Pathfinder: Kingmaker — Enhanced Plus Edition

The best way to describe the themes of this game is Lord of the Rings meets Game of Thrones.
This game has your typical fantasy elements like adventuring and coming across mythical creatures. The other part is you taking part in a political rivalry and establishing your kingdom.
The game can be very frustrating and straight up unfair at times.
If you are new to crpgs or pathfinder/d&d games, this game isn't going to do it for you.

A great game with RPG, strategy and kingdom management. Finally completed a playthrough to secure the secret ending - a truly tedious but satisfying outcome. Would like to 100% the achievements but I'd rather move on to the next game from Owlcat.

For those who are interested to play, do note there's a time commitment to fully enjoy the experience, and to overcome the toughest fights, but it would be worth your while.

If you just want to experience the story, go casual, but be aware this will trivialize the combat. I would strongly recommend at least one playthrough on normal difficulty to fully enjoy the whole experience and also be aware on your first blind playthrough, don't expect to achieve what you want.

Fun, with lots of opportunity for replay.

This is an amazing crpg experience.. Loved the story, characters, the world, all the mechanics. I had so much fun getting lost in this vast fantasy world. Only nitpick is the kingdom management system could have been better in some occasions. other than that no complaint at all. Absolutely awesome game.. 8.8/10...

Randomly exploring a few hours in the game, fall into an encounter against and enemy none of my charas can possibly hit due to insane AC and DR. No option to run away. Have to watch my team die of the span of 10 minutes of being helpless. Autosaved right at the start of the fight.
In other words, an impossible encounter I could not predict soft locked me out of continuing the game.

I just finished Kingmaker, and like the other Owlcat games, I will leave a review.

Pros:
I had a lot of fun with the story and the characters were interesting/ had interesting side quests and stories. There were several instances where I laughed at the banter between party members. (True to my other two favourite owlcat games). I really loved the final (true ending) boss fight. I felt like I was "kept on my toes" the entire time. I didn't find the management system or levelling system difficult. The management system was just annoying enough to be interesting because you would be out exploring, and then a little red ! notification would pop up on the kingdom application, and I would feel like I had to race back to my capitol to make sure I wasn't getting honey roasted.

Cons:
Owlcat, PLEASE fix the final key segment in Basement 2. It is literal HELL. I should not have to read 4 extremely vague walkthroughs, only to BY CHANCE stumble upon a godsend youtuber who posted the solution. Shoutout GamerCthulhu because I was in tears sending someone through the first segment of mist in that stupid circular room, not even realising there were TWO segments of mist. You are a real one, seriously.

Other than the basement 2 issue in endgame, I didn't really have any other complaints. The game was still really enjoyable for me. Not as great as WoTR or Rogue Trader, but still very solid. Would be a 7/10.

I have played many CPRGs over the course of my 40+ year life and I have to say this one was such a huge disappointment. I'll write my thoughts below in hopes you might avoid this title but perhaps what I say will entice you instead.

I put over 120 hours into this game between two characters, the first of which I abandoned shortly after this game released due to perceived issues with combat and bugs. When I picked up the game the second time, it was truly no different but I was willing to give it a shot once more since the sequel was on sale and I had heard it "corrects" many of the issues people common held about this game.

Anyhow, here are my thoughts...

Story
The story is fairly run-of-the-mill. There are a few twists and turns but nothing mind-blowing nor poorly written. It goes where it is supposed to go and has a fairly satisfying ending, at least for my kingdom and character. I felt some characters were far move developed than others, but perhaps I just found certain characters quite boring. The alignment shifting your main character can do has some real consequences if you are playing a class like Paladin (spell restriction) or Monk (gear selection), but beyond that, I don't think the choices made, outside of Kingdom Management, have much impact on the overall story.

Gameplay
This game is littered with combat encounters. Travel feels like the first two Baldur's Gate game in that there is an overworld map you use to travel between points of interest. Once you arrive at a location, you enter it and there is a small map with a fog of war that you can uncover just like old times. The familiarity of it made me feel right-at-home in that sense. I will say that the encounters along the road while traveling are quite annoying, as is the passage of time, which is intrinsically tied to the gameplay loop and main quest progression. I found the "pressure" this puts on you a little unnecessary and makes the game somewhat unapproachable to new players.

