[Review by lukaszek]

Foreword

Are you bored with the saturation in generic medieval fantasy settings? Did exploring a random dungeon hidden behind a cabbage stall result in your saving the world after fighting yet another dragon?

Did you ever wonder what would happen if we got rid of all that sorcery and embraced something more real? Closer to actual medieval Europe?

Look no further, as Warhorse studios has you covered with a return to 14th century Bohemia, where you once again take the reins over the peasant Henryk and go seek revenge. Can you escape class struggles and bring modern values to a war-driven world? Can Vavra be trusted with historical accuracy when parsnip looks like this:


I wouldn’t know, but I’m happy to share a story of my chad Henryk taking royal bedrooms by storm.



The Beginning

Continuing the story of KCD1, you’re sent to Trosky on a diplomatic mission. Unlike the original, you don’t start in an enclosed area where you learn the basics. Instead, your first few hours will be divided half among cutscenes, and half among gameplay consisting of walking in a line. The best comparison I can think of is the beginning of Cyberpunk 2077, except there the cinematics were short, and I still thought they dragged, while in KCD2 they’re much longer.

While walking along the line, Henryk learns the basics again, except that now his stats are all set to average. Honestly, I can’t say anything positive about the game’s beginning. Not only does it drag, it’s also very uninspiring and feels like something out of Far Cry. Then you suffer serious injuries, and all your stats are down to 5 out of 30. Like in Gothic. Why don’t skills go down to 1? No idea. 5 is the beginner level. You’ll need 8 in thievery to try picking a medium lock, but good luck with that. I hate skillflation with a passion. Your injuries somehow affect your speech and knowledge too, although at least you don’t need to learn reading from scratch.

Half the main quests will lock you into walking the line, and all of them are heavy on cutscenes. What’s annoying is that most of these are about characters standing and talking to each other. Since its not in-engine – you can’t press space to speed up the boring long sequences. This reveals another weakness: the writing. It’s not very interesting and NPCs like to overshare.

The prologue will also introduce you to playing as Godwin – the drunken priest from the first game. It will happen again a few times throughout the game. I can’t say that it adds much, and it could easily be dropped. The experience of playing as him is half-baked – many regular objects can’t be interacted with or NPCs talked to.

In fact, the whole prologue could die in its current form. I expect that some will try to refund halfway through only to find out that they’re over the refund threshold. I wonder if there were any people who found out that their rig wasn’t strong enough before it was too late?

Push through and the game finally opens up into the proper medieval sandbox that you’ll remember from its predecessor. There’s no character creation, but after a few hours of suffering we finally get to look at the character sheet and start planning.


Character progression


Stats/skills/perks are all similar in their mechanics to KCD1, although the whole system has been simplified. Attributes are the same. While new skills governing polearms were added, a bunch of returning ones were merged, the overall numbers went down. Feels like there are fewer mutually exclusive perks too.

You won’t notice it at the beginning, but the curtain will fall down fairly quickly. There’s just no planning. All your stats go up quickly, and by the time you leave the Trosky region to finally witness Kuttenberg you will be 20/30 across the board. Reaching the maximum of 30/30 is not a big deal, and in fact you can quickly get to an effective 30. In every skill. In general increases up to 15 feel significant (especially combat ones) and much less so further down the road. If you switch to axes after leveling sword to 15 you will find yourself dead due to not being able to land hits/parry. Meanwhile the difference between 15 and 30 is mainly about dmg output.

Not only can you go the jack-of-all-trades route – you should. Perks in one skill often give bonuses to another. For example, the horsemanship perk Saddler gives bonuses to pickpocketing and repairing shoes. The only exception are weapon skills, so you can just pick your favorite. Spoiler alert – like in every self-respecting RPG, swords are the only choice. Although after reading this paragraph you might wonder if it can be called an RPG at all. Listing systems and cool interactions is what I like doing most, yet I can’t be bothered to even list them all here. I wonder why the devs bothered to implement a potion resetting your perk choices. If you can’t sleep because your horse spends 5% less stamina on roads compared to off-roading – there is hope for you in the final act where said drink can be acquired.

You will acquire every perk by the end of the game. To make matters worse, most of them are not very inspired. Pick whatever gives you flat bonuses. Very few give you actual new actions. The ones that do are mostly in the Houndmaster tree.

