Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a game for patient people. You start as a son of a blacksmith, a skill-less nobody as far as the game world is concerned - the game revolves around developing and shaping that character. It may sound like an alluring concept to some, including myself, but I thought the design of its early game has much room for improvement. You're "meant to" train your skills, and much of it sadly translates to what felt like an unsatisfying chore requiring a significant time investment. The satisfaction I found was later on, mid-game, and was drawn from the perspective on how far I came. The early phase is not something I was very fond of, especially when attempting the disastrous lockpicking minigame (which seamlessly jumps from impossibly frustrating to easy at a certain skill level), or even more significant aspects like combat.

It's also a very immersive game. It takes place in the medieval Bohemia during a conflict between King Wenceslaus and his half-brother Sigismund. It attempts to replicate real-life locations, what they could've looked like at the time, and what the life of their inhabitants might've been like. It is a damn convincing vision and what makes the game really stand out among other games in the genre. From charcoal-burning sites, through farms, to towns - they all feel like living and breathing virtual medieval places. The optional Czech voice over is a cherry on the top and I encourage turning it on (the English voice actors aren't particularly good anyway).

The main storyline was pretty good, with some memorable quests (the Neuhof investigation, Pribyslavitz attack, infiltrating the monastery), requiring choices in the spirit of western RPG tradition, and had decent writing - that is until the last act (anything post-Vranik). It took a nosedive from there, the big plot twist and the last missions felt rushed, most of them were just linear action sequences without much (any?) choice. Even the combat there was trivial in comparison to some of the earlier moments in the game, the weight wasn't lying as much on the player's shoulders. I also had a small Hans Capon DLC installed, which triggered at the very end of the game and locked me out of finishing it until its quests are done - they were fetch quests, mind you, to add to that uninstalling the DLC didn't let me load the save, so I had to go through with them... The ending was disappointing too and clearly leading onto the sequel.

The game also has multiple side quests and smaller activities logged separately in the journal - the latter are often uninteresting fetch quests, but the quality of the bigger side quests was generally good. That is if I could complete them without any bugs. These are often not trivial, funny bugs to do with physics, but frustrating timewasters. There were a handful quests I just couldn't finish - e.g. "The King's Silver" which is notoriously buggy, "Next to Godliness" which I couldn't advance because of a character scripting bug, or "Playing with the Devil" which similarly didn't have an event triggered. On top of that it has an annoying save system requiring you to brew potions to save the game (the only other option is to save at an automatic checkpoint or quit) and you're in for a frustrating ride without quick loading to try and go around a bug.

The melee combat system is another unique aspect of the game. It is very weighty, direction-based, and besides you just getting used to it it requires a lot of literal practice because of the character development system - you'll spend a significant portion of your time on a combat training arena. I did get a hang of it after a while, but it borders on unplayable when fighting multiple enemies, which can happen in quests or even randomly when using fast travel. It was very clearly designed around one-to-one encounters, which can be satisfying, although can be abused with counters.

The medieval times were full of hardships. From religious zealots to disease to petty rulers to town mishappenings, there were all sorts of problems. This game does an excellent job of immersing you in this time period. You encounter basically everything you could think someone in a medieval fairytale might encounter. However, you definitely don't start as a prince in a fairytale. You start as Henry. Henry is a young, stupid, arrogant, and loyal young adult who wants to see the world, fuck women, and become something great. He is a blacksmith's son with many hopes and dreams. While he is a set character with a set storyline, you can be the Henry you want to be. You can be a mean brute, or you can be a hero who won't kill. There's plenty of routes you can go. The systems in place are immaculate. The fighting mechanics are some of the most frustratingly refreshing systems ever. While it can be hard, once you get the hang of it, there's lots of fun in it. The many different skills, including reading and drinking, allow for a very unique playthrough each time. Maybe you want to be the local drunk or the most educated man in every building. Then there's the storyline. It's fantastic. It's riveting. It's dark and it's beautiful. You go from nothing to something, but it isn't an easy journey by any means. The side quests for the most part is captivating and not just a bunch of repetitive fetch quests. I can't recommend this game enough to RPG fans, medieval fans, and overall videogame fans. It's a game full of accurate historical knowledge and will leave you feeling fully immersed. I might say that this is the most believable game I've ever played.

