Since you (the devs) asked me to leave feedback here, I'll happily do so, and I'll update this thread with more feedback as I play the game. The Steam forums are more active, but whatever. Feels more honest to leave this thread here.

Background: I used to run and play 3.5e D&D, and I've played earlier versions as well. I have no real experience with PnP Pathfinder. I've played cRPG implementations of D&D rules going back to some of the old gold box games like Curse of the Azure Bonds. Ironically, I was never a huge fan of the Baldur's Gate series or Icewind Dale, but I did enjoy Planescape: Torment and some parts of NWN (the PC game, not the old online service). Heck I even played Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager and Dark Sun Online.

But enough about that.

First Impressions

You're cloning BG2's art and play style, which is good if you like BG2 and bad if you prefer the way NWN (NOT NWN2) worked. Personally I felt that NWN's art style was weak (until Hordes of the Underdark), but the camera setup was great. I liked being able to switch camera angle, pan n' zoom, the whole nine yards. Can't say I am a huge fan of NWN not having a world map.

I'm cool with the realtime combat, mostly.

I set Kingdom Management to Auto straight out of the gate. That aspect of the game doesn't interest me much. PoE's keep management was already kind of a headache. I'm on normal difficulty, if it matters. I'm running a Str-based Cleric (Crusader) of Gorum with the Strength domain. I wanted to go Cha-based, but I see there's no implementation of 3.5e's Divine Shield or Divine Might, so . . . nahhh. You do have Righteous Might which will be kinda fun with a reach weapon, if I ever bother to start using one.

The Strength domain powers seem kind of . . . disappointing, and I keep forgetting to use Strength Surge. It's pretty underwhelming for a Cleric that is a front-line DPS. Are you going to give up a full round of attacks to use that buff on someone like Amiri? I dunno. The Community and Nobility domain powers looked better, but I really wanted either War or Strength domains so I could get some of my favorite spells in domain slots (notably: Righteous Might and/or Divine Power). Having the Pathfinder version of Tenser's Transformation as a domain spell may also be amusing. We'll see. You apparently have no Greater Magic Weapon which is really disappointing. But you do have Magic Vestment?

Tutorial

Pretty standard stuff. My only problem with the tutorial is that I couldn't pledge my support to Tartuccio. I'm being thrust into a leadership position right out of the gate, so I tried being defiant by choosing every pro-Tartuccio dialogue option available. Sadly it was not meant to be. I don't want to be the baron. I want him to deal with that crap so I can bust heads.

I robbed the guard's treasury (and passed it off as "guarding the money", lol) and tried to rescue some dying guards, and wound up with Amiri, Valerie, and Linzi following me. I'm kind of glad since I would have had two more divine casters in my party otherwise. As much as I love Clerics, I don't love them THAT much. That being said, I came out with three front-liners and a Bard, which is still not great class composition. At least we wreck in melee.

Chapter One

First problem I had was figuring out how the world map interface worked. I kept trying to go back into the city to sell my looted crap (I looted everything), but I couldn't do so. Instead I had to trek to Oleg's, and it took me awhile to figure out that I had to click on the little arrow next to the city to move. Clicking on the map itself didn't do anything. Travel was excruciatingly slow due to party encumbrance.

Oleg's was pretty standard. Nothing here jumped out as bad, and setting traps for them was fun. I think convincing the alchemist to help us in the fight was a bad idea, since he kept hitting us with potions. Jerk. Had to save/reload on the fight once because of that. Only other problem I had was that supposedly Anoriel Eight-Eyes lets you recruit mercs (for as little as 1 gold?), but I never found the option until later in the chapter when mercs were 8k gold each and I already had a full party. Seriously, the dialogue option just wasn't there. Is that normal?

The spider cave was easy but stupid. Giant spiders? Fine. And I got the berries without seeing one swarm. The swarms still have the same basic problems that people have complained about from the beginning: thrown splash weapons only do 1 damage to them, and AoE spells (in my case, Firebelly) are pretty underwhelming. I managed to kill one swarm using 5 flasks and two Firebelly spells. That was enough. I left and came back later at Level 3 with Tristian, and we used Extended Firebelly, which was enough to get rid of the rest of the swarms. Low xp rewards and a +1 magic weapon were not really worth it, but hey, at least I killed the stupid things. Between the tutorial and Anoriel not offering me any merc options, I had no way to use Burning Hands (or similar) without playing an arcane caster from the start. I can see why you shuffled those over to a side cavern in the back so people can just avoid that encounter.

