I don't want to get to deep into how great the narrative is. The story is great, as a general rule, if the graphics aren't bugged, they're going to be great too. All of this is also aimed at a realistic medieval experience, and it pretty much nails what it's going for. If it weren't for the bugs, I'd say that KCD is on par with a Skyrim-type experience. It's that good. The problem that I've got has to deal with huge performance issues. I have in excess of 450 hours with the app up (not all of that was actively playing it admittedly,) but just as an example, I was just trying to get through the scene in Woman's Lot where Theresa is fighting off Cumans, and in order to carry on the fight, the game will teleport the Cumans up the ladder to get to you. I get that you're not supposed to really fight the Cumans in Woman's Lot, but if realism is really your target, it shouldn't be possible for enemies to just magically pop into being on the landing with you. You got shot them with an arrow, and fell down. Either climb back up, die, or run away. A debug where the computer just puts the enemy right behind you is absurd. Woman's Lot in particular has had several weird freezes where the whole program just stops working. Even when there's basically nothing going on in-game. I've had a lot of situations where the controls just don't respond because apparently, you can't press more than two buttons at the same time. The game gets a little horrifying walking down streets before the sprites are fully loaded. A woman with a floating head and no body to speak of is really weird to see. I'm kind of wondering if War Horse's Q&A section or their tech support section is non-existent. I've been cruising forums for days now trying to find a way to cope with some of these absurdities, and posts go up on the reddit, or their home site complaining about things, and they just never get answered at all.
As it stands, MD (as I will call this game) is in development. That being the case, there are a few things that I hope to see ironed out, and since I don't have a lot of words to use, let's get right to it. 1. The temperature system is wonky. I died my first playthrough because I couldn't stay warm. To mitigate this, I built a fire, but in this game, fires don't keep you warm - even fires made with in-game firewood. For the first year you apparently have to do one particular quest chain that requires that you run clear to the other side of the map to get warm clothes. It's not really hinted at that this will be crucial in the early game, and if you don't have the right skills to make clothes when winter hits, and you haven't done the quest, you're just out of luck and dead. It also doesn't make sense, because after you get warm clothes, you can jump in the water and swim in winter, and you're fine. That part of the system feels very unforgiving and I hope to see it rectified once it's out of alpha. 2. At night, animals give absolutely no indication that they're sneaking up on you. I get that that's what they do IRL, but it just turns into a series of jump scares. Boars could grunt, wolves could bark, but they don't when they are after you at night. 3. Each season has exactly three days in it. In my second playthrough that I'm in now, I was racing around trying to get skills to make warm clothes to make absolute certain that I didn't die, and it felt like a cross between a race and a job. I play games because I like to relax, and maybe my approach was bad, but I can only tell you how I feel. A bit more time would be nice. 4. I would kind of like to see a voiced tutorial and maybe some voiced characters in-game eventually. I'm out of words, let me close with a compliment. This has a feel like KC:D - which I loved. It's just you get to build stuff. I'd like to see more weapons and armor but the game isn't quite there yet. It's in a raw form, but it's still good.
