Pathfinder: Kingmaker

Hands down one of the greatest rpgs ever made, it's hard to even know where to begin. The amount of choice you have - both in character creation and role playing your way through the game is off the charts and while there's some fake difficulty due to stat bloat and some late game enemies. having immunities that don't make sense, navigation being a PITA in some cases, etc, more often than not I would describe it as being compellingly challenging. Kingdom management adds a very cool geopolitical strategy element to the game and the way it integrates into both the story and gameplay is nothing short of phenomenal for a minigame. The characters are outstanding, companions, villains, and npcs alike. Though there will always be elements of subjectivity and acquired tastes and whatnot that go into this but for my part, I found the cast to all bring something to the table that made me feel right at home in this world and almost all of them had highly compelling backstores and connections to the setting's lore. Using your head is mandatory. You have time limits per act which, while very generous, still prevents you from doing the old "exhaust every OP ability I have, rest, repeat" playstyle that...well, a lot of other crpgs allow lol. The encounter rate is also quite high - those two factors combined make using your head a mandatory part of playing the game. You have to use your spells and abilities judiciously, and without a guide, you won't always know when is the best time to burn a spell slot or a specific item or something else that has limited uses or limited uses per rest period. You have to decide how much weight to carry and how that affects fatigue and the need to rest. Half of the challenge is using your own judgment as you try to decorate the land with your enemies entrails without getting your own head torn off. If all of this sounds like a bit much to handle, understand that the difficulty settings are highly modular. As are the combat settings. You have a LOT of control over the type of gaming experience you get to have here, far moreso than the vast majority of games. The obtuseness is something of a feature rather than a bug. The writers expect you to read the coversations and in game material such as books and letters and such for clues on how to find various secrets or understand the significance of certain events or figure out how to advance a substory, etc and so forth. The writing is verbose and the game is massive so this is a taller order here than it sounds. If you're a new parent or something like that you should probably just play something else (if you have time for video games at all), not gonna lie. The necessity of min-maxing, metagaming, and having to have a million buffs on at all times is overstated. Most of that talk from the fandom is based on grognards and uber nerds who play on unfair difficulty and solo runs and other such craziness. Again, difficulty settings along with various other gameplay settings are highly modular. Just understand that this game's normal is a level or two harder than most rpg's normal, and that goes for every default difficulty settings. The so called necessity of metagaming is due to the number of hidden checks based on the many, many choices you make and the consequences they may have. This only requires metagaming if you're going for the "perfect" roleplay and secret endings and such. For me, that would've just turned an epic rpg experience into a miserable one. I simply play the way I want to play and let the chips fall where they fall and I have a blast with this game. I could go on, but limited time and character count is going to prevent me from doing so.9.5/10. Will play again. Pathfinder: Kingmaker is one of the greatest rpgs of all time, bar none.

Brilliant game Owlcat have shown themselves to be the next big thing in rpgs. It has everything I like in games including fun combat, great story, base management,fun characters...I never put it down once I started!