-There's some bugs/glitches I've hit that really make me hope they get fixed soon. Right now it seems there are some broken scripts if you do a quest in the wrong order which totally fucks things up when it comes to completing them. There are other ones I've encountered like crashes and such, but nothing that completely kills my progress. Though I'm not in Chapter 4 so that likely could change.
-The writing is... surprising. When I first began I thought this would be way too "ideal high fantasy" where you're pretty much shoehorned into being a good guy that gets a few chances to be a cunt along the way. If this game does feel rather overly safe and relaxed or reads like a Paladin's power fantasy then I highly recommend sticking through it because you eventually start to get much more interesting narratives to frame your character with. While by no means perfect (and really, with the myriad of options one could think of in any given dialogue it's an impossible task to satisfy) the alignment choices when speaking to an NPC are quite cool. What begins as a rather by-the-books story becomes much more muddled as you go on once you acquire your barony especially. Even some of the "good" choices aren't necessarily good. It feels like they want you to kind of react in a way that paints you as having more grey to your actions. I've seen some Lawful Good actions that come off as Chaotic Evil such as wanting to purge all perceived villains like a kobold camp while at the same time, a Neutral Evil option may seem much more sensible. I like this because it lets you tackle, say, a Paladin as less of an infallible pillar of glory and heroism and take on more villainous tones at times. What seems good to one side, can be evil to another. It's all about perspective.
-One thing I think this game does right is how your character feels like your own. Simply put, not since the Renaissance RPG days have I felt this prolonged surge of fun and excitement while playing a CRPG. I've tried a lot of them in the past seven years and completed a fair share, but they all failed to have me care much about what I was doing. Maybe it's my love for AD&D 2e/3.5 that I grew up with, but that character creator made me stuck on the screen for at least two hours. This ties in with the dialogue above, but it's great that I actually want to see my character succeed and how he will play out both in the narrative and gameplay. Better yet, this also means replayability is high for this game since there are some classes and combinations I'm genuinely interested in trying for the first time.
-Another thing I quite enjoy and I will make it no secret: I love low level D&D. To me, low level D&D is when you feel every victory is earned and you have to be a bit more clever in your application. Better yet, I love when a more grounded campaign is present to go along with it. I couldn't get drawn into games like POE or D:OS2 because the story was simply this "chosen one, save the world" shit. In fact, I don't understand why so many people are all about it. Like in D:OS2 for instance, you can actually kill a big ice dragon in the very beginning island about three hours or so in on your first playthrough. What the Hell is that? I enjoy that Kingmaker frames your first major threat as a highly organized gang of bandits and cutthroats lead by some barbaric and ruthless motherfucker. You don't need to start a level 1 off telling them they're special and unique and will one day suplex C'thulu into the Statue of Liberty. All you need for a good hook is often something simple and to the point. Outside of some truly fucked random enemy encounters (likely due to me wandering into areas I shouldn't be near) I appreciate the gradual ascension through the monster manual. Every now and then you may face off against something truly daunting and challenging and will wreck your shit and that's good.
-So far Kingmaker is my favourite RPG of the year (tied with Kingdom Come Deliverance, actually) and it is easily my favourite of the "Kickstarter era" CRPGs. I could gush over it, but simply put this game "gets it." Maybe a lot of this has to do with blindly buying it since I actually didn't even bother keeping up with development and I thought at best this would be a merely decent but easily forgotten entry and at worse a Sword Coast Legends follow up. So being caught by surprise and thinking about this game during my work hours or down time when commuting around the city is something that very rarely happens to me these days.
The best compliment I can give this game is it feels like it's from another era. It's familiar but different. This is the sort of game that would have felt at home being released in a big square box and obscenely thick manual with probably four CDs to constantly switch between. What really keeps me in anticipation is the thought of where they could go from here. I'd love to see an IWD-style campaign emerge from this down the line.
This is the sort of RPG that makes you forget about microtransactions, loot boxes, dialogue wheels, tacked on features that serve as bloat than additions, and all other dogshit of modern game design. It's pretty good so far.