Pathfinder: Kingmaker
I've finished the first chapter so far about 15 or so hours into the game(I had about 55 days left on my initial 90 day timer) and I have to admit it's pretty good despite being a bit slow. The first chapter is basically bumming around the wilderness exploring and killing things while finding loot with a few quests to guide you but it is kind of nice to just find things and get a feel for it(after the fucking endurance trial that is the character creator). After taking down the stag lord(which means thinning out his bandits first), there's a bit where you get given your baron title and control over some of the stolen lands with a feast and a little ceremony and it feels approps. More importantly, you find out that there's politics at play here.
Without going into a ton of background, the lady who sponsored you to go into the stolen lands is locked in a power struggle within her nation with another noble house and the idea is that by sending adventurers into the stolen lands to clear them out and then grant them baronies, she can then use those new baronies as allies to assist her in her political goals. There was an ulterior motive there and she flat out says "You've just gone from a pawn in the game to a player". It gives the events a more Game of Thrones vibe to it, especially having a barony to rule. I get the sense the baronies are essentially vassel states but OTOH it sounds like I can choose not to aid her so maybe that's not the case.
I haven't been able to do much with the barony so far, partially because I don't have a full set of advisors(there's no treasurer candidate) and the options I have take a bit of time to complete and I know time is important, so I'm trying to not over commit my people. For example, one project takes 45 days, during which that advisor can't do anything else so I don't want to commit him to that just now.
But yeah, it's interesting. Despite playing for 15 hours it doesn't feel like it's grindy or dragging. It feels like it's taking that long because it's meant to take time to explore and rest and move between parts of the map. Kinda like how RDR2 is a slow burn and it's meant to be that way, this game has the same vibe to it in that regard.
Also, I did a little reading up on the Pathfinder world(the tooltips are nice to give you a paragraph of background info on certain proper nouns though) and apparently, among other things:
1.) There's a nation built around a crashed alien spacecraft and they've been reverse engineering the tech to build ray guys and shit, so there's apparently an entire faction in this D&D type fantasy world with fucking laser guns they reverse engineered XCOM style.
2.) There's a huge fucking portal to hell called the WorldWound that every so often a Crusade gets launched to keep the damn thing from getting any bigger. From what I understand, in "Wrath of the Rightous", you somehow end up leading the 5th and final crusade to seal the portal entirely.
3.) Cthulhu and his cosmic horror buddies from Lovecraft are apparently canon in the Pathfinder universe, which is just fucking lovely.