In this Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 article I’m going to be talking about my first impressions playing the full version of the game. Thanks to Play On And War Horse I got a copy of the game a few days ago and I’ve been able to play since then. I’m only able to give you guys my impressions from the first 8-10 hours of the game so that’s what this video is going to be and we will have a full review of the game later on but for now let’s talk about what we make of the game so far.
Something New Yet Familiar
Having played the very beginning of the game before, I can confirm that basically the beginning of the game is the same as what I have played. If you didn’t see our previous preview video on this, I can basically tell you that the first hour or two of the game is slow. It reminds me a lot of Red Dead Redemption 2 where there’s a lot of story building, a lot of cut scenes, and a lot of dialogue that’s happening.
There’s a recap of events of the previous game, and it’s on rails quite a bit for the first two hours or so. You have a little bit of gameplay here and there, but it’s really trying to set up this epic story, so it has a bit of a slow start. It still remains that way from what I played before, so just keep that in mind. However, what I will say is that the recap is good enough, and the way the story is set up is good enough, that I don’t think you need to have played the previous game in order to play Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.
It’s been like what, six, seven years since Kingdom Come Deliverance came out? I haven’t played it in that long, and I didn’t remember tons and tons of the story, but I still felt like I knew what was going on, and the recap helped a little bit. So, it’s not like you absolutely have to have played the previous game in order to play this one.
I will say, though, that Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 throws a lot at you in the beginning, and it’s frankly overwhelming and I’m talking about mechanically. Even if you’ve played the first game, there are just a lot of systems in this game, which is one of the great things about Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. It’s got a lot of depth to it, but it does throw a lot of it at you in a way where every five to ten minutes you’re getting these big screens with lots of text on them. You’re like, “Oh god, I gotta read like two more pages of text” for activities in the game that include things like blacksmithing, cooking, crafting, making potions, fishing, lockpicking—and there’s even more activities and explanations of things like horseback riding, archery, and all different kinds of mechanics.
It can be a bit overwhelming when you first start playing, just the sheer amount of things you can do in the game. If you’re like me, you probably won’t read all these as they come up. There’s just too many, they come at you too quickly, and when they do come at you, you know you’ve been through this one- to two-hour build-up, and finally getting to play the game, you won’t want to just read them over and over and over. You’re gonna want to start playing the game, which is fine.
If you need other help, obviously we will have the wiki and we’ll have guides up for you as well. But I will say that as much as I love the depth of the game, I do think a certain portion of people playing the game will find this very, very overwhelming, and they may not like it. Although, I would hope that by now people will know what they’re getting with Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, because a lot of these systems were in Kingdom Come Deliverance 1, even though this game has even more systems.
I will also say that Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 feels a lot more polished than the first game already. Even from only playing like the first eight to ten hours, there are very few bugs in the game. I haven’t had really any issues; I’ve noticed a little jank here and there in dialogues where NPCs are looking the wrong way. Sometimes you’re having a dialogue with somebody, and a random NPC photobombs the camera.
I actually had one incident that was absolutely hilarious—I was almost in tears. There was a naked merchant tied up on the side of the road, and I went to untie him. I asked him what happened, and he told me he was robbed by some bandits. Right as I’m talking to him, the two bandits that robbed him come walking through behind him in the scene, and right when I come out of dialogue, we got into it. It was just a funny series of events that happened. It was a little janky, but at the same time, it was really endearing. I don’t think this stuff really takes away from the game. In fact, it made a very special moment that you just won’t find in most games. I think it actually adds some charm to it.
What Else Can We Get Away With?
Another thing that I really love so far about Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is how reactive the game is after the opening bits. I was fortunate enough to run across an NPC that had picked a fight with me and my companion that you couldn’t get out of due to the story. Right, was it just part of the story that you got into a fight with this guy? Well, I ran into him immediately. I had the fortunate circumstances of this, so what did I do? I knocked him out and robbed him, put his clothes on, and then promptly walked back into town with my shiny new attire.
But when I went into town, the guards recognized that that clothing didn’t belong to me and it belonged to a guard. They attacked me, which was unexpected but also very entertaining because I didn’t realize that the AI in this game had programming for something like that. You will find that there are a lot of moments in the game that are going to happen like that—moments you just didn’t realize because it’s not normal for a video game to have that level of interactivity.
So far, I find myself playing Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 like I did Red Dead Redemption 2, which is to say, basically like a psychopath who takes every opportunity to do something horrible when I can get away with it and sometimes even when I can’t get away with it. It’s just really fun to do. The fact that there are systems in place for this, and it’s not just like this noble Henry that you have to play—that you’re forced to play as a good guy—I really like that. You have the option to play as this scoundrel villain, a noble hero, or somewhere in the middle. The fact that you have options to do that is one of the things that makes Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 so much fun.
I know not everyone will take advantage of these systems. A lot of people like to play the good guy in RPGs; I do myself sometimes, most of the time even. But sometimes these systems will come into play when you’re not even expecting them. You do something that you didn’t realize you weren’t supposed to do, and then all of a sudden, all these consequences show up. Things spiral out of control, and you get into some really entertaining and unexpected situations, even if you’re trying to play the good guy.
