(Got this free on Epic Store)
It's pretty and feels nice, but there are lots of bugs.
The most common bug I have faced is that healer's spells gets randomly activated and I can't deactivate the spell. So I'm either forced to heal somebody (often accidentally enemies) or skip a turn. Sometimes healer is too far away to heal somebody and attempts to run to the target, but never reaches there, soft locking the game (can be fixed by turning off and on turn-based combat)
Timers and kingdom getting destroyed randomly cause headache as well.
You will also receive so many kingdom events, that you are forced to fail most of them, because you have only limited amount of advicers and for some reason they cannot multitask events.
It is a pretty game. I would like to play this a lot more if there would be less bugs and no game ending timers.
I have met only three or four times OP encounters in the whole game, so I don't understand why people are complaining about them.
This game is clearly a labour of love. It oozes atmosphere, everything is brimming with detail and you will come to appreciate the well structured writing and characters, despite that some of the prose can be somehow a pain to read.
Where the game completely falls on its face is the difficulty - it's all over the place! Some will argue to just get good (as in learn to break the game), but for most others, the game has a tendency to devolve into a completely unnecessary re-load fest, especially on your first play-through.
The game can be very rewarding, but even with all of the difficulty sliders set to normal, Kingmaker requires a much higher player effort than your typical Baldur's Gate 1&2, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights.
There are a few things that need tweaks but overall this game is awesome. I grew up playing NwN and this to me is the sequel i always wanted. The gameplay is tight. The voice acting and story are immersive. There are some balancing issues but it hasnt been an issue for me and i'm playing on the hardest difficulty. I think you need to realize that the pause button is your best friend. I am really excited for them to continue working on this game.
This game is the best RPG I have ever played (including BGII). The only down side (and reason why I don't give it 5 stars) is that the combat is not turn bsaed. Pathfinder is a very tactical tabletop RPG (the most I would say) with positioning and cover as capital features. In the real time combat of this game, this is not captured.
Next game: Starfinder with tactical combat!
This game is bad is so bad that I lack English to explain why. But I'll try it:
1- Not balanced at all: There is no internal balance in CR at the game. You can get a random encounter that is over your level by a lot.
2- The combat is broken!: Abilities like damage reduction, displacement, and spell resistance are too strong for low levels creeps like CR2 or 3. ( In fact their CR should be a lot higher just for having these abilities, but who cares about years of D&D balance am I right?)
3- The GAME is broken: Tones of bugs make the game almost unplayable. Lots of patches weren't enough to fix the game. Some bugs can hard lock your memory into oblivion.
4- Bad mechanics: The set of rules are designed for turned based games (if you ever played D&D you understand that the creators never heard of the game per sè) if you do the right thing witch is playing in turns the combat will get clunky and bugged (the game wasn't designed for that)
5- I hate my kingdom: You get nothing from your kingdom besides headache and some obligations that will put you running everywhere just for not losing the game because of some disease or whatsoever.
6- Where is the XP?: There is no way to level correctly while your kingdom is being destructed by some Trolls or crazy mages. You'll be always severely under level. Like lvl 6 against CR 11 or 14 O.o (my RPG section would last an hour with that mentality, the chars would be all killed by a dog lol)
7- Hello learning curve: There is no learning curve the game is broken and hard and you'll have to make so weird builds to play it not friendly to casual players.
8- The good part is that GOG lets you reimburse the money after 30 days so if you bought it try it why not. But be smart and reimburse this game before even trying it too hard.
Good points: Voice acting, good chars, and rich stories.
TLDR I recommend Pillar of Eternity and waiting for Baldur's Gate 3.
