I really enjoy this style of game. I think there is a lot of merit to KCD. I hope it is patched to a working state. I want to be able to recommend this game. If this game was a clean, polished, bug free production, I would rate it 8/10.
The bug report system is a hot mess, I’m not even bothering. This isn’t to report these bugs to the developers, it’s for potential customers. This is a collection of my own bugs on a ps4 (not pro) and expreiences, in case anyone is reading this forum thinking of purchasing, plus my review of some core progression and gameplay mechanics.
The short version of this post: The idea of this game is a good one, but the game lacks stability, balance, and polish. The dynamic way quests play out, with time and player actions taken into account, means that there are just too many variables for this game to handle cleanly. This is a cool idea, but technically, things get real ugly real fast. Even if bugs were not there, the game theory behind the leveling system is unstructured and lacking thought.
I keep giving this game a chance, thinking the bugs may have been patched out. Let’s be honest: this is a fun game! I lost a 1.0 save file to corruption on 1.1, started a 1.1 save file. Lost the 1.1 save file on 1.2 to corruption after extended periods of saves simply not recording. On my third playthrough, 30-40 hours of total time overall, just encountered a bug and simply cannot save at all. Bed sleeping will not autosave.
This is absolutely ludicrious. I have now played this game three times through and have not seen past 3 or so major story missions. I keep losing save data to corruption and having to start over. Only 9.4% of ps4 players have earned the achievement trophy of killing a mid-game boss. Think about that. Either there is another path other than killing the boss, or less than 10% of your playerbase have survived this bug-ridden mess of a world to that point.
This level of game-breaking bug is just unacceptable for a sixty dollar price tag, I don’t care about indie studio size or excuses. Scope and budgeting are part of running a business. This game is a rough alpha level of stability at best. Some other, regular bugs I encounter almost every 10-15 minutes:
The area in which the game renders textures at close ranges is just jarring in quality difference: Sometimes, 15 feet around you, it’s Skyrim, and 15 feet to the horizon looks like an ugly ps2 game.
Often, textures don’t render.
AI breaks itself. (knock villager unconcious, take his clothes, watch him walk around naked for the rest of the game)
UI/UX is a hot mess.
Load times on every transition to a conversation, and the load times are long.
The game is sold as a world in which your choices to complete quests are many, yet I can guarantee that after THREE playthroughs, there are many paths within quests that cause other things within the world to bug out very badly.
Example: I managed to convince the scribe to teach me how to read outside of Lubosh’s house at night, paid him, was transported to his room in the middle of the night alone, the scribe vanished, and now I can’t find him to learn how to read.
The stealth system and thievery in general have very little balance. You are either terrible or godlike. You literally go from a squirrely peasant to the grim reaper himself, able to instant stealth kill almost anything. There is no in between. The way crimes work is not very reliable, you can knock a bandit unconcious in a town and when looting him be arrested for theft. Moving ANY body, dead or unconcious, is treated as carrying a corpse and will get you arrested, regardless of circumstance.
The combat locking is so finicky that multiple opponent fights are near impossible, often require cheesing, and are very little fun. By the time you’re able to fight multiple people, it is because the scaling in this game has allowed you to poke or one shot every single enemy in the game regardless of armor. Combos are not useful in these situations, just cheesing space and poking.
Putting different ballistics on archery arrows and removing the sight made it basically impossible to do anything with a bow other than one time ranged sneak attacks… and even then, since you can’t pull out your sword crouching, plus a hefty button delay on weapon draw, you often lose your advantage because every enemy in the game closes the gap before you can fumble your sword out.
I get that this was a business move releasing at this point, but this level of technical weakness in a game cannot be a surprise to anyone on quality assurance, programming, or honestly any level of production in this game. There are reports of the same game-breaking bug I am having from 2016. That’s two years of production to fix the save system, which I would prioritize as a pretty big deal.
Rant over, thanks everyone.
ps. I really do hope Warhorse gets it together, this is a diamond in the rough, not a polished turd.