Boy, is this post a long time coming. I think I’ve played enough of this game to give it a review, even though I haven’t played through the main quest fully. In fact, I’m only really halfway through. However I am 63 hours in, my SSD drive is crying for space and I know enough about the game to know where I stand with this.

This might just be my favourite game of 2018.

This game was played on my ZOOSTORM laptop: GTX950M 2GB, 8gb Ram and Intel (R) Core i5-4210M 2.6 Ghz.

Brief Overview

What an experience it is so far. Now, I’m fully aware of the games problems with bugs and glitches. For many, it’s still broken, and I thank the deepest tentacles of Lovecraft Cthulhu that I don’t have this on console. I started playing Kingdom Come Deliverance in April, and I’ve avoided most of the botched bugs and crashes that others have suffered.

Now, I’ve had some problems. Some texture pop-in, a few visual bugs like NPCs merging like some weird Chimera experiment and some little things like that but nothing gamebreaking. I’ve had a couple of scene crashes and one infinite loading screen, but thats honestly it, and every patch has improved the performance for me. In fact I’ve been pleasantly surprised how well the game runs for me. My laptop isn’t great but loading times have been nice and quick (My SSD goes a long way of course, and I highly recommend one for everybody) and FPS is generally good with playing about with the settings. I never expect to run high end games in max but then again, I don’t care about 4K and all that. I just want it to look good and run good.

Now I’m going to go on a bit of a rant here and this isn’t directed at Warhorse Studios, but gaming as a whole. And believe me, the game has had some problems at launch. It still does. It’s had quite the flak from people for its semi-broken launch and some more serious bugs, and that should be so. Frankly I’m sick of games being released in such a buggy state, and for a game that was Kickstarted, asking people to pay 50-60$ then to have it take ages to be fixed is not a good way to start off. I’m being as nice as possible here, because I have big respect for both the game and Warhorse Studios for having the balls to make something like this in an over-saturated market of open world exhaustion-fests. Only indie studios take risks these days which is a crying shame, but I will not treat them differently. Do not release your beloved game in such a terrible state and expect people to jump up and down and love you when you fix it. This isn’t just for KCD, but for every fucking game that comes out lately. How about making sure it’s stable at launch? That would be great.

Now that rant is over I can finally start talking about the game as a whole. I haven’t played such an immersive, enjoyable 1st person game in a long time. The world-building is good but not overly saturated, it’s well researched, the systems in the game are excellent, and I adore Henry as a player character. He’s a burly, blacksmith’s son who likes drinking and fighting, is terrible at first with a sword, and the voice acting I really dug. There is some amazing voice acting in the game, sprinkled with some. . .lesser voice acting. I’ll go into more detail with this in general.

I love most of the systems, like the pickpocketing, rich combat system and the alchemy, but I do feel there’s…something missing. I want more, but although there are a lot of random events said, I’ve come across so few that the world, beautiful as it may be, can seem a bit barren at times. I love travelling in the world regardless, and although the game feels like it still suffers from Open World RPG syndrome, at this point in the game this isn’t a problem. It’s not a chore, and I enjoy that.

This does not look creepy at all.

So, onto the main review itself. I’m going to do things a bit differently for this review, and make bullet point categories for things I loved, things I liked, indifferent and things I don’t like.

Things I love in Kingdom Come Deliverance:

The cast. There is a rich and well-crafted group of characters in here, all believable and well thought. Many are taken from history itself, and the research really shows. Hans Capon is my favourite, the guy who I hated at first sight at first, but as the story develops, you really begin to love him. Fighting him in an archery contest and a brawl, then having to be his peasant bitch in a hunt, saving him from bandits and a really cool friendship develops. This is repeated throughout my playing the game. The evil fuckers are really good to hate, and your dopey and leechy friends you just want to punch in the face. Just look at these twats. Otherwise, this is one of KCD’s main strengths. I want to explore the characters and learn more about them, and I love playing as Henry. He’s just a lovable dope who becomes a badass.

These asswipes. I was too tempted to kill them, but one of their quests is a serious amount of fun and I want to finish that one first. Lazy bastards. One of them has the head of a potato.

