Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition Reviews

I badly wanted this game to introduce new players to Pathfinder in digital form, but I found it too open-ended and often found my entire party directionless in terms of where to go next, or dead because they stumbled across an enemy that was too powerful even though the ones neighboring it were easily defeated. The creators should consider a more guided experience with ramping difficulty, like that found in Divinity: Original Sin. I played Pathfinder for 20 hours before uninstalling it.

Look, I've played Pathfinder 1 and Pf2 both extensively, and I played and enjoyed Rogue Trader. I feel like I have a decent understanding of mechanics as well as a tolerance for Owlcat jank. I just can't. I've tried to get a game of this rolling three times and every time I've given up in frustration. This game explains nothing, overloads you with bullshit, and punishes you absolutely *brutally* for its own lack of clarity. This is Pathfinder sure, Pathfinder with a DM who thinks it's their job to TPK as often as possible and treats the players like shit, and whose games I'd just stop showing up to. "Just follow the campaign" people said, okay well I did that I'm lvl2 at a boss the internet says I shouldn't approach before lvl4, who just 1-shot every single member of my party. Nah, nah I'm out. This is everything I hated about Rogue Trader with none of the redeeming qualities that kept me playing.

combat drags, story lags. its great in the middle portion but once your party gets going its basically a bunch of chores until the main quest kicks in. the story is great at the beginning and middle and then gets boring. trying to drag myself through the last section of the game right now. i love the characters.

Overall a fun RPG, but man are some systems super dumb/make no sense. How do I rest 9 hours and recover no health? Yet it uses up rations....Like I said, it's a fun game. But man some mechanics are just absolutely dumb as hell. If you like table top DND, Baldur's gate, and the general style of party RPG play - this game is for you. Just be prepared to be frustrated with arbitrarily difficult game systems for no apparent reason. It's more like hardcore table top RPG

The setting and story seem great, but the constant frustration of seeing my party getting torn apart even by foes that are ostensibly weak has killed any pleasure I get from the game. Very little is explained; even enemies that are low level can be deadly simply by consistently terrible dice rolls; and the inability to just run away when you know that you're over your head have lead to a lot of wasted time redoing areas (spamming the saves is not my nature, but it needs to be for this game). Overall, simply not worth the effort.

It is a fun crpg, but I would advise downloading bag of many things if you do not want to restart the game if you mess up.

I wish this game wasn't impossible to play with non-perfect builds on normal mode. Really wanted to like it but the encounters are FUCKED

I've played through this game multiple times to get the best / secret ending. It's probably the best CRPG i've ever played. It can be frustrating at times, as there is a lot of game mechanics to get your head around. but I highly recommend it for it's character creation depth and fantastic story telling. I've tried so many times to play newer rpg's, but the writing is just impossible for me to get into. This game drove me forward to find out what was going to happen next in the story. I love going from a simple adventurer, to running a barony and then a kingdom. It's extremely immersive, and the kingdom management can be extremely stressful, which makes it feel more real. you don't just get the happy ever after, you feel like you have to fight tooth and nail for every inch of ground you win, which makes victory all that much sweeter. All decisions have weight, and you may never even know that an outcome was directly tied to an earlier decision. You get out what you put in. If you love CRPG's, you'll love this game. also I banged a Nymph

I'm sure die hard pathfinder players who are well versed in the game will find it quite enjoyable. And the systems in and of themselves are great. The overworld map and traversal is great. The moment to moment encounter movement and combat is great (though it could stand for an undue for silly misclicks). But the encounter balancing is entirely out of whack. I've just been following the early missions given by the base NPCs at the trading post. So far I've had to reload because: * An encounter with a Manticore in the wild * Going to retrieve some items in a spider nest where the giant spiders were push-overs while the small spiders were end-runners as they were immune to weapons and the items given to use on them only do 1/3rd health. They give you 6, and there's more than 2 small group of spiders. * While chasing my rival, failing a check I didn't think was going to even be a check, falling 2 levels in a dungeon, then running into 8 skeletons 2 levels above my group of 4 adventurers. * Following the main questline running into a mob 2+ levels over my group which could literally one shot any of them in a single round. All of that in <8 hours on [b]normal[/b] and barely out of the tutorial area. All with very little introduction to the underlying system or really any way to inspect ahead of time how things might go. I thought maybe it was just me, but checking online for the encounters I had returned pages upon pages of people hitting the same brick wall with the only real consolation being Pathfinder TTRPG vets saying that the encounters are doable [b]if you have read and understand the TTRPG ruleset[/b]. It seems like the devs forgot that, as a CRPG, this might have a broader appeal than just fans of the TTRPG and would be an entry point to the system - with the requisite need to provide a little more guidance and inspection of the underlying systems. I know there is far more game here than just the small party. I would have loved to gotten to the kingdom management aspect of the game. But having a reload every ~hour because of terrible balancing and pacing means I simply have to put this game down as I have far too many other games vying for my attention. Games with far fewer frustrations.

Owlcat's first cRPG is everything you would expect from an Owlcat game. Full of bugs, some game-breaking Some of the best characters and NPCs in cRPGs Janky animations Hidden things everywhere, including romances and endings Insanely difficult Absolutely huge game world A mind-numbingly horrendous final act/quest (house at end of time) WTF puzzles A metagame no one asked for (kingdom management) Top tier storytelling and writing The most in-depth and complex RPG and combat system you can imagine Day night cycles and dynamic weather (*cough* come on, Larian) Wouldn't have it any other way.