Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[PlayerEmers]

cool watch
did not know about the movie director that shares surname with Vavra

 

[AwesomeButton]

One thing that I associated with Czech Republic was their strong school of animation from the 1980s. The rabbit animation in KCD2 actually reminded me of that too.

They also have a local tradition of quality firearms production.

 

[NecroLord]

One thing that I associated with Czech Republic was their strong school of animation from the 1980s. The rabbit animation in KCD2 actually reminded me of that too.

They also have a local tradition of quality firearms production.

Also have local and strong tradition of prostitution and p0rn stars.

 

[AwesomeButton]

One thing that I associated with Czech Republic was their strong school of animation from the 1980s. The rabbit animation in KCD2 actually reminded me of that too.

They also have a local tradition of quality firearms production.

Also have local and strong tradition of prostitution and p0rn stars.

The superior Cuman genes.

 

[VerSacrum]

My main association with them has always been historical. Especially the struggle of the Bohemian Estates against Habsburg dominance in the 30 Years War, something one can strongly sympathise with where I live, but ended tragically for them because they don't have the advantageous geography as we did.
There's also the innovation in the decorative arts - glassmaking, porcelain. And everyone knows the Mucha style.

I treasure a piece in my personal collection, a porcelain nymph resting in eternal sleep on a poppy flower, created ca. 1900.

All in all, a really lovely country that has so much more to offer than porn.

 

[cvv]

Especially the struggle of the Bohemian Estates against Habsburg dominance in the 30 Years War, something one can strongly sympathise with where I live, but ended tragically for them

Yeah but they didn't enjoy their victory for long, mere 300 years later we showed them who's the boss.

 

[Infinitron]

One thing that I associated with Czech Republic was their strong school of animation from the 1980s. The rabbit animation in KCD2 actually reminded me of that too.

The real best Czech videogame studio?

 

[Paul_cz]

The real best Czech videogame studio?

I like Amanita but no. Aside from Warhorse I would put Wube (Factorio) over Amanita too.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Hey, is "live launch coverage" something that's typically done?
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/live/...performance-analysis-and-all-the-latest-news/

 

[Raghar]

One thing that I associated with Czech Republic was their strong school of animation from the 1980s. The rabbit animation in KCD2 actually reminded me of that too.

In 80s, officials at least spend hours by thinking if my disability is real or not. In democracy it was if my disability isn't visible, I should live from welfare for unemployable. When they will not list me as disabled, they would show better statistics to the government.

School of animation was paid by state money because socialistic state wanted to have professional and high quality cinematography. While Prague movie studios were full of mafia, they would lose government income if they produced crap. And a lot of animators were fans of what they were doing who were employed because of high talent and skills, and they spend effort.

They also have a local tradition of quality firearms production.

And we had great tradition of nuclear research in 80s.

 

[kain30]

One thing that I associated with Czech Republic was their strong school of animation from the 1980s. The rabbit animation in KCD2 actually reminded me of that too.

They also have a local tradition of quality firearms production.

Also have local and strong tradition of prostitution and p0rn stars.

I hope is quality independent escorts and not street hookers

 

[whocares]

with helps from universities, museums and academics.

 

[Fedora Master]

What weapon type gets bonus damage vs. negroids? This is an important gameplay question.

Knees.

Whips

 

[Infinitron]

Hey, is "live launch coverage" something that's typically done?
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/live/...performance-analysis-and-all-the-latest-news/

I don't believe I've ever seen this kind of thing at PC Gamer for a single player RPG.

 

[Alienman]

Love it how diversity always comes down to looks for these people.

For me having Germans, Hungarians, Cumans and maybe the odd Pole is quite diverse already. But then we are not as shallow as the American journo with a gender studies degree

In the setting, that would have been exotic enough, but no. Need a black guy. It's ridiculous.

 

[thesecret1]

There is good reason why book- and film critics don't use a 0-100 scale, at best they use 1-5 stars and in their conclusion summarise strengths and weakness and speak out a purchase recommendation (or not).

Yeah, a large scale only leads to degenerate behavior and is effectively meaningless. What more do you really need other than:
Shit, pretty bad, mediocre, pretty good, amazing?

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

When is the review embargo up?

 

[Quillon]

When is the review embargo up?

10 mins

 

[NecroLord]

When is the review embargo up?

Tomorrow is the release day.
Ready the lube and your buttholes.

 

[Ivan]

One thing that I associated with Czech Republic was their strong school of animation from the 1980s. The rabbit animation in KCD2 actually reminded me of that too.

The real best Czech videogame studio?

Creaks is fucking awesome

 

[Paul_cz]

When is the review embargo up?

in 7 minutes

 

[Infinitron]

3/5 https://www.eurogamer.net/kingdom-come-deliverance-2-review

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 review​

Peasant company excluded.

This gorgeous medieval RPG continues to be just as divisive, prickly and abrasive as its predecessor.

Direct sequels in games are funny things, aren't they? As narrative contrivances go for honouring all the choices you made and characters you built in the first part of the story, there are usually two schools of thought on how to keep building on that foundation effectively. One is the Star Wars Jedi: Survivor route, where developers rummage even deeper into their bag of tricks and somehow emerge with even wilder skills and abilities that make the first game's power curve look like training wheels.