I did not like the Technic League encounter. I kept getting this over and over, and I only had four party members at the time, so it was either lose a party member semi-permanently or die. I reloaded every time on this thing until I finally had Tristian, at which point I was able to kill them in combat, track them down at their camp, and finish them off. And really the encounter wouldn't have been so bad except that a). I only had four people and b). my entire team kept repeatedly failing Will saves against the one caster. Also I couldn't pre-buff, naturally. If I were running this as a PnP game, there's no way I'm throwing Technic League at my players while there's only 4 of them and they're only level 2. Only way this encounter really works is if you let them take the party lead captive and then do a jailbreak sequence with the rest of your party on the outskirts waiting to charge in and help. THAT would have been a good encounter. I was not willing to go down to 3 party members under any circumstance.

In contrast, most of the other random encounters at this point (and throughout most of Chapter 1) were vastly underpowered. Two bandits? Some of those marsupial dog things (Thylacines)? Cmon. Some of them were okay but most of them were really weak. I think I had one good bandit encounter and that was about it. Also had a random encounter late in Chapter 1 that was three trolls and a stronger troll beating up on some bandits. My first inclination was to watch the fight, but the trolls eventually noticed me and I just reloaded on the spot. And then I exited the encounter. That was a hard "nope!". At least you let me leave. For the most part, this game doesn't let you do that, which is really obnoxious.

I was completely put-off by the fact that I had to track down Tartuccio. Like I care about what he's doing? Let him follow me. Of course I wouldn't be upset if he finished off the Stag Lord before me! Letting the game languish until you finally start tracking him was kinda lame. The fog won't clear until I follow him, specifically? Raaaailroooaaaaad.

Stag Lord encounter was okay. I get that you have people trying to sound the alarm (which would make the last fight a lot harder), but at the same time, it seemed a little cramped in there for people to NOT notice me wiping out their comrades. Suspension of disbelief and all that. Also, I know you wanted the Stag Lord to have height advantage for his bow, but putting him on the same platform every time is kinda dumb. I just reloaded when I saw him do that and positioned Amiri and Regongar up there to intercept him. They touched off the encounter, and sure enough, he teleported up there and was dead in maybe three rounds. You would think he would choose not to go there if he had two thugs waiting to beat the hell out of him. They also caused all the bandits to try and charge around the bend so they could climb up on the platform to help their leader(except the one divine caster in the corner). It split the encounter, enabling me to squash the divine caster while the rest of the bandits were intercepted by that Paladin dude, an owlbear, and (eventually) Valerie. Overall I think it would have been more-interesting if the bandits went for the alarm earlier, and if the Stag Lord picked his starting position based on whether or not you had any people waiting for him on the platform.

I'm in Chapter 2 now, and I'll continue with some of that in my next post.

Am getting towards the end of the game as level 17, but would like to offer some generic observations.

Items: The itemisation could definitely be improved. There is a dearth of choice among many weapon categories, and for others we only get the weapon at all, or a decent variant, towards the very end of the game. Going through about 15 levels without a fauchard was painful. At least the weapon focus is less of a deal here compared with BG, but still.

Map locations: Early on I was amazed about the huge map and all the locations we could travel to. But fairly soon it became apparent that a great deal of these locations are reused, and will only have 1-2 monster encounters. For the most part they're also very small. I really hope this will be much improved upon in Wrath. It was so much fun to walk around in the pretty big ourdoors areas in Baldur's Gate (the first). Sure, lots of it was "empty", but it was still memorable. Think areas were larger in POE and Deadfire too, so hopefully Wrath takes inspiration from all these games.

DLC: Seems like the DLCs aren't all that well included in the main game, and that they're meant to be played as a standalone module. I've not seen any mention about Varnhold's Lot yet in-game. Did come across the Tenebrous Depths, and there are some reminders now and then about it, but that too seems intended to be played separately. I much prefer expansions/DLC that is included in the proper game, like for Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity (didn't get that far in POE2, admittedly) and Witcher. Plus many others of course. No word yet of DLC for Wrath, but I'd be surprised if they don't do it. And when they do, I hope they will be added areas, quests, etc. in the proper game world, with companions we already have. Improves immersion and prolongs the game's life.

There is a lot I like about the game, however. Threads like these tend to focus on the negatives because people get upset by x, y, z. I like the characters and that they are "realistic" and not min-maxed to the n-th degree (Valerie is great in my mind, we'd be raped without her most of the time). I like the character interaction and that resting is kinda soft-capped. The kingdom management has been interesting, although eventually it does become a bit easy, and at times frustrating because there can be "problem" events that only one advisor can take care of, and perhaps that person is doing a 120 day curse project or something like that. Upgrading the individual villages can be fun too, but I do find it frustrating that it's so tricky to place buildings and get the "next to" bonuses. Especially when new buildings get unlocked as you play, and you've already placed buildings based on the info available to you at the time.