Compared to the first game, some skills were expanded - Maintenance became Craftsmanship. Henryk has learnt how to forge swords! Which brings us to another pet peeve of mine: how come your average adventurer becomes the best craftsman in the land? Through magical genetics, you have inherited your foster father’s genes and can forge the best weapons in the entire kingdom. Yes, this barely adult chap is the only entity capable of forging Tier 4 weapons, which bring quite a substantial boost, as can be seen in the screenshot below. Here is the best one-handed sword you can obtain in the game. And you can get it early in the first act, at a point when even Tier 3 items are extremely rare.

I long for moments when item crafting becomes an important milestone on your journey. In KOTOR 2 it takes a while to assemble your first lightsaber. Finding the pieces and assembling it is part of worldbuilding. In BG2 one needs to explore the whole world to collect all the pieces of Crom Faeyr before bringing them to Cromwell.
Those returning from KCD1 might remember that Vavra loves minigames. Weapon forging is a new addition and I can't say that it's rewarding. It can be awkward as horseshoes are harder to forge than swords (you are hammering 2D vs linear space).

The feeling that I’m not exactly playing an improved game stuck with me from early on, as one feature is conspicuously absent: the traits known from KCD1’s hardcore mode. In KCD1 they were added after that game’s launch, but why are they missing in the sequel? No idea, and bear in mind that the developers weren’t coding anything from scratch. In fact, Warhorse Studios with big fanfare did a post-launch-closed-beta for playtesting that feature alone. If you want to experience sleepwalking and waking up in the middle of the woods without a map marker – you have to wait a few more months.


Sandbox

When the game finally opens up, you start just like in KCD1: weak and broke. As a bonus, you’re also smelly and in general no fine lady would like to interact with you. To make matters worse, those who seek honest work will find that it’s no longer that lucrative.

Picking nettles gives you little. A few minutes of work is required to buy a single lockpick (their possession is legal!). You can brew potions instead, but you’ll only get about 30g each, and the whole process takes a while. That’s not to say that hitting an alchemy bench early isn’t advised. After borrowing a nearby German alchemist’s recipe, it doesn’t take much to connect the dots. There’s a potion that gives insane bonuses to speech checks, as well as +50% to XP gained. In all skills. You can unlock it after like 30 minutes of work, and it contributed much to my experience of maxing all the relevant skills.

Poaching doesn’t make much money either. Also, it’s annoying in the beginning due to archery being weaker, but I’ll get there later on.


Then there’s the newly added weapon forging. It takes similar time to potion crafting and will not make you rich either. You’re free to try, and one of the game's paths (the honest one) will even lead you towards it. However, as you seek merchants to sell your goods, you’ll notice something. There are lots of weapons around. And many bandits armed to the teeth.

My Henryk found his first duo of bandits within 15 minutes of free play by following a curious trail of booze by the road. I snapped the neck of one of them and easily dispatched the other. He was wearing full plate armor while I had nothing. This is a quick introduction to how combat difficulty was lowered and how the economy was screwed. Just like in medieval times, arms and armor is expensive and single merchants are unlikely to buy much from you. I got into the habit of carrying around expensive jewelry/swords to use them as payment instead. Thinking about it, it’s kind of like in Morrowind, where a single piece of expensive equipment can empty a merchant’s pouch. Except here there are more daedric pieces scattered around than you can carry.

If I were to name the best way of making money early on (without meta knowledge), it would be archery competitions: they make money and raise your strength, agility, warfare and archery all in one go.

Still, one should cherish those moments when you’re figuring out the world and striving for better equipment. For me, this is the best part of the series. Even if you want to, there are no shortcuts like running to Ghostgate and stealing 80% of the glass equipment set.

There are 2 sandboxy areas: the Trosky and Kuttenberg regions. All the fun to be had is in the first one when you’re still growing and can run into challenges. Once you reach Kuttenberg you’re an unstoppable powerhouse. What do you do when there’s nothing else to achieve, no room to improve?

For example, in BG3 you start Act 3 and see the glorious titular city. You are max level, fatigued from many hours spent in Acts 1 and 2, but people don’t drop the game there. Powerful equipment is waiting to be acquired, the story becomes more epic, dragons remain to be slain.

There’s no such thing in KCD2. Sure, there’s better armor to be found, but you’ll fix that within a few minutes of hitting a shop. And it’s not going to be that big of an improvement anyway. Writing is nothing to be excited about, and you’ve already had your fun with all the sandboxy activities in the Trosky region (which is huge). Kuttenberg is much larger, though. As a result, I finished nearly 100% of Trosky, while in Kuttenberg I just rushed the main storyline.

