Maddie's CRPG Corner

[This review was originally posted to Backloggd on January 14, 2025. It has been revised and expanded for this blog.]    Pathfinder: Kingmaker is one of those games that feels nearly impossible to fully form a succinct thought on. Over the course of a 160 hour play through, I oscillated between "this is one of the best CRPGs I've ever played" and "this game is an absolute mess" nearly every five-ten hour interval. By the time of the House at the Edge of Time, I began to feel as though my life would forever be an eternal limbo comprised entirely of this dungeon. Then, I truly enjoyed and was satisfied by the finale. This dichotomy repeats constantly. So how the hell can I make a decision between the two extremes of the game? Is it a monumentally ambitious CRPG that I love, or is it a misguided mess that should have never made the mistakes it did?   The obvious answer here is that it's both. This game operates on a scale I have seldom seen in any other game....

Updates on this blog might be inconsistent or slow. This page will give a decent overview of what has been reviewed already, what hasn't but I've already played, and a random assortment of games I have not yet played. By no means is that last one a complete list. 

It is December 2025, and Larian Studios is currently top dog in the CRPG genre. Baldur's Gate 3 , released only a scant couple years ago, has become the most successful game the genre has ever seen. All eyes in the space are on Larian and their newly announced return to their Divinity series, and their home setting of Rivellon. It's no surprise then that the (very recent) quotes Larian CEO Swen Vincke has given regarding Generative AI usage in game dev workflow have drawn such ire despite the fact that likely every major AAA studio is doing much the same if not more. Quite simply, there's just more eyes on Larian than nearly any kind of studio of it's kind. But that controversy isn't the topic here (although it is still an important topic). The topic here is that aforementioned return to Divinity . Divinity has always been a bit of a blindspot for me in the CRPG space, a fact I'm a little ashamed of considering my love for the genre. I adored BG3 , but only ev...