Has Warhorse Studios’ bravery been favored by fortune? Let’s take a look at Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.
Fortune favors the bold
And man, did fortune favored the boldness of Warhorse Studios’ approach to the RPG genre in their latest record-breaking release, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. The game reaching a peak of 256,206 players on SteamDB.
Medieval fantasy at its purest best form as realized by the developers who are clear to their vision. They only have one mission, to make the best medieval fantasy they’ve envisioned since before the 1st game. Being as immersive & realistic as possible, but still telling a great tale while doing so.
In The Right Place, At The Wrong Time
The story starts right after the first game, perhaps hours or weeks after the events of Kingdom Come Deliverance. Hans and Henry set off to travel to deliver an important letter.
Without spoiling too much for folks who have yet to play the game, delivering a letter would sound like an awfully simple mission. But, unbeknownst to our protagonist, Henry, things will become significantly more complicated and difficult, as you’ll immediately find out as the game starts.
For people who have not had the chance to play the 1st game, you don’t have to worry, as the game uses the most ingenious way of recapping the 1st game organically. We will save you from the spoiler, but if you’ve managed to read this article and stay away from any reviews or YouTube videos showing this bit, you’re in for a very immersive and informational ride. The game will catch you up to speed and even use the recapping to help you form your own version of events and use that to specify the stats of your Henry.
The Maps.
Yes. You read that right. The game takes place in two very distinct areas, Trosky and Kuttenberg of 1403 Bohemia or modern day Czech Republic. Painstakingly researched, and designed as accurately as technically possible within the game as they described in their interview with HistoryExtra, Making a historically accurate videogame: how Warhorse took on the task in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
“We designed not only the aesthetic elements of the medieval world but also paid close attention to how things were made in the past: what materials were used, and the types of construction methods, techniques, colours, and overall craftsmanship,”
Joanna Nowak, in-house historian at Warhouse Studios
Kuttenberg Region being the larger of the two maps of the game has wide open plains, big castles, and multiple towns. Of course, with a region like this comes thriving with stories and struggles that Henry will encounter. Despite the big wide open areas, Kuttenberg never lacked interesting encounters, side-quests and stories that are distinct from town to town.
And of course, the main point of interest of the region, Kuttenberg. Never have we seen a city this big, feel this alive. Every single NPC in this game has their own lives and things they do throughout the day. Which you can observe and witness if you stalk anyone.
And with our 123 hours of playtime, that still wasn’t enough to unravel all the stories and side-quests the game has to offer.
Some choices in the game has an impact on several points of the story which affects how certain people react to your Henry, and even at the ending. The ending being the key section where your choices have an impact. You just have to play to see.
Here’s the thing….
Before we dig deeper in the gameplay, let’s just get this out of the way. Let’s acknowledge the proverbial elephant in the room, The Romance Options. The game included a few romance options:
- Klara
- Rosa Ruthard
- Katherine
- Margaret
- Hans
The last one, Hans, has sparked many debates both in the Steam Discussions and mainly on Twitter. Enough so, that articles like this: Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Is Just Medieval Brokeback Mountain from TheGamer amongst many others drive the main discussions about the game. It has gotten to a point that Daniel Vavra, Writer, Director and Co-Founder of Warhorse Studios, has responded to this culture war as reported by ComicBook.com; Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 Responds to LGBTQ Scene Controversy.
Turns out that we are once again in the middle of a rather bizarre ‘culture war,’ this time from the opposite side than usual. So here’s a statement, but I’d hate to spoil the plot of the game for the sake of it.
Daniel Vavra, Writer, Director and Co-Founder of Warhorse Studios
The game is exactly what I wanted it to be. No one has tried to influence me as an artist in any way, and anyone who knows me knows I wouldn’t let them anyway. Every character in the game has a very clear reason to be where they are, which you’ll understand when you play the game. Our goal was, and still is, to show life in medieval Bohemia as it easily could have happened and to tell an interesting story.
From our 120-hour playtime and have completed the game, the game did not force these choices to the player. The story were not written in a way that forces you to romance Hans or anyone, depending on your play style or taste. The game and the writers treat the audience to be mature enough, not depict romance foolishly or in a patronizing way. The developers didn’t make the romance sections to be the main point, however an added spice, to your game. Whether you agree with the addition of gay scenes or not, the game handles it very maturely and it never rubs it to your face. All romance options has to be followed through for almost the entire game before said scenes can be triggered. This, like many other games before it, is the best way of handling romance.