But then you get games like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, which strip their heroes right down to their pants and have them flee for their lives into the hills. I mean that quite literally here. Picking up immediately after the events of the first game, blacksmith-turned-squire Henry and his idiot lord-in-chief Hans Capon have trotted off to Trosky to broker peace with the enemies of King Wenceslaus. Alas, your trumpeted arrival is cut short when Capon's lusty appetites get the better of him and he goes swimming in the nearby pond to chase some nearby giggling women. Unfortunately for the rest of their travelling party, this is the exact moment a band of local bandits decides to attack and murder everyone, causing Henry and Capon to flee with nothing but their soggy bottoms intact.

A daft and cringeworthy setup in equal measure, but it nevertheless does an effective job of doubling the stakes for this sequel. Not only are you in hostile and unfamiliar territory here, but you've also got to claw back all the trust and status you lost so everything you worked for in the first game isn't completely for naught. Strangely, though, the game doesn't seem all that bothered about what those earlier events actually were most of the time. After picking one of three classes to determine your starting crop of strengths and perk points, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 effectively acts as a clean slate to what's come before. Some of Henry's previous escapades are occasionally referred to in passing when chatting idly with NPCs, but there's no long-drawn character sheet building or decision porting like in Mass Effect or The Witcher, and your answers have little bearing on anything at all.

This is a frequently beautiful game with a sense of scale that regularly impresses, with strings of rundown, muddy hamlets eventually giving way to imposing hilltop fortresses (bottom left), which are in turn dwarfed by the enormous walled metropolis of Kuttenburg later on (bottom right). | Image credit: Eurogamer/Deep Silver
For new players, it's refreshing not to have a whole game's worth of baggage bearing down on you in these moments. Then again, with zero accompanying context on what any of these names and places mean, it can't help but alienate at the same time, making you feel adrift in a sea of missing back story. Likewise, for returning players hoping for more of a throughline with their version of Henry, the throwaway nature of these moments may come across as something of a disappointment.

Still, for all the lumps and bumps in its plot, the meat of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is still very much business as usual. This is an RPG that thrusts you out into the lush, green fields and forests of fifteenth century Bohemia, and leaves you to make of it what you will. Your skills improve slowly by doing them repeatedly over time, and careful attention must be paid to your appearance, cleanliness and attitude if you're going to ingratiate yourself with the locals. It's play-acting of the highest order, and exploiting Henry's chameleon-like ability to become all things to (almost) all people forms the backbone of this dense and sprawling RPG experience.

When it comes to persuading locals to do what you want, you'll need to think carefully about which skills and response would best fit your current dilemma - a choice that's not always immediately obvious from the numbers. | Image credit: Eurogamer/2K
The main quest will take you on a tale of deceit and intrigue that only gets grander and more ambitious as it goes on, but the game's huge stable of sidequests shouldn't be overlooked. These are often just as substantial as those on the critical path, weaving complex tales across its two enormous playable regions where their lettered objective markers regularly reach down to the Ps and Qs. They are twisty, lengthy yarns that feel pleasingly elastic in how you're able to approach them. Possibly not quite to the same extent as Baldur's Gate 3, perhaps, but the way its reactive and accommodating script handles the cumulative snowballing effect of your actions gets pretty damn close.

Early on, for example, I undertook a series of exhaustive quests from the local miller to help me get into a high-profile wedding feast. When I managed to get to the wedding another way, leaving the miller's quest unfinished, the game didn't close off that avenue of the story, or automatically fail it. Instead, when I returned to the miller post-wedding, the script immediately bounced back and shifted gears to accurately reflect where I was in the story at that point, all without missing a beat. The same goes for when you stumble on important quest items unexpectedly ahead of time, or come to solutions slightly differently to how the quest might have intended.

Even tiny villages have some pretty great characters to meet, and they'll send you on all sorts of errands and quests to cause general mischief. | Image credit: Eurogamer/2K
Sometimes that cleverness can fall flat, such as the time I decided to steal a supposedly magic amulet instead of winning it fair and square from its Romani owner. The recipient - the owner's daughter - implied that theft was the only way forward, but on my return with the stolen amulet in hand, only then did she bemoan that its magic comes from being handed over willingly, so stealing it robbed it of all its power. In that moment, I felt annoyed and misled, and I left grumbling to myself how I should have just endured the slightly arduous-sounding, multi-stage wager challenge proposed by her mother instead. My fault for wanting to cut corners, perhaps, but a path I thought the game was pushing me down nevertheless.

Thankfully, the impact of these sorts of quests is fairly minor, but others are much more important, almost to the point of being practically essential if you're ever truly going to get to grips with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's many, and often very fiddly, systems. The way to that wedding feast, for example, is presented as an either/or optional choice between two multi-stage sidequests, the miller's path teaching you the basics of stealth and thievery, while an alternate path sees you enter the employ of another blacksmith who takes you through crafting and other vital survival skills such as hunting and tracking with a dash of combat. That you could feasibly miss either of these quest paths in the ten or so hours it takes you to even step foot in the wedding is woefully ill-conceived, though its tutorialising methods more generally do leave a lot to be desired elsewhere.

