KickStarter Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Dan Vavra's medieval chad simulator

[aeroaeko]

Is this game worth it at full price?

 

[Agesilaus]

Is this game worth it at full price?

No, but it's a bloody good lark, I bought it on sale and enjoyed it immensely.

I say no for two reasons:

It was released at $60. Fuck you.

I get sick when playing fps games unless I do a whole bunch of testing re: scope, fps, blur, etc. So, not my cup of tea.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Is this game worth it at full price?

It's the best AAA RPG since New Vegas.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Is this game worth it at full price?

If you're looking for a good game to play now, absolutely. The game is great fun.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Is this game worth it at full price?

It's the best AAA RPG since New Vegas.

This is BS. KCD tried some interesting things, but as a whole package, in the context of being a product meant for entertainment, it is quite lacking. Dark Souls, Witcher 3, and ELEX are all far more enjoyable AAA (or thereabout) RPGs. Unless you really want to role-play a peasant.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I was almost taking you seriously, but then, Elex.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Don't let the meme stuff fool you, ELEX is a far superior game to KCD.

 

[aeroaeko]

Don't let the meme stuff fool you, ELEX is a far superior game to KCD.

why is that? KCD looks much more interesting

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Don't let the meme stuff fool you, ELEX is a far superior game to KCD.

why is that? KCD looks much more interesting

KCD is just not a fun game, in my opinion. Why is that?

1. The combat is not fun - It has a lot of detail under the hood but in terms of player input and what you actually have to do, it's very similar to morrowind combat, completely determined by stats and not skill. The only thing that involves player input and participation is the timed parrying, but the higher your stats go, the larger the parry window gets, so basically just hit Q whenever you see the enemy start to attack, get a successful parry. Everything else is purely stat driven. They have directional parrying but it doesnt affect anything, they have directional attacks, but they don't change anything beyond the animation, only the stats determine whether the attack is successful or not. Same for feints, no effect. Combos are pointless since they cannot be executed (always get interrupted). So essentially Morrowind combat wrapped in a lot of bullshit you never use.

2. The exploration is not fun - They went to a lot of trouble to do sattellite imagery of Bohemia, hired historians, etc, but ultimately, they went way too far overboard to historical realism, and created a faithful recreation of medieval Bohemia instead of an interesting game-world. You can ride through most of the gameworld and not encounter anything interesting, just some peasants doing peasant-like stuff, villages etc. The density of bandit encounters or enemy soldiers or dangerous wild animals (and obvisouly non-existent monsters since this is historical) is exceedingly low. This is realistic, because in RL you weren't getting jumped by bandits every 2 steps, but for a game, this makes for boring gameplay. Combine this with the lack of monster dens, fantasy-style ruins and other stuff of that nature, and you have a National Park hike instead of a game adventure.

3. The writing/storylines/dialogue are not fun - Where do I even start? The main character is a village yokel. The overarching storyline is about a war between various factions in Bohemia/Holy Roman Empire but it's all so shades-of-gray and underwhelming that there is barely any motivation to care. The dialogue in general is not bad, especially by video game standards, but again, since your character is a yokel, his lines are always not fun.

 

[Funposter]

Combos are pointless since they cannot be executed (always get interrupted)

git gud

Also your argument that "there need to be MORE roadside encounters!!!!" is so pants-on-head retarded that I don't know where to begin

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Exploration is excellent and it's excellent exactly because it's realistic. I didn't find it boring at all, I find it incredibly relaxing and soothing. You walk around, you enjoy a nice view, birds are signing, you smell some flowers, you swim in the lake, most people you meet are friendly, sometimes you scare a couple of rabbits or try to hunt a deer. All of that combined adds a nice change of pace. Does it make for tense, butt-clenching gameplay? No, but why would it?

Exploration doesn't mean constantly being on your toes and on the lookout for a pack of orcs hiding behind every tree. Yes, it's mostly a hike, but it's an enjoyable hike, greatly helped by the visuals - the game has some of the best vegetation and forest ever put into a video game.

