Pathfinder Kingmaker is a great game with flaws that held it back for me.

Pathfinder 1e was an enjoyable system for me to play around with, before this game I was unfamiliar with it. There are so many builds that you can do to the point where it could be overwhelming for some people. If you are unfamiliar with the system you will likely need a guide to make an optimal build if you decide to play on the higher difficulties. Which isn't a deal breaker for me.

Compared to D&D 5e, it is not as accessible but I feel that it makes for a better game, as someone who likes more complex character creation and builds, this is miles better than DnD for me. While Baldur's Gate 3 did have alright builds, I believe that the system it is based on is just not as varied nor is it as mechanically in-depth compared to Pathfinder. While it is serviceable, I just prefer Pathfinder for the increased depth and variety in character creation, as well as how the combat itself plays out.

The difficulty options are alright, they range from piss easy to impossible unless you min-max, and in my opinion, there was not a good middle ground difficulty by default, where you had some sort of challenge without needing to min max. You can customize every part of the difficulty to your liking, so I believe there is a way to achieve that perfect difficulty, however, I did not spend too much time on tweaking it. I believe that the game could have been balanced a bit better, some fights in the early game were brutal for someone unfamiliar with Pathfinder. Because of these hard fights, it led me to lower the difficulty quite a few times, which thankfully you can do at any time. I would have preferred to not need to switch the difficulty and just have a consistent challenge at all parts of the game. Compared to Baldur's Gate 3, it offers a more difficult experience on the higher-end difficulties but is not as balanced in the middle difficulties, which can be a plus if you enjoy min-maxing and crunchy games. which I find myself enjoying. The encounters themselves got pretty tedious at times, which ultimately contributed to me not finishing the game.

I enjoyed the exploration aspect of this game, There are smaller maps, that contain various mobs, loot, caves, and the like which are tied together by a big overworld map in which you have to spend time traveling and to camp when your party gets tired, I loved this part of the game, it added a lot to the fantasy of it being an adventure. It created the feeling of this being a more living world that spans months rather than it spanning a week or two like Baldur's Gate 3, for example. While Baldur's Gate 3 felt like a faster-paced short-term adventure, the time felt wonky, each long rest is presumably one day, but you could take as many as you wanted with only a few quests reflecting the passage of time, this is not a thing in Kingmaker, because of the fact that you travel everywhere and that you need to rest once you get exhausted, the passage of time feels a lot more realistic, and conducive to a long term adventure that involves creating a kingdom and handling all of the problems that come along with it. Ultimately the two games are quite different and I feel the way each of them handles resting and the passage of time would not work well if they were swapped, but I feel it's handled better in this game

A lot of the encounters in this game require you to buff yourself before the encounters, and with there being sometimes 10-15 spells you need to case before fights, it takes a lot of the time away from the fighting. In the sequel, this is a bit worse, but at the least you can download a mod that lets you apply all the buffs you want at the same time, saving you 5 minutes before every big fight, which I did not have access to in this game and made it feel very tedious. Compared to Baldurs Gate 3, where buffing before a fight was not necessary to win most of your fights and the fact that there are simply fewer spells you need to cast, this issue is notable if you are coming from Baldur’s Gate 3.


I did enjoy the fact that there were options for real-time with pause and turn-based modes, the game was designed with real-time with pause in mind, but Pathfinder as a system was designed to be turn-based so each of the modes has its positives and negatives. The turn-based mode makes the harder fights easier since it is easier to micro your party members compared to RTWP but it makes the trash mob fights very tedious, while RTWP makes the game a lot faster, it does increase the difficulty a bit since it increases the amount of micromanaging you need to do. I found myself switching between the two quite often, but because the game is designed around RTWP while Pathfinder is turn-based it means both of the modes aren’t perfect by themselves, but since you have both it is not a big issue.

The kingdom management is interesting, but a bit tedious at times, it tends to throw a bunch of events at you at a time and can be a bit overwhelming, this system also requires you to watch a guide to get the hang of it, which depending on how much you mind reading guides could be a negative. While the system itself is not perfect, the existence of the system does a tremendous amount to make this game feel grand, compared to Baldur's Gate 3, I think Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous feel like grander adventures with their respective management systems. Thus while the management systems may be tedious to some, I believe it contributes more to the game than the sum of its parts.

The companions are serviceable, and most did not blow me away, but their stories were interesting enough to where you wanted to do their companion quests and most of those quests were solid, but I did not end up finishing the game so I did not see all of them.

This is an extremely long game, a full playthrough of this game will take you above the 100-hour mark if you are not rushing through the game, and while CRPGs are known for being long at times, compared to Baldur's Gate 3, it is quite a bit longer, but a decent part of that is not just main quests, it is mostly downtime in between acts, in which after rushing through the main story you get many in-game days of downtime, to catch up on kingdom management, do companion quests and other sidequests, and to explore the world map. Because of the downtime from the main quests, it feels a bit padded which inflates the runtime a bit compared to Baldur's Gate 3, which was extremely long because of the amount of side quests and area to explore, rather than downtime between acts.

The vast majority of main quests are on a timer, and if you do not complete them in time, you lose the game and your kingdom falls, these time limits were pretty generous however, time limits do not feel too good to me, thankfully in the sequel the time limits are a lot less strict and done a lot better in my opinion, which is a common theme of this game, generally the ideas in this one are more well executed in the sequel, Wrath of the Righteous.

