly awful.