After a buggy launch, the game is in great shape now (encountered no bugs, no crashes on both PC and Mac, runs great on M1 MBA). I liked it a lot, even the kingdom management was OK. Only the difficulty spikes and grinding at the end was annoying, you're forced to buff like crazy before every fight and there are so many fights against trashmobs that advancing takes ages. I switched to story mode just to get over with it and that kind of kills the motivation.
Still very good, looking forward to the sequel.
So far, I've played 25 hours in the game. It's an alright RPG, even though there are common issues such as too many trash mobs, a fatigue system forcing you to rest too often, too many choices (literally dozens of weapon types to specialize into, so many attributes you need 2 hours the first time you level up) and the usual overabondance of useless loot...
But it doesn't matter because, even though I tried almost everything (disabling GeForce Experience, borderless windowed mode...), the game crashes randomly (sometimes before I can even load a game, oftentimes 1 to 20 minutes into a game, sometimes after 1 hour).
I play quite a lot of games but I've never played one that crashes so much. Perhaps Owlcat Games should focus on making a functioning game, 3 years after its launch.
I'm an RPG fan, mainly focused on tabletop RPGs, but I fell in love with Pathfinder Kingmaker. Starting with positives:
- difficulty is done very well, there are many options, so you can tailor the experience to yourself
- enjoyable learning curve of how different rules interact with each other
- tooltips on terms, which people might not be familiar with (like deities, cities, countries, etc.)
- story is well written, unexpected at times, and amount of choices for each alignment is giving this great replayability value. Lore is great, you can spend a lot of time delving into intricate details of the world
As for negatives:
- initially there was no turn-based combat, which for a pathfinder rule-set based game is IMO a flop. Real-time combat just is not it. Thankfully, Devs listened to the community!
- initially there were a lot of bugs, but currently I encountered only three after 4 months of playing:
a) in turn-based combat a character will sometimes move to attack, but then stop after walking up to an enemy and do nothing
b) in bigger battles, initiative que gets stuck. Both this and previous problem can be fixed by quickly pressing T two times (which turns off and on turn-based combat)
c) if you don’t assign an advisor to a problem with Mendev crusaders, then you won't be able to complete the quest related to them (there's no scripted encounter, that you should get)
- evil alignment playthrough could get some love, as the game leans heavily towards Lawful Good
I don’t get complaints about time restriction on quests, as I had plenty of time to do all of them (I failed one due to bug mentioned above). If you’re running out of time, then you didn’t pay enough attention to the quest.
I’ve played this game for the last 4 months, with my wife playing alongside me on another PC. It was great fun, especially comparing outcomes of our different choices. It’s definitely not the last time I come back to Stolen Lands, even though I’ve completed the game a few times already
I had such high hopes for Pathfinder: Kingmaker as a big RPG fan! The game play and graphics are all that I was expecting...
Sadly... less than 7 hours into the game I ran into the fatal flaw in the game that I just learned has been a longstanding and unsolved problem for years with the title! There is a terrible loading lag that has proven insurmountable thus far, after being first reported as far back as 2018!
My computer is a modern self built/scratch built, high-end i9 Core 3.6ghz w.32gb onboard Ram, and GeForce Lightning Graphics Card... so I am way overpowered for running this simple game, yet it has become totally unplayable with a startup/boot time of over 6 minutes when it first started in 25 seconds, and in-game load times for play & combat areas is anywhere from 5-10 minutes to transition when they were mere seconds in the early few hours of my playthrough! And there is accompanied sound jags & stuttering...
In 5 years they haven't solved this issue according to all the forums I've visited! 5 YEARS!
Do not waste your funds on this game... such high hopes to meet with such crushing disappointment when actually played...
One of the best cRPGs ever made.
Deep customization.
Challenging enemy encounter design with a TON of variety going far beyond tank and spank.
Astonishing story.
Incredible characters.
Great overall writing.
Lots of impactful choices that lead to very different results.
Multiple endings some of which are very hard to achieve.
Huge amount of interesting content.
Only negatives:
While this is an absolute heaven for people who like to spend hours optimizing their party, it can be overwhelming for casual players. I suggest playing on low difficulties or looking up simple and effective builds online.
Limited voice acting.