The menus are real headache in this game, with important information regularly portioned off to only partially visible side panels, which you must navigate to manually with the analogue stick. | Image credit: Eurogamer/2K
Rather than teach you its systems by showing, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 relies on telling you via a bevy of dense text menus - some of which are no more enlightening by the time you've finished reading them than you were at the start. You can, at least, refer back to them at any time should you need a refresher, but that still doesn't excuse its poor explanation of how dice match turns work, for example, or the hours it took just to figure out how to equip my damn torch properly when night falls.

Even if you do feel like you've got your arms around a particular system, there's still a lot that's left to chance through various skill checks. Of course, rolling invisible dice on trying to be knowledgeable, intimidating, domineering or simply winning people over with your charming and charismatic personality is all part and parcel of an RPG like this, and there's a genuine thrill in seeing if you're successful. Heck, even when responses don't go your way, there's surprising wit and humour to be found in its script that usually helps soften the blow of defeat.

Can you tell that Henry failed to pass the knowledge check about limbo here? | Image credit: Eurogamer/2K
But when multiple skill checks are in play during any one dialogue option, I do wish there was just a smidge more information available to interpret what its various numbers actually mean. Is 8 Speech better than 4 Dread or 2 Charisma, for example? Not always, it turns out, as your overall persuasion stat is governed by several other interlocking stats and skills, the effects of which are sometimes hard to grasp in any given moment. Other factors are even subtler - such as having the wherewithal to take notice of your opponent's social standing, say, and weighing it up silently in your head against your own. Cynically, it all feels a bit like nebulous guesswork, though again, perhaps this is more a symptom of trying to game the system than truly meet it on its own terms. I have no doubt that these silent, unknowable mind games will be deeply enjoyable for some, but it's also the exact same recipe that's likely to cause frustration in others.

It doesn't help that throughout the early stages of the game, your stats often aren't good enough to succeed at literally anything. You are constantly failing left, right and centre, and only over time, through repeated head butts against the wall of progression, do you gradually, finally, gain the smallest of footholds. To say it's a grind isn't quite accurate, but it does take considerable effort and determination to muster the will to continue sometimes. This friction won't be for everyone, and deciding whether you're able to embrace that tension will ultimately make or break the game for you, I think. I'm right on the edge of this particular fence myself - at a slower, less hurried pace than the handful of weeks we've been afforded for review this time round, I reckon there's a version of me that actually quite likes this more abrasive style of RPG. There aren't many games that push back on the player as much as Kingdom Come does, and I do admire that about it.

I like that you have to pay such close attention to what characters are saying to get the most out of a mission, as a lot of this information won't be necessarily be recorded in your journal afterwards to refer back to. | Image credit: Eurogamer/2K
There is much to be said about how hands off it is. While your ultimate destinations are always marked up clearly on your map and compass bar, I love that you really have to look and listen to what characters are saying to discern a mission's finer details or seek out particular objects. This is a game without detective vision or licks of yellow paint everywhere, and it's refreshing to pay such close attention to its gorgeous and detailed world. It shows that both exterior and interior spaces can still have distinct visual identities without needing to flag things up with not-so-subtle signposts all the time, and the result is a level of immersion that few other action RPGs are able to match. There is so much to see and do here, and it's the kind of game that should be savoured over many, many months.

That said, no amount of time will ever make the interminably bad hang that is Hans Capon any more palatable to me. This boarish buffoon almost pips Goldeneye's Natalya as the companion I want most to see roast in the fires of eternal damnation, and he is easily the game at its most detestable - a lewd shrimp of a public-school posh boy whose childish, throw-his-toys-out-the-pram approach to any kind of obstacle made me wish I could stick him with the pointy end as soon as possible (or let him hang when given the chance), just like I could with its rest of its murderable cast. But you're stuck with this turd of a human for the long haul unfortunately, which put as much strain on my will to carry on as the game's obtuse stat systems.

Hans is one of the worst hangs I've had to endure in quite some time, and you better be ready to hear the word 'pizzle' more times than you care to count. | Image credit: Eurogamer/2K
It's not helped by cutscenes that verge on Kojima levels of indulgence in places, with several scenes feeling bloated and overwritten. I often felt myself reaching for my phone to help drive away the boredom in these moments, especially during the long stretches of horse-back riding where control is wrested away from you completely, leaving you to passively follow along for minutes at a time while fending off hailstones of exposition. Even fast travel stretches the meaning of the word, as you wait patiently for your little model of Henry to toddle across the criss-crossing roads of its impressionistic map before finally arriving at your destination - though you're just as likely be interrupted halfway through by an event of some kind (usually wolves or bandits lying in wait to clobber you rather than anything more inviting), making it feel more cumbersome than it needs to be.

While you can direct where your blows can land on your opponent, I never found it really had much bearing on whether fights ended in success or not. | Image credit: Eurogamer/2K
Thing is, these innocuous encounters aren't just extraneous time wasters. They're real and frustrating dangers, as just like the first Kingdom Come, this game is exceedingly stingy with its saves and checkpointing. You're just as likely to die to a random wolf in this game as you are in a full-blown army ambush, potentially undoing hours of painstaking work if you haven't slept in a while or are part-way through a mission quest. It's mean-spirited in the extreme, especially when the combat system remains one of the worst tools available to you to try and defend yourself with.