Far too many modern games resort to constantly spamming you with participation awards and cheap thrills to trick your brain's reward system into feeling that you're doing something important, when you're not. Exploration shouldn't be about frantically running from one exclamation point to another, from one loot crate to another, and getting jump scares every 3 minutes. That's not exploration, that's consolized popamole idiocy for pre-teens who have attention span of 3 minutes and need constant positive reinforcement to keep them engaged.

If I want action, I know where to find it. For exploration, I'd much rather have a hike, thank you very much.

 

[Multidirectional]

Witcher 3, and ELEX are all far more enjoyable AAA (or thereabout) RPGs.

Fuck off, retard.

I just gotta love how after name dropping these you bitch about KCD's combat not being fun. I guess Witcher "hold the button to see red glowing stuff" 3 has better exploration now too? And it sure as shit was super rewarding in Elex to kill a huge damage sponge troll in a tedious boring fight and get that toilet paper he was guarding, top quality exploration there.

 

[Mark Richard]

Exploration is excellent and it's excellent exactly because it's realistic. I didn't find it boring at all, I find it incredibly relaxing and soothing. You walk around, you enjoy a nice view, birds are signing, you smell some flowers, you swim in the lake, most people you meet are friendly, sometimes you scare a couple of rabbits or try to hunt a deer. All of that combined adds a nice change of pace. Does it make for tense, butt-clenching gameplay? No, but why would it?

Exploration doesn't mean constantly being on your toes and on the lookout for a pack of orcs hiding behind every tree. Yes, it's mostly a hike, but it's an enjoyable hike, greatly helped by the visuals - the game has some of the best vegetation and forest ever put into a video game.

Far too many modern games resort to constantly spamming you with participation awards and cheap thrills to trick your brain's reward system into feeling that you're doing something important, when you're not. Exploration shouldn't be about frantically running from one exclamation point to another, from one loot crate to another, and getting jump scares every 3 minutes. That's not exploration, that's consolized popamole idiocy for pre-teens who have attention span of 3 minutes and need constant positive reinforcement to keep them engaged.

If I want action, I know where to find it. For exploration, I'd much rather have a hike, thank you very much.

Some folk enjoy a medieval theme park ride, others prefer walking around an authentic medieval castle. Is one form of fun truly more valid than the other?

Spoiler

The answer's yes, and its the castle option.

 

[Beowulf]

Exploration is excellent and it's excellent exactly because it's realistic. I didn't find it boring at all, I find it incredibly relaxing and soothing. You walk around, you enjoy a nice view, birds are signing, you smell some flowers, you swim in the lake, most people you meet are friendly, sometimes you scare a couple of rabbits or try to hunt a deer. All of that combined adds a nice change of pace. Does it make for tense, butt-clenching gameplay? No, but why would it?

Exploration doesn't mean constantly being on your toes and on the lookout for a pack of orcs hiding behind every tree. Yes, it's mostly a hike, but it's an enjoyable hike, greatly helped by the visuals - the game has some of the best vegetation and forest ever put into a video game.

Far too many modern games resort to constantly spamming you with participation awards and cheap thrills to trick your brain's reward system into feeling that you're doing something important, when you're not. Exploration shouldn't be about frantically running from one exclamation point to another, from one loot crate to another, and getting jump scares every 3 minutes. That's not exploration, that's consolized popamole idiocy for pre-teens who have attention span of 3 minutes and need constant positive reinforcement to keep them engaged.

If I want action, I know where to find it. For exploration, I'd much rather have a hike, thank you very much.

You can't swim in KC: D

 

[cvv]

Dark Souls, Witcher 3, and ELEX

Dark Souls is the greatest game ever made, even the KCD lead designer agrees with this, but comparing it to traditional WRPGs in this context is nonsensical. It aims for a completely different experience.

