Time's valuable, so I'll start and end with the TLDR:

PROS:

1) Fun Gameplay overall: 8/10
2) Decent Replayability (choosing between lawful and sociopathic): 6.5/10
3) Roleplay (morally dubious vs good): 7/10
4) Variety of missions: 7/10
5) Depth of mechanics (trade, trade routes, party paths, etc): 8/10
6) Party management (camp and companion specialization): 8/10
7) Enjoyability overall: 8/10
8: Final Rating: 7/10

CONS:

1) Lack of enemy variety, especially animals (game relies too heavily on reskinned enemies with tacked-on additional skills)
2) Music (ie - battle music is always one track - and the track loop is only 60 seconds while battle lasts anywhere from 5-12 minutes, guaranteeing you hear the same fairly uninspired song 5-10 times every fight)
3) Battles (No option to 2x-5x speed of actions during turns, which you'll wish you had once battles become tedious as they inevitably do, etc)

BOTTOM LINE:

Should you buy?

If you enjoy party management RPGs and like the idea of managing a mercenary band focused primarily on survival through food and gold regardless of ethics and morals, then YES. BUY. It really is quite fun.

Also, buy if you're bored with all the games you normally play and you're looking for something new. I haven't played any games quite like this, and I'm what you'd call a Wide player (tall v wide - gamers get it!)

For all its flaws, it's a fairly unique game and scratches a niche itch. If you play a lot of games and value variety, this one tops the list of games that do what it does.

If there was one thing I wish I could change, though, it would be the option to automate battles when fighting opponents 1 or more levels below the average of my party. I can breeze through all average-to-easy battles taking minimal-to-no health damage -- but it still takes me like 10 minutes because of how slow combat animations are. Add a function to "send troops to battle" a la Mount & Blade and I would give this game a final rating of 8/10. Doesn't matter if that option is available before the fight, automating the entire thing, or in-battle to drastically speed up individual rounds; both would be fine. Just get rid of the tedium, please.

I like the cut scenes with all the epic deaths. Tactics are fun with the small squads. Big battles can take a long time.

this game is an excellent balance of resource management and tactical combat. yes I know you've read that sentence before. but if you like that sort of thing, this is one of the best I've played. it has good variety of different competing interests to keep you constantly shifting between tasks. as long as you enjoy the combat ( I do. the turn-order management is the most interesting tactical challenge) you are going to have a good variety of things to do in between. the overworld play is even entertaining to me, which is unusual for this kind of game.