Kingdom Come: Deliverance Review

Role playing games are beloved by droves of players for their ability to offer enjoyable gameplay while maintaining a certain level of immersion that other genres simply cannot. This focus on becoming part of the world you’re playing in has always fascinated me and is a leading reason I became interested in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Once I learned that this ambitious first title from Warhorse Studios promised to bring a living, breathing medieval Bohemia to my platform of choice (Xbox One X in my case), I was instantly on board. 

Opening on a sunny day in 1403 Skallitz, Kingdom Come wastes no time in explaining our unlikely hero’s place in the world. As the local blacksmith’s son, the fictional Henry should have a fairly bright future ahead of him as he learns a lucrative trade from a proclaimed master. Unfortunately for everyone involved, this predictably doesn’t go as planned. I say predictably because the protagonist of our story wants for nothing but adventure. As always, “be careful what you wish for” fits perfectly here and the cozy home life Henry once knew is swiftly stolen away from him and replaced with a thirst for vengeance. Maybe I’ve just spent too much time experiencing similar stories over the years but this feels obvious from the first few minutes and any sort of profound effect the traumatic event should have is completely lost.

Luckily for the main narrative it is filled with interesting and unique characters that make your time pursuing Henry’s ultimate goal much more enjoyable. While I can’t speak about the historical accuracy of any part of this game, I am assured that many of these people did exist in one form or another thanks to their codex entries. Clearly, Henry’s entire arc is fabricated for the sake of the game, but this premise makes the historical aspect of the title less impactful since it never happened. While this isn’t a deal breaker, it seems as if a medieval Bohemia inspired world would have worked just as well. Either way, the actual quest Henry will embark on isn’t as long as it’s made out to be and only has a few major points that are stretched out of several quests. While I don’t want to spoil anything, I’ll say that I enjoyed how much detail was put into each quest and how so many characters you encounter are memorable.

A large part of what made these NPC’s come to life lies in the dialogue you trade with them. Important figures make their importance known through how they speak and what kind of speech checks you’re allowed to try on them. While you may be able to convince a villager or a town guard of some nonsense, a person of nobility may see right through your lies. There are countless skill checks in the dialogue and they cover several different skills; from intimidation to compassion or ability to heal and even investigative knowledge. Asking questions will often reward the player with bonus information or a recap on past events to keep them up to date without expecting them to constantly pursue the same quest or task. While speaking with NPC’s usually works fine, despite the typical separated nature of videogame speech, I did notice that I felt like I was getting railroaded to certain choices at times and started to have Fallout 4 flashbacks.

The fact that every character in Kingdom Come is voiced is a huge plus and adds to the relatively unique models each has. It’s a shame there are so many “Villager”s and “Guard”s in nearly every settlement, but this is forgivable given the nature of the game. Honestly, what isn’t as forgivable is how quickly passing conversations will get reused. I understand that recording lines can be tedious and expensive, but I should not be able to hear the exact same story about a girl who picked up painting that I first heard in a now burned down village. The people telling that story are dead and thus, so should that rather long conversation. By far the worst offenders of repeated lines has to be the various traders found throughout the world.

This should come as no surprise, but many traders say the same thing as others when you attempt to haggle or make a purchase. In fact, I learned how to skip dialogue for this very reason. I can’t be too upset with the lot since they provide a very important service with a simple system that requires the player to consciously think about what they are trying to sell. If you choose to pick a few items you want to purchase, pick a few that you wish to sell, and attempt to close out the transaction with any stolen (or otherwise ill-gotten) goods under your “Sell” tab, the merchant will completely deny you. I’d have liked to seen the possibility of haggling for a lower price on the stolen goods or something, but since that mechanic is a little too simplistic as-is, the many fences found throughout the land will have to do.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll get to know these less-than-moral merchants well. As I have a fondness of breaking the rules in videogames, I tend to pillage, loot, and steal anytime I’m given the chance. Because of this habit, I wound up with a plethora of ‘liberated’ goodies on me at all times and the guards seemed to know this because they would come up and ask to search me. Luckily for me, I had a high enough speech level (or coin) to get out of these situations and never encountered the consequences of getting caught like this. Although, I do know that there are different punishments for different crimes. If you’re caught stealing, you’ll have to pay a fine while murder will land you in a cell. Best to keep this in mind since Henry sucks at doing nearly everything at the start and every player is bound to fall victim to one of the three most important mechanics of the criminal life.