Witcher 3 is the only comparable game to KCD, in that it also aims for deep characters and writing and generally mature vibe of the world. But it's also by and large an interactive movie with much less reactiveness and player agency than KCD. Instead of the world feeling alive and real it feels like a pretty illustrated book you're going through. The NPCs don't have even the Radiant AI level of agency, they're all like cardboard cut outs, standing in place with quest marks over their heads.

Elex is an excellent RPG but it's a traditional game with all the emphasis being on gameplay while the plot, characters and writing are left at the serviceable level typical for the vast majority of RPGs ever made.

That said I share some of your doubts about realism. It's great to have a historically realistic RPG and I have enjoyed it a lot but I also see why there aren't dozens of these games coming out every year. People watch movies mainly for short-term entertainment but they play RPGs mainly for long-term immersion and escapism. That's why historical movies can be massively popular but purely historical RPGs will always be relatively niche.

My problem with fantasy/scifi RPGs isn't that they have fantastical elements but that they're dumb. Most of them contain stupid, low-brow, fanfic level of lore, characters and writing. Plus the stories are the type of childish shit we used to watch as 10 year old kids on Nickelodeon. That's what I appreciate about KCD the most - it's something kids wouldn't find interesting. In fact that's a great definition of an RPG I'm interested in - something that kids would never play.

But if all fantasy RPG writing and characters were as intelligent and mature as Witcher 3 my need for historical RPGs would be greatly diminished.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Oh, yeah, fantasy-style ruins were so interesting in Skyrim. Radiant quests made the game for me. Vavra, come to your senses, man!

 

[vota DC]

3. The writing/storylines/dialogue are not fun - Where do I even start? The main character is a village yokel. The overarching storyline is about a war between various factions in Bohemia/Holy Roman Empire but it's all so shades-of-gray and underwhelming that there is barely any motivation to care. The dialogue in general is not bad, especially by video game standards, but again, since your character is a yokel, his lines are always not fun.

You aren't supposed to save the world against a daedric invasion, but while your opponents are still humans they destroyed your own little world. Godfather is about shades-of-gray but still if you play as Michael you have many reasons to stick with your family and zero reasons to join Virgil Sollozzo.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Exploration is excellent and it's excellent exactly because it's realistic. I didn't find it boring at all, I find it incredibly relaxing and soothing. You walk around, you enjoy a nice view, birds are signing, you smell some flowers, you swim in the lake, most people you meet are friendly, sometimes you scare a couple of rabbits or try to hunt a deer. All of that combined adds a nice change of pace. Does it make for tense, butt-clenching gameplay? No, but why would it?

Exploration doesn't mean constantly being on your toes and on the lookout for a pack of orcs hiding behind every tree. Yes, it's mostly a hike, but it's an enjoyable hike, greatly helped by the visuals - the game has some of the best vegetation and forest ever put into a video game.

This is nonsense. RPG exploration must present the player with interesting things on a regular basis in order to be good. It doesn't have to be "orcs behind trees" every 3 steps, but the way the human brain works, it must receive stimulation to enjoy the time spent. What you describe above (and the actual game) is pretty much like a walk in a local park. Do people walk much in parks now in the age of digital entertainment? It should be fairly self obvious why such an experience is vastly inferior to any RPG with decent to good exploration.

Witcher 3, and ELEX are all far more enjoyable AAA (or thereabout) RPGs.

I just gotta love how after name dropping these you bitch about KCD's combat not being fun.

Yes, all 3 of the games mentioned have better combat than KCD. Dark Souls obviously, and both ELEX and W3 require more player input during combat than KCD's Morrowind-like system.

I guess Witcher "hold the button to see red glowing stuff" 3 has better exploration now too?

Both KCD and W3 have terrible exploration, but for different reasons. In KCD, it's ruined by a boring 100% realistic backwoods world, in W3 by quest markers, cookie trails, etc.

However, since I said W3 as a whole game is better than KCD, which it obviously is, I don't really see your point.

And it sure as shit was super rewarding in Elex to kill a huge damage sponge troll in a tedious boring fight and get that toilet paper he was guarding, top quality exploration there.

