Pathfinder: Kingmaker – Enhanced Edition

TL;DR - A great game bogged down by some design choices so strikingly un-fun I am half ready to believe they were purpose made to piss you off.
After almost 200 hours, I have finished my first playthrough. It really was a journey, filled with ups and downs, but mostly ups. This is a very, VERY shaky "recommendation". I went into this game with a slight working understanding of how DnD/Pathfinder works in general. By that I mean, what's armor class? What are spell levels? Slots? What are saves? What does "2d6" mean? Etc.
One of the main complaints you'll read is how the game requires meta-knowledge to some extent in order to overcome some challenges, and I'll say that's true. For example, take the Fangberry cave where you have to get some fruits for Bokken. The cave is infested with regular giant spiders, and spider swarms. Swarms are its own creature type and they're immune to slashing, crushing, and piercing damage. Basically, you can't hit them with regular weapons. You do get some grenades to deal with them, but at these early levels it's more likely you'll miss the throw than actually hit. Unless you know this beforehand, and stock up on MORE grenades, this is a death sentence. Spiders can poison you and drain your stats, and if you're not careful, your characters can quickly die of stat drain, or become all but useless.
So that's rough, and if you don't perform your due dilligence, you WILL screw yourself. Expect to re-roll a couple of times until you get it right.
Then there's also just the sheer amount of stuff. Items, feats, spells, locations, enemies, holy fucking shit there's so much of it. Unfortunately, it's all really unwieldy and it's easy to get overwhelmed. Just for example, you can't see all the feats available in order to check which feat has prerequisites. Instead you just have to read up or fumble your way through leveling up.
The story is generally fairly good. It stumbles in some parts, and some of the translations are kinda off, but overall I really enjoyed it. The same goes for the companions. Some parts feel rushed, and the companions never reach the heights of, say, Dragon Age, but that didn't bother me too much. In the end, I really grew to like them, especially Tristian.
The most controversial opinion I have, is this. I absolutely abhor the concept of critical misses. On average, one in twenty attempts of anything that requires a skill check will straight up fail, no matter how good your character is. Imagine that once every twenty times you open a door, you accidentally yank too hard and end up slamming yourself in the head with the door. Imagine once every twenty times you take a step, you trip and break your arm. That's a FIVE PERCENT chance to just straight up botch anything you're doing. I can't even begin to describe how much it pisses me off to read "Roll: 1 + 21. DC: 21" in the combat log and see that one of my level 8 spells just missed. I'm positive this is much more tolerable in pen and paper because the DM can always mangle the rules a little or roleplay your failure to make it more entertaining. In a computer game however, this is just ridiculous. I absolutely cannot stomach this and it pisses me off to no end.
Second, some quests have an infuriating flow to them and make no sense at all. Spoilers: I had seen during one of the loading screens that if a soul stealer knows your name, it becomes much more dangerous. That sat at the back of my mind until I got to the quest "The Varnhold Vanishing." Everyone in the town misteriously disappears and you have to figure out why. On your way, you are hounded by a magical raven that keeps taunting you. A lot of the dialogue options in response have you state your name to the raven. I thought this was really sus so I kept telling it to piss off. Later, when you get to the barbarian camp, I refused to tell the Defaced Sister my name. I did everything in my power to remain nameless to these people. Then, after I'd finished the Sisters' errand, when I returned to the camp, one of the sisters accused me of being
a traitor, which fair enough right, they were evil all along, shocker. But then she screams what my name is. How in the God damn FUCK did she suddenly learn my name? Even if you bullshit an explanation about how "ummmm ackshually she's a wise spellcaster and and and she uh divined the future and uh" shut the fuck up first of all. Secondly, why trick the player into thinking they have agency? Just railroad them into telling the raven your name and be done with it. That was so infuriatingly stupid I reloaded a save from hours before, only to go find the gate to the valley of the dead myself and figure out what to cast in order to get in. It's Bane by the way. And even inside, when the raven taunts you yet again and asks you who your best friend is or who's the weakest among you, again you get the choice to not say a name. If you pick that option, one of your party members will pipe up and say their name. That is so fucking stupid just writing about it again is getting me upset. Holy fuck.
Third, the whole kingdom management section can fuck off and die in a fire.
Fourth, everything is timed. Every single quest can fail if you don't do it in time. This wouldn't normally be a bad thing, but that means that you can straight up miss out on some things if you don't stumble upon them in time. I never got a single masterpiece from my artisans because the last quest in the game has a super short deadline, and after you defeat the last boss, the game kicks you out to the main menu without the chance of continuing your playthrough. When you step into the last area, there's no going back. That really blows. And speaking of which...
Fifth, the last two areas of the game were about as fun as pulling teeth without anaesthesia. How would you like rooms full of enemies with gaze attacks that paralyze you if you fail a will save? I sure do hope you took the Blind Fight feat on every single party member! Oh, what's that? You picked the wrong dialogue option for some companions' quests? Sorry, but they're dead now. Ok, back to the manor, how about rooms full of spectral enemies with the outflanked perk that can drain your stats? I hope you like seeing "Attack of opportunity" pop up on your screen, because you will be seeing it a lot. Bring Death ward! The (pen)ultimate boss has an AC of 50 on normal difficulty. FIFTY. Take that as you will.
To sum up, I have to say I enjoyed like 80% of my time with the game, immensely. The other 20% of the time I yearned for the sweet release of death. I will not be replaying this. To offer some advice:
1. Take the Blind fight perk on all characters. You don't have to take it immediately, but do take it. Improved Blind Fight isn't necessary, but might help on melee characters.
2. Literally always have camping rations and supplies on you. No less than 12 at any moment. If you have him, set Ekundayo to the special role during rest so that you reduce the necessary rations required by 2.
3. Remember that stat bonuses mostly do NOT stack. If you have an item that gives +6 to CON, and another that gives +2. that's not a total increase of +8. The lesser bonus is completely ignored in favor of the greater bonus. Diversify your gear.
4. If you haven't turned kingdom management to auto (and I don't blame you if you did), get all the advisors as soon as possible. That way you'll have more people to spare on any given event and you won't have to let Problems slide and deteriorate your stats.
And that's about it. Is the game worth it? I got it for a measly 3 euros and I got 180 hours out of it. Even if I did want to commit toaster bath for the last 20 hours, I'd say it's well worth the price if you have a lot of patience, knowledge, and time on your hands. This is the most faithful translation of PF PnP rules to a video game ever, for better or worse.

