Kingdom Come Deliverance I and II

With Kingdom Come Deliverance I and II being dropped on Game Pass I figured that I would put my two cents worth in for what the games are and why people should at the very least give them a try and lastly, give a little advice to make it a little smoother to play the games.

I played Kingdom come Deliverance when it initially came out. I played for a good 40hrs and then petered off. The game was great and I was enjoying it but I got to a section where I died and lost progress due to its divisive save system. I will speak about the save system later but the long and short of it all is you need a consumable to save and many people found this to be a deal breaker. The game is extremely immersive and this is one of the games biggest selling points. You feel part of the world and Henry, the main protagonist, becomes an old friend very quickly. A quick thing to note is this is an adult game, this does not mean a game that a mature teenager can play as it is worth noting that there is visceral combat and full sex scenes (if you want to go down that path with the various choices). The fact that there is a gay romance option has also been a cause for some negativity but to be honest in both games this option is essentially hidden and something you effectively need to go looking for. I never even got a hint of it until I saw it mentioned somewhere and only then did I realise where this branching path in the relationship between Henry and the other male character could move towards a more serious relationship rather than the friendship I encountered. It is not forced in any way contrary to what some people have reported. 

The basic story is laid out in the prologue. It is a typical prologue designed to teach you the basics of the game. It also helps set up the sort of Henry you will be playing. This is an RPG but not a create your own character kind of RPG. You play Henry, a blacksmith’s son, in a small village in Bohemia in 1403. The prologue sets you off on a ‘quest’ to collect a few things for your father before you are allowed to go off and join your friends. This includes you collecting money from someone your dad did some work for or alternatively returning the goods he bought, secondly buying some coal with the money you retrieved, getting some beer from the pub (where the young lady you are interested in works) and getting a cross hilt from the chamberlain from the nearby castle all in order to help your dad finish the sword for the local lord, Sir Radzig. As an example of how the game allows you to complete your quests and goals in various different ways, when you speak to the local drunk that owes your father money, he refuses and tells you to go away. You can complete this in various ways, including using speechcraft, sterling back the goods or just plainly beating the living daylights out of him. You can fail at all of these methods and these each have consequences. Again the save system comes into play here as at the time you need to save you don’t have or have a minimal amount of the consumable you need to save. There is actually a fair amount of content to complete here in the prologue before you head back to your father to complete the quest, and many of these I would strongly suggest people to complete, especially on your first playthrough, as they explain many of the game's systems through story. You also get a hint into the fact that you can play your Henry in various different ways. This is evident in your interactions with your friends, the barmaid and other people around the village.

Eventually you return to your father and the two of you complete the sword for Lord Radzig. You complete it as the Lord himself turns up. After some conversation and deepening of the characters, you get a cut scene as your village is attacked. There are many story beats in this attack and to explain them would spoil some of the twists and turns of the story but suffice to say there are events that transpire that change your life as Henry forever and you end up first in the local lord’s castle and then through more story, in the castle of his lord Sir Robart. From here on the story really starts as you begin your journey as Henry proper. 

The game is full to the brim with quests, side quests, small interactions, world events and ‘random’ encounters. There are also characters that have a huge part to play in Henry’s development as a character as well as smaller side characters as well. There are various skills and vocations you can interact with (such as alchemy and repairing your armour and sharpening your weapons through a mini game). The game is chock full of things to do which are all entertaining and rewarding if you give them the time to engage you, but I can see how they could become tedious if you are forced to engage with them and you do not enjoy the mechanics. The important thing to mention is you do not need to engage with these mechanics and side content if you do not want to. It is all icing on an already complete cake. 

This brings me to the combat. This is probably one of the biggest gripes most people have when they speak about this game. It is very different from the usual hit RB for light attack and RT for heavy attack. It uses a directional system where your attacks can come from various directions, like the points of a star. They have 5 points (Up, Left, Right, Lower Left and Lower Right) as well as a central dot for a stab. I played with Mouse and Keyboard and you moved the mouse around when locked onto an enemy to change your attack direction. It seems complicated at first but actually it is more complex than complicated. It becomes more intuitive over time and you learn to move the mouse around in order to get past the enemies defence. You defend by keeping your sword directed towards the enemy's attack direction. But in all honesty it ceases to matter later on once you learn to Master Strike. This is probably the biggest bit of advice I can give to anyone trying this game for the first time. Play through the main story from where the attack happens until you meet Sir Robart’s Master at Arms. He will be asked to teach you some weapons skills. Go through the tutorial until he teaches you Master Strike. From here on combat is infinitely easier. You will still be overwhelmed by multiple enemies but at least you will be able to be attacked and compete on a more level footing. I would also suggest that everyone goes through as many of the trainings as you can but once you have the Master Strike ability everything else is a benefit. There are different types of enemies and some, especially the Cumans, are very difficult until you increase your skill levels and multiple enemies will always be a challenge. People oversell the difficulty of the combat, not to say it is easy, but with a little practice and getting far enough to have Henry be taught a few new strikes will make a difference. This is where many people give up as they cannot get to grips with the combat, but it is worth noting that the developers designed the mechanics to feel realistic in the difficulty as Henry is not a soldier and has no experience in combat, therefore when he is faced by experienced soldiers he is at a severe disadvantage. 