In general, the game stops you from ruining the main storyline too. Let’s have a look at the following extreme example:


What you can see here is one of the more important locations where many events take place. You can stab the whole garrison, and the only consequence is your being marked as a criminal. If you surrender to the guard, then you’ll see a gameover screen – for you’ve lost the trust of the local lord.

But you can continue. Every crime is eventually forgotten. Return after a few days and you’re a solid citizen. The devs also went a step further and made crucial NPCs immortal:


Peter doesn’t care that he’s the sole survivor of his castle massacre. Crucial NPCs don’t appear to be a part of the game world. You can’t attack them, nor steal from them. They’re apparitions that roam around and sometimes permit talking to them.

To make sure that you don’t go where you’re not supposed to, certain doors might be standing in your way. Here is my most annoying example:

I’ve stumbled upon this one three times. First was when I was picking mushrooms in a forest and found a cave. It was obvious that I found a secret entry to the Trosky castle. The very location that is your first objective and which you must spend many hours on reaching. The devs do not allow shortcuts.

The second time was when I finally reached the castle and had to save Capon. Since my Henryk was skilled in the art of not being seen, I found his cell, which for whatever reason can’t be opened. Next to that cell is an underground passage that leads to the above door. No, you won't be breaking Capon out and escape together through that passage.

The third time was when you’re tortured in a nearby cell later on and you can finally escape through it.

Overall, however, the world is lively and believable. NPCs follow their daily/nightly routines, and I know how passionate the Codex is about those. On a few occasions it’s glitchy and annoying when you can’t interact with shopkeepers. For example, the blacksmith standing in a wrong place at his forge.


Myself, however, I'm more interested in sanitary conditions. I'm happy to report that there are a few quests concerning toilets, and you’ll even learn how they fit in castle architecture. Sadly, no hidden perk like Expert Excrement Expeditor can be acquired. However, playing with dung makes you reek and it's advisable to wash promptly.

There are also random events in the game, which will happen regardless of whether you fast travel or not. Most of those involve wolves/robbers, but there are a few more interesting ones, like unexpected Spanish inquisition.

Speaking of wolves, they sure are annoying. They’re common only in the Trosky region and fighting them can be hard depending on the weapon you use. One-handed sword? Fists? Tough luck! They’ll always be out of reach, even when you hack at them at the right time. You must wait for an attack, then execute a perfect block and parry only to find yourself slashing air. Rinse and repeat for a few minutes, since they always come in packs. I found it the easiest to try cornering one against the wall – then your attacks will start connecting. Or equip a zweihander, but that felt silly.

Archery doesn’t help much since it’s weak, and you’ll need to put 3 arrows into a single wolf to kill it.


You won’t be alone in your travels. While you can’t form a party, most of the time you have your trusty dog and horse with you. Mutt’s usefulness grows with perks, so you can utilize him in hunting, be it game or fine ladies. On a few occasions, he can help track quest objectives, but there's no exclusive content attached to this ability. It saves time but I found no example of an objective that could be finished only that way.

Mutt is immortal and will help you in combat mainly by distracting enemies and letting you hack at them freely. If he suffers damage, he’ll return to the forest and join you again as time passes.

You can own only a single horse. It is possible to acquire stolen one by visiting friendly gypsies that offer GTA fresh paint services. I recall mounted combat in KCD1, but in the sequel there’s none of it. Some can be seen in cutscenes, and if you’re desperate, you can fight brigands from your saddle, but don’t expect much challenge. Quite odd that while iron weapon/armor are common, horses are rare.



Night-time activities

Half the things you can do in this game are not widely accepted by society. Once you make a decision that you’re not here to please your dead parents, there’s lots of fun and money to be made. But not gambling - in case you hadn't realized, you had all this fun so far without RNG involved, so why would you start now. Thinking about this, your parents would be fine with gambling. It will become clearer why I mention them later.

Henry doesn’t need to sleep as much as the rest of the population. The difference becomes more pronounced when you grab certain perks and keep doping on potions. As the sun sets, it gets really dark outside. At that point, a goody-two-shoes has nothing else to do but pass the time, be it by waiting or reading a book. Beds aren’t always available. Those moments when NPCs you must speak to close the door and go to sleep can be quite annoying.

Unless you kill time by getting rich. Pick the lock, clear all the containers, and on your way out talk to the NPC in question. Sometimes they’ll talk to you, sometimes demand you return in the morning. I didn’t find a reason governing when it’s doable and when it’s not.