Character creation and level up can be very daunting. I'd really like some more helping hands here. The thumbs up and down help, but feats especially is still tricky. So much to choose from, and it can be hard to get an overview of what leads to other feats (pre-reqs) and which ones are useful for my class or not (when checking out everything via the arrow down button).

I was really pleased to learn there will be information in Wrath about suppressed effects. That means it will be much easier to know what items or spells don't do anything, because they happen to boost the same type of ability etc. With so many items, spells, abilities and forth, and so many different categories of buffs (competency ++) it's pretty much impossible to have a solid grasp on this unless you know the Pathfinder ruleset in and out (which probably 99% of players do not).

Also, for the love of Gorum: PLEASE try to reduce loading times. It's fine early on, but by mid-game it's fairly annoying, and now in end game, waiting for 10-15+ seconds each time I do anything is not all that much fun.

Hey, if they want feedback, they're gonna get it. Obviously the game's good enough because I haven't requested a refund, and I'm probably going to play through it twice. The negative is what they can fix. They've got enough posts blowing smoke up the hindquarters.

Still playing through Chapter 2, though the only thing that really jumps out is. . . well two things actually.

First, the um Verdant Chambers? It feels like this encounter was set up badly. So I start out soloing the Hydra. Once I get that it's an ambush, I reload (ha ha) and buff myself with the usual set I have memorized, plus some extra stuff since I can't pass off defensive buffing duty to Tristian: Shield of Faith, Bull's Strength, Enlarge Person and an Extended Divine Favor. Probably should have used Effortless Armor but oh well. Anyway, long story short I was able to overcome both the hydra and manticore, but I couldn't beat the owlbear. BUT! But. Each time I killed the hydra, the manticore and owlbear would just stand there looking at me like idiots. Lights are on, but nobody's home? I would have to rush them to get them to fight. It felt weird, superficial, stilted, whatever. They were clearly within aggro range. The scenario must have some weird rules in play. In the end, I felt like I was in some kind of alpha/beta version of a map where things hadn't been playtested properly yet. Somebody drops some dangerous, hostile critters right next to me that can quite clearly see the Large-sized, platemail-wearing dude with a greatclub, greatsword, AND greataxe strapped to his back (don't ask) and yet they stand there doing nothing.

Anyway the rest of the encounter was kinda goofy. Trying to get out of there alive was like throwing spaghetti against the wall. I did not lake Linzi's obvious recommendation of bringing along Invis potions (because who would be cliche enough to make this encounter a straight-up ambush without diplomacy options? Oh wait, apparently the devs) so basically getting out required killing the Hydra (I just killed the Manticore for yucks), taking off my platemail, climbing a wall (and hopefully not falling down and hurting myself too much on the Athletics check), putting the armor back on, fighting a Redcap who is really annoying, climbing down another wall, and then killing two entirely-forgettable wolves on my way out. At one point I tried rushing past the owlbear using a Haste scroll (yes, my Cleric has UMD) plus Vanish potions, only I would enter combat even while Vanished. Never mind the Vanish potions last only 1 round, making them pretty useless for stealth. Or really anything. You can drink one as a Move action and then cast exactly one spell without risking an AoO, but that's about it. Whose bright idea was it to put in Vanish potions with a caster level of 1? With caster level 5, I could have made it past the owlbear, worked my way around the traps, avoided the plant thing, and escaped without the convoluted wall-climbing sequence that never should have worked for a Cleric, but did because hey, Str Cleric. Were I an Ecclesitheurge with the same complement of items, I have no idea what I would have done to escape. Though were I to play that style character, I would totally have Trickery domain available because playing invisible healer is a lot of fun.

Moving right along, I also noticed some really funny things with the Auto kingdom management I'm sure I'll run into more. It'll ask me to do things like appoint an advisor, but obviously I can't do that. So it just keeps annoying me about it. The whole spider swarm thing totally threw me for a loop. I apparently failed two steps of that somehow. I cleared out the hill when they told me it was time to go up there, but the Auto mode wouldn't appoint an advisor for me so I failed that part? Then later they told me we got through it but a lot of people died. And some cows. Oh dear. Then it asked me to talk to the priests in town, but when I flagged them down in the town square, they had nothing to say, and nobody approached me in the throne room. Later on after some arbitrary switch they finally did approach me in the throne room, and told me the curse is coming back or . . . whatever? And some snotty noble showed up and told me that my kingdom is a run-down heap. Which is sort of true. Auto mode doesn't seem to want to build anything. At least not that I've noticed. I bought some extra build points but nobody spends them on anything (that I've noticed). I'll keep an eye on it and see how things go with this troll threat.

