KCD does many things, but does very few of them well. This game is more analogous to the Assassin's Creed franchise than it is to a game like Skyrim. There is a lot of content in this game, but very little of it is fully fleshed out. This game came out in 2018. I am writing this in 2025. This game still has game breaking bugs. Quests glitching. NPC's that have omnipresence and will know every action you do regardless of whether anyone is around. Without looking up proper dialogue options in certain quests, you will lose reputation. If you choose to do a playthrough without prior knowledge of dialogue options, you will find yourself reloading your save constantly to get the best outcome, because seemingly innocent dialogue choices will cause you to lose your reputation (even if the context of that dialogue is alone between your character and a murderer you chase down). Quests are also bugged and must be done in certain orders and without informing you, some quests will be timed and if you fail to complete them within a certain time frame, you will fail and have to reload your last save. This would not be a problem if the game informed you of these time-gated quests, but it doesn't. There are quests you can start and choose to finish tens of hours into your playthrough, but you will have no way of knowing which is which. Combat is interesting at first, but then just becomes a matter of who has the bigger stat stick. Using a bow is only viable for hunting, because unlike the melee weapons the bow gives no perks. If you like playing archer builds, this is not the game for you because it is nearly impossible in certain fights. TLDR: The game has a "correct" way to play and the only way to get that "correct" way to play is to either play through it before or play through it with a walkthrough. It does not respect your time, and lacks A LOT of QoL that you would expect a game of this caliber to have.