Thievery is in a weird spot. Lockpicking and pickpocketing skills were merged into one. Opening locks, as I’ve already mentioned, is hard and tedious in the early game. However, this is not the case for looking into NPCs’ pockets. And do you know what nearly everyone is carrying? Keys. All household members tend to have the same set of keys that can open every chest and door. Robbing a single guard gives entry to nearly every door and chest in the hold they’re guarding. This will serve you well until the middle of the Trotsky act, at which point you'll reach 15-20 in thievery and be able to pick locks without breaking a sweat.

Lockpicking and pickpocketing minigames are the same as in KCD1. Sneaking, however, seems to be easier. It’s not just about the addition of pebble throwing to distract guards. Nor being able to order Mutt to bark. It might not be the case at the start, but after a few hours you quickly realize that you’re nearly invisible. What’s more, noise levels appear to be bugged or offset by higher sneak skill, which I was able to test by sneaking in plain sight in plate armor and chainmail. Bushes don’t seem to generate noise either.


You can sneak and shoot arrows without being seen. Enemies will go to your general location at the time of firing the arrow. However, being just a few steps away seems to be enough to shake them off. Each injury slows them down too (not just in the legs), which helps you further.

The crime system is present, but I can’t say that it’s any obstacle in its current form. If you’re spotted on someone’s property and anything goes missing – you’re automatically a wanted criminal in the area. Sounds good in practice, but you’ll see it makes no sense after you trigger it a few times. It’s just not that big of a deal. At first, I was jumping fences, staying off the main village road and doing other things to avoid the guards. But I quickly realized that sneaking is too strong, and I can sneak at noon through the main street while being the most wanted criminal.

But let’s assume that you took an arrow to your knee and crouching is no go. You can always surrender and explain the situation to the guard. And boy, there are so many options, like threatening, bribing, or pretending to be a noble, that you'll always be able to talk your way out of trouble. A more educated Henryk can even bend the law, which is quite effective against guards that can’t even read. The difficulty depends on the price tag for your crimes. The excuses given by the protagonist are numerous and hilarious, especially when you fail. For example, when spotted strangling some village maiden, a weak excuse by Henryk would be ‘I thought she was my wife’. Too bad I never had any issues with succeeding those checks, if anything they helped me level up my speech.

If smooth talking is too hard for your smooth brain, worry not. Peasants have short memory, and it takes 2 days tops for people to forgive you for murdering the whole village.

Those seeking thrills can try their hand at grand theft horse activities. A gypsy merchant will buy a horse off you. As with all merchants, his coffers are limited, so you’ll have to wait a while before selling another one.

On the topic of merchants, you can rob them blind too. The wares they sell are displayed around their shops during the day, while the more expensive pieces are locked in chests during the night, which is a nice touch. Those chests are hard to pick, but as I mentioned, stealing keys is criminally easy. That’s the way to obtain top equipment early. Normally, buying plate armor can be quite pricey. Stolen items will be recognized if you try to sell them in the same area, but given enough time and/or repairs after use, this status will be cleared.


Finally, despite all these criminal activities, playing a bad- or good-aligned Henryk is a fake choice, considering that the story forces you into banditry anyway. There are no choices/side paths, so keep that in mind.


Story

While the world and side quests are fun, I consider the main storyline to be the weakest part of the game. In KCD1 it was nicely contained, with your village boy rising in the ranks, and was the perfect excuse to teach both Henryk and the player about medieval Europe. After all, many players would be from other parts of the world and would have no idea about the important role played by the clergy in that society, for example.


That aspect is thrown out of the window in KCD2. Henryk is now all peasant/scholar/knight/commander. The game is no longer educational but instead feels like a Guy Ritchie movie. Normally, I’d be fine with it since I’m a fan, but it’s lacking execution and a proper McGuffin to center the action around it.

Yet so much time was put into that story and its cutscenes. I thought that CP2077 had a lot of them, but here it’s dialed up to 11. The story can put you on the rails for hours, and it’s rarely just a single quest but a chain. I found it especially annoying between the Trosky/Kuttenberg acts. You join a siege, get imprisoned twice, change to Godwin, fight a few hordes, visit 3 castles and cross 2 maps on horseback in a single go. All with cutscenes and little freedom of action.


