Too fantasy kitchen sink for me, although I did enjoy Janny Wurt's Cycle of Fire trilogy. She kept the spaceship thing to a bare minimum and only at the end of the trilogy, though.
It's not too kitchen sink for me, maybe dryer with a bunch of different clothes (ideas) being tumbled around.
But in the way the game presents it, it fits IMO. Just the game, not the pen and paper stuff.
I played 30 hours of Kingmaker and really enjoyed it. I am however afraid that one day my kingdom will crumble and I’ll grt game over because of something stupid.
You can turn on Invincible Kingdom to avoid crumbling by bad kingdom management. Only way to lose then is if you don't do the main quests in time.
1 - BG series style of writing was light hearted. With "funny" chars all over the place. Friendly beholders and guys like Noober. PF:K has WarctaftIII style of graphic while trying to be more "serious". I prefer BG tbqh.
2 - Items description; every item of loot in BG had a lenghty description, even gems (gems descriptions, how they are used in spells, where they can be found were awesome!). Most of the magical items had a story and name instead of "longsword +1, +1 furious". PF:K really feels like random generated loot.
3 - Magic was central in BG2. While in PF:K, mages are more support chars. No epic liches/dragon/whatnot magic battles. Also less scrolls, less spells.
4 - PF:K rest/encumbrance system IS FAR superior to BG, where you could just rest spam. I love it.
5 - Kingdom management feels pretty meh.
6 - BG2 characters were meh, but PF:K has even worse chars.
7 - Forgotten realms is so much better than the PF setting... I am not saying Drizzt is the best character in the world, or Elminster, but compared to Amiri they surely shine.
All in all, BG series win. But PF:K is a great game, really funny to play, with decent story and I look forward to expansions and sequels.
1 - There are plenty of funny moments in P:K, though. I love the music that plays during those events, and I'd say it's a bit light-hearted itself, and somewhat similar in tone to BG. I can name several funny events that happen in Chapters 1 & 2 alone.
2 - Item descriptions in BG were amazing. Absolutely. P:K does have item descriptions, though, if you right click INFO and read, they usually have a sentence or two of lore. But I don't feel the loot is randomly generated in P:K at all, especially on my 2nd run where I see everything is mostly hand-placed.
3 - Less scrolls and spells, yes. Magic isn't quite the same as in BG, no real mage duels so far in my experience. But in terms of every spell being useful, P:K is amazing. Not nearly a useless spell that I've found yet, everything has some support purpose and can be used to effectiveness.
4 - Agreed, I just wish PF:K let you have banter, romance and dialogue triggers while resting on the main overworld map.
5 - Highly disagree. Kingdom management is pretty awesome to me, with all the choices you make, alignment, moral and otherwise. People visiting you, strange events happening, having to build and keep things under control; I love it. It could be better explained, though.
6 - I dunno, I like all the characters I've met in P:K so far. The companions are great and I liked Tartuk, Oleg, Kesten Garess, etc.. Not terrible by any means.
7 - Hey, I like Amiri! She's supposed to be a little, err...slow in the head.
Elminster is cool, though. I like the P:K setting and it's close to FR to me, but let's keep in mind that FR is drilled into our heads from many games and even novels. P:K has one game under its belt right now, so it'd be fairer to compare how the sequel adds to the setting than right now with just one game.
It's close for me but I adore BG1 and like BG2 less but it's still cool. P:K is great and I look forward to expansions and sequels as well. Since P:K released I'm more likely to replay it than I am BG right now, due to the sheer amount of customization in 3.5e you can have.