Like before, an easily worn-down stamina bar governs the limits of your physical abilities in any given fight, turning most scraps into slow, comical dances of swings and recuperating roundabouts. But many of the weapon choices here feel quite limp and lacking in heft a lot of time. Close-quarters fights are just about serviceable, despite its somewhat messy and undercooked directional system of being able to strike to either side, the head or the gut, but ranged combat feels utterly weightless. Bows and arrows flit through the air like out of breath pea shooters, and the new rifle-like hand pistols take such an age to reload (and explode in such obfuscating puffs of smoke when fired) that they're next to useless. All this is compounded by a stubborn lock-on that still doesn't want you to easily turn around to fend off multiple nipping fangs or incoming maces.

You spend a lot of time following people on horseback in Deliverance 2, and there's usually nothing to do but twiddle your thumbs until they're finished dumping bucket loads of exposition at you. | Image credit: Eurogamer/2K
Instead, I found myself relying on the old shield parry and riposte most of the time, as you would do well to master, too, given how much more prevalent fights are across almost all questline types (and if you're not having to fight someone, there's good change you're stealing something instead, or hauling some kind of sack (coal, human, animal or otherwise, they've got 'em all here). It's disappointing how often these three activities repeat themselves in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, especially when there's such a wealth of other pursuits to potentially draw from - smithing, hunting, alchemy and herb gathering to name just a few of them.

Charisma's in the eye of the beholder, I guess... | Image credit: Eurogamer/2K

Admittedly, there are still moments of levity to be found among the drudge work, such as the blind priest who tasked me with building pyramids of bones in a messy crypt, or thieving a maypole from a rival village to deepen a generations-long spat between them. A drunken game keeper insists you're his horse at one point, and a shift with jolly graveyard digger ends in him asking you to make some corpses of your own to facilitate a dodgy agreement he came to with his neighbours. It's still a little too eager to jump into more juvenile territory when women enter the picture, especially when Hans is around, but at least its romance buffs are a little more tastefully named this time round. Though thanks to its infuriating system of multiple menu panels in a single screen, you'd be hard pressed to even find them most of the time (and that's assuming you don't just give up in anguish). It shouldn't be this hard to move between important stat info and equipment menus, but somehow it is, and it's one of many, small frustrations in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 that can't help but wear you down over time.

There are many times I wish Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 was easier to like. Easier to get into, easier to enjoy, and easier to savour in the long-run - and that's before we get into the knotty briar patch of its director being a vocal supporter of a movement whose effects continue to cause real and tangible harm to the wider industry. But I also don't think it really cares about being liked, either. Which is fine, as I don't really much like it myself. There's a lot to admire here, sure, but you have to do so on its own terms. It is a hard and maddening slog at times, but one that still has its moments where it surprises and quietly delights. Like the original, this isn't an RPG designed to make you feel good - you continue to be little more than a passenger in this historical tapestry, following along behind the horse tails of Henry's betters, and clearing up the mess they leave behind. Some will revel in that work, but I for one won't be chomping at the bit for another sequel any time soon.

A copy of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 was provided for review by publisher Deep Silver.

 

[Infinitron]

90/100 https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/kingdom-come-deliverance-2-review/

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 review​

KCD2 is just as bizarre and ambitious as its inspirations. Thank god.​

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 might be the most specific RPG I've ever played. Everything from its location, to its era, to its combat, to its clothing feels hyper-tuned, dialled in with precision to suit oddball tastes.

Looking for a sweeping fantasy romp? You won't find one. Like its predecessor, this is a game whose story springs inevitably from the politics of its time and place: the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1403. Want to mow down your foes by the dozen? Good luck. Combat is a strange dance of positioning both your hands and feet relative to those of your enemies, and charging into the fray even in the late game is liable to get you cut apart. Want to equip a hauberk without first equipping a padded gambeson beneath it? What are you—some kind of moron?






Like I say, oddball tastes, but they happen to match mine exactly, and my only regret after 75 hours or so with KCD2 is that the demands of having to review the thing compelled me to sprint to its endpoint. I would happily have spent another 75 hours getting chivalrous in the Bohemian crownlands. This is a new RPG classic, an instant favourite for me, and a successor in tone and feel to the great mavericks of old—games like The Witcher 1 and 2—ragged edges and all.

Lads on chore​

KCD2 follows on directly from the first game. You're still Henry of Skalitz: blacksmith's son, noble bastard, orphaned when mercenaries attacked your town, and companion to Lord Hans Capon of Pirkstein. Bohemia is in the grip of war, torn between supporters of the abducted King Wenceslas of Bohemia and supporters of his abductor and brother, Sigismund.

Capon's lordly guardians are Wenceslas supporters, and have dispatched him, Henry, and a retinue of protectors to deliver a letter to Otto von Bergow, one of the foremost supporters of Sigismund, with an eye to putting an end to the whole internecine thing. It all goes really, really well and everyone gets to go home.