Furthermore, as you near the final chapter of this game, combat encounters change drastically. You will fight much larger groups of enemies. These enemies will have incredibly high Saves, making it impossible to utilize bread-and-butter abilities such as Fireball or apply any form of crowd control. In addition, enemies will start coming in waves and some of those waves will spawn behind your backliners, often leading to their deaths immediately. I perceived this as a punishment for using RTWP mode of combat, and forced me to switch to turn-based for specific segments of battle, which was a huge deterrent for me once I had already min/maxxed my characters and understood the established format of battle at that point. Flipping the script so late in the game made it a huge slog. My final complaint about combat is that every mob near the end of the game, at the start of combat, either inflicts fear-based gaze attacks on your entire party, comes equipped with mirror image, or is a rogue type with evasion and high reflex saves, essentially making pets useless to your combat strategy, creating another layer of complexity that is incredibly unwelcome. Why invest in pet classes is they will spend the entire final chapters (10 hours of gameplay) running around due to Fear effects? That is very poor game design.

The completely unfair mob AI and resiliency made those segments borderline unplayable and I found myself, a mild-mannered dude, tempted to throw my controller, nay, my entire laptop, through the nearest window.

Kingdom Management is a huge element of this game. It's a system in which you are making decisions for your kingdom. Ultimately you must improve all the elements of your kingdom (think: DAI) lest it fall into ruin. The time element becomes key in this process as some upgrades require days, weeks, or months to complete, and the order in which you do these things does have an impact on the happiness rating of your kingdom. Unfortunately the system is poorly design, with very few useful tooltips or pointers to help you understand it. There are a lot of factors hidden from you, and if you progress your MSQ faster than your kingdom, you will literally lose the entire game and be forced to start over. Thankfully there is an option to place kingdom management on autopilot, which I do wish I had done prior to the final chapter as it would have let me focus on the core parts of gameplay that actually made this game palatable. I highly recommend not bothering with this sytem but you should give it a try and see what you make of it. Don't feel bad for abandoning it though, it truly is the worst part of this game.

Classes and Progression
I actually enjoyed the complexity of the class system. There is a lot to toy with and it may be best for those wanting to focus on combat to look at the wiki and understand how the classes work in this game. There is respeccing offered very early on, which is great, and you get three free respecs to use initially. Thereafter the price increases to some absurd amount of gold, but by the time you are rocking and rolling in the later chapters, the cost does seem trivial, but also still unnecessarily high. I would recommend following a guide to familiarize yourself with the potential loadouts for each character that work well for the Companionis you find throughout the game as you cannot change the levels they have at the time you acquire them.

Sound
The music in the game is inspiring but repetitive. The character banter is very limited, with only a handful of statements said when you click chests, disarm traps, and the like. It feels underdeveloped a bit but does keep you in the experience well enough.

Overall
I give this one a 4/10 rating. Personally I will never go back to this game for any reason whatsoever and having played it makes me question if I even want to try to sequel. Perhaps when my ire for this game wanes I will give that a glance as it is supposed to be a much-improved version of this title. Owlcat studios had some really good ideas with this one but poorly executed so much of it. It really feels like various parts were developed by totally different people with very little connective tissue being obvious. Perhaps you will feel differently however. Good luck!

It took me 205 hours to beat the game with both DLCs ONCE, seriously, was using turn based mode and challenging difficulty and that probably affected the time. Still I think game is really, really long, too long to be honest, after finishing it I felt relief. If you are not willing to spend at least 100 hours with the game, don't bother.

