I bought the game a while back, maybe last year during the holiday season, but finally got going on a real attempt to play a couple weeks ago.
I only made it an hour or two the first time and got paralyzed trying to figure out what type of character to play. Now that there are quite a few guides to read through, I felt a lot more comfortable just picking one and going with it. For this first time through, I am just following some guides I found on GOG forums.
I just hit level 6 yesterday and just picked up Ekun. I will probably drop Regongar for him and play around with that for a while. Harrim will probably go soon, but I still need to wrap up his class quest.
I was pretty overwhelmed with the start of the baron duties and the kingdom management, but I have tried to follow the advice here and elsewhere and have it on Easy and have been saving 150-200 points for when I need them. I check back every so often and have just completed 10 tasks. Will see if I can keep that going okay.
I have only been using RTWP so far, but am very glad the turn based is there. I love turn based, but haven’t learned the intricacies of it yet in Pathfinder. There is all this talk of 5 foot steps and touch spells and not sure I follow any of that yet, I just set my guys up and let em go to town with a few pauses to position once in a while and set some spells when I want, but it has worked pretty well so far. I definitely need to give turn based an honest try sometime soon.
Overall, though, loving the good ole fashioned D&D with familiar named creatures and the availability of my Monster Manual next to me that I can read up on my foe before I tackle them! I am really impressed with the graphics and music so far. I still have PoE and PoE2, which I just purchased, to go through next (I may just skip PoE, heh).
I do have a question about a companion that I don’t want to mess up. I will add it as a spoiler just in case: I have dropped Amiri as I wanted to try some of the other new characters out and I was only able to find her first monster, Tuskgutter, for her companion quest. I have no idea where or when I may run into another, so I just dropped her for now. Should I grab her and knock those out, cheating to find out where the other monsters are, so I don’t lose her or mess up some ending? I am still in the early-mid chapter 2 and just found out the location from the wizard where the three troll hideouts may be.