Oh no, wait, sorry, it all goes to hell pretty much immediately, and before long Henry and Hans are AWOL on a quest that sees them jumping through all the mad loopholes and imbrications of 15th-century Central European politics, hopping from faction to faction in a plot that gets tense and intriguing, particularly if you're the kind of dork who will get very excited by the presence of historical figures like Jan Zizka and Sigismund.

Their mission doesn't just take them through the haute monde of medieval Bohemia; it brings them into contact with the periphery of society, too. Jewish people, Roma, even a roaming Muslim scholar pop up to offer a glimpse into life outside the velvet confines of the imperial court, and while their tales aren't always masterful, they always feel well-meaning.

All in all, it's a period with great fodder for anyone who likes sinking their teeth into meaty political plots, and presents plenty of opportunities to chuck difficult choices and moral compromises at you, which the game does semi-regularly. But where the Euro-RPGs of yore (and, really, I'm thinking of CDPR here), delighted in visiting you with the consequences of your choices, it does sometimes feel like KCD2 pulls its punches on that front. A choice that might, for instance, seem to be about choosing which of your companions dies might resolve with a handwave: Actually, all the named characters are fine, but boy we had you there for a second, eh? It's a lack of sadism that shears some choices of weight.






But the politics are knotty and good fun, and really, the gold thread that ties the whole narrative together is the relationship between Henry and Capon. Henry's a plucky, likeable lad with a West Country accent you simply don't give to a videogame protagonist unless you are possessed of an almost religious vision, while plummy Lord Capon is realised incredibly well. It helps that, in contradistinction to most of the game's secondary cast—whose voice acting ranges from 'acceptable' to 'inexplicable'—they're both portrayed with plenty of range and emotion.

But also, Capon is so believably of his time and place, with all the obnoxiousness of a child raised from birth to think he's inherently better than the common rabble, but under the muck of aristocracy a genuinely decent lad. His development and the development of his relationship with Henry are very well done indeed.

Feudal systems​

It's the game's systemic ambitions that really elevate it, though. There are times when Warhorse's simulation of a medieval world approaches Stalker-levels of zeal. Stole something from someone's house without being spotted? All well and good, but if someone spied you hanging around there they'll still put two and two together and report you to the guards. I once got chased out of a fortress because I'd absent-mindedly equipped a stolen ring and walked past the schmuck I took it from.

It's that kind of world: A world of rules, a world that feels interested in itself for its own sake, and that feels to some extent like it happens independent of you, the player.

By the end of the game, when you're teeming with perks and fancy gear, you'll be a rambling Bohemian Cuisinart turning all your foes to shreds, but even this feels like a more earned and systems-driven process than it does in your average Skyrim-inspired RPG. You're not just inevitably climbing a levelling power curve, you're feeling out the edges of the game—what's possible, what's impossible, what's expected from you.






By the time you become a whirlwind of death it's partially down to all your skill points, sure, but it's also a product of you making sense of the game's angle-based combat system, its combos, knowing how to manoeuvre and approach foes, and what the deficiencies of the AI are that let you chalk up a few stealth or ranged kills before the fight kicks off properly.

But even better, it's a world that's happy to let you cheat your way to the top. It obeys its own rules to your detriment and your advantage. Seen an impossibly expensive set of armour in a shop? KCD2 will let you break in after dark and pull it right out of the storekeep's stockroom (just don't wear it in front of him). Want to take advantage of every skill-trainer on the map to buff up your skills way ahead of the endgame? The money you pay for their training goes right into their eminently pickpocketable inventory. It's a game that usually answers the question 'Wait, couldn't I just…?' with a resounding 'Yes, absolutely.'

And then, if you're like me, you spend about five hours robbing a single castle of all its incredibly valuable loot, armour, weapons, and clothing. It has no problem letting you feel like you've gotten one over on it. In other words, it reminded me of Morrowind, the highest compliment I can give a videogame.






Not that you have to become a criminal, of course. You're just as likely to stumble across a skirmish—or its aftermath—in the road as you are to see an enticingly robbable armourer. No one will object to you yanking off a dead man's boots, giving you easy access to what would, in another videogame, be much higher-level gear, and all because you happened to be in the right place at the right time.

It's all a continuation of the philosophy of the first game, of course, but where I remember hearing horror stories of bugs and technical weirdness on KCD1's launch, the second game has been pretty bug-free in my playing. My performance has been good, I've not run into crashes, and all its ambitious systems seem truly to work, discounting a few oddities and, well, a frankly huge number of typos in the game's subtitles and menus, which I hope get patched promptly.

Gloria mundi​

Bohemia, it turns out, is large. KCD2 features two alarmingly sizable maps stuffed to high heaven with things to do. It's the kind of pitch that could easily get tedious, like clearing all The Witcher 3's question marks—but so long as you approach them without a fanatically completionist fervour are just a big grab-bag of things to do: activities and distractions that root you in the world and act as yet more means to give yourself an advantage.

There's hunting, bandit camps, graves to dig up, side quests to trigger, all the things you expect, along with blacksmithing, alchemy, dice (all the best games have dice), treasure maps, and who-knows-what else. So far as I can tell, medieval Czechia is one big freshers' fair full of exciting new hobbies to take up, and getting good at any of them hands you new skill and perk points (plus new weapons and potions, from blacksmithing and alchemy) to use in your daily pursuit of slaughtering your enemies.