But that’s not all the annoyances ahead of you. If random events would stop undressing my Henryk, that would be great. Surprisingly, it’s not bathwenches who do that (as this happens off the screen). You know the trope – you’re imprisoned and you escape with nothing but the clothes on your back. Usually at the end of such a sequence, the devs would place a chest with all your equipment that would be put on automatically upon interaction. But not Warhorse Studios. There are 20 non-weapon equipment slots and up to 8 more weapon slots. By the way, a great feature is that now you can have 3 loadouts – for example full tin can, nobleman and thievery clothing sets. All of these can and will be wiped in an instant. Sometimes all 3 slots, sometimes only the currently equipped one. Now I’m a firm believer that each game is permitted to one such stripping occurrence. KCD2 does it more times than I can count on a single hand.

It happens so often that during certain forced sequences I often got confused what weapon I had equipped. Is my sword unsheathed? A number of times I just fisted my enemies, and in general I’d say that unarmed is a great skill to have, for weapon swapping takes forever while fists, fists are always ready.

There’s one quest that had such a terrible execution that I was scratching my head afterwards. You start by investigating a demon and through some interesting chain of events you end up being stripped and left alone at the bottom of a mine shaft. What follows is a horror story that is too short to experience any paranoia due to whole situation. Instead you focus on searching for your belongings to manually equip your items yet again.

Moving back on track, the main story seems to be centered around Henryk’s personal growth and vengeance. The first act, the Trosky region, ties up loose ends from KCD1. Since it’s so long, the game could easily end with it. After all they have the perfect formula for game starter: injure the player character and drop all the skills to 5 across the board. Being able to skip the first act is something that mods can hopefully fix as it will help with replayability.

The second act is Kuttenberg, which I’d describe as rolling with the punches after the events in the first act. Along the journey, your parents will visit you in your dreams in red haze sequences like in KCD1.

Not only does the whole parent thing feel out of place, it makes little sense from the perspective of character development. We’re playing a barely adult Henryk who’s busy trying to stay alive over the course of less than one year (counting both KCD1 and 2). Suddenly, at the end of the game he gets a deep retrospective in his dream while the air is thick with death and smoke?

Fifty meters away from Henryk’s resting place, one of your new father figures is unable to ride away into the sunset after parting with you due to the bodies scattered around. I chuckled a bit at that bug, which allows you to perceive the man’s well-groomed horse in all its glory.


Finally, my parents scolded me, which I found confusing. While I stole a lot, I was a good rogue archetype who saved many villages. Then I found the in-game stats:

I don’t recall killing a single civilian, so they must be misrepresented. If you want to receive a pat on your head, better sleep at night and exclusively use your fists (they are non-lethal).

Now close your eyes (use a tool to read the text aloud for you). Think deep about the most annoying quest type in RPGs. Did you think about escort quests where NPCs get constantly stuck on terrain and walk at a speed between your walking and running? Then you’ll be pleased to hear that Warhorse Studios have found a solution! Now it’s not the NPC who’s following you, but the other way around! A new feature was implemented to auto follow them, but for some reason it’s not enabled in all the quests. It’s especially annoying when the game wants you to have a conversation that way, and the UI for it is abysmal.

There is little to no C&C to be had. The worst example was when Capon was being accused of poaching. It would be fine if not for the fact that I completed a lengthy optional quest during which I stopped his activities and hid his involvement. There are numerous logic holes in the main storyline too. The game has you defend the Saracen Musa, but he doesn’t appear to be critical to any events. He’s just a recurring character who’s present sometimes for mysterious reasons without contributing much.

There’s another logic hole that I can’t omit due to patriotism. Behold the true main protagonist, Ader:


He speaks only Polish and understands Czech perfectly, but most NPCs barring a few can’t understand a word he says. It’s odd considering that in the 14th century our languages were much closer than they are today. Especially since there are a number of NPCs speaking gypsy or German that everyone seems to understand.


Combat

Without beating around the bush, the combat is easier and the weapon choices are not equal. KCD1’s six attack directions were scaled down to four, while some weapons will give you just three. Before, you had to spend long sessions with Bernard to fight knights on equal footing. Now you can hit the road and fight groups of bandits from the very beginning.

Something seems to be wrong with the enemy skill levels. They’re set to low, and as result you can push through by hacking at them mindlessly. However, from time to time some weak looking peon will surprise you by executing a master strike and/or taking half of your HP bar in a single go. Moments like that are rare, but I hope that mods will scale it up in the future.

I found myself not even bothering with blocking, riposting, master striking and combos as dodging is safer and allows you to strike the enemy once or twice. Which is enough given how strong swords are. One or two hits are enough to drop a fully plated enemy later in the game. In theory, you have stabbing, slashing and blunt attacks, but for whatever reason slashing is the king even against heavily armored enemies. To make it worse, only swords and fists can execute master strikes. I hope that axes/maces will end up being patched in the future too.

