Pathfinder: Kingmaker — Enhanced Plus Edition

Its a great game with solid RPG mechanics and deep character customization. However, I ended up quitting because of the mandatory and tedious kingdom management system. The base-building aspect felt more like a chore than a fun mechanic and really broke the pacing for me. A great RPG overall, but that part made it hard to enjoy long-term.

Pathfinder 1e a.k.a. spread-sheet calculator PC-ified.

Has some questianable choices and decisions, but over all great game.

Can spend a lot of time if you enjoy char building aspect.

Great game if you want a no handholding experience that requires a deep understanding of the Pathfinder 1e system or D&D 5e.

Otherwise you might find the learning curve a bit steep.

My recommendation on this game is a qualified one. While the developer has created a good game, faithful to the rules of the system it's based on... the problem is the system it's based on is pretty seriously awful. From the fact that pyjamas provide more protection than adamantine plate mail, to a harsh encumbrance system and low movement speeds, the ridiculous choice hamstringing put in place by an alignment system that fails to understand how people actually make choices and often locks you out of preferred solutions and narrative options, to the fact that a deep familiarity with the classes, subclasses and feats is required to have a character build that doesn't suck, there's a lot to dislike here. The Kingdom Management elements of the game are also a weak point, and a tedious one at that.

Yet the narrative and the adventure itself are well written and enjoyable, enough so that after finishing the game I've started a second playthrough.

There is a good game here, it's just hobbled by a bad system, and the developer's faithfulness to that system translates into some very poor elements of play.

It is unexpectedly huge game. It took me almost 150 hours to finish from start to end. Some parts of the game such as kingdom managing can be omitted but it isn't too awful. Game allows you to switch between real time fights and turn based fights anytime you want. Even during the combat! Story wise, it is great role playing game that makes choices matter. Hundreds of unique items that makes you redistribute your arsenal over and over again every time you progress in the game. From alignments perspective, I think this game can be replayed couple more times to achieve few things that I have missed from my lawful good play through. But I have to say that game's engine is too much problematic. There are constantly fps drops and it gets worse over time. You'll have to restart game to mitigate these issues. This game could be perfect if developers put last bit of effort to remaster it. Nevertheless, it was still playable and enjoyable unique experience.

I would recommend this game to any CRPG fan; however, DO NOT play this as your first ever CRPG. You will have a bad time if you do and it could sour the genre for you. The RPG elements are great, story is fantastic, and the combat feels really good between real-time with pause and turn-based tactics, but the kingdom building aspect of the game does slow down progress quite a bit. Not only is this part of the game not explained super well, which can lead to spontaneous game loss if you don't have the setting to "never lose" turn on, but it takes up quite a bit of time in the story. That being said, you can apparently turn this part of the game to automatic, though I don't know how successful it is or how much of the story is cut out of the experience when doing that because I didn't try it. While I enjoyed the kingdom management for the most part, it did take up about half of my play through time sending advisors on missions and listening to citizen requests. My 110 hours as of this review is for one single play through on normal difficulty, which is a long single player experience. So if you are already a CRPG fan and are interested in something different to shake up the experience, I highly recommend the game. If you're new to CRPGs, I recommend getting into the genre somewhere else first before diving into this wonderful game.

Fun. Confusing sometimes, but all old Baldur's Gate fans must-play. Not as well done as BG3, but still quite awesome.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is hard to simply describe as good. I think that "good in spite of its issues" is a more accurate description. There's no need to reiterate what other reviews have said in detail. There are some portions of this game that are really, truly, baffling in their design. This game is also wildly long; my first playthrough took 180 hours. In spite of the numerous issues present in this game, this game is really good. I don't need to write about why this game is good. Just know that you can read about 500 different issues this game has. You can read about countless bugs, terrible enemies and encounters, and even the worst quest ever put in a crpg. All of those issues are real, true, and possibly even worse than they sound. Pathfinder: Kingmaker is good, maybe even great, in spite of those issues.

A great game ultimately spoilt by the developer's approach to the design.
I played it all the way to act 7, but instead of being rewarding at the end, it drags and drags forever and throws at the player hilariously illogical puzzles and pointless battles with myriads of overpowered (but irrelevant) foes.
I realized why I gave up on this game twice earlier and understand that I do not want to try and complete this. Ever. Permanent uninstall.
Its ending is so badly designed that it is idiotic and cannot be recommended.
You can try to play all the way to act 7, but then you will give up and leave frustrated. Really sad.

My absolute favorite cRPG, use of turn based mode is highly recommended (adjustable turn speed). A large assortment of decisions to make for your own kingdom including buildings with their own passives. Amazing adventures and side quests (with meaningful conclusions and onward in your story) including great rewards.

Quick save often.