Pros:
- characters development, tons of interesting builds possibilities, many unique items
- companions with their own stories
- combat
- somehow plot, with the exception for maybe last two chapters and certainly the very last one, which was straight up terrible, lots of stupid fights - example fighting group of annoying enemies, you win, puff next enemies appear out of thing air, you win, puff, more enemies spawning again, seriously who thought it was fun? Or debuff that makes you roll natural 1 40% times, yay! You can finally get eight 1s in a row, geez...
- kingdom management

Cons:
- last chapter
- length
- some bs enemies, that are not difficulty but annoying
- kingdom management - after a while it becomes a chore

Game wasn't too difficult, didn't use any 'meta' builds or anything, had to save-scum few times for kingdom management events, as didn't want to ruin my playthrough for that reason.

If you like old school cRPGs (Rtwp or turn-based) you should probably give it a try, especially as it's quite cheap on discounts.

Great game. For lovers of CRPG in the old school style but with modern presentation. Mac version runs nicely and is most appreciated! The story is great and the choices you make really do matter. Highly recommended.

Love it. I'm playing on normal difficulty mode right now and it's about right for someone who hasn't played this game before. It's a great story so far and I look forward to where it will take me.

A fun and exciting crpg that you can play years later and still have fun and experinece new content you haven't seen before.

wildly hard to crack into at the start, but with enough wiki-ing and googling i am now enjoying this title as much as my followup play throughs of bg3

It's a really fun game. The kingdom management can be frustrating, but once you get a hold of it, it's fun!

You know how Baldur's Gate 3 is like D&D but more streamlined? This is D&D but ~crunchy~. Hell of a lot of fun, though.

Finally! After four starts and 620 hours, I finally finished Pathfinder: Kingmaker (the entire game probably lasts about 80 hours for one playthrough). This has to be the most convoluted game I've ever played (which is not to say that it is a bad game). To rate this game based on a simple binary (yes or no) system would be grossly misleading. Pathfinder: Kingmaker requires patience... a lot of patience. If you do not like to read a lot of stuff in your games, then that's already going to create a bad experience for you.

Kingmaker looks like a regular party-based RPG like Pillars of Eternity or Divinity: Original Sin, but does does not play like that in my opinion. While PoE and D:OS have an almost intuitive feel for their game mechanics, Kingmaker's mechanics require you to read and read and respec and retry and restart and oh boy...! In a word, convoluted!

The game is quite tedious and frustrating in it's first act. The middle game is where I had the most fun given that combat becomes more accessible and dynamic compared to the first acts. The end game was exhausting.

In general the game feels like all the ideas that were put on the table during game development were just thrown into the game without any streamlining. Some people may like it, others may not. Personally, I believe that less is more with such games or, at least, streamline the systems. The morality system is one of the worst I've encountered in a game of its type/class. Combat becomes fun in the middle to endgame. The kingdom management is a unique addition to the games systems and I very much appreciated that inclusion.

The story was engaging enough that I wanted to see it through to the end, regardless of how the end game was presented.

If you like reading and figuring out systems, perhaps Pathfinder will be for you. If you prefer a game with intuitive gameplay mechanics, then I would not recommend Pathfinder. I am yet to play the second game. Hopefully, some things will be improved in that iteration.

I've never been a fan of the "real time" type RPGs, for whatever reason this one broke through for me, probably because the systems in this one feel like they have depth, are thought out, and the game gives you tons of class options.

Story is pretty simple yet satisfying, characters are competently written. I like how it fully incorporates the travel aspects of the pen and paper version too.

Combat is tough at first and the pathfinder system can come off as convoluted and pedantic, but once you know how to get advantages and navigate the UI/system terms it becomes pretty easy.

Kingdom management is the weakest part of the game, can seem like its a bunch of nothing and overly complicated and it can lose you the game outright; I turned all that stuff off b/c i didnt wana play that type of game and focused on adventuring, which saves most of the game.

If you've felt stuck on more classic feeling RPGs this game could be the moldbreaker.

TL;DR - I tried Kingmaker before Wrath of the Righteous out of curiosity. I regretted it--I couldn't get past the second chapter without being frustrated by the games annoyances, major and minoir. As much as I personally love CRPGs, I can't recommend this game. It's best to jump straight to WotR.

