As I recall, my exhaustion came when exploring the many, many regions on the map - many of which consisted of relatively small overland areas (sometimes with a small cave or building) with a significant amount of trash fights. When I say trash fights, I mean fights that don't directly stand out in any meaningful way - much like the average CRPG fight. It's rare when RPGs implement a majority of fights that are thought out and considered - as opposed to "more filler stuff".

That's because fans genuinely enjoy such fights - and I know I'm somewhat of an outlier here. I'm just tired of that formula, I guess.

I know many of them are quest related, but that's not always obvious unless you've triggered the quest - and, even so, many of the side quests are pretty trivial in terms of the content - aside from those fights.

Well, don't get me wrong, I quite enjoyed Kingmaker for the most part. I think I have more than 100 hours in it, which represents around 3 attempts to complete it.

I still intend to do that one day, but I don't think I ever got further than Act 4 on one occasion.

But I'm a huge D&D fan, especially the 3.0/3.5/PF systems. Well, actually, I'm a fan of the CHARACTER system not the COMBAT system.

My problem with 3rd Edition D&D is that non-magical characters have very few active abilities - which was always part of the traditional D&D design.

Ironically, my least favorite D&D system (4th) actually has the best combat system - precisely because of the active abilities.

Sounds good, I will definitely check it out.

I bought and refunded BG3 - just to check it out.

Not sure how I feel about it yet. Not a big 5th Edition fan - though I'm not too familiar with it.

It seems overly simplified and, again, lacking in terms of active abilities for non-magic users.

Still hopeful about it, though - and since it's one of the very, very few CRPGs with meaningful cooperative gameplay - I'll almost certainly play it.

Yeah, that might be for the most part the encounters for the Magical Prison quest.
Imho they could have designed this (and the encounters) a lot better and more motivational with relatively low effort.

That sounds really good.

It wasn't that long ago that I thought I was sort of past this particular subgenre, but I must say that games like Kingmaker, DOS2 and - in particular - PoE2 have demonstrated to me that I'm still very fond of them.

Does this Wrath game have any direct connection to Kingmaker? As in, is there a good reason to play Kingmaker before Wrath - apart from it being a good game, I mean? :)

Oh, that. And the magic lantern… that wasn't my favourite part. Too alien, maybe. Poor old Nyrissa ;) Well, in WotR at least you can adjust the number of enemies (reduced, normal, enlarged), but there are still combats without special characters, in many locations. You won't see a completely different game, but many improvements, they really try to please people's varied preferences around the CRPG core as much as possible.
Those are nice rulesets :) There's definitely a lot to explore, Pathfinder is complex and rich, and WotR has increased the number of classes. Character creation and evolution is one of Owlcat's strong suit.

D&D 5E is interesting but not as complex, I agree with you. I like it but it's really a matter of preference in the end. Solasta much better represents the mechanical part of 5E, although it doesn't offer a wide choice of classes (and has another setting). BG3 has more races and classes I think, but they've modified the ruleset a little to make it look even simpler, and the presentation is confusing. We can't have it all.

They're completely independent. The only reason would be that crescendo in quality, you may be even less motivated to play Kingmaker again after playing WotR.

Cool, thanks for info.