For a CRPG lover such as myself, this game is pure gold. First of all, it is MASSIVE, as in INSANE loads of hand-crafted content. The mechanics are also very classicist, i.e. a very detailed and accurate implementation of the Pathfinder ruleset, complete with very slow level progression (by today's standards), despite the huge number of fights you're going through.
The sheer number of fights and their challenge (if you don't dumb it down in the difficulty settings) means that this is a game for people who love tinkering with complex RPG mechanics and optimizing the heck out of their party. Some fights will really challenge you to think out of the box, and you will always need to be smart about managing your resources, because at some point you will be caught ill-prepared.
But what makes this game so massive is mainly the Barony mechanics that force you to travel back and forth through your entire realm, having random encounters and exploring every corner of your realm while expanding it through diplomacy, construction and questing. This serves to pace and spread the feet-on-the-ground content over this extra layer of event-driven political/strategic RP and city building mechanics. This additional layer is very well integrated in that it keeps interacting with your party gameplay through quests and resources.
Don't believe the negative comments you may have read about the encounter design. Enemies spawning out of thin air is extremely rare, and in the few cases I've seen it happen it was always somehow motivated through the story. Some people may also have gotten confused by invisible enemies. There are MANY encounters, and of course the random encounters are technically infinite and follow a set of blueprints. So of course not every one is a masterpiece, but there is a lot of diversity and some very memorable ones.

F5 is your friend. Something moved? F5. You think something might move? F5. The night before you dreamed something might move? F5.

The Good
- Gives you a TTRPG experience in a video game.
- The choices you make (seem to) matter! Especially when it comes to companions, future dialogue, and the state of your alignment and religion.
- Timing matters! Especially in the political phases, take too long to resolve something? too bad.
- If you're itching for more BG 1&2, this is it (but updated)
- Graphics, performance, sound, all pretty much good for a cRPG
- So much loot, so many characters, so much variety
- Character (main) progression is nice
The Bad
- Its pacing is slooowww, sloth-like slow. It's frustrating.
- It's repetitive, combat can come down to just attacking single enemies in mobs. I've experienced some strategy here and there but rarely. Most of the time it's just a send-all-in-to-attack style strategy.
- It's repetitive, the even resolutions, like the curses, constantly dealing with the same ones over and over unless you spend a ridiculous amount of resources to research them...it’s frustrating
The I-Wish-It-Had
- Multiplayer. I can see this being played in segments with a group of friends the same way TTRPG is played. This would improve the game greatly.
As it stands, I'm only ~30hrs in, on the (third?) chapter, and I can't get through it without falling asleep. That's not a good or a bad thing, I know people who like their slow and chill rpgs, but this one is not for me. I am hoping WotR will be an improvement.
If I could give it a middling rating I would, but as it stands, I will give it a recommendation because the good outweighs the bad. I just wish I had the energy to see it through.