Obviously, the most important part of being a thief or assassin is not getting seen. Without any kind of reticles or HUD to tell the player if they’re being detected, the player must keep in mind if there is anyone around. The problem with this is that you’re never completely sure if you’re hidden or if that guy that just turned the corner saw you from down the dark alley. Without any light sources, you may think you’re fine but the game might decide differently. Combine this with the mini-game for picking pockets and you end up in a situation where you have no way of telling how you got detected. That is, if you didn’t get heard picking the lock on the chest half a room away. Having a person wake from a dead sleep because I was fiddling with a lock wasn’t even the most infuriating part about learning to become an accomplished thief. The mini-game for lockpicking requires absurd amounts of precision and consistent motion. To put it succinctly, lockpicking is less fun than punting a kitten into an orphanage fire and will get you caught more often than not.

When you do get seen and need to make a speedy getaway, your best option is your trusty steed. Henry will be given a horse during the main questline but many others are available to buy throughout Bohemia. With different stats such as speed, capacity, courage, and stamina, these horses can make helpful companions by either carrying extra loot or simply getting you around. The most glaring issue is that the horse can get stuck on the most minor scenery or will simply not jump over small fences and other barriers. Beyond this, the only minor inconvenience is watching your mount’s stamina bar as you make long treks since it will buck you if it fully depletes.

Players even have the ability to equip their horse with a saddle, horseshoes, saddlebags, and a few other things which all help to make the beast that much better. If that many equipment slots for the horse sounds like overkill, then the 20 slots Henry gets is going to blow your mind. With room for a helmet, chest armor, pants, gloves, boots, a weapon, a shield, a bow, and arrows, what else could he need, right? To name a few: there are slots for a coif, a ring, a scarf, vambraces, a necklace, and a jerkin. Every one of these pieces serve a purpose and change several aspects of Henry’s stats. Beyond simply having Henry make more noise in platemail and less in leather armor, your choice of equipment also determines Henry’s visibility, conspicuousness, noise (as a stat), charisma, and, obviously, armor ratings for his various body parts.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is not satisfied with simply having an overall armor rating or even a single number for each body part. No, instead there are three values for head, body, arm, and leg armor that represent resistance to stab, slash, and blunt damage. This means that, unless you’re fully kitted out and have every slot filled, you’re bound to have a weakness of some sort. While many will probably choose to live out the fantasy of becoming a shiny knight covered in shimmering metal, I preferred running around in simple leather or even cloth gear so that I could be as quick and silent as possible. Obviously fighting was tricky for me even before all the issues I encountered during my time with the earnest combat system.

Sporting not one, not two, but a whole five directions to attack and defend from, Kingdom Come: Deliverance forces players to pay attention to their opponents’ weapons as much as their own as they attempt to find an opening. This should lead to a deep and interesting system that demands concentration, but instead falls short for a variety of reasons. First up, the number of times I ended up in an outnumbered fight and this entire system fell apart is far too high. There is simply no way of defending yourself from attackers that you aren’t locked onto. This applies to enemies as well because, despite them having their own armor, you can simply attack them if they aren’t locked onto you and kill them in seconds. Combat is obviously designed to be a one-on-one engagement in this title and the general slow and deliberate nature only further cements this sentiment.

Fights feel longer than they need to be and it doesn’t even always feel fair. I hate using that word but I can’t ever tell if my opponent even has stamina to drain while each blow I sustain not only takes away my health but also my stamina. Without any magic potions to recover health, you’ll have to deal with lost health by sleeping or visiting a bathhouse. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up with damaged limbs or even be left bleeding, slowly losing health. Bandages can fix you right up, but it will take quite a few if you take a bad enough beating. I think the worst part of combat is how long you have to spend being bad at it before you start to enjoy it or even excel at it. Although the problems with unarmed and ranged combat may outweigh this issue.

