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Tags: Kingdom Come: Deliverance II; Warhorse Studios
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II was possibly the Codex's most anticipated title of 2025, but then The Leak happened. What followed was a 200 page feeding frenzy that required the forum to be reorganized in order to properly contain it. Compared to that, the game's actual release nearly two months ago was almost a low key event. The game was a commercial success of course, and most of our users who actually played it don't seem to have hated the experience. But focusing on whether Kingdom Come 2 is fun enough to compensate for being "woke" obscures some important questions: Is it a well-designed title? Is it an improvement over the first game? Our reviewer, the indispensable lukaszek, seems to have approached the game with those questions in mind. His answer, in short, is "not really". While packed with all sorts of features and activities, Kingdom Come 2 is ultimately an unchallenging mass market action RPG, with a railroaded story that doesn't really work despite a massive amount of cinematics. He does seem to have had a blast trying to exploit its systems, though. Here's an excerpt:
Read the full article: RPG Codex Review: Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II was possibly the Codex's most anticipated title of 2025, but then The Leak happened. What followed was a 200 page feeding frenzy that required the forum to be reorganized in order to properly contain it. Compared to that, the game's actual release nearly two months ago was almost a low key event. The game was a commercial success of course, and most of our users who actually played it don't seem to have hated the experience. But focusing on whether Kingdom Come 2 is fun enough to compensate for being "woke" obscures some important questions: Is it a well-designed title? Is it an improvement over the first game? Our reviewer, the indispensable lukaszek, seems to have approached the game with those questions in mind. His answer, in short, is "not really". While packed with all sorts of features and activities, Kingdom Come 2 is ultimately an unchallenging mass market action RPG, with a railroaded story that doesn't really work despite a massive amount of cinematics. He does seem to have had a blast trying to exploit its systems, though. Here's an excerpt:
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.
[...] 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.
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.
[...] 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.
Read the full article: RPG Codex Review: Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