This is a good a** RPG. Someone who is a D&D guy, really enjoyed this title. Let just say, I had the black flag version of this game, which didn't cost me anything, and liked it so much that I went and bought it here on Steam just because I felt the devs deserved my money and felt guilty for playing such a great title without giving compensation to the creators.

I recommend this game -- but just barely. Get it on sale.
The concept is great. It has the feeling of a classic D&D RPG, which is what you'd expect from a Pathfinder game. The characters and the plot are interesting, the gameplay is fun, your decisions affect the story, and building a Kingdom is extremely satisfying. Pathfinder: Kingmaker is easily on par with Baldur's Gate.
That's what makes the terrible execution of so many mechanics so frustrating.
The first problem is the difficulty. You'd think adjusting the difficulty would solve that problem, but no. I'm at the very last dungeon and it might be unbeatable because I decided to play an Ecclesitheurge and the encounters are obviously designed for a high-level tank class. It's not just that the combat encounters are easier if you fully optimised your party, it's that the game will brutally punish you for making fun roleplay choices, and this often comes out of nowhere. Most of the time, you can let your party autoattack, so it's even more jarring when the difficulty spikes out of nowhere. The design of the encounters is such that lowering the difficulty won't change anything.
The second problem is time management. You know how, in most RPGs, you have an infinite amount of time to save the world? It undermines the story's tension, but there's a reason why games are designed that way.
Kingmaker has multiple quests that are on a timer. On its own, that wouldn't necessarily be a problem. Combined with a kingdom management mechanic that forces timeskips, it means you can lose the game, or at least lose resources, by accident. Add in events that basically railroad you into moving the plot forward and quests that are on independent timers (or imply they're on independent timers, but expect you to do something without telling you what that thing is -- I'm not sure) and you can easily lose out on content. The way some quests are supposed to work simply isn't clear.
That big map full of adventure that you're supposed to conquer? If you take the time to actually explore it, you lose. All those options to develop your kingdom? Most of them will never pay off, and will be ignored so you have advisors available for plot-relevant kingdom events.
You might be able to do everything, or at least most of the content, if you're intimately familiar with how kingdom management works and you decide to roleplay a certain type of character, but you can't expect that from a new player.
The third problem is the way the game handles the alignment system. A lot of choices can affect your alignment. On its own, that's not a problem. When the game forces you to make a choice that affects your alignment and either doesn't give you any choices that match your alignment, or gives you choices that match your alignment and are completely stupid, it's a huge problem.

Lets start with the bad since there isn't a lot of it.
1. The camera sucks for combat sometimes. With no ability to rotate the camera you can sometimes end up fighting outlines behind walls, this dosent matter in most situations but in dungeons and narrow maps this can be annoying.
2. The kingdom management feels tacked on and annoying. Multiple aspects including figuring out how to unlock advisor positions and figuring out how to raise kingdom stats felt unfulfilling and frustrating at times. There are aspects of kingdom management that can make you lose the game if certain situations get out of control and your advisors cant handle them. Fortunately you can turn on "invincible kingdom" in the options and it negates 95% of this but this was easily my least favorite aspect of the game.
3. Multiple quests are time gated, while this almost never was a problem for me i can see how someone who gets carried away can fail things just by not paying attention to timing.
Now for the good:
1. The story is epic, from the opening moment to the final scene there are multiple times in the game that have stuck with me. Story moment abound and pull you into the world and the lore that is being built.
2. Choices matter: Seriously, i had choices that i made in the first 20 hours of the game that played out in the final 10. Some were good and some absolutely sucked, your decisions carry weight and choices stick with you and have meaning. More games need to pay attention to a system like this.
3. Companions and side quests are really good, each companion has their own story that you can dive into and play out to learn about them but also to build their loyalty too you in the kingdom.
4. Combat feels really good, this is Pathfinder to its core as the name suggests. Having played the tabletop i can tell you that this is as faithful an adaptation of that system as you are going to get.
Overall this was one of the best CRPG's ive played in a very long time, 100% worth sinking your time into if you enjoy Pathfinder, D&D or anything fantasy.