ELEX had great exploration. Sure some of the rewards were sucky (like the toilet paper), but there were plenty of good rewards, and overall, the world had a huge amount of interesting things to find and explore. Ruins of a destroyed world, out-of-the-way bad guy bases and monster nests, various colonies and NPCs, remains of tapes and notes hinting at the world's history, ways to vertically explore, exploration was a sheer joy.

Meanwhile in KCD, oh look another woodcamp.

Witcher 3 is the only comparable game to KCD, in that it also aims for deep characters and writing and generally mature vibe of the world. But it's also by and large an interactive movie with much less reactiveness and player agency than KCD. Instead of the world feeling alive and real it feels like a pretty illustrated book you're going through. The NPCs don't have even the Radiant AI level of agency, they're all like cardboard cut outs, standing in place with quest marks over their heads.

Elex is an excellent RPG but it's a traditional game with all the emphasis being on gameplay while the plot, characters and writing are left at the serviceable level typical for the vast majority of RPGs ever made.

So W3 is too story oriented to be compared to KCD and ELEX is too gameplay oriented? I am pretty open minded when it comes to RPG sub-genres, I like good writing, gameplay, combat, exploration, char development, puzzles, etc. The problem is that KCD excels in exactly none of these things. W3 might have shit exploration, but it is awesome in writing/lore/characterization. ELEX might suck in certain aspects, but it is great in exploration and quests and C&C. KCD is just meh all-around.

That said I share some of your doubts about realism. It's great to have a historically realistic RPG and I have enjoyed it a lot but I also see why there aren't dozens of these games coming out every year. People watch movies mainly for short-term entertainment but they play RPGs mainly for long-term immersion and escapism. That's why historical movies can be massively popular but purely historical RPGs will always be relatively niche.

My problem with fantasy/scifi RPGs isn't that they have fantastical elements but that they're dumb. Most of them contain stupid, low-brow, fanfic level of lore, characters and writing. Plus the stories are the type of childish shit we used to watch as 10 year old kids on Nickelodeon. That's what I appreciate about KCD the most - it's something kids wouldn't find interesting. In fact that's a great definition of an RPG I'm interested in - something that kids would never play.

But if all fantasy RPG writing and characters were as intelligent and mature as Witcher 3 my need for historical RPGs would be greatly diminished.

To me, the problem with KCD isn't that it chose to go historical. It's that it made bad design decisions AFTER going historical. I still fully believe that you can make a highly entertaining and enjoyable historical RPG. But you have to be smart about it. For instance, you can fight the trainer in KCD for 15 minutes and have all your combat stats go up so much you become an expert fighter. Obviously this is not historically accurate, and neither is the day being 1 hour instead of 24, nor being able to traverse the entire region in 15 minutes. So the designers understood that sometimes you cant be 100% realistic. And yet, in many important decisions, they forgot this, and chose to go with 100% realism.
If they had the gameplay in mind more, they could've plopped down a lot more interesting encounters/things to discover throughout the world.

You aren't supposed to save the world against a daedric invasion, but while your opponents are still humans they destroyed your own little world. Godfather is about shades-of-gray but still if you play as Michael you have many reasons to stick with your family and zero reasons to join Virgil Sollozzo.

Please don't compare the story and characters of Godfather with KCD. The former had fascinating characters and a page turning story, and in KCD, you have a bunch of extremely dull people. The liege lord (Radzig?), a by the book bland as vanilla dude, the fat guy (pseudo-Vavra), the old guy being cucked, the spoiled brat prince, cartoonish bad guys, etc. And of course Henry the Village Oaf running between them, yes sir, yes sir.

 

[Multidirectional]

Witcher 3, and ELEX are all far more enjoyable AAA (or thereabout) RPGs.

I just gotta love how after name dropping these you bitch about KCD's combat not being fun.

Yes, all 3 of the games mentioned have better combat than KCD. Dark Souls obviously, and both ELEX and W3 require more player input during combat than KCD's Morrowind-like system.

I guess Witcher "hold the button to see red glowing stuff" 3 has better exploration now too?