They're also, naturally, intensely involved. No Fable-2-style blacksmithing rhythm game here; you'll heat your metal, hammer it into shape, quench it when it's done and you'll like it. Alchemy is even more absurdly elaborate, which is something I admire conceptually but which doesn't quite work in practice. I never really figured it out, and every potion-brewing sesh ended with Henry muttering about how I'd screwed it up, though you still get a slightly worse potion for your trouble.

But the point is that, even over its ample runtime, KCD2 manages to maintain a sense of momentum and unfurling between all its stuff to do and the zigs and zags of its plot. You're a soldier, now a spy, now a gambler, now a blacksmith. The arc of its medieval life simulator is long and varied. About 50 hours in, the game suddenly sprung a whole Thieves' Guild questline on me to finally make use of those stealth skills I'd been underusing for the rest of my playthrough.

Signed, sealed, delivered​

KCD2 feels a bit miraculous: a ludicrously ambitious and peculiar thing that somehow fulfills its ambition and peculiarity, managing to hit the highs Warhorse aimed for in the first game but perhaps fell just short of.

It feels tailor-made for a certain brand of systems-loving sicko—the kind of person who still gets starry-eyed about Stalker and Morrowind—and manages to actually make good on their (or at least my) nostalgic yearning for those halcyon games of old.

The Verdict
90

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is a big, bold, unutterably weird thing, and it's a new RPG classic.

 

[Yuggoth]

The most kosher game of 2025 is upon us Vavrasisters.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/kingdom-come-deliverance-2-review-a-bastard-for-all-seasons

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 review: a bastard for all seasons​

Bromancing the throne
Image credit: Deep Silver / Rock Paper Shotgun

After several hours of battles, sieges, imprisonment and torture in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, a groggy Henry of Skalitz is woken by a servant girl in a castle outside Kuttenberg. She greets him like a nobleman. I have Henry push back. He's a blacksmith's son. He might have some blue blood care of his biological father, but he grew up in the soot and clamour of the forge. The girl nervously insists, however: Henry must be from the upper crust, or he wouldn't have been welcomed and feasted by the lord of the estate. He wouldn't be lying in his very own chamber with its very own hole for shitting in - and in any case, it's more than her job's worth to treat him otherwise. In a timid, not quite spiteful show of reverse class policing, she refuses to end the dialogue until she's dismissed in a manner befitting her station.

It's a passing exchange that captures KCD2 at its most interesting. The game is classless in the RPG sense, yet classbound as a piece of historical fiction. It's a fantasy of unbridled agency where you can go anywhere and level yourself up into anything, and a game in which you are continually being asked to know your place - at least, until the bloviating plot decides it for you.

Image credit: Deep Silver / Rock Paper Shotgun
The game inherits much of the morality, reputation and social systems of genre fantasies, like the Elder Scrolls games, but Henry's undecided class origins characterise KCD2 at every level. Whether you are holding forth at a banquet or interrogating a swineherd in the woods, standing at the head of an army or rotting in a cell, there's always the opportunity to go up or down a rung on the ladder. It's all in how and when you speak, how you dress, how you fight, what kind of horse you rode in on, whether you are noticeably injured, how you smell. If you're armed with a longsword, people might comment that you're putting on airs and graces; equip yourself with a pike, and you're positioning yourself as rank-and-file. Dress in silk after a visit to the baths, and you'll get to hob with the nobs; the serfs, however, may resent you, and you'll be making yourself a plum target for bandits as you explore the game's opulently mucky 15th century geography.

The execution of all this can be startlingly subtle for a game that often leans heavily into romance cliches about warring, wenching and wastrelling. I suffered a reputation cut at one point after glamming myself up to escort a courtesan to a wedding because, to be frank, I made her look plain; her flattering response carried a note of derision. The game's many tradespeople and artisans are especially sensitive to both incompetence and drive-by bullshit artistry, which can be a problem when you're haggling over the price of a cape. Fail a conversational skill check and they'll think you're a poser; ask an unnecessary question and they'll think you're a fool.

While it takes a while to layer up negativity to the point that it seriously inconveniences you, there's a wonderful prickliness to Deliverance 2's reputation system, which shapes reactions within individual settlements and communities. As with Telltale's open-ended "X will remember that" notifications, the HUD's bluntness (smiley faces when you've impressed somebody, frowny faces when you haven't) proves a strength. Rather than abstracting the process, it leaves you to figure out what, exactly, has earned somebody's respect or disgust by digging into the detail of the ample writing and characterful - if often hammy - voice performances.

At the heart of KCD2's class angst is Henry's brotherly yet awkward relationship with Sir Hans Capon, who is both his partying buddy and class superior. As in the previous Kingdom Come, Hans is a spoilt young fop who pines to be taken seriously, yet is incapable of acting the part. He needs you to step in when he talks or drinks or shags himself into difficulties, but if you do that you're also overstepping your bounds as manservant. Hans will forgive such impertinence up to a point that is never clearly indicated, and that ambiguity keeps their conversations engrossing - more engrossing than they should be, given that Hans himself is pretty boring. You need to know when to speak as protagonist, and when to play the NPC whose dialogue is all function and obsequy.

