Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Took me about 4 hours to acutally get into the open world and not sure if I feel like continuing at this point. Needs an alternate start mod lol.

Man, I REALLY wanted to love this game. Its story is compelling, and the characters and dialog in it feel natural-ish. But it has some very ugly spots that I've had a hard time reconciling with, every time I've given it another shot. Here they are in no particular order: 1. The inability to save without spending currency. Brutal! When dying is this easy, this is pretty much inexcusable. 2. Combat is too clunky. I don't feel like I have nearly good enough control over Henry to actually be an effective fighter. It's about as good as the combat in Thief 1. 3. The game allows you to miss opportunites WAY too easily with no knowledge you've missed them. 4. The game is rather poor at telling you what to do. Yeah yeah, I know you have goals you can view in your journal. But it's still very vague how you actually do the thing. For example "Obtain the Talmberg Armor". Where is it? In the chest up the ladder? In the chest at the bottom of the ladder? How do you open the chest? Oh, you needed to be an expert lock picker by now, to do it. Is that even possible this early in the game? What did I miss, that I've never picked a lock yet? Is it too late to get good at lockpicking? Why do lockpicks cost so much? Why can't I save a game right before I attempt to pick a lock? 5. I just picked herbs for about a half hour, leveled up my herbalism from 0 to 5, and then got two-hit killed by some madman at my parents' old churchyard. Does it restart me right before I died? Nope. Back to the beginning of when I entered town, 45 minutes ago. See my previous point about not letting you save whenever you want. Yup, this one wasted my time and ticked me off so I'm putting it in here twice. What a horrible system. OK, ok. Aside from all the awful QoL oversights, this game is really beautiful and engaging. If you really think you can put up with everything I just mentioned, then pick it up on sale and see for yourself. Just don't say I didn't warn you.

I wish they had released this game in a more playable state. It shows a lot of promise, but the technical issues drastically reduce enjoyment and break immersion in the game. Maybe someday this game will live up to its potential, but that potential has not yet been realized as of the time of this review. The performance is awful. No modern game should struggle this much on a 7700K and a GTX 1070. During some cutscenes, the framerate drops into the teens, assuming that the game doesn't simply crash at the cutscene. If Witcher 3 ran beautifully for you (especially if you have a high refresh rate monitor), you've been spoiled; don't expect the same from this game. The save system combined with frequent crashes makes free exploration a huge hassle. Wandering around without starting a quest or visiting a save point is a gamble with your time. The game might crash or something might bug out and you've lost an hour or three returning to the last save that you made. It really breaks the immersion knowing that each movement you make could be your last before the game does something that stops your progression.

Historical locations accurate, Names verified, local pheasants illiterate CHECK actions of the main character... too modernized, he fights with "nobility" doesn't get stockaded. poaches, steals, kills, and it's all part of the mission. Don't get me wrong I'm loving the game the complexity of the learning curve for all skills. The combat is unique, the Alchemy while frustating at times is fun, the pickpocketing/lockpicking is fairly difficult. You need to listen to the locals for important clues on how to proceed, if you don't listen you will miss the obvious. BUT with the release as it is there are GLARING bugs that you can not miss. You can not walk through certain doors if your even close to maximum weight. if at any time during the game you killed or stole when you get to a certain point in the game, your past comes to haunt you, seemingly all at once. Just like with all new releases, it will probably take a dozen or so patches to make this a stable game worth the hours you'll be spending in it.

I strongly reccomend this game. KCD fills the empty gap that the Gothic series left behind, and it has become my new RPG favourite. FINAL SCORE: 10/10 PROS: - not a single side quest in this game feels like a boring filler. - interesting and, sometimes, hilarious dialogues for the main and the side quests, often with a moral lesson attached to it. - although the final outcome of some quests is always the same, or very similar, the player is granted absolute freedom on how he wants to solve them and this makes the game feel much less forced than, let's say, Dragon Age/Mass Effect - the player can set his own pace for story progression and character development, as well as what to do at any given point in time - unique skill progression system based on practice, practice, practice. - the horses: spectacularly fast, they are also great chests with four legs CONS: - handling inventory can sometimes be a dull experience, i.e. it is not possible to directly compare an item with another one that is already equipped. - some items seems to have no practical use, at least that I could find, e.g. there seems to be no way to repair broken arrows or to use animal skins to create something new. - the game has just been released, it's possible that there are still some bugs here and there, though I have not yet found anything game-breaking in my play-though. The worst that I have seen is some difficulty walking through doors / ladders in a couple of very specific locations. Still, I have seen much worse bugs with other games when they were first launched. TIPS: - installing the game on an e-ssd makes dialogues load pretty much instantly; - Go to Uzhitz and learn how to read ASAP - Get yourself a Horse ASAP, either buy a cheap one in Uzhitz or acquire Pebble through the main quest; A Horse is invaluable, as it helps roaming through the countryside and acts as an extra chest that can be accessed anywhere and anytime - Herbalism + Alchemy = Infinite Steady Supply of Saviour Schnapps; Herbalism is trivial to pump up to level 20 very early in the game, Alchemy requires a bit more effort but it pays off very well in the long run - If you collect all plants in Skalitz at the beginning of the game, by the time you leave the city you will have a *ton* of money; Picking up plants pumps strength too once you unlock the appropriate perk - When Saviour Schnaps are not available, sleeping in some Tavern costs only 2$ and allows one to save the game up to 24 times in the same day.. So consider this approach instead of buying Saviour Schnaps for 50x that price. - Interesting Locations *always* hide some hidden treasure: look around! - Monk robes can be found in Sasau and are the best piece of cloth for sneaking around both silently and conspicuously