Don't feel ashamed to mod the F out of those games, the base is really good but there are a lot of shitty elements to them that mods will smooth over.

Not sure if they improved it but the kingdom building in the first one was just loading screen after loading screen after loading screen. I've not finished Pathfinder and is the reason I did not even try the second one. I've also noticed that they have all the classical woke crap, no white human male companions, fighter characters are generally women and some odd cringe dialogue here and there.