Everything I've seen leads me to believe the studio had different priorities and there's an underlying distaste for KC:D1 built into the sequel.
Everything you've seen is wrong then. Gameplay wise this is an across the board upgrade in every conceivable way. And whatever woke elements they snuck in, are so minor as to be nonexistent 20 hours into my playthrough. All I'm getting are complex quests with numerous skill checks and varied outcomes, events that transpire without treating you as the center of the theme park, and fun exploration. The only culture-wars related things I've encountered so far was gypsy bashing and a subtle anti-tranny joke.
And while there's no denying that Musa and turning Hans and Henry gay is beyond retarded, the only reason it's getting so much heat is because the devs consider russians to be subhuman and refuse to sell to them. So now every vatnik sees it as his duty to project his immense butthurt about this into the world. Which is exactly what you're seeing. Don't believe their lies and play it yourself, make your own conclusions.
But why do vatniks so desperately want Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, when they have KCD at home?
I so much wish this game was finished and good.
It's only more interesting that it's Russian, but the project has been very badly managed.
I've gathered some impressions of KCD2 after 20 hours of no-minmax, no-rush, no-grind roleplaying, following what I thought was a rational path, as would be seen by the character.
This amount of time has been enough to get Henry nearly all the way back to the level at which he starts the game. So any claims you have to grind to get back your powers are overblown, in my experience.
Overall, I don't think it's true that "the game is twice as big", as reviews, and at various points Sir Toby, have claimed. The first map has fewer settlements than in KCD1. However, what's there is definitely more detailed, and random NPCs often have more characterization work put into them.
I have intentionally refrained from picking up all quests I find, to avoid getting overleveled and to keep some interesting stuff for future playthroughs. Also, since the game autosaves on quest start, objective completion, and quest end, it pays to take quests strategically and complete them one by one, not as a laundry list.
The game mentions this in a tutorial, but I can also confirm it's not a good idea to exhaust all conversation options all the time. Some of them lead to loss of reputation, and you should be mindful of how what you say will be interpreted by the other party. In general, I think it's a very silly "pro gamer" fashion this striving to experience all of "the content" in an RPG, and then getting mad at the developer that your guy has things happening to him which don't fit the character, when it was you who opted into certain branches.
Stealth doesn't seem changed much, though I made use of the pebble-throwing feature when I had to sneak into the livestock shelter for the "Mice" quest. I'm also happy to see that takedowns and stabs are not guaranteed to work anymore. In A Woman's Lot, my Theresa reached a body count of 10 people, mostly knifed. And all of this on the same night, not even Rambo did this in "First Blood"
Same as KCD1, you still have to take into account the peculiarities of the open world game. For example I was admitted into the Semine lord's house, but the guards made me wait until the morning to talk to him, and even though he was still walking around I wasn't getting a "Talk" interaction until asking the guard on the next morning. Similarly, while the stable master in Semine is walking to the location where he leans during the day, you can talk to him, but you can't trade until he reaches the right spot, or area.
One really cool story I had was when I had to choose between killing the Hermit or siding with him against the knights who were after him. I was kind of underskilled and undrequipped for the fight with them, and I hadn't even passed the Tomcat sword training quest. But I didn't want to kill the Hermit. The way I finally did it was by opening with an crossbow shot at one of the knights. This made two of them go for me, while the third one went towards the Hermit, as the Hermit himself came rushing to fight them. Due to game scripting I guess.
I ran past the two knights and into the Hermit's courtyard, through a narrow place between two rocks. They tried to follow me, and one of them pulled his own crossbow just as he had passed through the tight spot. I took advantage of him being with the crossbow and rushed him with my feeble hunting sword, managing to get a couple of hits in before he switched back to his melee weapon. It was lucky I had a shield to go with that sword too.
By that time the Hermit had killed one of the knights, whose body I later found had fallen down the hill that's just before the narrow space. At some point the other knight had also been killed. I never saw what happened, and if the Hermit had killed both of them, or they had fallen down the hill somehow. Anyway, together with the Hermit we sandwitched the third knight in the narrow space between the rocks and made short work of him. While I was hacking at him from the front and from a slightly elevated ground, the Hermit was with a two handed sword behind him, so he didn't stand a chance.
The eyebrow-raising stuff
If I switch on the ideological police mindset, there are some grating moments I've encountered. The first few were regarding the "movie script" by which the game's intro is guided. First off, the script puts characters in needlessly hopeless positions from which in order to escape, they have to break with realism and plausability. In a real world situation, Henry and Hans would have been killed, and Katherine would most definitely have been raped and killed. The idea that a woman will punch a grown strong man in this situation and would be given a pass is highly dubious.
Bozhena seemed so little surprised about wounded strange men entering her house in the middle of the night that you'd think this happens to her on a daily basis. Come to think of it, the innkeeper of Troskowitz, Betty, was more disturbed by the men brawling, than Bozhena was of Hans and Henry's arrival. While Henry and Hans behave like morons, they are consistently guided and aided by women - Bozhena, Katherine, Betty, and after being released from the pillory - Bara, a beggar girl who looks as clean, fed and pretty as any regular Troskowitz resident. You can't convince me all of these are coincidences.
Hans' comportment at the inn and in general is really stretched so as to make him look stupid and infantile, as has been mentioned in this thread, I think by Alienmann. However spoiled he was, he is not behaving realistically as a character, in my book. He has just had a near death experience, you would think he would be able to read the situation better than cause a bar fight in an unknown village the very next day. He is either an idiot character, or his role is very poorly written in order to direct the plot where Vavra wants it.
I find the whole premise "nobody knows you or believes you are nobility" rather dubious as well. If not Henry, at least Hans would have had something on his person - a ring, a cross - that would identify him as someone of stature. Even if not, Vavra seems to forget that both of those characters are literate, easily proving they are not just some vagrants. The bailiff of Troskowitz is experienced enough to hear out their story and organize an expedition to the place of the battle, to confirm if everything is true. That is if we go with the version that the bailiff cannot take Katherine's account, which he likely can.
I'll continue later with the Cumans, whom I also encountered and got them to leave peacefully. Lots of make-believe stuff there as well.