Great writing, interesting plot, a couple of really enjoyable companions.
In-game times is satanic, I hated it and hated not being able to handle the game at my own pace. The amount of repeatable kingdom quests makes it boring and repetitive. Boring and repetitive is how i would describe this whole kingdom running thing. The amount of running on the map and meaningless random encounters is offensive. The amount of resting you have to do is disgusting. Why does it have to take whole 5 minutes to get from A to B? Trust me, doesn't help the immersion.


Overall, would probably recommend it for a one-time thing, will never ever replay the main campaign.

somebodies been updating this game, i have played through this game multiple times and there are details in the game now that were not there before, and its appreciated, nice work

Fantastic game, definitely play on standard difficulty. The only way it could really be improved would be if it was built originally on PF2e, but that didn't exist back then.

Owlcat, PF2e game next please!

As long as you are someone who either is deeply familiar with the path finder, or just a player who doesnt mind super complicated systems - this game is amazing, a flawed gem really. The amount of creative ideas that the world is filled with is astonishing and is honestly inspiring. But yes, it is sometimes tedious, unfair or straight up stupid. which is why having mods is a must for this one, especially a bag of tricks. Also I would recommend a buff bot. Good luck.

For being a game that was built on top of the pathfinder system, this game does a terrible job of imitating the game. Just watched my characters been shot by a bow character through a solid wall. The game only cares if your "in-range" and takes nothing else into account. There are a lot of other issues, don't enjoy the real-time combat, and the turn-based combat is janky. Abilities light up like you can use them but just don't go off sometimes. Also sometimes you tell your character to do something, they'll decide they need to move to do it, then either don't do the action (then the game won't even let you do the action again, for no aparent reason), or use both "actions" moving (yes, this still happens after you turn the game setting on to prevent that from happening), and more.

Great story, smart gameplay, difficult kingdom managment but this makes the game more interesting!

The story is interesting, the companions are engaging, the game-play all-around is good. The only real flaws are quality of life things like too limited character portraits.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a CRPG where you - an adventurer - set off on a grand adventure to establish a barony in the Stolen Lands and uncover a thousand year mystery that threatens your new domain. It is a tale of adventure, mystery, intrigue, friendship and even a bit of romance. A classic tale for the ages told by the best bard in all the lands.

Graphically the game isn't anything impressive but it works well enough in its genre. The gameplay on the other hand is strangely addicting, especially the kingdom management. Others may disagree but I do enjoy city and colony building sims so this feels right up my alley. Combat runs on a six second per full action in real time or turn based. The mode of combat is entirely dependent on you but I found myself running on turn based for the more difficult fights as this game is mechanically complex and so many actions and spells can run at the same time leaving you overwhelmed.

The music is standard fantasy soundtrack. It's there and fits the mood of the moment and action though I especially like the battle theme against the final boss.

Overall I truly enjoyed my time playing this game and I can't wait for more adventures

9 out of 10 - too many fallen kingdoms

A well written story with interesting companions and fantastic RPG elements. Combat is enjoyable yet heavily dependent on the nature of encounters, which start off strongly but fail to keep this high standard throughout. Unfortunately, this results in the game becoming a bit of a slog towards the end. I didn't find the game to be particularly buggy, but the lack of certain QoL features from Wrath of the Righteous are sorely felt. Kingdom management is less of a hassle than most reviews suggest, and the artistic elements (art direction, music, themes) are arguably better than the sequel. Overall, I'd strongly recommend this game

Very deep gameplay, with lots of choices on character creation some minor bugs, but very immersive and positive gameplay experience

Fantastic game for anyone who loves RPGs, especially if you enjoy the Paizo product line. Multiple paths and options to support nearly any play style.
Note: several classes and options are not available base, but they can be added with the Call of the Wild mod for the Unity Mod Manager, for free.

"Pathfinder: How I became a King of A Small Country by Becoming A Medieval Arms Dealer" i feel would be a far more accurate title for this game.

Given Kingmaker expands into a Kingdom Management game, I found the easiest way to finance my questing and building was not simply by questing but by Procuring weapons and armor in mass and selling them. We were very much a medieval fantasy version of Nic Cage in "Lord Of War". Sure did atrocities occur as a result of those transactions? Likely. Did i likely fund goblin schools with that money? Who Knows? But at this point, forget rival kings or magical threats, the biggest threat to your Kingdom in this game would be a visit from the ATF: The Bureau of Alchemy, Trebuchets and Falcons.

In short, this game isnt baldurs gate or fallout 2 at its core, it is a very similar RPG but you are on a timer and have far more to manage in the game than just your spell slots and health potions. The real time combat to turn based toggle is amazing however, Its likely what made my 2 almost endgame runs somewhat quick i believe. I would recommend this game, But i would be aware its not exactly a explore every corner of the world game in a single run.

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.