I loved and hated Kingdom Come: Deliverance

[JaxonThomas]

Hello everyone,
Gonna talk about my experience with this game having just finished it and feeling pretty conflicted about whether it’s good or not.

First of all I’ll say the first 10 hours or so I absolutely loved learning the medieval life ‘simulator’ mechanics, seeing how I could easily screw things up and that I could not cheese the combat. Galloping around the beautiful green country side and exploring castles was an incredible gaming memory which reminded me of the fun I had with Skyrim back in the day. I was also really impressed by the main quest line which has lots of unexpected and interesting situations and a cool detective vibe.

Mid-game the shine wore off. The need to regularly eat and sleep started becoming a chore and I started to notice a lot of the quests, as good as they are story-wise, were just fetch quests like in nearly every other RPG. Find this, talk to so and so, follow this bread crumb trail, etc except that KCD will have a bunch of them together in a single story. It wouldn’t be so bad except the amount of travelling back and forth across the map is ridiculous (most I’ve endured since The Witcher 1 which was insanely bad) and the fast-travel system in KCD is ironically slow (like a lot of things in the game, it’s brilliant for immersion but becomes tedius because you gotta watch your character move along the map’s road network).

By end game my love hate relationship with this game was really clear. Some of the quests I thought were brilliantly conceived but so very tedious to actually play. There’s that quest in the monastery everyone shits on since you’re supposed to follow a rigid daily routine and there’s not enough sensitivity with the skip-time controls to fast-forward past all the boring parts in that routine. There’s that quest you get right before a big battle that requires you to fetch a bunch of supplies for the troops, a doctor, etc … that one pissed me off nearly as much. There are a bunch of other examples I could give.

Overall, I think it’s a unique gaming experience and I am keen for there to be a sequel with a better balance between realism and tedium…

[Warrington]

Yeah this is type of game where you will have both great time, and some dark moments. The thing i loved about this game, is how many kind of ways you can play this. Making money for example. At hardcore mode its not easy to make money, but after i held my stolen goods for couple days in my house, i could sell them for better price, since Peshek doesen’t pay as well as smith. And poaching was another good way to make money.

And there is so many ways to handle those quests. Some side quests and main quests got lot longer because i was rude, and some side quests even failed. There isnt that many games, where your actions have this huge consequences. Second playthrough was defenetly worth it, and now im thinking allready 3rd playthrough. Maybe with my brother. It won’t be ‘‘multiplayer’’ when we play at same time, but storywise pretty close to it. And i mean that we both play with different PC.

[PatrickAWilson]

I disagree that making money is difficult. I played without reselling weapons or armor from defeated enemies. I limit what I take to groschen and small items. I even stopped taking spurs as they are a veritable cash cow. Still had more money than I knew what to do with until it was time to fund Pribyslavitz.

If you really want to loot and resell money practically falls into your pocket. One trick that I discovered accidentally and try not to use: sell something to a merchant at a discount. Two or three days later they will have lots of cash. Do it again, only this time selling more stuff. Rinse, wash repeat your way to 100K groschen in no time if that’s what you want to do. I admit that I do resort to this when it is time to fund Pribyslavitz.

I absolutely love this game. I love the fact that so many quests are not combat related but instead tell a story. Sure, they might be a fetch quest, but the story that they wrap is just fun to be a part of.

Combat in this game, for all of its flaws (locking!!), is still hard for me all the way through the game. I love having to think before I leap. One of my greatest fears is coming across a half dozen peasant thugs with pole arms.

I love being in a historical setting. I’m American, but my mother was German. Hof is right on the Czech border and I have visited Prague once. As I look at the landscape and even the villages they seem almost familiar in some ways.

I love hardcore mode without a clear navigation sign. I like having to spot the sun and moon to determine direction. The feeling of getting lost and finding your way again. Eating and sleeping to me is more enjoyable than tedious. It makes my Henry feel more real. He needs to be taken care of.

It’s all highly subjective, of course. Thing I would like to see improved:

1. AI is pretty stupid. Watching them gawk at you for 15 seconds after you have put an arrow into them is pretty silly.
2. Money should be incredibly hard to come by.
3. I cannot do a combo move with keyboard and mouse. precision is not there. And then there is the locking - absolutely the worst aspect of this game. Fighting more than one person can be incredibly frustrating when your character is no longer under your control.
4. Scaling of armor is IMHO silly. Suddenly bandits have better armor than the highest of knights.

So those are what I perceive as flaws. Others will have different ideas. But in the end this is one of my favorite games of all time.

[savvym]

It looks like you hate it more than you love it. When I was in mid game I was used to eat and sleep regularly and maintained good health = better stats.

I was excited when I was finally able to talk to some new NPCs in village I discovered on the other side of map.

Fast travelling was actually done well, just some perks for it seemed pointless.

I was “unlucky” to be thrown out of monastery on my first day so I didn’t experience what many criticise, however I walked around it after and was disappointed nobody liked me there.

Fetching the supplies for units was actually easy because it was late game and I knew where to look for those and easily get them.

I had totally different issues with game and I don’t see what exactly you liked about KCD.