It's very hard to rate this game. It has many strong sides - the world, characters, medieval feeling, but it also has many problems, some of them are minor, but some are almost unforgivable. But all in all, I liked Kingdom Come, but this game could be so much better.

Calling this game "realistic" would be a stretch, but it definitely has the medieval feeling I mentioned before, while playing you feel like you are a part of this world with all its hardships and challenges. Of course many things had to be sacrificed for gameplay's sake, but I think it is a close to reality as it could, while still being fun.

I also like the scale of this story. It is happening in a relatively small area with few towns and villages and most of it is also rather small scale, although it gets bigger with time. Of course our hero gets more tasks than he should in normal circumstances, but, again, this is understandable and somehow explained by the story.

I like the fact that the game allows player to solve problems with different approaches. It is being helped by the fact that the games has many systems implemented like alchemy, hunting and so on. That gives the player much freedom which is appreciated. But unfortunately some of them seem unfinished or not well thought out. For example fighting system has many different combos, but in fact, you can win almost every fight with counters. The fights with more than one enemies can be really difficult on the other hand, unless you use a bow, which makes them trivial.

The game was released few years ago, but still there is plenty of bugs. Some of them are just funny, some annoying, but one time I was killed by...opening journal. Also, although exploring world is fun, this is not a typical open world game. It really concentrates on telling the story. Which is not bad by itself, but sometimes player can feel discouraged from doing sidequests, because it's hard to justify not following the main plot. Another think I find irritating is save system. Generally you can save the game in three ways - by buying drink called Saviour Schnapps, by saving while exiting the game, there are also auto-saves. I don't think developers should restrict players in this way, especially when their games crash sometimes.

This game is worth playing, but it sometimes can be frustrating, annoying even. Still, there is nothing like this in the market. I would like to see a continuation of Henry's story some day.

Unfortunately, in recent years Bethesda has really gone down the shitter. One lazy game after the other, one retread of the same formula after the other-- Bethesda's formula is the only thing keeping players around. Thankfully, Kingdom Come offers a really unique take on the formula -- one that easily outdoes anything Bethesda has done since Skyrim and in many ways outdoing Skyrim as well.

It'd be difficult to talk about this game without talking about what makes it so uniquel; it's a historically accurate medieval RPG, set in the Kingdom of Bohemia, an Imperial state of the Holy Roman Empire. You follow the story of Henry, who is a common young man and son of a blacksmith. War breaks out across the country, and Henry finds himself in a struggle to survive and caught in the conflict.

Part of what makes this game so great is the world's details. As a good open world game should have, there are countless quests, things to collect and upgrade, and a lot of gameplay choices. You can be a knight, donned in armor from head to toe, committing good deeds and gaining a positive reputation, or you can be a sneaky thief, avoiding combat altogether when possible, living in the shadows and stealing to make a living.

The game is not without flaws however. Upon release, the game did have some open world jank, things like the glitches you would expect to see in Skyrim and other first-person open world games. Some of them were game breaking as well, and if you completed quests in a specific order, you could have prevented further progression of the main plot. Since release though, the game has been patched countless times and the game is in a very very good state. The combat on horseback can also feel clumsy at times, and the introduction takes too long for my liking.

Despite these flaws, throughout my playthrough (which I have admittedly not finished yet) I am constantly surprised by this game. There is so much heart, detail, and rewarding gameplay to experience in Kingdom Come. It's a game I can recommend to anyone who's a fan of Western RPGs, and easily one of the best games I played this year.