You never really get good at the unarmed combat because it is simply clunky and obtuse. On the flip side, you may be an excellent marksman in most other titles but the lack of an aiming reticle and the amount the bow sways will likely throw off many of your shots. Since neither skill has any perks to purchase, it seems as if these skills will always be a little annoying. Most other skills have perks that can be bought every few levels. These perks can drastically change certain aspects of the game, such as gradual health regeneration, or give the player slight quality of life bonuses, such as being able make an extra haggle after failing. Henry’s proficiency with his skills is determined by his attributes such as strength, agility, and vitality.

Henry’s different attributes grow with use over time and will decay if he spends time in jail. Since so many of the perks available make changes that permanently alter how the player interacts with the world, several of them will be locked off if their opposites are chosen. This means that Henry may be better at speaking to nobles than villagers or vice versa. These perks can be quite handy since even cleanliness plays a role in how people react to Henry. With so many unique towns and settlements, it’s nice to be able to interact with as much as possible. This isn’t as true of the area outside of villages as there is very little to do outside of hunting a few rabbits and deer in the wild. The scenery is beautiful and the random encounters players will come across can be interesting, but it just isn’t as engaging as the towns.

Honestly, the best part about entering any new town is finding the local gambler to play some Farkle. The dice game is rather fun and not very difficult, making it perfect to play for a few minutes between quests. Also, it’s not full of bugs and glitches like so much of the rest of the game. From the very start villagers were displaying odd behavior, bushes were more like quick sand, textures would pop into existence, and quest entries and markers would revert or just be wrong. With how fun and distinct the quests were, I couldn’t fully enjoy them because of glitches. In fact, I had an AI pathing bug that forced me to reload a three hour old save. A villager decided to stand in a doorway that stopped a story intensive NPC from leaving her room.

While normally there are multiple ways to finish a quest, this one had no other solution and I was forced to reset because even killing the villager didn’t fix my issue. You may be wondering why I hadn’t saved in three hours and that’s because Kingdom Come only saves when you sleep in a bed you own, sleep at an inn, complete certain quest objectives, or when Henry consumes a Saviours Schnapps. Since I wasn’t doing anything dangerous, I didn’t sleep at an inn and didn’t see the point in wasting one of my three Schnapps. This system simply doesn’t work in such a buggy game. Luckily for me, I didn’t encounter any glitches with Henry himself.

Speaking of Henry, Warhorse Studios did a wonderful job of giving him a very detailed character model and voice. This is all made less impressive when you come to find that Henry is contradictory and rather boring. There are plenty of times where Henry will say the exact opposite of what I want him to or he’ll say something like “I’m no thief!” right before I ask how to pick pockets. My main problem with this is that it highlights my biggest gripe with the whole experience: you can’t role play as anyone other than Henry.

On the surface, this may seem like a vapid complaint, but I assure you this is a far reaching and deeply impactful loss. All the way at the start of the game, Henry will automatically say and agree to certain things that the player has no choice over. These instances aren’t too commonplace, but break any sense of immersion I had that wasn’t already broken by the games many other troubles. I can get behind Henry having a personality and his own stake in things but unfortunately it never really feels like I’m the one in control. A perfect example is how I’ll spend hours stealing things, murdering wayfarers, and looting corpses only to watch in awe as Henry is outraged by a man looting a corpse.

One of the best options Kingdom Come gives players is to complete the game non-lethally. This allows players to immerse themselves in a way that most of the immersion-breaking issues can’t mess up. Everytime this title begins to immerse the player, it does something to screw it up. For example, Henry has to eat and sleep just to live, but the whole world freezes everytime he decides to rummage through his pockets. I understand why this happens, but why go to such efforts to make an immersive title only to stop just short? By far the worst offender has to be the ‘time sensitive’ quests or tasks. These situations are not actually time sensitive until they are started. Unfortunately the very controls work against the experience with the B button needing to be held to sprint, taking the ability to freely look around away from the player. The button can’t be remapped and the camera sensitivity is locked. There’s also the the AI that is so easy to trick and acts so dumb at times that I simply can’t believe it is supposed to make me care about this world. To be short, Kingdom Come offers a good role playing experience but not a great one.