The second bone of contention is the save system. This is a system that I understand why they designed it the way they did but with a little work you can eliminate this as an issue which makes it a bit irrelevant as a system overall. I would suggest you collect all the ingredients that you need for the Savior Schnapps which are nettle (which is found everywhere) and Belledonna (which is quite hard to find and is probably the only thing I would suggest people look up where to find) and spend a while brewing Savoir Schnapps. Eventually your alchemy skill will be high enough that you will brew quite a few at a time. You have a storage chest and I just stored the ingredients in there so that if I was running low I could just brew a few more. I bought the Belledonna in the beginning just to get my skill up. You can also use your alchemy skill to brew potions to sell in order to purchase the Belledonna. It is worth noting that on PC there are also mods that allow you to save at any time as long as you have one Savior Schnapps in your inventory while not using the schnapps up. 

Kingdom come Deliverance is best played slowly and deliberately. By this I mean I believe you will get the most out of it if you explore and immerse yourself in the world the developers have created. They really took their time and put a lot of effort into building a realistic medieval world that feels alive. The towns, villages and cities in these games are beautifully crafted and deliberate in their aesthetic. This is not to say that you have to do everything there is in the world. The game can take you 100hrs or more if that is what you want but realistically the main story is only 42hrs long according to How Long to Beat and 136hrs for a full completionist run. I have 120hrs but that is across one comprehensive but incomplete playthrough and a comprehensive full playthrough where I knew the first part of the game and made sure I had the Savior Schnapps and did the training. I feel many people will be somewhere in between. The game is certainly worth the time and effort it asks of you. 

This brings me to Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. It is difficult speaking about this without any spoilers for the first game as it takes place almost directly after the ending of the first one. There are characters that cross over into the second game from the first and that adds to the feeling of continuity and many who loved the first game really felt that having these familiar faces around helped settle them into the second game like putting on a pair of old comfortable shoes. 

The easiest way to set it up without any spoilers is to say that you and some of the returning people from the first game are sent to a nearby land to try to encourage them to join your side in the war that kicked off with the attack on your village which is still going on . While on your way to the lords castle, you are ambushed and most of your party are killed apart from yourself and a major returning character. You are chased and end up injured and near death being taken in by a local woman who was shunned for her abilities with herbs. This woman saves your life and this explains your slow return to form and abilities from the first game that you lost. You and the returning character attempt to contact the Lord but are turned away as you are without your fine clothes and appear to be vagabonds and after a period end up in the stocks in a local village. Once you are released the story begins and you need to build yourself and your reputation up as you are in a foreign land where nobody knows who you are and you have no friends. 

That's the basic premise and my advice here is the same as before. Learn sword skills and practice your alchemy to create Saviour Schnapps. There are new minigames including blacksmithing to immerse yourself into, but again only if you want to. The story in this one is deeper I feel and the characters are more numerous and therefore have more variety and depth. The combat has been reworked and I found it better but the same as the first one, once you learn the power skill, the combat is nowhere as difficult. You don’t have to have played the first one I suppose if you wanted to watch a catchup video but really you will be doing yourself and the games a disservice if you do. 

These games have been made with love and care and you can tell the development team really loved the world they were creating. They handed out helmets to content creators in their press kits for crying out loud! There is an incredible amount of passion in this game and everything feels deliberate and hand crafted in the world. You can feel that if there is a tree there, it is because someone decided it needed to be exactly there. In any other year they would have won game of the year quite easily. Of course the first one came out with the new God of War game and the second one was in the year of Clair Obscur. The first game when it came out was a relatively unknown game from an unknown developer that gained a following as time went on. The second game was hotly anticipated and extremely well received, but was in a year packed with incredible games and Clair Obscur which blew every game out of the water. It received a lot of praise but it was just never going to compete with the masterpiece that is Expedition 33.

I feel everyone should at least try these games and give them a good go before deciding to give up on them. The things that make the game fiddly, complicated and challenging, is the same thing that makes the game comforting, engaging and immersive. It is quite possibly not everyone's cup of tea, and I do understand that but I think if people give it a try and let themselves be drawn in and find ways to not get frustrated, they will discover why these games are so beloved.