Let me start by saying that I have zero experience playing the physical version of Pathfinder, though I have a long experience when it comes to digital games, especially RPGs. As such, I can't really put it up against the pen and paper version, only how it stacks up to my knowledge, expectations and other games in the genre.

- STORY -
Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a good game. But it's not a great game. While the story is alright, though at moments it looses steam or certain chapters over-stay their welcome, it still manages to get you somewhat involved and interested. Though the end villain is, in all honesty, a bit meh. Even when you get to the kingdom management part of the game, you still have larger threats or purposes that drive you and the narrative forward. At times the main story is at odds with the "explore and adventure" part of the game, where as you have time constraints placed upon you which forces you to do certain quests before you can go out and adventure. This is not a big issue since in all the cases I came across you can still just do the side quests afterwards, but it still pulls you out of the adventure aspect of the game and forces you onto a set path. It's sort of like going from a free-ride to being put on rails, the rails are fine and all, but that's not what you were doing right now.

- COMPANIONS -
Most companions are good, but they're marred down by cliché writing and force-fed stereotypes... or anti-stereotypes? You have the strong independant woman who was always looked down upon by men, you have the nonchalant cold-hearted one who does whatever to further their own gain and so forth. There were a couple that I found genuinely interesting, ironically Nok-Nok the goblin was one of them. But even he is the rather stereotypical "non-human, uncivilized" companion who thinks human customs are dumb. Overall, alright copmanions, but a bit hamfisted and cliché at times.

- GAMEPLAY -
You can switch the gameplay between tactical and turn based, and of course all the dice rolls are done behind the scenes. This is not new or revolutionary, but it doesn't have to be. It gets the job done very well, and if you know more about the pathfinder ruleset than I do, you'll do a lot better in the combat as well. The rest of the gameplay loop is caring for your kingdom (barony) sending your advisors out on missions and upgrading/building things in your villages and towns. Looting and equipping your character is fairly standard D&D affair, nobody will be surprised there.

- GRAPHICS -
The graphics are pretty good, the last cRPG I played was probably Pillars of Eternity II and this is better graphically looking than that game, but not by a whole lot. Environments and nature also look good, with nothing that sticks terribly out of place, so everything is keeping within the world's aesthetics. It should be noted here that you can NOT rotate the camera in the game. This feels kind of odd to me, but it rarely becomes a problem since they've designed the levels with this in mind. Should have probably put that last bit under gameplay.

- AUDIO/MUSIC -
Music is pretty mediocre, there's a piece here and there that stands out but overall it just manages to do the job. The audio however is generally pretty good. Attacking in melee sounds meaty and chunky, and spell effects are well-made. In terms of Ambience or atmosphere, there isn't overly much, though when there's a proper storm (which comes with its own stat debuffs for your party, by the way) it really does feel like a storm.

- Performance -
The game has performed well on my system, I'm running a bit of an older CPU, a Ryxen 1600X with a 2080 TI and 32 gigs of DDR4 RAM. I know, I know, I'm going to upgrade my CPU soon. There were occasional moments with a lot of units on screen as well as with a lot of effects where I did lose frames, but it was still at a playable level. It seems that light sources and effects has the biggest impact on your performance. Overall, it runs fine.

NITPICKS
* Travelling on the world map can take a long ass time when going far away. This makes logical sense, of course, but when you've done most of what there is to do, and you just want to finish up some side-quests, it's annoying that it takes 5-10 minutes to go from your capital to your quest location. This can take even longer when you get interrupted by random monsters on the road that will drag you into a combat scenario. This is a nitpick for when you've done most of the game though, since before that you have all the juicy exploration to do and things feel new and fresh.

* There's not really much happening in your capital after you've gone through the main quest-line. There aren't many interesting characters, there are as far as I'm aware, no random events at all, and you'll never ever use it except to visit your merchants or the local cleric to buy restoration scrolls or other divination items.

* There is no crafting in the game at all, if you don't count the different "foods" you can make while resting your party. This is not a huge deal, but it feels weird to not have any crafting at all when it could've added much to the game.

