I bounced off the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance pretty hard when I first tried to play it. I appreciated the concept; a historical RPG with absolutely no magic or fantasy elements, just 15th century Bohemian politics, is about as close to a perfect setting for me as you can get without including naval battles against Napoleon. However, I just couldn’t get past the combat. [Editor’s Note: Chris recommends listening to Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2’s soundtrack, linked below, while reading this issue of Ludology Now!]
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 still doesn’t have what I would call a “good” combat system, but enough tweaks and refinements have been made that I can now both tolerate it and actually execute movements purposefully. It’s janky – you still need to block and attack at the proper angles, Skyward Sword-style – but in a less frustrating way than it was before. I can actually win fights in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Most of the time.
My Kingdom For A Dog
The introduction of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 sure takes its time, but once the main game opened up proper I only had one goal in mind – find Henry’s lost dog, Mutt. I’m a sucker for main characters with dog companions (it’s probably half the reason I reviewed Blair Witch as highly as I did) and the ability to take an early game perk point in dog mastery meant I had both roleplay and gameplay reasons to seek him out. This is how the first real ten hours of my Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 adventure started.
I traveled back to where the dog and I parted ways, but all I found was a peddler who had been robbed, stripped, and tied to the side of the road. I untied the man and gave him a shirt, a spare pair of trousers, and my shoes, then sent him on his way. Still searching for my dog, about ten minutes later, I ran into a group of minstrels out in the woods and lost most of my money to them playing dice. They hadn’t seen my dog, but they had seen some wolves recently.
Following the trail of the wolves led me to a gamekeeper, who led me to a pack of horse thieves, who led me to a stolen horse and a hideout in the caves. I didn’t find my dog there, but I did finally learn how the stealth attack system works. And, with the horse safely returned to its owner, I continued on my quest. Someone said they might have spotted a dog with a different group of wolves a couple of towns away. It’s worth checking out.
It’s Such A Pretty World, Today
We found each other eventually, of course. I even reconciled with my old horse, Pebbles, a few hours later. I had undergone quite the change mentally; my journey from naked, bruised, and ashamed at the stockade to my current position in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 as a blacksmith’s assistant with my own lodgings had taken long enough for the improvement to feel earned, and I was eager to help my new boss with his missing cart problem.
The day began gloriously. I made a good impression on the two nobles whose assistance I required in locating my boss’ wares, and I was even invited to spar with the local lord while we traveled between towns. It was as if God himself was shining down on me, as I won the contest with nary a scratch and then did nothing but speak complimentary of my opponent, who was but the most gracious of losers. The three of us rode into the next town all smiles.
It was then I was ordered off my horse and forced, at swordpoint, to surrender. As the two nobles, those men who had gained so much respect for me in the past few hours, watched, I was accused of murder in the middle of the street. At first I was confused, but then, after hearing the name of the victim, I understood.
Only Murderers In The Village
You see, a few in-game days previously, I had in fact murdered a man. I hadn’t wanted to – I had tried to talk him out of a longstanding feud, one which had just caused the death of an innocent bystander and nearly caused the death of another. He wouldn’t listen to reason. I had no choice. Keeping him alive made everyone less safe.
Of course, the guards wouldn’t listen. No matter how many times I reloaded my save and tried to coerce, threaten, or argue my way out of the situation, there was no escape. How to save in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is a bit cumbersome (quicksaving consumes an in-game potion called Saviour Schnapps) but still I tried every trick in the save-scumming handbook to avoid justice. I even took the game back to before the day’s journey, before my friendship with the nobles, before the victory in the sparring match, all the way back to right before we even met.
It didn’t matter. The murder had happened days ago. The body was cold and everyone in the village knew it was me who did the deed. After hours and hours of trying to find a way to not take responsibility, finally I loaded back that original save file and forced Henry to turn himself in. I was taken prisoner and branded, literally, like an animal, so everyone I met would know my crimes.
Afterward, the nobles I had been traveling with would no longer speak to me. An innkeeper I had previously befriended turned up her nose when I asked for a room. Dejected and once again feeling crushed under the weight of the world, Henry and I sat down with the only person who would talk to us, a beggar at a campsite on the side of the road, and we played dice until the sun set.
Big Man In A Silly Hat
I really was not expecting to get as invested in Henry, as a character, as I ended up being. The little I remember from the first game – blacksmith dad, dead, sword got stolen – there’s enough mention of all of it in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 to let you know it’s still important, but the real core of the adventure is Henry’s journey from day-to-day. How do you afford food? How do you buy clothes? Where do you sleep? What do people think of you?
Hundreds of titles have sought to gamify these aspects of normal life in varying degrees of success. Some go the cozy farming game route, some go the immersive sim route, and others go for more of an arcade feel. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is part-RPG, part-immersive sim, and all history, and it’s a choice that pays off a hundred times over.
Crucially, it lets you make all these important decisions for Henry in a way that doesn’t feel “game-y”. That adventure I went on to find my dog Mutt? That wasn’t part of the main quest, that was just a side activity that I wanted to do. The fact that I was arrested and lost face with the nobles? The murder was entirely my choice, borne from a line of different favors I had been doing for someone else days earlier. My actions caused the story to unfold in this fashion and the game seamlessly went along with me.
Is Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Like Skyrim?
Yes, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is like Skyrim in the way that it handles many things. Your skills level up as you use them. You can fast-travel between towns once you find them for the first time. You can just walk in any direction on the map and find something interesting. There’s alchemy, and blacksmithing. You can rent rooms in inns, and you also get permanent homes throughout the story.
Now, there’s no dragons. There’s no magic, no elves, no giant trolls or any of Skyrim’s other fantasy trappings. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is Skyrim in vibes only, but those vibes are strong. It also (for me, on my PC, at least) has an ungodly long loading screen each time it starts, which always gives a dash of Bethesda to any game. Check out the video at the beginning of this article for how that can feel.
Really, the way Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is most like Skyrim is just in the way I end up playing it. It happened completely by accident, but once I noticed it I haven’t been able to shake the comparison. No other game since Skyrim has nailed the “I’m going to go do this, ooh, what’s that, now I’m over here doing this, oh, yeah, I can help this person, now let’s go here, wait, where was I going six hours ago?” feeling – for me, at least – until now.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 feels like a game I can play for 80 hours once every two or three years for the next decade, and I’m truly looking forward to doing so.
THIS WEEK’S RECOMMENDED MEDIA:
- I’ve spoken before about Mark Brown’s series Game Maker’s Toolkit, but this recent video about improving The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’s UI is absolutely worth twenty minutes of your time if you have any interest in game design.
- The Stop Killing Games campaign still needs your help. Sign the petition and tell your friends to do the same.
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