Gave Pathfinder Kingmaker another go, making it much further than I previously did. Still not really my cup of tea.
More often than not, I find the kingdom management aspects getting in the way of the adventuring aspects and the adventuring wasn't all that great. Half my issue was with the 3/5E/Pathfinder system itself; I'm reasonably familiar with it, but I've never liked the over-reliance on feats for basic tasks, or how far in advance builds need to be planned. The AI is also astonishingly bad for a 'tactics' game. The hardest combat encounters in the game were often defeated with basic tactics like kiting foes around, or simply sending the most immune character in first while five others attacked from the opposite direction.
All the Elder Scrolls games have level scaling--though I don't think the pre-Oblivion entries scaled animals--and all were very easy if one learned to game the system. Fortunately, most of them, including Oblivion, had mods to tune or eliminate such scaling.
I think what I found most frustrating with the post-Daggerfall TES games was the ultra condensed scale of all of them. The extra focus on detail was nice, but sometimes quantity has a quality all it's own. It was awkward to be able walk across the entire game map in fifteen minutes, or show up at the capital of a continental empire then realize it's population is about 200 (with four voice actors shared between the bunch) and it's the size of a fortalice.
More often than not, I find the kingdom management aspects getting in the way of the adventuring aspects and the adventuring wasn't all that great. Half my issue was with the 3/5E/Pathfinder system itself; I'm reasonably familiar with it, but I've never liked the over-reliance on feats for basic tasks, or how far in advance builds need to be planned. The AI is also astonishingly bad for a 'tactics' game. The hardest combat encounters in the game were often defeated with basic tactics like kiting foes around, or simply sending the most immune character in first while five others attacked from the opposite direction.
All the Elder Scrolls games have level scaling--though I don't think the pre-Oblivion entries scaled animals--and all were very easy if one learned to game the system. Fortunately, most of them, including Oblivion, had mods to tune or eliminate such scaling.
I think what I found most frustrating with the post-Daggerfall TES games was the ultra condensed scale of all of them. The extra focus on detail was nice, but sometimes quantity has a quality all it's own. It was awkward to be able walk across the entire game map in fifteen minutes, or show up at the capital of a continental empire then realize it's population is about 200 (with four voice actors shared between the bunch) and it's the size of a fortalice.