The world and immersion. It’s beautiful! I’ve spent a lot of time transversing the countryside on my own, and with the lighting, the forests and all the scenery it’s really impressive how nice everything looks. It might just be the most beautiful game world I’ve ever been in. Skyrim looks good and so does The Witcher 3 for certain, but KCD has the advantage over TW3 in that it’s in first person. Even with my fairly middling gaming specs, the game looks gorgeous even in mixed settings. I’ll get back to that soon.

The game mechanics: It’s safe to say I absolutely love some of the mechanics in this game. The pick-pocketing is nicely thought out and gives you a challenge, the alchemy is wonderful in that I actually need to sit down and think and not fuck up (Coughs and points to Elder Scrolls), lock-picking is workable but thank god for the patch and of course the fighting, which I’ll go back to in another segment. There’s a lot of different systems at work here and there’s a lot of ambition. Does it hold up? Overall, yes. One of my favourite things to do in the game is alchemy, so much so I wish there was more substance to it. I’d love to do some odd jobs in the game even if it was just a radiant mechanic. It really helps the feeling that you’re walking in a medieval world, and there’s a lot to love here. There is a sleep/food mechanic as well and while I do think that the base system is a little too friendly, it’s probably better this way. You need to think about it but it’s not intrusive which is a nice thing. If you want a harder challenge, just do the Hardcore mode.

The game menus. They’re fucking gorgeous! There’s also a considerable amount of lore in the game about the locations, history and medieval life, and it’s honestly one of my favourite things about playing the game. It’s quite in-depth and there was a lot I didn’t know.

(There is an elephant in the room here. The Save system. I know. I’ll be getting to that in a moment, trust me.)

Things I like about Kingdom Come Deliverance:

The combat system. Now I have a couple of niggling concerns and I was originally a bit turned off when I started playing. The games intro was hard and I kept dying, so much so I was prepared to grab a save game which started me off in Rattay and go from there, but I got through it. For an RPG, they’ve built one hell of a system and overall I really enjoy it. Beating your first enemy feels really rewarding, there’s a lot of different weapons to choose from and while its punishing, it gets better and your character progresses.

Character Progression is a really tough balance. Little Henry starts off with fuck all skill with a sword but with time can really turn into a monster. Much of the game’s difficulty is tied into the combat system. Master its little quirks and a lot of that difficulty will go away. The archery is tough with no target, but with training you can nail headshots for OHKOs like a +6 Garchomp sweeping your opponents team in Pokemon Generation 4 oldschool style. You feel like a knight in training when you start off, which feels great. To all those who are worried about the combat, don’t be. The start is rough but once you’ve advanced someway into the main quest, Captain Bernard gives you unlimited free training in the fighting arena at Rattay, and you don’t need to fight that many people to get that far. Don’t worry.

Of course there’s the issue with all combat focused games. You’ll eventually hit that stage where you become so powerful the game becomes a non-issue, and KCD is no exception. I don’t really know what can be done to stop this, but one thing in this games favour is that it still takes a while to hit that point. There is one big problem with the combat however and that’s taking on multiple enemies at once. You auto-lock into your target when combat starts and taking that off involves a fiddly double click which is annoying and frustrating in the middle of battle. I really wish they had a better way of doing this as even a bunch of peasants in sticks can bring you down. it makes it harder then it needs to be but on the other side of the coin, this is pretty realistic. The game has done a good job in making things have authenticity but still allowing for gameplay. Again this is a difficult balance to achieve, and overall the devs have made this happen. I give them a lot of credit for that.

Now let’s talk about the quests. There aren’t a huge number in the game but there is more then enough content for me, and there is little signs of game bloat. The world may seem a bit small but it’s just large enough to keep it interesting. This game doesn’t make as many faux pas in the open world syndrome by stuffing it with filler but there still lies some tiredness. The world itself is pretty and full, but a lot of the landmarks don’t really have much to them. Even with this in mind, you can tell it’s well made.

Now back onto the quests, there’s a good amount of variety here. Fetch quests are still there but there’s some pretty cool options, like roleplaying as a monk, taking part in an odd witchcraft ritual, looking for jobs for your fellow village survivors and some execution stuff. You can do quite a lot and the quality shows if not a little buggy at times. Unfortunately the romance line was fairly inconsequential but I’d say it’s still worth doing.

The Stealth and Crime is also pretty nice now, and a perfect example of how patches can completely change my mind. Once there was a massive problem with how crime was detected, where you took massive reputation hits even if your crimes aren’t detected by anyone. In the past this was my biggest gripe with the game and seriously reduced its appeal to me but this has recently been fixed. Now you only get a minor hit to reputation which vastly improves it.

