Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an ambitious game. Creating an RPG without any magic or fantasy elements and with unforgiving gameplay could easily be a recipe for disaster in the current state of the video game industry. Yet Warhorse Studios has managed to make a captivating experience with its open-world Medieval RPG, even though it’s heavily flawed.
Bohemian history
The game is set in the Medieval Kingdom of Bohemia during the 15th century. Right from the start, the game makes sure to present itself as a historically accurate and realistic simulation of that time. You learn about the dispute between King Wenceslaus IV and his half-brother Sigismund, who believes he should rule the kingdom and spreads war throughout the lands to achieve his goals. This war has life-changing effects on the Bohemian people, one of them being Henry, our protagonist. His peaceful village where he helps out his blacksmith father is one of the many places that gets razed by the invading forces of Sigismund. After watching his parents die, he manages to flee to a nearby stronghold, where he sets out on a journey throughout Bohemia.
The storytelling of Kingdom Come: Deliverance is surprisingly good. Even though you play as a mere blacksmith’s son, you’ll come across several situations that are filled with political intrigues, treachery, and royal disputes. It’s also surprising that, despite all the historically accurate lore, everything that happens in the main story and side quests is easy to follow. I was afraid that my lack of knowledge of the history of Bohemia/Czech Republic would hurt my experience. Luckily, that was not the case. I would even say that the game taught me a lot about this important piece of world history.
Deep RPG gameplay
One of the most noticeable aspects of Kingdom Come: Deliverance is its deep RPG gameplay. Many call it ‘realistic’ but I personally think that’s a little exaggerated. However, it has more ‘realistic’ concepts and implementations than most other RPG’s. At the start of the game, Henry is a weak and untalented boy that gets drunk after one drink and can’t swing a sword. To improve his skills, you have to train them by simply using them. Take archery, for example. Initially, Henry can’t hit his targets unless it’s right in front of him and even manages to hurt himself by flaying his fingers with the bowstring. To improve this skill, you can shoot at training targets in strongholds or, more effectively, hunt several animals in a nearby forest. Eventually, Henry will become a skilled marksman and one-shot enemies with a well-aimed arrow. You can also unlock perks that give you additional benefits when using a particular skill, like being able to skin hunted animals. To further deepen the gameplay, you also have a main level ranking, that gives you separate bonus perks that have their advantages but often also disadvantages. However, what I described in the previous sentences is not what makes Kingdom Come: Deliverance stand out from other RPG’s. What is truly unique in this game, is how it handles speech and reputation mechanics.
Keeping up appearances
The way Kingdom Come: Deliverance handles its speech and reputation system is something I haven’t seen implemented in any other game before. There are the standard dialogue options you can pick when talking to someone, but there’s an extra layer to it in this game. Like many other RPG’s, you can equip your character with different sets of clothing and armor. You can dress up as a knight, nobleman, poacher and many other styles of clothing. However, choosing the right set of clothing/armor is key to broaden the number of people you can talk to. For example, if you want to speak to a nobleman because he has information you need, you better make sure you approach him with a similar style of clothing. Show up in a full set of armor and he’ll quickly dismiss you since a warrior would have no idea how to speak correctly to someone of high social status. If that isn’t already a neat mechanic on its own, it also matters if you take care of your hygiene. Speak to a woman while wearing blood-drenched clothing will make her afraid of you. However, talking to a mercenary while being all bloodied up and he’ll see it as a token of your combat skills. Mechanics like these are what differentiate RPG’s from each other and this particular one should, in my opinion, be featured in more games.
Visually good…enough
The visuals of this game are good, but not great. To start off with the positives, I love how the forests look like actual forests. A pet-peeve of mine is how open-world games with forests in them always look like simple plains of grass with a few trees that have huge gaps between them. Real forests are dense, filled with all different kinds of trees that block out most of the sun, which is how they are designed in Kindom Come: Deliverance. This is why navigating through forests in Kingdom Come is hard, but more realistic since whenever you come across something interesting (like a shack) you make sure to remember its location as a point of reference.
The rest of the visuals are good…enough. To be honest, they’re not that great but also not that bad either. The easiest way to describe it is ‘unfinished’. Every visual aspect of the game looks fine most of the time, but it regularly messes things up. For example, the lighting effects look good most of the time, but every now and then they simply don’t work like how they should, resulting in some ugly visuals. There’s also an overabundance of motion blur during every fight sequence that makes the game look like a blurry mess. The pc version can already be tweaked with mods to disable this, but console players don’t have this luxury and can’t turn this off in the menu screen either. Another visual issue is how ‘muddy’ everything looks on the console versions. The pc version leaks clean and crisp, so its probably a hardware limitation issue. Still, it hurts the game experience a bit when you can’t identify something in the distance just because your console is not powerful enough. It’s not a major issue, but a noticeable one. Speaking about major issues…
Broken mess
Kingdom Come: Deliverance was made by Warhorse Studios, a relatively young company that consists out of several veteran game developers. The project that eventually became Kingdom Come started in 2011 but initially failed to gather enough interest from publishers to fund the game’s development. That’s why the company started a Kickstarter in 2014, which funded their game and continued receiving funds from thousands of backers through their website. They eventually were able to strike a deal with publisher Deep Silver and finally released the game in the current year. Why am I telling you this, you may ask? Well, that’s because it’s obvious the game had some trouble during its development. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is filled, and I want to emphasize filled, with glitches, bugs and even crashes. I played the Xbox One version on an original Xbox One and my God, was that unpleasant at times. Texture popping, failed quest instances, NPC collision issues, missing sound effects, unbearable loading times, NPC’s dropping dead for no reason and even hard crashes that forced me to reboot my console. This game, in its current state, is a technical mess and severely hurts the player’s experience.
Missing features
Before I end this review, I want to talk a little about all the missing features that Kingdom Come: Deliverance doesn’t have in the final version but were made out like big features in early trailers and concept videos. There’s no weapon crafting in the final version and also no large battles on huge open fields. The biggest battle I’ve fought in during my playthrough consisted out of ten people that surrounded me, while my fellow soldiers were simply watching getting mauled by my enemies. There are also no stronghold sieges in the final version. Well, there are, but they can be hardly called sieges. Walking towards a wall with a ladder, climbing it and killing 10 soldiers is not exactly a siege in my opinion. These shortcomings are most likely a result of the troubled development of the game, but it’s disappointing to discover these only after you’ve bought the game. A little more communication from the dev team about this issue would have been nice.
Conclusion
Like I said in my intro, Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a heavily flawed game, due to its technical issues and missing features. Yet, its historically accurate and intriguing story, combined with the deep RPG gameplay are what make these issues more tolerable and even manages to make you ignore them. Still, I can’t highly recommend a flawed game like this when it has a €60 price tag. Follow my advice and keep an eye out for this game and buy it when it lowers in price or when several patches have been released.
