Kingdom Come: Deliverance review

    KINGDOM COME: DELIVERANCE was released in 2018 to mostly positive reviews but quite a few complaints. The result of an indie developer and Kickstarter money, it was initially riddled with bugs but a labor of love. Much to the surprise of the community used to developers abandoning their games after release, Warfare (the company) continued updating the game with hefty DLC as well as patches. The Royal Edition was followed by a massive graphics upgrade to modern consoles just this year and it is now on par graphically with the recently released Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. 

    Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a alt-historical story that contains a few mild traces of low fantasy set during the war between King Wenceslas IV of Bohemia and King Sigismund of Hungary in 1403. As they're a Czech developer, this is important national history for them but for a majority of players used to only English or French history, it is a fairly new period. Fans of low fantasy will love this feeling as the Game of Thrones feel is strong and the real-life historical figures are every bit as messy as the best grimdark fiction.

    The premise is that you are Henry, a blacksmith's son in the city of Skalitz (technically Silver Skalitz, which is a bit weird to leave off). Skalitz is treated as a small village, though, and it doesn't take someone familiar with most fantasy to know that their home life is doomed. King Sigismund's forces sack the city as they did in real life and Henry is left to seek refugee in the nearby city of Talmberg. From there, he attempts to go back to Skalitz to bury his loved ones only to get mugged and lose his father's sword.

    Yes, that is the plot of the game, losing your father's sword and recovering it. The game benefits strongly from keeping the stakes far more modest than in other games. Henry saves a noble's son? He gets a horse. If you manage to do fantastic service to the kingdom, then you can potentially become an adult squire to a nobleman with no real expectation of being knighted. This is, to Henry, fantastic social mobility. Certainly, much better than being a blacksmith but you're an enlisted man versus an officer and work for a living. You even start the game as illiterate and have to pay to be taught to read.

    Kingdom Come: Deliverance's early gameplay is punishing as hell and that hasn't been changed by the updates. Henry has no knowledge of combat at the start and if he starts a fight with the town drunk in the starting area, he's liable to get his ass kicked. You have to train and master the controls both in order to survive Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Indeed, the realism is helped by the fact that facing down multiple opponents is suicide until you've managed to get yourself some decent armor. Even then, you can find yourself taken down by not managing yourself against opponents from behind.

    Much has been touted about the game's realism with Henry needing to eat, sleep, and clean himself regularly. If you neglect the above or don't manage the numbers carefully by overeating, you end up getting status debuffs. The save system is also punishing with the fact that you need special potions to save or a safe place to sleep. The latter was so unpopular that they implemented an automatic saving system that happens when you quit the game. Even then, the current system sucks and is one major area of complaint versus if they'd just included an unlimited save system.

    Kingdom Come: Deliverance's gameplay is a lot like Skyrim with no magic, a much better dueling system so that button mashing is not your friend, and a very slow fast travel system. You have to do the things you want to master and while my Henry ended up a Renassiance Man with knowledge of alchemy, healing, swordsmanship, thievery, speech, and horseriding, he also worked like hell for all of these. He was also a crappy archer no matter how hard I tried to master it. The game caused me to almost quit several times during the early period with how hard lockpicking and stealth were but then they suddenly weren't. It's an addictive gameplay loop and I ended up putting something like a hundred hours in just the main game.

    The DLC for the game is fantastic with my favorite being "A Woman's Lot" where you play Henry's childhood friend and possible love interest, Theresa. That is also hard but nicely switches gameplay as while Henry is capable of fighting at later levels, Theresa must stealth her way through the sacking of their village. I also am fond of "From the Ashes" where Henry is given yet another gag promotion in the prestigious position of bailif--of a town that's already been burned to the ground. He must now shell out all of his money from adventuring to get the place running and spending the equivalent of Richard Branson money in Medieval terms.

    I really like Kingdom Come: Deliverance and think it is something that everyone should play before they pick up Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. The story is great, the worldbuilding impressive, and the adventures are all entertaining. There's some flaws in the gameplay and I wish there had been slightly punishing early options. Even so I came to love all the characters and learned a huge amount about the 14th century Holy Roman Empire. 

9/10