Pathfinder: Kingmaker – Enhanced Edition

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.

I have spent far, far, far too long with this game.
I adore it. I love it.
There is no twist to this statement, I genuinely just adore Pathfinder Kingmaker, it's character, the world and the plot.
Best 5 dollars I ever spent, and I wish I had played it sooner.

Foreword
Although I’m going to praise the game, I want to be very clear that it is probably not for everyone. The game is based on the Pathfinder tabletop’s rules which are a bit complex, and the game doesn’t really explain the base elements of the system (stats, magic, throws, etc). So, unless you have previous knowledge of other CRPGs mechanics based on DnD or similar tabletop, the learning curve is going to be steep, and I would probably not pick this one as an entry point to the genre. This game is HARD and LENGTHY you have to juggle with the battle system, the kingdom management and a time limit. Keep in mind that less than 50% of players finish the first chapter and less than 10% finish the game.
Short review:
Kingmaker attempts to bring the Pathfinder series to the video game universe, bringing with it the complexity and intricacies of the tabletop rulesets. However, the game doesn’t properly address the basic elements of those rules and makes it hard for any newcomers to the genre to get into it. However, if the player decides to invest time into learning those elements and reading the basics of the pathfinder universe, they will be rewarded with an endearing story and companions, an engaging game and complex albeit demanding gameplay. With completely customizable difficulty settings, the difficulty of the game shouldn’t be a deal-breaker for anyone curious to experience an amazing piece of storytelling.
Complete review:
I.Form
a.Graphics
The game is visually appealing and displays a wide range of environments. The strength of Kingmaker is to offer at the same time, very dark settings full of mystery, and colourful natural landscapes. If the 3D models of the characters are rather simplistic, the various illustrations shown in the game such as the character portraits are gorgeous and you can feel that the game was crafted with a lot of attention.
b.Music
Music is one of my favourite parts of the game. When you play a game for more than a hundred hours and still vibe to every single track, you know it’s good. Here are some of my favourites:
• Peaceful Lands
• Steps Of the Goddess
• Skylark
• Caves Battle Theme
c.User Interface
A lot of CRPGs have a very complicated and unclear interface which makes it hard to understand all the complex information displayed on screen. Here, all the menus are clear, and the game contains a complete encyclopedia easily accessed to help you understand what is going on. The quest log of the game is presented in the form of a book that one of your companions is writing during your adventures which is original but also very clear and pleasant to use.
II.Content
a. Character creation and classes
The game has an extensive character creation with a choice of 24 classes. Each level you earn let you put a point into a specific class and earn the benefits of that class. Each class has a set of subclasses that tweak the main class a bit. That means that you have a huge number of choices and thus, character creation, and subsequent level ups can be overwhelming. To be able to use it efficiently, you will need to read a lot beforehand, just to decide what kind of build you want. I needed more than two hours to even decide on my base stats but thanks to Pathfinder, I made a character that no other DnD based game allowed me to create. Playing the game once seems necessary to really grasp the complexity of each skill and magic.
b. Gameplay
Kingmaker has different layers to its gameplay. the first and main part is a text-based dialogue system to progress the story. Expect a lot of reading like in most games of the genre. In some cases, those dialogues are voiced and quite well with that. You have different sets of possible answers depending on your skills, alignment or previous choices.
Another part is the exploration of a world map and different dungeons and zones with your party. During those explorations you will likely encounter enemies that you will have to dispatch.
Luckily, Kingmaker has two battle systems, the classic real-time with pauses that a lot of CRPGs use or a turn-based system which allow for a more tactical approach of the fights. You are free to switch between the two modes during the game which is especially useful when you encounter an enemy that requires more subtility. As I mentioned some of the fights in the games are quite demanding and unless you come prepared with a party completely buffed and a good strategy you will likely lose.
Another important part of the game is the kingdom management aspect, as you will earn your own kingdom through the game. You will have to conquer new territories, choose your advisors, work on projects and take decisions regarding the running of your domain.
And you must do all that while keeping an eye on a time limit. Every action, movement on the map, kingdom project cost a bit of time, and you have a limited amount of it before reaching a point of no return. This makes the game a bit stressful to play through but if you focus on the main quests before anything else, it should be okay.
c. Story
This is the strongest point of the game, you start as a potential candidate to seize the throne of the Stolen Land, the other candidates turn out to be some of your future companions. From there you will become the new monarch of the Stolen Land and uncover a deeper more sinister side to the story and your real adventure will begin.
Even though the game is demanding and hard, it kept me engaged through seven chapters of consecutive predicaments menacing the kingdom. Although the formula is quite the same for each chapter, the writing and twists were so good that I was pulled back in and wanted to stay for the whole ride. There were several moments during the story that gave me goosebumps and intense emotions. I got teary-eyed during the last chapter.
You can recruit up to 13 companions that are all very interesting. Each of them has a few personal quests that you can help them with and develop their character even further. The companions are an important part of the main story and not just sidekicks that have no effect on the main narrative. Furthermore, if you make the wrong decisions and leave your companions unprepared, they can and will die during the development of the story.
Furthermore, the game ending contains a reference to almost every decision you made during your playthrough, be it for the main story, side quests or even during kingdom management, making it emotional and impactful.
III.Others
a.Replay Value
If you want to do everything you will likely need more than one playthrough. Considering your alignment or your past actions allow you to tackle some problems in a different way. The variety of builds and character creation would also warrant another playthrough in itself.
b.Achievements
The game has 74 achievements and will require multiple playthroughs and the paid DLCs to complete. Some of them are very challenging to get and will require patience and skills.
IV.Pros and Cons
ProsCons
Good story and endearing companions
Charming music and graphics
Enjoyable gameplay

Steep learning cure
Difficult and stressful
Very lengthy
Conclusion★★★★✫

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 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

Even the imperfections had their own charm. The flaws and shortcomings added to the experience, giving everything a unique feel. I genuinely enjoyed this game.