Pros
- Combat can be satisfying at times
- You can customize the difficulty
- A ton of class choices
- The Pathfinder ruleset is difficult to learn at first but fun to play
- Interesting worldbuilding

Cons
- The story is weak and disjointed
- The dialogue and voice acting could be better
- The consequences of failure are punishing, but not in an interesting or rewarding way. If you have a string of bad rolls, you lose the game--full stop.
- Kingdom management isn't fun. It's pure RNG.

This game's encounter design is the absolute worst, probably why people don't really talk about it. I could generally flounder through WoTR, but my guys were level 3 or 4 and every enemy has like a +12 to hit and just chunks my guys, and/or has damage resist. Like I'm just playing normal core ruleset guys, the enemies should be in my level bracket, on an even playing field. Especially given that I'm corralled in at the beginning by fog.

I remember playing this years ago and there's this area where you're dealing with like kobolds or something, y'know, early baby stuff. In that area there's this camping spot and it had rations already set up, so you go "oh hey, a free meal for a free rest" and then they just throw a demi-lich at you, like HUUUUUH!?!

My favorite game out there. Better than Baldurs gate but still a little similar. I love the party playing style and beating the game makes you feel like the biggest badass!

A really, really long game. This is not for the impatient or people who dislike kingdom management. If this is your first time playing and you're completely lost, I'd recommend going on story mode first to understand the mechanics. Also, be aware of timed quests and use an advisor event guide for the management system. Save generously.

Kingmaker is far from perfect—it is buggy and tedious at times. However, I ended up enjoying this for the well-written characters and narrative. This was my second Owlcat game after Rogue Trader, and I can't wait to start WoTR next!

There is so much to say about this game, honestly...
Good Narrative
Hard Mechanics (Luck Based)
Long Ass Story
Complex
Enjoyble (Except Kingodm Management)

Overall, give it a chance, its rewarding and fun. If it is your first run, DO IT BELOW NORMAL.

Honestly about as deep as BG3, just uglier and without the amazing presentation. Also if you've never played Pathfinder you are going to be doing a fair bit of reading to understand the character progression.

Unlike BG3, this game let me upload a deep fried Shrek meme as my character portrait and ruin every serious moment of dialogue in the game.

I don't recommend this game, unless you're either a:
1) Fanatic of Pathfinder
2) Don't mind enduring extremely bad gameplay designs
3) Play your games in story mode
4) You have high tolerance for doing the same things over and over again

This game plays like a campaign from a DM who's running their first game and has no idea how to make things fun: they just assume that "fun" is combat encounters, having players move around point A to point B and then A again and just doesn't understand the system they're using.
Which is not necessarily an awful experience for some people and that's okay, some people enjoy such games even when ran by inexperienced people who don't understand what they're doing and that's fine, if you're that sort of person go ahead and play it.

To everyone else though, steer away.
Having just finished the game, I feel like I should've been paid to do so... and you know what? I didn't even mind the kingdom management, frankly if that was the worst design choice they went with the game would've been fine.
However you end up in scenarios where nothing makes sense, where you don't know how things work, where a choice made ends up screwing you over in the long run EVEN THOUGH they aren't even related to each other and you couldn't have seen it coming... I mean, sparing the kobolds and telling a guy to wait for a moment prevents you from getting any upgrade on one of your regions... why?
And as far as roleplaying goes... I hate what they've done: if you don't play your alignment perfectly and just make choices that objectively make sense, you end up having your alignment shifted, which ends up screwing up a lot of the things you may enjoy.

There's a lot more I could say but I can't reduce 70 hours of gameplay to a quick and brief rundown.
And frankly, the game should've ended around 30 hours and I even stopped exploring random locations because... what was I even gonna find anyway?
More garnets? Meat? A composite shortbow?
It was fun at first, quickly devolved into tedium.

