Is it actually good, or are people just kissing its feet to spite BG3's defenders?
That's a weird conclusion to come to.
Kingmaker's story and pacing was... Unique, for lack of a better descriptor. But there's a reason why there's a major consensus among beta testers that the WotR companions are much better written then their Kingmaker counterparts, with a couple exceptions on both sides. The actual story could be hit or miss based on how much people care for the source material, but the companions are great enough that they absolutely elevate the experience for me. I didn't really have that feeling with Kingmaker.
Real spite would be bringing up D:OS2's writing and wondering why people would expect much better from BG3, but it's a useless exercise for the purpose of this thread. Both WotR and BG3 are big improvements over their predecessors in that department anyway. Granted, these days I have similar feelings about things like kingdom management and crusade management as I do with the origin system. It's not much of a secret that the crusade management in WotR has been kind of an afterthought, it was just merely functional until beta phase 2 started adding some depth to it. Though I still think the origin system is the worse waste of resources by far.
I wouldn't be surprised if the next Pathfinder game doesn't have some sort of side management system, because I get the impression that the devs may have realized that they might have bit off more than they can chew with the crusade system. If it's based on Iron Gods as most are theorizing now, I don't think they can fit any kind of management system in that campaign without coming up with a concept that straight up didn't exist in the actual modules.
