Got to the beginning of Chapter 6 (?) HATEOT, lost all my companions and now big puzzle dungeon.
Going to take a break and finish up later when I feel motivated to play again.
Game is great up until Pitax, then the decline is obvious.
(Haven't finished but will critique what I did play)
-Wilderness areas are a mixed bag, I think Baldur's Gate 1 had bad exploration due to no stat checks or interesting exploration design (endless forest and hills, slow.) but Kingmaker helps correct this issue by making them small, but too many of them lack interesting content and a lot have poor encounters, would have preferred bigger areas with more stat checks and nicely balanced content. (Really hated the areas with one weak monster against a full buffed party, which made no sense.) In Chapters 1-3 you have quite a bit of large well designed areas though after this you start seeing a lot less. (Lonely Barrows was a great side dungeon, well designed for an offhand optional area.)
-Boss fights so far have been meh, Stag Lord's fight is great (if you do it without the help of the other bandits or at level 5.). Troll fight was p. good. Vordaki was garbage (have no idea why devs never buffed him, a bandit mage is more threatening than a Lich Cyclops.). Armag was a bit too weak, and Irovetti was quite difficult, especially with the snake woman. Maybe the bosses get better (we'll know eventually.), but I think certain bosses definitely could use some more buffs.
-Kingdom Management system is impactful and I didn't see it's final impact yet, (won't because auto'd due to auto-failed main quest.), but I generally didn't find it that fun or engaging, would rather play a game designed around Kingdom building than a more tacked on system. (I think WOTR's crusader system has a lot more potential, I guess I will wait and see.)
-Encounter design is good for the way it was intended aka endurance test. Somewhat repetitive but I had a lot of fun with encounters more in the early game (This is D&D so I expect the best encounters to be at lower levels, obviously.)
-The progression of the game sucks but is to be expected, Chapter 1 is my favorite chapter and I think its the best content wise and has a ton of C&C for a first chapter (lots of great stuff like CH2 from Baldur's Gate 2). Game generally goes downhill after Vordaki's, I haven't played CH6/7 but I don't expect to be blown away quality wise.). Barbarians onward I think the decline starts to show. (Especially Pitax.)
-One of the best things about the game is definitely the reactivity (alighntment, not race or reputation.) was fantastic. (Played a neutral good druid.) One of it's greatest improvements on the infinity engine games. I loved when Irovetti was talking shit about me and he mentioned his asshole servant that I choose to kill in the Troll Ambush (Little things like that in the game are great.)
-Char building is of course fantastic and one of the de facto achievements of the game.
-There is so much more to be talked about and critiqued, but the list would be too long. My general impression was the game was a bit too ambitious and lacked proper funding and time for a project so ambitious, they added so many features with a lot potential but I think it was too much, though it was nice to see an attempt rather than ignore the issues of the IE games.
My only RPG's that I've played are BG1, BG2 (up till chapter 3), Wizardry 1, Half of IWD and some parts of a couple others so I don't have much if all any experience with rpgs.