Both KCD and W3 have terrible exploration, but for different reasons. In KCD, it's ruined by a boring 100% realistic backwoods world, in W3 by quest markers, cookie trails, etc.

However, since I said W3 as a whole game is better than KCD, which it obviously is, I don't really see your point.

Dark Souls sure has a more enjoyable combat, I excluded it from quote because it's not an RPG so whatever. Absolutely cannot agree about W3 or Elex having better combat though, I found it to be tedious shit in both, much more so than in KCD.

I will grant that overall exploration in Elex probably wins over KCD, due to highly more varied landscape and locations. Item and enemy placement sucked ass though, huge decline compared to Gothic 1/2/Risen1. KCD wins easily over W3 in explorefaggotry in my opinion, though it could still definitely be improved. I distinctly remember one quest where I had to follow a blood trail that was actually sensibly placed and visible, unlike in W3 which fuckton of quests where I had to follow either blood or footsteps that were completely invisible unless I used the magic vision. Shit like this alone put exploration in KCD way above W3. I would've preferred if Henry could swim though. As far as character and general RPG systems go KCD is also miles above W3, even if not everything worked very well in it. Character system in W3 is just pure unsatisfying garbage.

I guess W3 is a little more satisfying from storyfag perspective in that it has a more epic story with better payoffs and conclusion, I can give it that edge. Calling it an "obviously better" game though is just pure faggotry to my ears, sorry. I enjoyed my time with KCD way more.

 

[cvv]

KCD excels in exactly none of these things

KCD has by far the most reactive world ever made in terms of NPCs. Nobody has even attempted what Warhorse did, the closest case is Bethesda's Radiant AI which is next to KCD like a toy rocket next to a space shuttle. If you play with your eyes open you notice that characters give off a solid illusion of actual people living their life. Also the crime and reputation systems are very advanced (tho both were buggy when I last played a few months ago).

 

[Gerrard]

not even joking when I say that Kingdom Come 2 needs full animation for taking a dump! Come on guys, be the first to break this new ground in immersiveness!!

I don't think they can beat shrinking horse testicles, sorry.

 

[vota DC]

Please don't compare the story and characters of Godfather with KCD. The former had fascinating characters and a page turning story, and in KCD, you have a bunch of extremely dull people. The liege lord (Radzig?), a by the book bland as vanilla dude, the fat guy (pseudo-Vavra), the old guy being cucked, the spoiled brat prince, cartoonish bad guys, etc. And of course Henry the Village Oaf running between them, yes sir, yes sir.

You said shades of grey, underwhelming events and bland characters were the reason for low motivations. At the end bland characters and cartoonish bad guys are the only reasons since a story about mafia families fighting each other worked very well.

 

[Rev]

KCD is a great game. Period.
I've yet to play Kingmaker, but up until now it's my RPGOTY.

 

[vazha]

Everybody whines about always playing TEH CHOSEN ONES till our brains bleed but when we get to play a normal dude it's suddenly booring and not awesum enough. Gaymers lol.

IF normal does mean bland, then yes. Somehow I suspect there is a vast realm of opportunities for character development between being bland and being the chosen one. Henry is utterly boring. Do I want to be boring? no. Does it mean I have to be the chosen one? nope, no. Simple as that.

 

[Barbarian]

IF normal does mean bland, then yes. Somehow I suspect there is a vast realm of opportunities for character development between being bland and being the chosen one. Henry is utterly boring. Do I want to be boring? no. Does it mean I have to be the chosen one? nope, no. Simple as that.

He is actually much more authentic and original than most videogame protagonists. Specially rpg protagonists. Unless off course you prefer the "chosen one"/"mary sue"/"overpowered chad" archetypes.

Henry is just a regular bastard on a mission and quite relatable. Last time I have seem a videogame protagonist getting his ass constantly kicked and developing as a character was... heck, I don't even know. You may argue that his progression from son of a blacksmith to competent soldier/adventurer is not very believable, but so is progression in any rpg I guess.