This game felt like a grand adventure, while not all of the systems were well executed and there were a lot of quality-of-life features that were added in the sequel, I think this game is great, the parts all combine to create a truly grand adventure that spans years, However a lot of things held the game back that prevented me from finishing it, a lot of the encounters are designed with a specific counter in mind, which if you are seeing for the first time and are unfamiliar with pathfinder, might be hard to deal with. Comparing this game to Baldur's Gate 3, it feels a lot grander in scope, it spans many months in-game, and it fulfills the fantasy of being a Kingmaker, all of the systems come together to create an adventure that's greater than the sum of its parts, that is held back by the systems being complicated, the difficulties being either too easy or too difficult and just general polish. Despite the fact I did not finish it, I enjoyed it enough to try its sequel, Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, which alleviates a lot of the issues I had with this game, and takes the parts of Kingmaker that shine and elevate them to even greater heights, Increasing the amount of character creation options while adding polish and quality of life features that were needed in Kingmaker.

All in all, this game was a great experience, it had a tremendous amount of content and systems that combined to create a grand adventure that mostly fulfills the fantasy of being a kingmaker, what holds it back is the hard-to-get-into system in Pathfinder 1e and the somewhat convoluted kingdom management mechanics, if you do not mind reading guides and can deal with some of the lack of polish, this is an excellent game. And if it's a bit too rough around the edges Wrath of the Righteous might be right up your alley, since it feels like a more fully realized version of Kingmaker in many ways.

It's a tough sell but there are moments where it's fantastic. (66.1 hours at the time of this review; 2 playthroughs, first one failed halfway, second one midway)
I have barely more CRPG than the average landscape of current gamers, some Baldur's Gate 1 that I played prior to 3, and I'm really struggling to see how this game would fare for someone only having played the more recent. The game seems to be a bevy of fun ideas that fall short if you can't fully invest yourself in them, and even still tend to end rather anti-climatically. For example, I haven't had single a boss fight in the game that I would both consider challenging and satisfying.
The difficultly systems do allow for what seems to be extensive customization, but the tuning has to be up to the player, and as someone hoping that stock normal difficultly gives a fair challenge, it often resorts to very cheap methods of difficulty.
Despite all of that, the game has a progression system and variety that I feel puts Baldur's Gate 3 to some pretty depressing shame, given that this game is so much older. The ability to toggle between real-time and turn-based is insanely helpful, and for me, in my first run, I didn't even use turn-based and combat was responsive and enjoyable. Shared inventory management and the game collating all the loot you missed when you leave an area, all of that makes the game have great pacing during the typical mundanities.
To an extent, it feels true to the minimal that I've played and much I've watched of the old guard of the genre: a kind of game that makes you work to have fun, and when it feels like letting you have fun, it's really damn fun.
I can genuinely see the framework for something fantastic, and I hope that wrath of the righteous can deliver on that when I get to it after I finish kingmaker.

This game brings some of the best features of a classic crpg into the modern era without feeling archaic. Really solid storyline with a great cast of characters and a interesting world space with decent world building. Its also one of the few games where running a barony later a kingdom feels like running a actual kingdom with the ability to select your advisors and having decisions impact not only the story but visuals as well. You can be good, evil or something in between. It is a lengthy title though and I strongly suggest to not take this game on until you have lots of time ready to put into it and no other distractions from other titles.
DLC wise I'd say the only one actually needed is the wildcards one as it adds some characters that I feel should be in the game story wise and are pretty op party members. Some of the issues this title has is its pretty unforgiving which tbh is expected for a crpg but I suggest using a guide because even small decisions can create serious situations and lock you out of certain things or may even screw you in the end game (do your best to finish companion strings as if you don't most of your companions will either turn on your or straight up die in the process of the final arc. I was left with like 4-5 guys luckily I had enough gold to buy 2 mercs off of a guy whos basically there in case you have almost no party members but the cost is extremely high per hired merc. ).
If you want the "secret true ending" you'll def need a guide. Its a lot of steps but its well worth the ending. Some of the other issues is poor optimization. I rarely had 60 fps I would often dip into the 45s even mid 30s during combat (sometimes just walking) and this game simply does not warrant this considering the graphics. The combat itself is interesting in a way. You have the option to play turned based or real time. I opted for real time as I didn't want these battles to last a millennia. In terms of depth I suppose you can get crazy with the stuff you can do but for the average player this combat is probably going to be a slog and boring after a certain amount of hours. Does not help that the game itself is pretty damn difficult especially on the higher settings. Thankfully you can tweak things if you must. There are some quest trigger bugs as I had certain missions not trigger for me despite meeting the requirements but it was not very frequent. Despite these short comings This game is still worth a run soley for the really dope story line and even if you pay the full price your going to get a lot of hours out of this one. On the heavy sales this is certainly worth the cop.
Oh and save often and in different slots I've had to backtrack a few times because like I said unforgiving game.

Eu me apaixonei com esse jogo pelas mecânicas de RPG que acabam fazendo toda gameplay dele ser única pra quem jogou, com diversas opções diferentes até mesmo com configuração de gameplay e uma campanha gigante, mas ele tem defeitos muito difíceis de ignorar.
Eu estava gostando tanto do jogo que no meio da campanha eu já tinha mais de 100 horas no save, e estava pensando em rejogar. Mas isso mudou com o endgame do jogo, que é repleto de combates repetitivos e chatos.
Eu só tive paciência pra completar uma parte específica do endgame colocando a dificuldade no mínimo e pulando todo combate possível pra prosseguir logo com a história.
O jogo também possui alguns bugs e falta de feedback com algumas coisas do combate em turnos que foi adicionado com patch depois do lançamento, como o jogo prever que você vai poder se mover e atacar em um turno, você clicar pra fazer isso e o seu personagem tendo que se mover 2 vezes no turno sem atacar pq a previsão estava errada. Ou o personagem bugar por 1 turno e ficar sem ação nenhuma.
Também é muito estranho um jogo 3D não ter uma câmera mais livre. A câmera presa em um ângulo só parece muito limitado comparando com outros jogos 3D do gênero.