I want to like this game so badly, but it seems like at every opportunity I am punished for being the type of person to not use a guide with another hour sunk to some dumb bullshit. You'll get slapped by the RNG of events that make you unable to rest, don't indicate that they're permanent until resolved, and the debuff will worsen after your second attempt at resting so badly that you'll be unable to move with any equipment because of the weight debuffs. Back to the save at the start of the session for you, buddy, the game doesn't keep multiple autosaves by default and you just saved over it with a rest that made things worse! Bet you've enjoyed learning your lesson through exploration!!!

How about waiting TEN REAL TIME MINUTES because a web trap went off? Like. Guys. Who the FUCK played through the Cloakwood and thought "you know what would be nice? If these web traps lasted ten times as long." Or little timewasting animations every time you go to pick some herbs. How about a nice helping of "there are likely no treasurers that most people who play the game will have as options unless you purchase DLC, and also fuck you even if you do purchase the DLC you have to know beforehand otherwise you'll miss that character's appearance trigger by the time you realize there's a problem"? Oh, or what about the fact that tons of early game enemies apply stacking debuffs which are cured by resting when the game is designed to punish you for resting too often? You might say that it's meant to be a challenge, I say it's designed to make you reload so you're not down 5 of a stat for the chapter because you crit failed some spider bites.

Tedium. This game is full of tedium. I want to experience the story, the interesting combat encounters, the world, running my own lands, the characters. Instead I'm thrown into another shitfight against some dumb centipedes for no loot and a collective 50 xp because I'm not using a guide. I'm being punished for attempting to enjoy the game, and everyone who likes the game will tell anyone who dislikes it to git gud while looking up another cookie cutter level dip multiclass that can bowl over anything that moves.

I like Pathfinder: Kingmaker. I just wish it would stop preventing me from playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker. There's so many problems with this game that CAN be avoided if you decide to optimize your way out of making discoveries for yourself, but I think punishing players for trying to enjoy your game on its own terms is dumb. This game places so many time-sensitive chokeholds on you for no reason that it seems designed to make you restart long sessions in the worst way or force you to consign yourself to using a guide to avoid trapping yourself in the shit dimension because you encountered the poopmancer event without realizing it.

I'll probably revisit this one eventually but I think clocking in 15 hours is enough to say I need a break.

man i hate linzi, the game would have been better without her.

One man can notice that this was the first game of this studio, the level desing could have been better... a lot better.. the kingdom managament that should be really important in a "kingmaker" game is kinda mid and in the end it doesnt matter, it doesnt matter if in "war in the river kingdoms" you have the best army or the worst your party wins the war by themselves.

The history is kinda mid follows more of a monster of the week formula than an epic like most rpg, hurting specially the villains being the only one i like Vordekhai that btw it can be a magister but is locked by an evil choice. i hate it, you can kill innocents everyday but the most interesting characther is behind a moral decision, i hate this.

I consider few games as to long and this is one of them, it should have ended in "war of the river kingdoms" but last one chapter more that its awful "the house out of time" its truly a pain in the ass.

I like this game (i cant say that i really like it thanks to the final chapter) i am realy looking foward to play the next game of this company, in a future i hope to see a remake of this game that fixes the level desing issues, history and kingdom managament plus if they remove linzi from it would be automatically better.

I've been on a isometric CRPG kick lately and returned to this one after I bought it a few years ago. It's scratching the itch pretty well, with everything I want out of this genre: likable characters, interesting story, and engaging combat.

My only real criticism is that it's not clear where to go and what to do at times; the Journal is only so useful but I find myself having to Google the the details on quests. The map travel can be frustrating because you can waste a lot of time running back and forth between points trying to find the next leg of the quest. Add this to the fact that there's a pseudo time limit on some of the main questline and it can get a little stressful.

Still, fun game, and worth the price of admission, especially when on sale. If you're like me and got the old adventuring/CRPG itch after plying BG3, this is a worthy game.

Great Concept but has a lot of issues.
Skip this one and play the Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous. If you beat that and like it you can still come back to this one.

