The game is indeed very good. I love it. It takes some time to adjust and understand that you have to use all the tools at your disposal, but once you start figuring it out, micromanaging your party a bit better and building your characters, look out! It gets really interesting then. Wholeheartedly recommend this for fans of Baldur's Gate and isometric CRPGs, no doubt about that. This may be the masterpiece we've been waiting on forever, a promise fulfilled, the true pillar of CRPG eternity that we've all wanted for years. I'm impressed. So impressed it's taken me away from Bard's Tale IV for a bit. Just having fun exploring The Stolen Lands!

People do a lot of watching and little playing it seems. It's hard to tell anything by watching someone else's party build, someone else's strategy and so on without getting your hands dirty and playing for yourself. YOUR strategy will be your own and the game will play much differently for each player.

There isn't any strategy involved beyond min-maxing and savescumming.

I've gathered enough information watching that I feel okay passing this judgement.

If you want to see what real skill based difficulty looks like, play the new PoE2 DLC on the highest difficulty. It has me pulling my hair out in frustration, but it doesn't feel unfair.

lol, silver coin again going on about POE 2…:D

Anyway, yea, there are a lot of threads complaining the game is too difficult on the steam forum for Pathfinder: Kingmaker. I, for one, take this as a good thing. I like difficult games, in particular crpgs. And the funny thing is they offer a lot of difficulty settings and tweaks in the game already! People on steam are making fun of those people complaining, saying that they are trying to play the game on hard or the next level of difficulty (called "Unfair" in the game) and think it will be like other rpgs, but that instead, the "normal" for this game corresponds to "hard" for most other rpgs.

That makes the game more interesting to me. Dragon Age Origins when it first came out was tough, but then people complained, and they nerfed the difficulty. I thought the pre-patch difficulty of Dragon Age was perfect! It was not easy, but challenging, and it really gave a sense of satisfaction when you won a battle. Then the devs gave in and nerfed the game making it much easier. I went and bought a DVD copy just to have an unpatched copy in case I wanted to replay the game.

There's a fine line between challenge and frustration.

A challenge is a test of ones abilities. Frustration is a test of ones patience. I think this game leans heavily towards the latter rather than the former.

Well after playing 10 hours and finally getting a 5th party member, learning to use my scrolls and potions and spells wisely, I respectfully disagree. It was hard at the start but gets easier as you go. You have to use all your tools wisely.

I just spent a ridiculously long time in character creation. It was nice. I've missed that.

Players in PnP don't have access to Load Game. Computer game does not equal PnP.

I told you guys Kingmaker is good fun. Told you guys thusly ;)

That doesn't mean games should be balanced around savescumming like this crap. Where's the complex strategy and tactics? Nowhere to be found from what I've seen.

If they rebalance the encounters to make it more tactical and less savescummy, then it could be decent. Although it would still be inferior than if it was turn-based.

At this stage, I'd just recommend playing the tabletop game instead. It's superior.

I am playing on Challenging and I didn't need to savescum at all. I did start on Hard and decided to lower it to Challenging when I figured out Hard gives flat +4 bonus to all enemy rolls and that would make all spellcasting mostly useless as it is not easy to raise Spell DC like it is to raise attack bonus or AC. Challenging gives +2 bonus to enemies and I find that a fair compensation for my ability to savescum (which does not exist in PnP).

And using strategy and tactics is what let me do fights without savescuming (and a bit of luck I guess). I guess you just enjoy easier games like PoE, maybe you should go back to that and let grown ups play good games like Pathfinder.

You need to be lucky to win most of the early combat, therefore it's balanced around savescumming. In other words, it's rubbish.

PoE2 is more strategically challenging than this game after all the recent patching and DLC. Most importantly though, the combat is fair and not plagued with RNG.

Go play PoE2 you Obsidian paid troll :)

Ya, ya, keep telling yourself that when you awake at night with nightmares of being killed in Pathfinder yet again.

As I said, you can go back to your PoE, we will keep playing a superior game.

Also, P:KM is such a superior game it uninstalled PoE from my PC while being installed!

You're the one that brought up PoE in order to deflect from criticism of this game.

Forget PoE2. This game is balanced around savescumming. That makes it rubbish. That's why it has 64% score and declining. That's only part of the reason why it's inferior to the tabletop version. That's what you need to address. My personal taste is irrelevant.

The more i hear how difficult it is the more happy i become. If people compare difficulty to ,let us say, PoE2, i'll love the game.
Downloading the game today.

I am pretty sure those same idiots on Steam would complain about BG1 difficulty if it was released today. You start almost alone there and can get one shot by a wolf. Also that terrible Ogre that can one shot even fighters. And the first Mage in Friendly Arms Inn that casts Horror on the party and then proceeds to murder main character with MM.

It is not balanced around savescumming. It was not made on purpose. They failed to provide anything else.
It is supposed to be RTwP. Throwing in tactics and strategy implies players able to play RTwP, that is, among other things, being able to implement a plan ahead of an encounter, being able to place inputs in RT. Both things players keep failing at.