Just a few days ago I gave Kingdom Come: Deliverance a glowing recommendation in my review for the game. Does that mean Kingdom Come is flawless and can’t get any better? Obviously not. The game is fine on its own, but it’s lacking in a lot of content and it leaves off on an open ending, leading me to think Warhorse Studios is confident enough in their product to already be planning a sequel. Given the recent news that it has already sold over 1 million copies, I’d say that confidence is justified.




I’ve also recently seen a lot of comparisons to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, many of which are in Kingdom Come’s favor. But here’s the thing, this comparison is unfair, not only because Skyrim is pushing seven years on the market now, but also because it has a lot more gameplay variety simply due to its fantasy setting. Skyrim even has some features that Kingdom Come doesn’t, no matter how basic and rudimentary they are, some of which I’ll touch on later. That really got me thinking, though!

So, here I’d like to detail several things I think would make Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 the best RPG there could be.


More Combat Variety



One thing Kingdom Come actually does have over Skyrim is melee weapon variety. In Skyrim you have swords, axes and maces in both one-handed and two-handed variants. In Kingdom Come, you have bastard swords, short swords, axes, maces, halberds and various other polearms.


When it comes to ranged combat though, Skyrim has Kingdom Come beat. Barring the elephant in the room that is magic, in addition to bows Skyrim added crossbows in its Dawnguard expansion. Should Kingdom Come 2 take place further in the 15th century, perhaps we could not only see handcannons and crossbows, but also potentially some of the first firearms?

That isn’t all though, dual-wielded melee weapons could actually be a thing. In real life dual wielding would see a duelist wielding a longsword, short sword, axe or mace in their right hand and a dagger in the other. The dagger would be used mainly for defense and parrying, while the sword would be for attacking.


I also wouldn’t mind seeing things like flails and billy clubs. As far as I understand flails were in fact planned, but ultimately dropped because they wouldn’t work properly. Here’s hoping Warhorse can get them working for a sequel, eh?

Cooking




Mundane as it may be, cooking is something Skyrim allowed even the almighty Dragonborn to do. In Kingdom Come by comparison I found it exceptionally odd that even with all those cooking pots everywhere and the necessity to actually eat, Henry couldn’t follow a recipe from a book to make filling and nutritious meals with benefits.

There’s already a fantastic alchemy system in place that requires following a recipe, given all those tastey ingredients just laying around and all those cooking pots everywhere why can’t Henry cook for himself? In addition to just sating hunger, making something like a cheese fondue could bolster strength because it’s high in calcium, or perhaps a tastey, sugary apple pie would give us an extra 20 energy for a few hours?


Given how great and involved alchemy is, it’s just really surprising to me that an RPG which requires you to eat occasionally wouldn’t allow you to cook various meals with varied benefits. I know you can cook raw meat at a fire, but that’s nowhere near as deep as what I’m suggesting. Combining different foods to create better meals is depth that a deep RPG like Kingdom Come is sorely missing.

Character Creation and Gender Selection



“I’m Henrietta, daughter of the Skalitz blacksmith.”


This one isn’t rocket science. Warhorse Studios was originally going to include character creation in Kingdom Come, but decided against it because they wanted to tell a better story. My issue with this is, character creation and great story telling aren’t mutally exclusive, any game from Bioware is proof of this. Playing a different gender could have even added depth and had an effect on starting stats.

Mount and Blade had a similar system. Let’s say you decide to play as Henrietta instead of Henry, for example. Henry might start off with bonus points to strength, vitality and melee combat, whereas Henrietta might start off with skill points in agility, speech, alchemy/cooking, clothing repair and healing/medicine.


In an RPG like Kingdom Come that boasts open-endedness, depth and player agency, personalization of your player character is paramount. We could have even at least been able to customize Henry’s looks, as much as I like Tom McKay’s unthreatening adorkable baby face. The boy works around a bloody forge and gets in fights with his peers, let us give him a gnarly burn scar or a nasty reminder of that one tavern brawl at the least. You can’t tell me he dated Bianca for nearly a year and never once had to defend her honor.

More In-Depth Siege Combat



This one could potentially tie in with more combat variety. Sure we partake in a siege here and there, but against teeny little countryside castles in the Bohemian boonies. Why not let us storm a real man’s castle with multiple tiers of attack. Let us man siege towers, catapaults, trebuchets, ballistae and let us defend as well!


Breach the wall with a siege tower, spill onto the battlements, cut down the defenders, raise the gate for the others and then breach the castle for a good old scuffle shuffle with the Liege Lord. Brian Blessed was fantastic as Konrad Keyser, and Keyser was excellently portrayed as a genius siege engineer. Everyone’s reactions of his descriptions of balistic missiles was knee-slapping hilarious, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think that sounded way more engaging than bombarding a castle with a single trebuchet for three agonizing days.


More Types of Activities



Tournaments back in the day consisted of more than just archery contests. Jousting was a poular spectatior sport, for example. As was single combat with dangerous animals, foot, horse and charriot racing, and there were other games besides Farkle as well.


As fun as Farkle is, it’s not as nuanced or challenging as chess, checkers, five-man’s morris or backgammon for example. When you’re not fighting or hunting, Kingdom Come mostly sees you running around and talking, with Farkle usually serving as an occasional and momentary distraction from the hum-drum day-to-day of mild-mannered Henry Smith. I’d certainly welcome a few more distractions.

Come to think of it, why not pie eating contests too? Penalize us heavily for daring to pig out on tastey blueberry pies, but on the chance we win give us a nice cash reward to make up for the overstuffed debuff. There were drinking games back in the day too, and a nice wager of a hefty sum of groschen might just be a good reason for Henry to get absolutely shitfaced.

