And all it took was a single trailer, late at night, while watching history video clips. I researched further, looking into gameplay, people's opinions and how the game played, and eventually bought a copy within release week.
Put simply: I am hooked. And this review will explain why.
To the people just like I was those few weeks ago or who has missed this release, Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a historic piece set in 15th century Bohemia (modern Czech Republic) and follows a young blacksmith's son named Henry. Henry is your typical young man; a drunkard who gets up to mischief with his friends while swooning over a pretty young girl. But life can be complicated. A raid falls upon his home and in the struggle, his mother and father are slaughtered in front of him. Henry flees the village to safety, carrying the last sword his father made. In an attempt to bury them, the sword is stolen and Henry is left to die. When he awakes, he seeks to train and become a better swordsman than a blacksmith, with a single goal: to take back the sword and complete his father's promise to his Lord.
Truthfully speaking, the beginning plot does sound very similar to veterans, but what I love about this story and this game is that you can choose what paths Henry takes. This isn't like a Telltale game or Until Dawn, but something much more: Do you want your Henry to wield a club, thieving off dead bodies while drinking and sleeping with every bathmaid in every village? You can do that! What about a Henry that stays away from ale, is a good Christian and likes reading books? Find your favourite bench and have a break!
Without giving away much of the story as I already have, there are small mechanics in the game that can determine if you fail or succeed and sometimes failure or succeeding is decided on what you say or do! But we'll come back to that later.
The story, in the beginning, is your cut and dried revenge story, but past the first hour or two, the game truly picks up and sets you in this massive, incredibly big world for you to explore. However, be warned! This isn't your classic RPG.
Gameplay, if boiled down to its bones, is a mixture of Elder Scrolls meets For Honor with a decent twist of Dark Souls and beyond. Players are given tutorials, to be fair, but in no way, shape or form is this game easy. Sword play has you remember different patterns and attacks, while defending is challenging and needs pin point timing to not reduce your stamina. Bows and arrows don't have on screen reticle and act like you're actually shooting the arrow yourself and needs to be aimed as such.
This doesn't even begin to mention the other smaller things that are required to play the game. Roleplaying is taken to the next level! Take too many hits to the chest, your chest is sore. Hit by an arrow in your unprotected hand? Your hand is bleeding and you need to patch it. Chose to drink? You're drunk and can barely stand. Each action has a concequence!
A normal blacksmith wouldn't be able to read in the 15th century. You have to travel to a far off village and see a scribe to teach you. An illness is plaguing a village! You need to travel to this place to study illnesses and diagnose what's wrong so you can make the appropriate antidote. You don't know how to make potions? Well it's in God's hands so let's hope you diagnosed correctly.
The leveling up system is tailored to how you play, and put simply, the more you do something, the higher level you become. If you attempt conversation techniques more and more, succeed or fail will grant you higher levels. The more you swing your sword, the more your vitality grows, the more hits you take, the more defense you learn. But be warned! That tasty bread that's at 40% quality? Well you've got food poisoning now. Forgot to sleep at night? You're ready to pass out! Kept a sword bloody too long? It'll deteriorate faster if left alone, fix it soon! This doesn't even begin to cover the massive amount of customisation at your fingertips; weapons and clothing take center stage, and I truly wish hairstyle and the like were too, but what's there will leave many players satisfied. Remember to shop at different towns to find what you want!
The world can be naked at times, true, but the encounters you'll have travelling on the road, the missions you'll be asked, each one improving your running, or making you stronger.
A normal blacksmith wouldn't be able to read in the 15th century. You have to travel to a far off village and see a scribe to teach you. An illness is plaguing a village! You need to travel to this place to study illnesses and diagnose what's wrong so you can make the appropriate antidote. You don't know how to make potions? Well it's in God's hands so let's hope you diagnosed correctly.
The leveling up system is tailored to how you play, and put simply, the more you do something, the higher level you become. If you attempt conversation techniques more and more, succeed or fail will grant you higher levels. The more you swing your sword, the more your vitality grows, the more hits you take, the more defense you learn. But be warned! That tasty bread that's at 40% quality? Well you've got food poisoning now. Forgot to sleep at night? You're ready to pass out! Kept a sword bloody too long? It'll deteriorate faster if left alone, fix it soon! This doesn't even begin to cover the massive amount of customisation at your fingertips; weapons and clothing take center stage, and I truly wish hairstyle and the like were too, but what's there will leave many players satisfied. Remember to shop at different towns to find what you want!
The world can be naked at times, true, but the encounters you'll have travelling on the road, the missions you'll be asked, each one improving your running, or making you stronger.
The graphics are very well done, especially in cutscenes, but can be off in the hubworld. Character's eyes, clothing and body parts clip through clothing and their own bodies at time (especially Henry when changing clothes) and the ground can look very pixelated at times, but otherwise the scenery is beautiful. The musical score is also incredibly appropriate at times, and the sound effects, but I wish there were more of both. Music comes and goes, sound effects can disappear if travelling too fast (mostly elemental like rain, wind in trees etc), but what's there is great.
Voice acting is quite good as well; the main cast shows incredible promise in the field, especially Henry himself. The cast features small role video game actors or actors directly from TV, which is surprising. The releationship between Henry (Tom McKay) and Theresa (Victoria Hogan) is incredible, and I really wish there was more of it! There's also the small issue of Sir Divish, an old man, sounding like a 30 year old, but that's no fault of the voice actor. There are a few NPCs that sound stilted or forced at times, but due to their few lines, it's only slightly jarring.
Finally, I must address the bugs and glitches this game does have, and which has been often the topic at hand. As mentioned before, clothing, body parts and the like will frequently show under clothing. The world tends to only fully load in close proximity to the player, but this isn't incredibly noticeable until you enter towns: buildings look flat and bland and take a few seconds to load at times, while NPCs may T pose before going about their business. Loading screens can glitch out the upcoming cutscene resulting in reloading an old save, your incredibly rare saves may do so before you lose a mission, and so on. I have experienced one or two game freezes, but only in loading screens, which caused much dismay. Large combat moments with many NPCs can also cause camera bugs and insta-deaths, resulting in old save loads.
At this time, I must also mention Savior Schnapps; these items are the tools you'll need in order to save your game. So unless you can make a massive supply (buy the ingredients and use Alchemy), you're looking at a lot of money lost buying them, which money is hard to come by so often. So you're left to use them sparingly and rely on the manual saves after sleeping or gameplay moments, but this will leave you disheartened if any of the events mentioned above happens and reloading a save from an hour ago. They are being addressed by the game having exit saves, but perhaps making the price for their materials cheaper, or the Schnapps cheaper themselves, may resolve this issue. But I digress.
The reason I'm writing this review now is because I cannot express how much I adore and love this game. It has been quite some time since I last played a game up until the early hours of the morning by accident. And this game is hard; you're going to die a lot before you find a technique that works for you. But what keeps me going is that this game is fun to play, addictive to beat your enemies that have held you back for hours, and more. This doesn't mention the realism this game has: the Codex has historic facts about Czech history, the people, the culture, how they lived, who ruled and so on. It's a history nerd's dream.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance could be a clear and easy 10/10, if it wasn't as buggy as it is. Even the developers have admitted it needed more time, and they are addressing these issues, but even at the state I'm reviewing it, if you're a fan of medieval culture, combat and roleplaying, this game is a must for you. Until the time comes that these glitches are addressed, I however have to review it in its current state, and that does drop it a tad.
But Kingdom Come: Deliverance is definitely already a contender for Game of the Year, and my personal recommendation to every RPG fan.
Play this game, my Lord, and you will fall in love with it too.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance - 9/10
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