A richly detailed RPG with deep mechanics, improved by enhancements, though its complexity might overwhelm newcomers to the genre.

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)

Hey! It looks like you're having fun!! Let's interrupt that with some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that is NOT fun, and if you don't do it, you LOSE! YAY!

So this game has a bit of both 'good' and 'bad' in my eyes.

The good is that it has extremely huge amounts of the lore of the world available for you to read, and certain important lore information is turned into mouse-over tooltips that are clearly highlighted in the game text during conversations and other dialogue to make absorbing all of that knowledge easier--even for easily overwhelmed players.

Gameplay is as hard or as easy as you wish it to be. I'm playing on the easiest difficulty, Story mode, and its enjoyable for me. If you just want to adventure and don't want to manage your kingdom, there's a setting to turn it off and default everything to successes with no risk to your kingdom whatsoever.

The bad to me is that some battles feel pointless--like having to wade through six fights, in a row, of literally pathetically easy enemies that just seem to exist just to waste your time. The other is that the developers sneak in some fights that are just not even remotely feasibly doable at your current level, but those are clearly given warning signs of "DO NOT DO THIS HERE" or you will regret it--case in point: Don't sleep at a campsite, even if it has supplies, if you see corpses strewn around the campsite with the victims' faces etched with horror.

To quote Kakashi: "If the bait is obvious? Don't take it"

A plus side to me at the end is that the boss battles are bloody B O S S battles. They're tough as nails, hard even on story mode, and depending on your choices and decisions will either make them easier to deal with or just a ruddy pain in the butt to deal with. Its all completely reliant on your ability to tactically plan and approach.

One thing I love is how you can either be good, evil or neutral in this game, and even then, you can be lawful, chaotic, or completely down the bloody middle in all things. The choice is up to you. And certain things will develop and the fate of the game world changes based on what choices you make.

When it states the title is "Kingmaker" it isn't kidding. Expect this one to be a long, drawn-out, haul if you get it but as someone who vehemently hates the Pathfinder table-top system, and loves D&D's 5e system and came into this extremely skeptical and wary; I'm happy to say I'm pleasantly surprised. The combat systems aren't nearly as complicated as Pathfinder itself is, and the game feels more like how Neverwinter Nights was designed in the 3.5E system for Dungeons & Dragons.

I'd definitely give this game my seal of approval.

7.5 out of 10 for me in terms of my overall enjoyment with the game.
10 out of 10 for the story.
8 out of 10 for the combat, it can get sloggy.
3.5 out of 10 for how clunky the spell system was, I didn't obtain the new spells for my companions until after almost 20 hours into the game.

Overall, this is a game you'll want for your tactical gameplay collection if you're an avid lover of tactical RPGs like D&D like I am.