Kingdom Come: Deliverance

I tried for 40 hours to really sink a fair amount of time before reviewing. I'm sure nobody will read this, but I just want to leave my 2 cents. I would consider myself to enjoy a difficult game every now and then. Heck, I love all of the Dark Souls games and I am no stranger to difficult combat mechanics. I could almost recommend the game, but it falls flat when it pretends to be realistic. It is not realistic at all. It is only realistic in the most annoying ways and chooses to be super unrealistic in areas that you would think wouldn't be that hard to nail down. For example. There are certain weapons that are dropped by enemies that you can pick up and use, but you can't store in your inventory or on your horse. The weapon can have a high value and be a highly damaging weapon, but you can't keep it or sell it. WTF?! But they want to you make sure you are managing your sleep and food bars realistically... The game is only realistic in the most annoying ways, and not in any ways that would be considered fun. The biggest and stupidest argument I see for combat being so bad is that Henry is bad, and you are bad. So you have to train, for like 10-20 hrs with Bernard before you can actually wield a weapon worth a damn. This is stupid because this is supposed to be a game and not a simulator to prepare me for actual warfare. Another lovely feature that is not realistic but forced on the player is the save system. In other words there is no quicksave. You have to sleep in an owned bed, find a random bed in the wilderness that allows you to save (there are some scattered around) or use the saving item called savior schnapps. Well the schnapps are prohibitively expensive early game so you will not have a means to access those. Your only recourse is to sleep in a damn bed. If you do happen to get ambushed by a bandit gang while fast travelling, you probably won't survive. If you didn't sleep in a bed recently then thats potentially 1 hr to 2 hr of gameplay gone right there.

I did not notice anything game breaking so far, having leveled up henry for 50 hrs and almost finished the main quest and many side quests and activities. Except for the sloggy and slow tedious fetch questing here and there in the middle fo the game, it´s a remarkable RPG with satisfying combat mechanics and an atmopshere at night and day rivaled by almost nothing on the market. Balancing is very well done, better than bethesda/ some bioware titles from what I have played in trading, difficulty and generally mechanics. The stealth is sensitive and requires a lot of learning just as every other aspect in the game, but once you level up, get rich, get suited and learn the mechanics patiently, you will raise hell and become truly a cuman and bandit slayer. The Story is epic but also pretty average at points, it´s a slowburner until the end, which I see will be more of what has already been given in the few epic moments. Try and buy. What hurts is performance and occasional ai bugs, due to a very well optimized, but sadly outdated Cryengine 3.4+ which had bad LOD and drawcall issues and severe pop in. My i5 9600k on 4.8ghz smashes the game cpu wise but it can get heavy on utilization from 40 to 80% on alll 6 cores and in towns you either have to slide object draw distance and texture detail distance from 20/20 down to 5 or 10/20 to minimize the stutter. That´s only heavily NPC and AI path routined areas which are rare, mostly rattay the big city or sasau a bit.´ Outside in the wild this game runs stable 60 in 1620p on medium/high settings with a 1080ti. I highly recommend leaving shadows on high though as medium disables grass contact shadows. Lighting and generally other settings barely change from ultra to medium, so play with high and medium around a bit. 0.5 off for repetitive and lengthy tasks which destroy pacing a bit too much. 4.5/5 RPG, very forgiving hurdles and a lot of hidden and dangerous 2 similiarities. Czech games as always I need more of!

The longer you play it, the better it gets. I am an absolute fan of this game. Everything is held as real as possible. If you look at the skill levels or the fighting. But what impressed me most of all was the biology. You can really see all trhe different kinds of plants, from water plants to trees: all species are build so real! WOW! And the siinging of the birds is so good, that you can shut your eyes and you are in a middle european forest. As a biologist I would give this 11/10 points! As a player its 10/10. BUT: when does the next part come?! DLCs is nice, but the story gioes on and you left us with a big cliff hanger! Thats not fair!!!!

This game is somewhat polirizing. Some players hate the most difficult aspect of the game: combat. Others see this as one of the chracteristics that make the experience even better. The fact of the matter is that this game can be unforgiving, but that is a result of the immersive experience that is offered here. If you want Henry to read, you have to actually learn to read. If you want Henry to be a proficient combatant: you are going to have to practice and practice a lot. Everything requires practice and patience. Once you undertand that, then this game will open up and give you a very historically accurate medieval world to live and prosper in. This goes on top of a great story with excelent voice acting and the obvious love the developers have for the subject matter. It has been an unforgetable and enjoyable experience. Now, is the game buggy? In rare instances but never game breaking. Is the game perfect? Nope. Should you give this game a try? Absolutley. In my honest opinion, this game is a masterpiece.

I only started playing this masterpiece in 2021. It is truly a game crafted with love, giving detailed attention to history. Wonderful work; I really want to buy the developers a beer for this labor of love. I think the only reason this didn't become a major hit is the combat system, which is a bit clunky. I understand where it is going and appreciate the spirit of it. However, the combat becomes quite a mess when facing multiple opponents. Honestly, there should be a locking view in duels and a different, free-for-all mode when facing multiple enemies or in a mass fight. Small difficulties with the combat mode, a bit clunky mounted combat and some obscure UI choices are the only real complaint. I heartily recommend the game as a whole to anyone interested in RPGs and historical settings. This is a game that can actually teach you things.