Image credit: Deep Silver / Rock Paper Shotgun
These questions of class sharpen when they form part of a quest intrigue. At one point, you and Hans visit a distant stronghold so that Hans can deliver a request for troops. While Hans haggles with the local lord, the latter's lieutenant takes you aside and, over cups and dice, smilingly presses you about Hans's agenda, because after all, us commoners have to stick together. I had Henry go along with this up to a point. Then, I smilingly turned the tables on the other guy: gosh, don't your chief have a lot of horses! More horses than men, from the looks of things. Where did he come by them? I greatly enjoyed the delicate line the game challenged me to walk here between my conflicting allegiances.

In general, Deliverance 2's quests are all about navigating the competing perspectives of nicely fleshed-out individuals. They are there to express the game's society, rather than send you out into the boondocks to pluck herbs or harvest respawning lowlives (though such quest-givers do exist, populating otherwise handy roadside campsites). Most involve trips back and forth between communities, each of which has ideas about the other, and often grant insights you can apply elsewhere. They pull you back through the workings of the setting like a shuttle through a loom, adding to the systemic ambience cultivated by NPCs with day-night routines, myriad trades such as tanning and smithing, and bits of virtuoso set dressing such as maids carrying laundry to the pond. Rather than fraying under your agency, this medieval tapestry is richer for your participation.

Your forays are checked by the game's touches of survival simulation - fatigue, hunger, equipment wear-and-tear. I don't think the survivally bits are a total success. The deterioration of clothing and armour feels very videogamey, with shoes evaporating in a matter of days, though the in-world presentation of dents on helmets and faded sleeves is convincing. The game's representation of saving the game once again walks the line between whimsy and frustration: you'll need to find, buy or brew Saviour's Schnapps to save without quitting. Drinking schnapps also gets you drunk, so you won't want to knock back a flask every 10 minutes, and it's easy to forget that saving is an in-game item when the game checkpoints itself anyway after more significant quests.

Combine that idiosyncracy with some review build crash bugs and - as in my case - it might cost you a couple hours of progress. Still, practicalities like these impose broad rhythms that, again, add to the feeling of participation. They hamper you just enough to kindle everyday pleasures like the relief of finding a safe place to sleep after a hard day's travel, without weighing on your mind from moment to moment.

Together with the absence of more generic plundering quests, the pressure to keep yourself clothed, fed and well-equipped also helps you understand the value others place on money and property. A new sword in Skyrim is a non-event: throw it on the pile, delete when you become unable to sprint. A new sword in KCD2 is a big deal, at least to begin with. While there's the option to amass a fortune through thievery, it's relatively difficult in KCD2 to just moider the mooks and/or take their stuff. Even the no-name bad 'uns come from somewhere, and if you slaughter or abuse them, the world will react, directly or indirectly. Filch somebody's belongings and, assuming you get away with selling or wearing stolen goods in the face of inspections and so on, the locals will become mistrustful. The guard presence will thicken.

Image credit: Deep Silver / Rock Paper Shotgun
KCD2's combat also has its simulation elements, offering a spread of ostentatiously authenticky weapon, armour, and attack types, together with a limb damage system and various buffs and debuffs. You can feel and hear the complexities: it's all in the clatter of a sword from plate armour, versus the reassuring crunch of a mace. But at heart, it's an approachable question of blocking and countering when you see the associated icons, mixed up with a generous pinch of good luck and knowing when to flee. It feels pleasantly raw and breathless: foes react in stagy but entertaining ways, yelling things like "fuck, I'm [/lookup debuff table]" when they're hurting. There are passive perks, combos and souped-up "master strikes" to reward technical players, but these are flourishes: the key thing is managing your stamina, being mindful of your blind spots, and not overcommitting.

I am not a technically minded player. My Henry fares best in a pitched battle that gives him the luxury of circling behind people fighting other people. He isn't some bastion of chivalry, just a guy trying to survive in a world of braying, duplicitous aristocrats. Or at least, that's how I've tried to play him. KCD2's great weakness is simply that the core hero story and RPG progression curve slowly take priority over the game's more flexible, ambiguous conception of a bastard making sense of a society that can't quite make sense of him. After a few main quests - say, 30 hours of play - your Henry should be relatively established with several sets of clothes for combat, daily wear and socialising, some decent weapons and plenty of cash, crafting materials and trinkets. From that point on, there's less need to negotiate with the world to make headway.

The game's unobtrusive, and perhaps overly generous approach to character progression also gradually smears away any RPG playstyle you might cleave to at first. Your stats improve passively when you perform a relevant action: overload yourself (an inevitability, because this is an RPG) and your strength stat will go up; talk to people and you'll get better at talking to people; spend a lot of time in the woods and you'll get better at poaching. Combine this with major quests that daisy-chain together a bunch of activities - sneak in here, talk to that guy, make some horseshoes, brew a potion, etcetera - and you'll grow steadily more capable across the board.