I think it’s one of the things that’s just so great about it. Even the people who aren’t going to take advantage of these systems in the way that I am, like a total psychopath, are going to see these systems at play oftentimes—even through unintentional activities.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is absolutely challenging from a combat perspective, particularly early on. There’s one enemy in the game that is a particular pain in the ass to fight—the guy with the shield. Anytime you run into this dude with a shield, he just has like a health pool that’s… I don’t know. I fought him for like five minutes one time, ten minutes another time.
What’s really interesting about the game so far is that it seems like the enemy placements are more or less the same when you respawn. If you die and reload the game, the bandits or enemies that are there are somewhat randomized. So sometimes you won’t run into the guy with the shield, and it’ll be somebody else, and it’s a bit easier. But man, that guy with a shield sucks. I think he needs to be tuned a little bit.
But you are gonna die a lot in this game, and this game shares something in common with the first game: Henry sucks at everything starting out. He just sucks at it. Obviously, the idea behind this is that, as you gain power, as you improve Henry, and he gets better and better at things, it feels good. It feels really rewarding, right? You can feel yourself going from an absolute nothing to an absolute badass over the course of many, many hours in this game.
I haven’t even reached that point in the path I’m going, but you may see it heading in that direction, and it’s a really rewarding feeling. But you’re gonna be bad at things because you have low attribute points. You can’t use good weapons, your armor is dinged up, and you have no money so you can’t repair it. You’re low-level, so you have less stamina, and you don’t have any perks yet. Even if you’re a very skilled player—which a lot of people out there are gonna be playing this game—there are limitations on you just because Henry is set up to be sucky at the beginning so that he can become stronger throughout the game.
This is a bit of a double-edged sword because some people won’t stick it out to get to that point where your character feels stronger and is doing exactly what you want him to do all the time. They might write that off as jank or maybe not good design choices, but it feels rewarding when you get there if you can stick it out.
I think one of the things that worries me a little bit is that because the save system is more or less the same from the previous game—although there’s a little change to it—sometimes you can get to a fight and just die. Then, you’re reloading like 45 minutes earlier and having to do all this stuff all over again. I think for some people, that’s gonna be a bit too extreme for them.
Dialogue and Visuals
Narratively, the game’s blown me away so far. I’m not gonna get into spoilers or anything like that, but apart from some small janky character movements and bugs in cutscenes, the dialogue is absolutely outstanding. The voice acting is some of the best out there, and when you combine that with the game’s excellent music, it always feels like you’re on an adventure of this really grand scale. You feel part of this grand epic tale that’s being told, even when you’re not particularly doing anything grand at the moment.
When you don’t feel like skipping through dialogue in a day and age when people have very short attention spans and it’s very hard to get people to pay attention for long periods of time, you’ve got something good when people are really listening to the dialogue as told by the characters. Even from characters that don’t have a significant importance in the overall plot of the game, I think that says a lot about the game.
And lastly, before I wrap up the video, we’ll talk a little bit about the graphics. The graphics of the game are absolutely outstanding. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is one of the best-looking first-person games out there. This is par for the course—Kingdom Come Deliverance 1 was of course very beautiful itself, so that’s not a big surprise. I find myself just getting lost in the lush forest of Bohemia and not really particularly caring where I’m going or what I’m doing. I’m just happy to be there. I’m just happy to be in that game world. It’s so vibrant and lush, and just exploring inside of it.
Additionally, the game runs pretty damn well, which is a huge plus considering you never know what you’re gonna get these days with modern games. Some of them run well; others run like crap. So, I was getting around 90 FPS, I think, on 1440p settings with a 3080 Ti, and I had everything on ultra, which made the game really smooth. I didn’t run into a single slowdown or hitch yet. You know, I’m not that far into the game—I’m only eight or ten hours into the game, so we’ll see how the overall performance of the game as a whole is as you go further and further. Still haven’t made it to the major city yet, where there are hundreds of NPCs, which should be more taxing on the system. Hopefully, it’s fine, but I don’t know how the whole game’s gonna be. So far, it’s running really, really well without any crashes or anything like that, so I’m really excited to see how the overall performance is.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I’m having so much fun playing Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. It’s a very old-school game in a very shiny new wrapper. It may be a modern game technically, but it is very much intended for old-school gamers and hardcore gamers out there. We’ll call them hardcore now. Those who can read dialogue and figure out mechanics without needing their hand held every two seconds, and for those players who will persist through challenges with some trial and error, who enjoy what is essentially a medieval playground to get lost in.
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, though, is not gonna be for everyone. It is a game that will take some patience. There is a little bit of jank here and there. There are some mechanics that are pretty old-school like going back 45 minutes if you haven’t saved recently and you need an item to save. These are the things that are gonna frustrate some people. However, I will just reiterate what I’ve been saying all along, which is that if you’re tired of the general direction of the gaming industry as a whole, for whatever reason—and there are lots of reasons to be tired of the gaming industry as a whole as it is—then you should love this game.
And while I have not made it through the entire game yet, as long as nothing changes much from the first bits, I think it’s safe to say this game will probably be one of the best games this year. Stay tuned, we will have more Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 content on this channel, but it’s going to be a lot closer to the launch of the game in February, including a full review of the title. So if you want to know what our final thoughts are on the game, stay tuned for that. But for now, just keep in mind that I think this game is gonna be one of the best this year.
So, what do you guys make of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2? Are you happy to have heard some of this? Are these all things you figured out already? Is it music to your ears? Let me know if you have any concerns in the comments below.