How was I supposed to know that? Seems like Auto isn't working if it makes you miss out on things. Shouldn't the AI get around to building those things for you?

I've already failed An Ancient Curse (first part) with two steps getting the red X:

Jhod and Tristian estimate it should gain its full power in about a month
Disgusting spiders appoint an advisor blah blah blah

I did everything the game would let me do (went to the hill within 10 days of the curse being at full power and killed Silky). Auto is supposed to take care of the rest. It didn't.

auto does what it should. As in you won't lose the game to the mismanagement of the kingdom. The rewards for managing the kingdom properly are not mandatory to beat the game. And auto kingdom doesn't mean there are no timers. They are very much there.

Gonna have to respectfully disagree with you there.

Seems like a lot of playing these games is trial and error, since the publisher doesn't tell you a lot of this stuff.

It's just modern gamers are used to handholding too much and suffer from mental breakdown every time a game pushes them to read and think.

It is a question of what you find fun to do. Everyone has their own things that they like in a game and things they hate in a game. Feeling like you are working very hard, at tasks that are not amusing, under severe time constraints, is something that a lot of people don't like in a game - this applies to both modern and to legacy (like me) gamers.

True, but there are trends as well. Sekiro had some backlash that was disguised as care for disabled players, but was directed at the difficulty of the game. On the other hand, earlier "Souls" games went much more smooth.
Granted, I do not have some representative set of data to prove my suspicion; but I am entitled to have my opinion and express it until banned.

I tend to not like time limits in games either, as I love to go around exploring and talking to people. But I never felt the time limits were an actual problem in this game. I see people saying they are harsh and it stresses them out (in many places online), which isn't what happened in my game. Plenty of time to go around and do whatever, and it's more common that I need to kill time by leveling up advisors until the next curse hits, than that I lack time to solve one curse before the next problem hits.

Admittedly problems related to the chapter's curse can mount up and seem impossible to handle well because you have fewer advisers than problems, but then that is a sign you need to actually deal with the chapter's core problem rather than faff around a lot. Once I realised this, it was easier to handle whatever the game threw at the kingdom. Generally I have enough people to take care of all problems and opportunities. However, if people struggle with that, as a result of delaying the main story problem too long, definitely prioritise problems over opportunities.

Generally I think the game is very well made -- but it's not perfect. Small niggle, and for me it's made worse by the horrendous music with a howling woman and what sounds like a retarded bloke blurting out crap when I'm in the capital main square (need to mute the sound each time now), but I wish there was a merchant in the throne room so I could sell stuff there without enduring two loading screens back and forth. Less realistic with a merchant in there of course, but it would have made my life easier.

I turned on the tutorial when I started playing, which helped a lot, although the tooltips are fairly basic. Hopefully for the next game they drastically expand the in-game encyclopedia. That should allow people to learn the basics without needing to look up all sorts of terms and mechanics online.

Honestly I just don't like management options of a colony/keep/kingdom in a cRPG. Old games like Actraiser actually did it right: you go on an adventure, rescue people heroically, and your civilization advances on its own based on how well you perform in the field. You don't have to stop beating up monsters very long to micromanage the daily lives of people that know how to take care of their own business. Terranigma (from the same publisher/developer) also follows this path.

Auto kingdom management is just that: auto. It's supposed to handle things for me, not deliberately fail at everything except the bare minimum of what's necessary not to produce game over. Strategy games ranging from 4x to RTS have been using AI to handle "kingdom management" by producing AI opponents that are capable of following basic build orders and tech trees for decades. They aren't the best (and often cheat on higher difficulty levels to make up for poor AI design), but they are minimally functional.

I'm still going to reserve my judgement about Auto until I'm done with this playthrough, though so far it has not impressed me. I got massive penalties to my kingdom when Auto mode failed to assign an advisor to the spider threat, and the game is still telling me to assign my first advisor, which seems to indicate that Auto mode won't assign advisors to anything. At this rate, my kingdom will be destroyed.
Not sure which Chapter I'm in now, but I just finished the troll quest. It was better than Verdent Chambers, by far. Granted there wasn't much to Verdant Chambers, which I guess is a problem in-and-of itself. Still plugging along. Now I'm in Tenebrous Depths (which might have been a mistake, dunno yet). So much to kill, so little time.

I keep buying more build points for my kingdom here and there, but nobody seems to be spending them on anything.

On the other hand, just giving you something that would otherwise require effort and quite a bit of gold investment would be rather cheap. Why would anyone have the incentive to manage the kingdom then? Bare minimum is exactly how it should be. You don't get any benefits of managing your kingdom, but won't fail due to bad management.

Who says I'm not supposed to invest gold? I'm buying build points, trying to prompt the AI to spend them. You clearly don't understand what I'm saying here.