All of which slightly sabotages one of KCD2's other strengths: it makes failure worthwhile. The biggest compliment I can pay the writers and designers is that I hardly ever save-scummed to obtain a rosier outcome. While a few failures trigger a "game over", many produce scenarios as winding and gratifying as any victory, and in any case, living life in Henry's shoes has taught me to take the rain with the shine. In particular, I never wanted to simply overpower people the way blockbuster games teach you to, and Deliverance 2 met me halfway, initially, by having characters dunk on me when I tried to act the tough guy, or applaud me for being a good sport when I got my arse kicked. But after a series of mandatory plot skirmishes, my Henry has become a proficient and well-appointed combatant, because that is what KCD2 fundamentally requires him to be. It's as though the game had assumed the role of that servant girl from my intro: it won't let me get on with my day unless I consent to my own greatness.

Image credit: Deep Silver / Rock Paper Shotgun
The more capable Henry is, the more tedious his yarn becomes. At heart, it's a simple journey to avenge the murder of his father - a motivation that unfolds in familiar ways, with familiar morales and punchlines of the hate-leads-to-suffering and we're-not-so-different variety. It goes hand in hand with loads of setpiece battles and dynastic jostling, which is bingeable enough until you realise that you can't picture what the key personalities do when they aren't yelling variations of "FRESH HORSES!" This is a plot-first, character-second affair. There are some brilliant individual chapters: a quest to prevent an execution by finding your way to a dying person at the top of a well-defended tower, for example, where you use everything you've learned to bypass dozens of NPCs. Sometimes, the game also shakes things up with a double-cross that performs a Metroid reset, restoring Henry's need to haggle with the detail of the world. But a lot of the time, the plot just feels like pageantry.

Inevitably, there is an enormous blank at the centre of my analysis of Deliverance 2 - I know absolutely eff-all about 15th century Bohemia. As such, I also can't really comment on what this fable says about the present-day Czech Republic - whether it serves a purpose akin to, say, The Crown in British TV. But I can say that KCD2 is a more sensitive, curious and irresolute portrayal than you might guess from either the previous game or from the self-defeating gator-baiting of Warhorse's co-founder Daniel Vavra. Its society is diverse: during his adventures, Henry gets to pick the brains of a Jewish merchant, speak to a Black noble from Mali, and run errands for a community of Roma travellers. The game portrays bigotry and gives you the opportunity to question it or go along with it. The writing also appears to respond to some of the criticisms levelled at the original Deliverance: there's an early quest devoted to humanising, if not necessarily redeeming, the Cumans who were once depicted as faceless outsiders.

Still, it's not above a bit of elementary Othering. There's a tour-guide feel to how ready people from different cultures are to unpack their traditions for Henry - a willingness to be added to the codex that is perhaps less a feature of Kingdom Come and more the expectation of encyclopaedic transparency attendant on open world RPGs. And yes, it's still pretty boorish in its portrayal of women. KCD2 has a lot of female characters, many of whom are substantial in terms of both quantity of dialogue and (sub)plot agency, but as a chivalric fable dominated by scenes of macho posturing and bromance, it can only permit itself so much interest in what women do when they're not being gazed at or mistreated by men. The female cast consists heavily of nags, healers, comely maids, femme fatales, damsels and harlots. If these portrayals draw upon accounts of women's lives during the period, they are also living stereotypes couched in modern-day English. It feels like the writers have both the will and the chops to get beyond them - my introductory anecdote about the servant girl is one example - but doing that also goes against the spirit of the game.

I don't think Kingdom Come will ever not be a boy's day out, not while Henry is involved. But after 50 hours, I do feel like it could develop further as a study of feudal class mobility. Confronted with abundance, I'd have liked Henry to get a little spoilt. Or at least, develop preferences or foibles that inconvenience me as the pressures of subsistence fall away. I'm always making him eat cooked cabbage because cabbage is convenient, but perhaps he really hates the stuff. Perhaps it gives him gas. Perhaps hanging around Hans for too long has robbed him of his tolerance for the bare necessities. Likewise, I'm always making him wear yellow hose because I think it brings out his complexion, but perhaps he thinks it makes him look like a giant ornamental banana.

Image credit: Deep Silver / Rock Paper Shotgun
I can't comment in any depth on Deliverance 2's portrayal of Bohemia, but I can conclude by talking a little about what the game shares with other historical fantasies. In particular, it frequently reminded me of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall novels, a sympathetic, mythologising account of the rise and fall of the English minister Thomas Cromwell. Like Warhorse's Henry, Mantel's Cromwell is a blacksmith's boy, though not a noble's bastard. Like Henry, he must dance around the whims of people of higher birth. Like Henry, his value ultimately is that he is man for all seasons, able to turn his hand to anything after a lifetime spent dragging himself from the gutter by any means necessary: soldier, bureaucrat, labourer, merchant, scholar, scribe, marriage-maker, weaver, butcher.

The difference is that when Mantel's story begins, Cromwell has already levelled up all the associated skilltrees and entered the postgame. Far from being a charming show of tenacity and pluck - the kind of thing that gets you called a "good man" by your betters - his supreme competence makes him both awe-inspiring and sinister, while setting the scene for his undoing. There is, in fact, a closer parallel to Cromwell in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, an older man with a gift for the gab who you'll fleetingly control while pursuing the main quest. Perhaps that's who Henry needs to become in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 3.