The new weapon type that got its own skill are halberds. They can’t be crafted and are weaker compared to regular swords/axes. Can’t say that their reach provides an advantage in combat, as enemies seem to be able to dash in when attacking – a move that is not available to the player. Wielding them is a death sentence unless you obtain some perks that increase their efficiency, so training to kickstart things is crucial. You can tell that the devs were proud of them, as each castle defense will involve the objective of pushing off some ladders, which can only be done with a halberd. Finding a rack with halberds in the heat of combat is annoying, so I strongly advise keeping one handy when doing the main quests.

Sieges are great and will have you performing various tasks like shooting, pushing off ladders or dropping stones on enemies trying to breach the gate. How well you do doesn’t seem to matter much as long as you stay alive. You can’t alter history. Which can be annoying, as during certain events it’s evident that you could kill the whole enemy force if the devs allowed you to do so.

This is because, as I keep mentioning, combat is easy and enemies do not appear to know how to use their numbers to their advantage. If they were to all sprint at you, surround you and start attacking then, there’d be little for you to do. Instead, they approach cautiously, and it’s easy to engage them one-on-one even in the open field if you keep moving. Enemy archers seem to have a problem with flanking or providing support from range too. It’s not like aggressive AI isn’t implemented – if you wield a ranged weapon then they’ll charge at you without issue.

It’s harder to go ranged in the sequel. In KCD1, I finished the whole game without melee. I was progressing by doing headshots. Twice in the main storyline I was forced to wield a sword, but I was able to quickly change to a bow. Ranged fighting was strong once you learned how to aim. It’s a shadow of its former glory in KCD2. It takes two face shots to kill an enemy even with a maxed out skill and the best bow. Shoot and dash is not a viable strategy, as it takes too many arrows to down an enemy, and they’ll just charge at you. Starting at a distance and switching to a sword once the enemies get closer is also quite hard, for weapon swapping takes forever. Henryk takes his sweet time to put an arrow in the quiver, then put the bow away and finally unsheathe his sword.

The weakness of archery seeps into hunting too. You’ll need to shoot three arrows to down a wolf, and a deer will escape after a single shot never to be seen again. As such, faster bow reloading is wasted and the game is urging you hard to use the newly added crossbows instead.

Aiming a crossbow or bow is like in the previous game. Even though there’s no crosshair I had no trouble hitting my marks. Still, there are some poorly thought-out mechanics. There’s a perk that gives you a damage boost if you stand still and aim for two seconds. Too bad that after that time another mechanic kicks in and you start swinging your bow wildly, making it impossible to hit a barn standing in front of you.

It’s similar with guns, another new weapon type. By the time you ignite sparks, you’re swinging your tube wildly. To make it worse, I couldn’t figure out how to aim this shit. You can't check on a shooting target where your shots are landing as you don’t have visible indicators like with arrows. Going against the stone wall seems to be better as holes are finally visible. I honestly chuckled at one Guy Ritchie-like ambush cutscene where your merry band jumps out of the bushes and fire their guns. Smoke settles and you can see that no one hits a single target, which sums up my experience well. I just fail to see why you would use such a clunky weapon when a sword is so strong.

There’s also some oddity with the hitboxes. Unless the enemy is engaged with someone, slashes that should connect do nothing. In the picture below I’m unable to slash a bandit sleeping right in front of me.


I’m not sure how much it has to do with one-handed swords having shorter reach, but I could also see this behavior when using halberds. Arrows have no issue with connecting, though… unless the game is pitting you against an enemy that the devs didn’t want to be shot at. During your first siege defense, you’ll be able to shoot down ladder holders. In the subsequent ones, they’ll be immortal. It’s the most annoying when fighting in Suchdol, where I wasted half of my quiver not knowing who I can shoot at to begin with. Also, for some reason restocking my arrows in a nearby barrel was marked as a crime.


The End

Seven years have passed since the release of KCD1. Clearly, that time was spent on turning the franchise into a movie instead of improving the game systems. You can no longer go with the excuse of it being a janky/indie game, and one should expect more. If anything, it feels like a regression (save for the visuals).

Regardless, contrary to my rants, I shall return to KCD2 when hardcore mode gets (re)introduced, as proper sandbox experiences are rare and I do have the itch for it. Do not expect me to bother with the story, though, and I hope that mods make crossing regions available without having to experience the endless cutscenes first.

When you jump into the game, remember that sauerkraut is the superior food choice, and I hope you pick it over the Janosh sausage in your travels.