After 2 full gameplays (the first I gave up at the very final zone years ago) and completing the game (while I finished its successor WoTR already before) I finally feel for giving a review.
Overall how I would describe Kingmaker - it is an epic cRPG. It has all the attributes you expect from such a title - it is a very large, complex, rich story with many side stories, heroic companions and fights with monsters and antagonists alike, meaningful choices that have an impact on story development with heroic or less-so-heroic deeds and choices by player.
There is also a strategic layout over the base game aka "kingdom management" that really builds up a feeling of responsibility for the country, the ability to shape it and one feels as real ruler.
In oldschool tradition game mechanics stay on a solid tabletop system (though sometimes possibly don't work exactly as tabletop and players just argue if it is intentional or bugged) Overall I would say it is among the best hand crafted tabletop experience available.
This all sounds great and such game could easily target the highest ratings... however, there are some "buts" that can be eventually very frustrating.
So what are the biggest caveats:
- kingdom management while entertaining comes together with a time-limited main quest line. It is poorly described and not always intuitive (eg. on one hand it is possible to argue that the threat of troll invasion should be dealt it with priority, but by spending time on kingdom projects and dealing with kingdom issues on fly, one can fall into the spiral where more and more issues arise, they need more and more time and attention and inevitably start the path to lose the game. If you know what to expect or simply rush for each main quest task ignoring everything else it is fine - you do what you are expected and will have fine nice progress. If you hesitate and make a few wrong choices you can find yourself in a situation where you lose the game without a chance of reverting it or having any troubles in dungeoning part.
- related to the previous is the time limit on main quests. It is reasonably long and creates a good feeling of press that drive the story and player action. However it really demand prioritization mostly in kingdom management and also has few traps for unawared player (one very obvious is the use of rations during camping vs hunting - easy to miss in camp management but hunting can take even 24 hours compared to default 8 per rest.. in time it sums up and if you will miss some 14, 30.. days in timers it is very relevant)
- For both reasons above I actually highly suggest to use Kingdom Resolution mod. Cut all kingdom event resolution time in half, reduce ruler attendance to 1 day and you will get much much enjoyable experience instead of "game over out of nowhere"
- last but not least what is major for me is game difficulty - or better say how unbalanced it is. First of all making a good character build in Kingmaker with plethora of feats, abilities and multiclass combinations is not an easy task without good knowledge of rules and practice. It dont even help most NPC companions you meet are stat inferior and require very specific builds to not feel as dead weight.
Second connected and where I hit hard walls and was frustrated most are encounters - even though there is semi-open world with opened locations, the regions are story-locked and new always unlock only in follower chapters. That is fine but encounter and monster distribution do not respect it and are placed in the world almost without any relation to the expected level that player party can have when visiting the place. That overall create situation where especially early levels might be very frustrating as with level 2 party you bump into lvl 8 monsters and so on (which can be defeated by using very good min-maxed/max buffed party or specific tactic.. otherwise it is frustrating wipefest) while especially later you go location after lcoation in "autopilot" mode where you dont need pay too much attention or use spells/abilities as 9/10 just die before you realize the details. (until you again hit some enemies that just wipe your party like nothing and you start study the encounter from scratch and look for every trick you can use...).
I would understand if this would be a case for boss/story fights but it is in fact more like random cave occupied by a trio of wererats you just found.. and once you have multiple of such encounters in a row, the balance feeling is really off (and this all is on normal difficulty with decent DnD knowledge - I would simply expect more reasonable balance experience like old Baldur gate - considering playing on normal difficulty no deep knowledge of rules should be expected and required, considering there are 3 harder difficulties still.
Also small note to bugs and performance issues - but more like their absence in my case. There is a narrative how terribly buggy the game is or how bad it has performance or loading times. I personally met only bare minimum issues in over 300 hours, maybe I just have better habits, HW configuration or different personal perception but I simply never had any issues or wrong impression others sometime present. And if there were really big issues at release I would say they are long ironed out.
So after all, despite its flaws, for me Kingmaker stays as extremely good transition of Tabletop experience, a game I always looked forward since crawling dungeons and Baldur gate 1. It also serves as basis for following WoTR title that is overall better,
Hence rating 8/10 but if someone going to buy please consider well the caveats above be sure you consider them well (I am extremely patient and RPG veteran to dealt with them - but I totally see why for someone the game can be total no go)
Also Kingmaker successor WoTR is likely better title to play today.