Now that I put Kingmaker on Normal difficulty, I'm enjoying it a lot. In many ways, it is destroying BG3. I don't like everything, but I find that most mechanics make sense and the game is balanced well for a normal playthrough.
Things I find very annoying with it:
1. Webs and other effects that have durations beyond combat. Holy fudge-mufkins! I set off a dang web trap in Old Sycamore and was stuck in it for like ten friggin minutes. Then I finally got free and accidentally triggered another one. Had to go afk while waiting for the trap to go away.
2. As mentioned elsewhere, some things don't make sense in terms of RPGing. If I invade the Stag Lord's home and leave, the base should be alerted and the guards replaced or something. I shouldn't be able to kill a bunch of people, leave for 3 days, and return with no one being the wiser. This is a problem I have with BG3 too. If a building is burning, if I leave and rest, that building should be burned down. That's ROLEPLAYING. Decisions have consequences. If you decide to NOT help people in a burning building as soon as you come upon it, then that's the choice you've made. When you return, it should be too late.
3. Random Encounters. I don't think Pathfinder does them well. They are annoying and frustrating. That said, I do think that they give the sense, at least, that the world isn't static. It's more alive than BG3. I think BG3 could benefit from random encounters done right, as mentioned in previous posts more thoroughly.
4. The game is balanced on Normal, which is good, but Normal says, "Enemies damage to players is reduced by 20%" and so forth. Why? Why not balance the game around enemies doing full damage and so forth and then making Easy 20% reduction and Challenging 20% more damage, or whatever? I REALLY want BG3 to balance the game around 5e rules and stats and so forth and make that Normal. Make the current rules and nerfed monsters Easy. Don't make the current rules and stats Normal and then give us Core rules as Hard or Super Hard. I like playing by D&D rules, but not if the game is going to be super hard if I do so. That's one of my pet peeves about previous D&D titles. It CAN be done right and fun if you implement the actual rules and build encounters right.
Anyway, I am starting to lose a lot of love for BG3 as I am playing other games that are proving they can implement a better D&D experience - like Pathfinder. It may be based on a more complicated rule system but at least I feel like I am playing D&D and going on a real adventure with characters who are camping in real places, carrying weapons, backpacks on their backs, capes, simple and efficient magic items that don't make you jump through hoops, rest mechanics that make sense, day/night and weather, animals and life in every map location, simple item management, etc.
When it comes to random encounters, Kingsmaker is not half as bad as WotR. They were still extremely bad, like a manticor group on a low lvl team where you could barely kill one. And of course, the game doesn't have an escape option.
I don't know if you played WotR on the core (the name indicates that this is the level you should play at) or higher, but it was literally a circus there. Beginning with Act 3, virtually every random encounter is fatal. The 4x ash giant group is the easiest fight of them all. The worst thing is that when you fail the stealth check, you automatically start surrounded by enemies, which ends in the death of half of the team in first few rounds. The game shows all the disadvantages of random encounters raised to the N power