The Gameplay
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is not a game for someone looking for a chill & simple game. The game has a lot of system, like its 1st game, that adds to the immersive feel of the game. Let’s take a look at them.
The combat feels more responsive and streamlined when comparing to the 1st game. This in no way has simplified nor complicated the combat system, though. The game is as deadly as the first game. With the wide variety of weapons (long sword, short sword, crossbow and a new weapon type), you can be as flexible as you want with your weapon choice.
Like the first game, you improve your skills by continuously using the skill or weapon. Alternatively, you can also pay skill teachers you’ll find throughout the map to help you speedup your growth.
Other than combat, the game has other systems that could easily consume your hours by grinding or simply taking part. This could either be a good thing or a bad thing to people. But for me, This is an extreme positive. Do you want your Henry to follow his father’s footstep to being a blacksmith? Or perhaps a bow/crossbow expert, Henry? Or even, an alchemist, Henry. The game is your sandbox.
Let’s take a look at some of the many subsystems of KCD2. All of these activities also have their own perk points that can help you do the activity much easier or faster, be more effective, or even sell some of the things you craft at a better price.
Smithing & Sharpening Wheels
The game now has a blacksmithing minigame which consumed our entire day just so we can earn money at the earlier parts of the game. You can smith from swords, to arrows, to even horseshoes. However, you can’t smith your own armor. Perhaps for the next game or a DLC?
Alchemy
Despite being optional for other builds, it might be helpful for your Henry to at least try to learn a few concoctions, especially the Saviour Schnapps, which is how you save the game. It might sound tedious, but the ingredients can easily be found anywhere on the maps, or near villages. Spending at least an hour or 30 minutes of brewing your own Saviour Schnapps can net you many of the save potions that you probably won’t ever need to buy one. You might even be able to sell some of them too.
Personal Hygiene
Like the 1st game, hygiene, including the way you dress and what you dress, can impact the effectiveness of your speech checks or charisma. Not taking a bath can even play against you in some scenarios, like failing the speech check or failing the stealth check, because the enemy can just smell you coming.
Gambling / Dice
Double-edged way of earning money, but is the main entertainment of people in taverns. You can make use of badges that grant you special buffs or advantages, or use your “special” dice to “improve” your chances of winning.
Other subsystem includes the hunger system, which is now more forgiving than what we remember from the 1st game. Keep your hunger in check by eating food, which also has its own subsystem which is simply spoilage. Keep a plant, raw meat or food in your inventory for too long, it’ll spoil and can either food poison you, or in the case of plants can degrade the quality of your potions.
Technical Performance
The game, despite looking far better than the 1st game, performs surprisingly better than the 1st game. I’m playing on the following setup:
- 6900XT Founder’s Edition
- Ryzen 5 3600
- 2x16Gb 3600mhz
- SSD
The game staying consistently at 90~120 fps, with dips present in particle and NPC heavy scenes, but not so much that it affects the experience. Overall, the game performs significantly better while looking better than the 1st.
The game is not without its flaws, though. We completed the game pre-patch 1.2, so things now are probably better than before. During pre-patch 1.2, We experienced many weird bugs that include some NPCs missing in the frame during in game cutscenes of conversations, and a few minor bugs that they can easily fix. However, there were no game breaking bugs, or game crashes that we experienced throughout our 120-hour playtime. This is from our experience. We’ve seen many steam discussion posts and tweets about people experiencing game breaking bugs or game crashes.
The developers have released Patch 1.2 that fixes many bugs and issues that the game has. Check it out here to see what they fixed, or added to the Patch 1.2.
Conclusion
We absolutely love the game. We highly recommend you give it a try. The very well-written stories, a treasure trove of side-quests, breathtaking sceneries, big but well-designed maps, fun and diverse selection of minigames, very interesting characters, and a very satisfying end to this tale (so far) makes this game a Game of the Year contender.
Adding to the fact that there were no issues at launch and an overall extremely positive reception, makes us hopeful that the game will be nominated this year. If not, at least be played by many more players in the future. The game, however, remains to be sort of niche. If you did not enjoy or liked the 1st game, there’s a very high likelihood that you still wouldn’t like this new game. It gives us great pleasure to have made a review for such a wonderful game. It did take us some time to write this review because of the jam-packed releases in February including the release of Monster Hunter Wilds.
With this, we’ll now be going back to playing. There are still stories to unravel.
Audentes Fortuna Iuvat!
Kyle Garcia