I’m still on my first playthrough but really enjoying this game. A few points of advice for new players:

1. SAVE SAVE SAVE. There are numerous situations you can get into as a low level player that are just plain impossible. Some fights really require leveling up first but are easily found even at low levels. If you enter a new instance (door icon) from a location you are exploring, create a new save aside from your main. Some instances you can get locked in once you enter and if you don’t have the right skills and/or equipment you could get stuck.

2. Pay attention to the skills you need for camping. Theses are very important because you need to rest fairly often and not having to return to the inn as often helps you level up faster.

3. Some areas or fights you just have to circle back to after you are higher level. There are quite a few situations like this so don’t be afraid to back out and try a different area first.


Overall, I really like this game but at one point I entered an instance that was impossible at my level and there was no way out besides completing the instance so I thought I was hosed but finally figured out that I could stealth past the final boss and get out, which was amazing because I didn’t have a save to fall back on.

Great game. Not easy, especially the first time though but I’ll play it more than once and I’m sure each time will be a bit easier to get further.

If there was a shaky middle thumb recommendation this game would be perfect for it. I wasn't sure if it was my unfamiliarity with Pathfinder, or disinterest in older styles of rpg, but in summation: Alot of tedium with not enough good writing to keep me going.

Honestly just not fun. Combat is about 80% missing attacks, 10% hitting for 0 damage, and 10% actually hitting for damage. Not to mention that most enemies are higher level, and any enemy that's a higher level typically has high HP and high AC. My last combat was against a bunch of spiders and a spellcaster. The spiders were dead by round 15, but it then took another 13 rounds of my full party attacking the spellcaster (who just stood there after running out of spells) because half the party needed to roll a 20 to hit, and her damage resistance made half the attacks that hit deal 0 damage. This is how genuinely every single combat works.

Then there's the camping/resting mechanics. You travel around an overworld map where movement passes in-game time. Not a bad idea, but approximately every 10-15 hours of in-game time requires you to stop, click through the camping screen, wait for companions to chat about nothing, then continue before doing it again 5 seconds later because travel can take 30+ hours.

Also, no Linzi romance.

Team rolls:
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Miss
Hit: 0 (Reduced)

Enemy rolls:
Hit
Hit (Critical)
Hit
Hit
Hit
Hit (Critical)
Hit
Hit (Critical)
Hit
Miss
Hit (Critical)
Hit
Hit (Critical)
Hit
Hit
Hit (Critical)
Hit
Hit (Critical)

I want to like this game. But the RNG makes me want to nuke the moon

Invalid character error wrecked 8 hours of progress. An error that has not been fixed in years apparently.

Still very buggy have to reload saves because the game just stops making enemies move on their turn sometimes. Also does a very poor job of explaining differences in pathfinder vs other d&d games. But got the game 90% off with all the DLCs for cheap as well during the spring sale so I would push through to complete the game but I imagine I won't play it again once I have beaten it once.

The old sycamore (key story area btw) area is really bugged up any quest that is there now I can't do. Same error as before. Definitely don't buy this glad I got it for 3 bucks on sale.

The bads outweigh the goods here.
The good :
-wonderful characters with believable storylines
-nice artstyle
-well implemented Dnd/Pathfinder mechanics
-very cheap at a discount

The bads :
-absolutely horrible balancing of the enemies. Sometimes you plough through enemies, and sometimes random enemies just obliterate your team.
-loot is uninteresting, and the fact that the game has like 30 weapon types, you will hardly find the weapon you specialised in
-very, very very poor PC optimisation. On a 4050 laptop, I average about 30-50 fps, with very high temps for this type of game, and no fix in sight from the devs
-the kingdom management, altough a good idea, is not very well implemented, and you will stare at so many loading screens
-the quests , especially the main ones, are so confusing, that I googled many of them to see when they trigger, and of course, they have lots of hidden mechanincs that nobody in their right mind would predict.
-also, most of the main quests are timed, so good luck managing those dozen problems that appear daily in your kingdom management screen. At some point after you finish them, you find out that you are almost out of time and your kingdom will fall soon. Good times :(

Don't get me wrong, the game has so much potential, but it feels like it was abandoned at some point, and as you can see, the game is very long. I am not very eager to replay this to soon. Pity.

