Pathfinder: Kingmaker has some cool ideas and the systems are super intricate, but it is all pulled down by repetition, length, and the cruft-filled nature of the Pathfinder rules.
This plays like a classic real-time with pause game, though I played it in turn-based mode (I don't really see how real-time can work with some of these abilities... Magus would just not be functional, right?). It is tactical and fun when it is balanced, but difficulty swings pretty wild in this game. Many encounters are overly difficult and extremely punishing for un-optimized characters. Pathfinder's prevalence of spells and abilities that do semi-permanent ability damage or full CC effects that last 10+ rounds make the game feel super unfair and pointless.
The combat is also very janky in certain ways. There are times when your actions are unclear and inputs get eaten, resulting in missed opportunities. The extreme complication of the pathfinder rules also don't lend themselves to this very much at all, since many of the options and benefits of certain abilities are basically wasted or impossible to use.
When it is working and kept fairly simple, it is still very interesting and fun, however.
The Kingmaker portion of this game is a kingdom management simulation with some interesting ideas, but not enough to really hold my attention. You can assign advisors to do events for you, but everything takes an extreme amount of time (presumably to encourage you to go out exploring while your advisors are doing things?) for very little reward. There are also hidden punishments for missing events and the amount of resources you can put into this mode is extremely limited, reducing the actual choices it feels like you can feasibly make.
Pathfinder looks good, using the style of the tabletop game to good effect. I like that it is distinct from D&D while still having a classic fantasy feel. I definitely had some random framerate issues while playing, though they didn't negatively impact the experience too much.
Character building in Pathfinder is a direct implementation of the Pathfinder rules, which would be cool if the Pathfinder rules didn't have so much unnecessary jankyness and cruft to them. The TTRPG feels like a couple of character ideas with a ton of (really boring, terrible) feats to band-aid over basic problems with the system or destroy any class uniqueness and this holds true for Kingmaker. There isn't much reason not to take the same basic set of feats for every character, most of which are astoundingly unexciting (Weapon Focus!? GREATER Weapon Focus!?!?).
It can still be fun initially to pick a character and plan out how you want to build them, but it eventually broke down pretty hard for me.
Pathfinder is HUGE. There is a map you can explore as if it were a hex crawl, with events and locations scattered throughout. Most of this is unconnected to the main story, however, and eventually started just being busy-work. Everything in the game just takes a very long time to do, from waiting for your kingdom events to happen, to traveling to your current destination. It is realistic, but definitely not fun.
I did still get some entertainment out of this game -- choosing from the different classes, building your character, and combat are all fun at first. The extreme length and lack of depth and variety in both the combat and kingdom management eventually just made me lose interest with the Pathfinder feat system being the final nail in the coffin for me.
This plays like a classic real-time with pause game, though I played it in turn-based mode (I don't really see how real-time can work with some of these abilities... Magus would just not be functional, right?). It is tactical and fun when it is balanced, but difficulty swings pretty wild in this game. Many encounters are overly difficult and extremely punishing for un-optimized characters. Pathfinder's prevalence of spells and abilities that do semi-permanent ability damage or full CC effects that last 10+ rounds make the game feel super unfair and pointless.
The combat is also very janky in certain ways. There are times when your actions are unclear and inputs get eaten, resulting in missed opportunities. The extreme complication of the pathfinder rules also don't lend themselves to this very much at all, since many of the options and benefits of certain abilities are basically wasted or impossible to use.
When it is working and kept fairly simple, it is still very interesting and fun, however.
The Kingmaker portion of this game is a kingdom management simulation with some interesting ideas, but not enough to really hold my attention. You can assign advisors to do events for you, but everything takes an extreme amount of time (presumably to encourage you to go out exploring while your advisors are doing things?) for very little reward. There are also hidden punishments for missing events and the amount of resources you can put into this mode is extremely limited, reducing the actual choices it feels like you can feasibly make.
Pathfinder looks good, using the style of the tabletop game to good effect. I like that it is distinct from D&D while still having a classic fantasy feel. I definitely had some random framerate issues while playing, though they didn't negatively impact the experience too much.
Character building in Pathfinder is a direct implementation of the Pathfinder rules, which would be cool if the Pathfinder rules didn't have so much unnecessary jankyness and cruft to them. The TTRPG feels like a couple of character ideas with a ton of (really boring, terrible) feats to band-aid over basic problems with the system or destroy any class uniqueness and this holds true for Kingmaker. There isn't much reason not to take the same basic set of feats for every character, most of which are astoundingly unexciting (Weapon Focus!? GREATER Weapon Focus!?!?).
It can still be fun initially to pick a character and plan out how you want to build them, but it eventually broke down pretty hard for me.
Pathfinder is HUGE. There is a map you can explore as if it were a hex crawl, with events and locations scattered throughout. Most of this is unconnected to the main story, however, and eventually started just being busy-work. Everything in the game just takes a very long time to do, from waiting for your kingdom events to happen, to traveling to your current destination. It is realistic, but definitely not fun.
I did still get some entertainment out of this game -- choosing from the different classes, building your character, and combat are all fun at first. The extreme length and lack of depth and variety in both the combat and kingdom management eventually just made me lose interest with the Pathfinder feat system being the final nail in the coffin for me.