* Any item you find is yours to pick up. There is no stealing, from anyone. Sometimes an item will have a trigger attached to it, like if you pick up something it'll spawn an enemy, but no stealing. Which means if you want to RP as a thief/rogue? You're pretty much out of luck.

* When traveling, your companions and your character will become fatigued and eventually exhausted. You have to either camp and use rations/go hunting to get rid of this debuff, or if you're fatigued you can use restoration scrolls to get rid of fatigue. However, if you are INSIDE, like a dungeon or cave, you have to use rations. The only issue with this is, you can be an hour or two, or three, into a grueling dungeon and either run out of rations, or not have enough from the beginning, to rest and recover your skills/spells. Leaving you vulnerable and essentially useless. This happened to me at one point in the main story and I couldn't go outside of the dungeon because there was a VERY tough encounter outside waiting for me, since I got inside the dungeon on, let's say, friendly terms. Now I know, I should've brought more supplies, but supplies weigh a fair bit in the game, and if you have just ONE supply too little to rest, nobody in your party will get anything. A good solution to this, in my opinion, would be so you can choose who gets the rations when you rest in a dungeon. Your fighter or barbarian might not need to recover their skills, but your spell-casters definitely might.

FINAL VERDICT:
I'll give Pathfinder: Kingmaker a solid 7, depending on my mood it might go down to a weak 7. It's definitely worth a try if you're into the cRPG genre, and even if you're not, it might be worth picking up on a sale!

It's alright I guess

Buy this game. If you are even somewhat interested in RPGs or Adventure games, buy this.

This game is a beautiful tale of dedication and determination from the developers, that paid off. Good sound-design with beautiful music that really sets the medieval fantasy mouse mood. Lovely graphics that are surprisingly good and sharp, and that, once again, sets the mood in this beautiful game. The story? Well I won't spoil it, but who doesn't want to play as a cute mouse minstrel on a quest!

Honestly, buy this game. It's not expensive, and it's a gorgeous experience.

Where do you begin, when they ask you to review one of the best games of all time? It's hard, I tell you what. But I'll give it a shot, regardless.

My first experience with Knights of The Old Republic was on the original xbox, back in the year of 2004. And my only memories from it are good ones, walking on the bottom of the sea on the ocean world of Manaan, or wandering around amongst the trees of the wookie planet of Kashyyyk all made you feel incredible due to the great sound-design and beautiful (at the time) visuals. The gameplay can feel a bit slow and sluggish by todays standards since it's not superfast and pulse pounding the way some games are, but that's not what it was about, and frankly, I rarely cared so much about the gameplay in this title because of the fact that the story, the characters and the setting is what brings this puppy home. It's safe to say that what Bioware created with this title was a game of the ages, something that would stand the test of time forever, and proudly so. When people place this game on their "Best games of all times" list, they do not do it for any other reason than the one that it is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good game.

The story will take you far and wide, beginning with your character (which you can customize, male-female, caucasian/hispanic/african etc) waking up on board of a republic ship that is under attack by Sith forces, for you who don't know, the sith are the "bad" guys. In the spirit of spoiling as little as possible, you end up on a city-planet called Taris, where you have to take on an underground crime syndicate, join a swoop race (kind of like floating motorcycles) and take out a crimeboss. All while doing this, you will meet companions who joins your party. The companions are varied, and extremely well fleshed out, and they all have good voice-actors (admittedly some better than others).

By the time you're done on the world of Taris, you will have spent about 3-6 hours in the game, depending on how much time you spent doing sidequests, exploring and talking to your companions. And that's just the first "major world" that you get to visit during your main quest, which I shall not spoil for you! Regardless, you have several more worlds to visit during your quest, and the game can take you anywhere from hardly any time, to a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lifetime to complete.



Amazing story
Amazing characters
Amazing setting and locations
Amazing gameplay (in my opinion, this is more subjective since some do not like the DnD combat in RPGs)
Amazing sound-design and soundtrack (composed by the one and only Jeremy Soule!)

It's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 10 out of 10 in my book. And everyone should at least give this game a try. :)