Fun game and very full of lore and things that change based on your decisions. But... Combat is a slog of a time. You will have to save spam just to get through, most of the fights I have encountered are so over powered I get one hit with all of my party. Free would be the only reason to get this game now.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a beautiful but highly flawed game. I love the story, the environment, and graphics, but the gameplay is at times extremely frustrating. This game is poorly balanced. Certain combat encounters are just way too hard, especially at the beginning of the campaign. The game throws unreasonable difficulty spikes at you, but you rarely get enough information on how to deal with problems for which you only have limited options to prepare for. The game does a poor job at explaining all the mechanics and risks you run into. You will have to repeat fights over and over again just to get good RNG. and look at online sources to make necessary preparations for missions. Your success in many of the more difficult encounters depends on having the right companions in the party or having the right spells and equpiment. I have a feeling that the game somehow expects me to know in advance what types of enemies I will ran into. The fact that the game has mixed reviews does not mean that it is a bad or mediocre game. It is a mixed bag. On many levels, Pathfinder: Kingmaker has qualities similar to the best games in the CRPG genre: an exspansive world and engrossing story, deep RPG mechanics, inrteresting and thrilling gameplay, and decent production values. However, the experience is repeatedly hampered by frustrating problems with encounter design and an unbalanced difficulty curve. I would still recommend the game to CRPG veterans who want a challenge. I would definitely not recommend Pathfinder: Kingmaker to people unfamiliar with or just starting in the CRPG genre.

I've got almost 900 hours in this dumpster fire of a game. Don't buy it. Save yourself the aggravation. It's a reload simulator that reminds me of a vindictive DM.

You know the ones -- bend/break the rules just to make sure that the players NEVER get an advantage. The dice rolls are FAR from "random."

Quests are often bugged and not explained in a way that will allow you to muddle through it without looking up a walkthrough. Even so, many quests are on a hidden timer that you only find out about if you take too long. How long is too long? Arbitrary and capricious.

The Kingdom Management is ridiculously stupid. Again, you can try to improve your rolls and your kingdom falls into anarchy, or you waste time reloading the 5% chance rolls for a 1/2 hour before you can move on. Your advisors often get sucked into months long projects that remove them from being able to combat any problems that come up. Again, there's a timer on almost all of it. Zero explanation on how to improve/unlock kingdom stats. No differentiation between problems that will ruin your kingdom or not even scratch it. Opportunities that you skip will often result in negative results instead of just "nothing happens."

For those who are going to say "turn down the difficulty" -- NO. I play on the difficulty that gives achievements. If the "core" ruleset was actually followed, it wouldn't be an issue.

For those who are going to say "turn off the kingdom mgt" -- Again, NO. If a game can't explain how to win, and will never let you get an advantage, it's broken, period. Turning off a core feature just robs you of being able to get achievements.

The last dungeon is by far the worst. Cuts you off from everything. Kills off the party based on earlier decisions. Don't have enough money to buy mercs? oh well, do another playthrough. Just garbage game design.

Don't bother with the DLC. It's repetitive trash.

A nice and lovingly written story. The Pathfinder system is very solid but it may take some time to get to know it if you are a complete beginner. The characters are interesting enough. All in all, a very good game - better than binging some brainless series any day ;)

as owlcat games' first release, this was unpolished, janky, and buggy, leading to lots of people writing this off on it's initial release. however, having played this in the 2020s, where a lot of the issues were eventually ironed out thanks to owlcat giving this the time and attention it deserved, it's still hard to talk about this game. the balance is off sometimes, leading to one area being too easy before the very next area feels too hard. despite this and other flaws you might find within the game, this is actually quite innovative for a later 2010s release even.

the kingdom management was so dang cool and all the different story quests and companion quest lines were well written and the story was satisfying overall. the story can feel like it runs a bit too long, as i've seen many people say it became quite a slog at various points in the latter half of the game. i agree and feel like the game could've definitely benefitted from some fat-trimming in terms of story content. owlcat was clearly VERY ambitious while developing this and i am confident enough to go out on a limb and say they absolutely killed it, despite a few flaws here and there. you need a lot of time and pre-existing knowledge can also help, and if you're not interested in leaning a whole new system of tabletop mechanics in video game form, you'd probably get turned off by this game extremely quickly. however, i wholeheartedly recommend this game to anyone who wasn't turned off by the idea of a hardcore crpg experience. there is so much in this game, yet i still think it's worth going in as blind as possible and trying to experience everything first hand as it's introduced to you.

