This is a rather difficult review to write, because the game is a bit of a mix bag, so it is not something I can give a clear ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Nonetheless, to show my gratitude and support to the game developers, I have decided to give it a thumbs-up, but you can make your own judgement whether or not the game is worth buying and spending time on. If you are sitting on the fence, then please do feel free to read the following before making a decision.

Before proceeding, however, do note that the combat in this game is classified as real-time with pause, not turn-based. With that said, let’s move on to the list of “good, bad and the ugly”.

• Well-established and polished ruleset for Dungeons & Dragons (DnD).
  
• Loyal to the lore like some other famous (classic) RPGs do.
  
• Hints, tutorials and detailed information provided in the tooltips and event/combat logs are quite easy to understand even for new players of the DnD genre.
  
• A very large open/sandbox world to explore.
  
• The amount of story and dungeon gameplay is sufficient and well-mixed.
  
• Choices matter – they are noticeably impactful sometimes.
  
• Freedom of character customisation (single/multi-class, skills, abilities, weapons, etc.). Note that this can be a bad thing for newer players to Pathfinder RPG and do require some research.

• Bugs. But on the positive note, the developers are still working tirelessly to patch the game.
  
• Requires a sizeable amount of disk space for (manual) save files unless you clean up the older saves after each session.
  
• Requires a decent CPU, RAM and solid-state drive (SSD) to run the game smoothly for a long duration.
  
• (Without spoilers) Certain fights are heavily scripted where we are expected to lose.
  
• Requires a certain amount of advanced game knowledge and metagaming to be able to do well without (having to worry about) the need of save-scum.

• Almost no handholding at all. Now this can be good because it means a lot of freedom for players to do whatever we want, but it can also be quite bad if we do certain things without knowing that it will be too costly later and ruin our experience (usually happens in blind playthroughs which in this case may force a restart). Sometimes we are also expected to make a guess on where we should go next in order to proceed with the main questline because there are absolutely no indications available anywhere, even during conversations (while quest markers on the world map mostly depend on those conversations). I spent a lot of time in my first playthrough trying to figure out what should I do or where should I go in order to avoid ending the game prematurely.
  
• Certain companions/advisors simply vanish into thin air if we advance the main questline without them (or knowing where they are). I understand it is a decision for players to make and to accept the consequence of it, but not having fail-saves for such important characters can be game-breaking. I lost two chances of recruiting a treasurer in Act 2 because I did not know they would simply vanish, and that really crippled my early-game development.
  
• Lack of level-scaling. I do not oppose the idea of not having level-scaling in sandbox games; BUT when each level is a noticeable jump as it is in this game, it can mean the difference between life or death in each encounter. A tip to new players: certain fights are very difficult to win against; if you doubt you can win the fight, then run away from it and do not look back, or get to a choke point to equalise the playing field.
  
• Kingdom development is currently only reflected on the management screen and in certain cutscenes and conversations in the throne room, represented by a bunch of statistics and events. While this is sufficient, being able to visualise its growth and road to prosperity in the form of expanding village/town/city area maps would be a nice addition.
  
• The dice rolls (d20) can be infuriating on a bad day. In that case, take a (short) break from the game and do something else.

I hope I did not miss anything. If (I realise) I do, then I will give my review an update. If you do decide to buy the game after reading this review, I hope you are going to enjoy it; otherwise, I am glad to have saved your money. If you are still on the fence, watching gameplay footages on YouTube might be a good idea, like this playlist for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB_wtcFYkRs&list=PLN39y5i_H0Flj38pHs-CBDpm9XA7x5Cy6
In any case, thank you for reading my full review and I hope it is helpful to you.

cll

Edited: Formatting.