Look at the death glare in Henry’s face. Does anyone need any help dying?

I’ll also talk a little about performance. On the whole I was rather impressed overall. I’m talking about its basic fundamentals here, not bugs. It’s a little choppy but I’m amazed it even ran on my rig, and quite well at that. With some minor changes to settings I hit a perfectly playable 35-40FPS pretty much everywhere. If you’re not obsessed with maxing everything out then you should find few problems but I recommend an SSD, otherwise I’d imagine the loading times would be quite horrendous.

Issues:

Now, let’s talk about the problems. Fortunately for me, I don’t have many but no game is perfect. First of all is the main quest and its ending. I haven’t finished it but it seems the game was intended with a sequel in mind, and the story kinda ends on a heavy cliffhanger. I know now Warhorse said from the beginning that it was originally going to be 3 Acts, with one per game but we eventually got Acts I and II in with this game. Thank God for that, otherwise I imagine a lot of people would be pissed off with paying 60$ for that.

I’m enjoying the game no question about it, but I do question this policy. Instead of splitting the game into 2-3 games…why not one? Just a thought. Then again it’s not as though Kingdom Come Deliverance is short on content. It’s not, it’s absolutely packing with it. It’s just a pet peeve of mine that people insist on selling content onwards instead of having it in the first place. On a good note, the game has been well supported so far, with some tasty looking added content coming and the big Workshop mod support coming along as well.

Back to what I said about the world. . .it can seem a little lifeless. Sure it’s beautiful to wander in, but while there’s random events they seem to be few and far between. I suspect this was deliberate by the devs in an attempt to combat a bit of the difficulty especially early on. Seeing as in the latest patches I’m seeing more events now, it could be the case. Still, I would love to see more things happening. The world is immersive and solid, but it could be so much better.

I also have to talk about the bugs, not so much for me but for those who’ve struggled with unplayable messes. Yes, I know every game has bugs, and I hate the fact that people blast this game for it while giving the likes of Bethesda and CD Projekt Red a pass for everything. If anything this game is far more polished then Skyrim.

On the other hand, why do we has a whole allow this? Games should be in the best nick possible on release, and being made to wait ages for simple problems to be fixed is frankly insulting. This is more for the gaming market on principle rather then just Warhorse.

Then you get bugs like this and just piss yourself laughing.

You alright there?

So, the limited save system. Yes, it’s staring us in the face. Yes it’s annoying but it’s not a huge problem. Here’s all the ways the game allows you to save:

The limited item Saviour Schnapps. These are piss easy to make, you can create them as soon as you get an alchemy bench and they require virtually no ingredients and just five minutes if that. You can also buy them. You get a Save on Exit. Rattay’s Mill is a save point. Any Inn you stay at for “A week or more” is a permament save house. Camping sites It saves when a new quest starts and big milestones.

So it’s not a major problem. I’ve only used three of the “limited item” in 60 hours of gametime. It’s really not as bad as you think.

So then, if this is no big deal, why do you have it as an issue? Principle. When a game has bugs, this is when the gaps show. I’d hate to repeat game time just because I wandered into bandit camps and got killed, then realized it did not save. When crashes are taken into account, the limited save system shows its problems.

Conclusion

Kingdom Come Deliverance took a long time to come out, and it’s taking a long time to fix. Consoles really have it rough and there are still niggling issues. But do I recommend it? Oh my days, yes.

The game doesn’t hold your hand and combat can be rough but I haven’t played an RPG like this in quite some time. It’s quite taken my breath away at times, the story and characters on the whole are pretty good and it’s just an overall fun experience. Even better, Warhorse is continuing to support it with future content and I can’t wait for all the Workshop mods in the future. I will err on the side of caution and say this isn’t for everyone. Do not come into this expecting something like Skyrim or Witcher 3. It has its jank and has its quirks, but it’s one of the best experiences you can ask for – if you’re forgiving of some bugs. If you’re a performance micro-manager, I would wait for a little longer, and I would definitely recommend PC over console if I had a choice.

Total Rating: 8/10. It’s not perfect but in a market over-saturated with games that take no risks, this is a refreshing experience. Euro-Jank for certain but don’t let that get you down. This is one real diamond in the rough, and a potential GOTY for me.