The Game is somewhat enjoyable as every now and again you will be in challenging and engaging combat encounters then other times the enemies will machine gun fire debilitating debuffs and/or be nigh invulnerable and fighting these guys deals 1D6 mental damage to you in real life so beware.

Something cool about the game is the town building can be pretty fun expanding your kingdom, levelling up your advisers, building stuff was all very fun and felt rewarding BUT this can get very tedious to the point of extreme frustration when trying to get BP to engage with all the aspects of the town building and crisis coins for the ever annoying near constant "events" that you have address or your ass will be blasted, early on this inst too much of a problem but when you start getting events with DC 30+ your town stats will drain right before your tear filled eyes. I recommend turning the difficulty for the town stuff to the lowest or to automatic to avoid it or if you wanted to go a step further don't buy the game and use your money to buy food instead that way you'll no longer be hungry and afterwards you will have a more pleasant shit than this crap.

This game has had me going back and forth between fun and frustration for about 150hrs which has drained my will to 1 but I still have the intelligence to take a break and maybe come back to it in a month or something. If your're big into RPGs might as well give it a try if not Avoid avoid avoid.

The first few acts were fantastic. Amazing characters and I was really hooked on the mystery of the curse.

The final act however, threw away all the goodwill I had for this game and turned into a slog with some of the most annoying enemies and mechanics.

To be successful in this game (even on normal) you have to pay more attention to detail (and/or already know it all from playing Pathfinder) than I think is reasonable.

For example, the first main side quest I received was to go get some potion ingredients from a cave. Classic. Love it. But then I show up and there are spider swarms, which are immune to all of my attacks. I've read everything I've been told by every character and have left no stone unturned. I run out of flasks to throw, and have been told that I can use a torch to attack in a pinch. I do. The swarm is immune. TPK.

Game just isn't worth that level of effort for me. That being said, you might love that sort of thing, and also this game.

This is like playing DND with a DM that hates you in combat but wants to bring you back to the game during the story. I haven't even gotten to the King as i have created dozens of characters.

An in-depth story and game play keeps you engaged. The only thing I would like to see is a PF2E version or mod.

DISCLAIMER: I own the dlc’s but have not played them.

I loved the game, the story, the combat, the dialogue, and especially the characters.

If you enjoy TTRPGs then you will love this game as it’s set in the Pathfinder universe. I felt I was giving life to a genuine Pathfinder campaign which felt awesome.

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.

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 gave this game several tries and ultimately had to put it down for good.

I was 10+ hours into a run and out of nowhere: Got attacked by a monster while long resting, that just immediately one shot my party. The great thing: I just came out of a super hard dungeon.
So in order to continue the game, I would have either had to go back about 3 hours of gameplay, or start from scratch.

It's honestly a shame. I really wanted to experience the story of this game, but I am not willing to backtrack half of the time I have put in, just to "maybe get unlucky again".

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.

Unfortunately no amount of beautiful, classic RPG visuals nor Soundtrack will make up for the fact that this game was poorly designed in terms of gameplay. I think by wanting to do so much, they did none of the aspects quite right. It gets repetitive fast, what is required to complete a quest or progress the story is often unclear and the city management is very unforgiving. I really tried with this game, I wanted to like it. But in the end I couldn't even finish it. It felt like work and had stopped being fun a time long ago.

At the beginning a bautifull game.
BUT the further you go, the imposible it gets - Even on the easy mode. In the end it's no fun anymore, it's more like torture. If you like hurting your self, this game is perfect.