SUMMARY
Kingdom Come Deliverance is an open-world action RPG that takes place in the country of Bohemia during the year 1403. You play as Henry, the son of a blacksmith. What starts out as any other day ends up turning Henry’s whole life upside down. This event, that happens early in the game, causes Henry to set out on a quest of vengeance to track down those who wronged him. During his quest, Henry will meet new and exciting people and partake in new experiences that will not only help him grow as a person but find his place in the world.
WORLD
The world of Kingdom Come Deliverance looks quite gorgeous for not being a triple-A title. Each building throughout the various towns has a form of detail reminiscent of the buildings from the time period they are modeled after. The towns also contain various merchants that you would expect to see from back then such as a scribe and miller. Even the character models were made with the time period in mind. They live, work, dress, behave, and act similarly like the peasants, lords, and bandits of the olden days. The world also contains plants to harvest, animals to hunt, and some beautiful scenic areas. However, as you play the game, you will sometimes notice that buildings and objects do not load into the game correctly causing them to look distorted. It might even make you fall through the ground, trapping you, with reloading as your only escape option.
CONTENT
There is plenty to do in Kingdom Come Deliverance that will keep you busy for quite a while. There are many quests and activities to complete, gear to collect, locations to explore, and dice to win. The quests and activities are spread throughout the whole map and consist of objectives, such as finding someone or something, gathering information, hunting, stealing items, fighting, or killing bandits and Cumans. Each side quest also has its own unique story to follow, some of which can be really entertaining or really buggy. There were a couple of quests where bugs prevented me from completing them. The activities are more repetitive like hunting game or fist fighting for money. Gear is also plentiful in the game with both light and heavy armor that can impact the current task you are tackling. Light gear is less protective but doesn’t make as much noise which is perfect for stealthy situations. Heavy armor is more useful in battle and is able to absorb more hits from enemies causing Henry to take less damage. There are also many different weapons ranging from short swords, sabers, and longswords to axes, polearms, and spears to even maces, daggers, and bows. Each weapon also requires Henry to have certain stats like a specific amount of strength and agility to effectively wield it. Blade weapons like swords need to be sharpened and repaired to keep up the damage they do and prevent breakage. While working on quests and looking for the best gear, there are tons of hidden things just waiting to be explored such as graves, interesting locations, bird nests, accidents and bandit camps to name a few. Graves are locations where Henry can dig using a spade to find loot in the form of groschen, gear, or even books. Interesting locations can also have hidden loot or some unusual scene to gawk over. There are also nests located in high locations that require you to shoot them down with an arrow and can contain groschen, jewelry, or even gear for your horse. Accidents are often broken down carriages with loot nearby that can typically be found in a hidden in chest or barrel nearby. If the accident occurred on a slope, chances are the treasure container rolled down the hill. You can also come across bandit camps that can house a couple to a crap ton of bandits. These areas are good for collecting loot off the bandits to sell in towns to make a profit. When you’re ready to take a break from quests, looting, exploring, and fighting, you can take Henry to the local inn to try your luck at a game of dice, which is similar to Yahtzee.
HENRY
Now that we have gone over the world and content in Kingdom Come Deliverance, let’s talk about our favorite son of a blacksmith, Henry. When you get control of Henry, he is essentially a blank slate. This means that his skills are all level one, his gear is his peasant attire, and he doesn’t even know how to read. This puts you in a position to shape Henry to fit your play style. You can elect to focus on his speech over combat, make him the very definition of a knight, or even a stealthy rogue who takes what he pleases. A couple of skills to really pay attention to are speech, strength, reading, and alchemy. The higher Henry’s speech skill the more likely he can talk his way out of an unfavorable situation. A good example would be when you’re carrying stolen goods and get randomly searched by a city guard. With a high enough speech, you can convince the guard to let you go with your stolen goods. The strength skill not only allows Henry to wield better weapons but also determines how much weight he can carry. This is important because being able to carry more gear means you can explore more areas and carry more loot. There is also the mule skill in the strength tree that increases the amount of weight Henry can carry. The reading skill is really helpful for doing things like Alchemy where Henry has to read the recipe to make the potion or for reading skill books that help boost his skill level. Alchemy is an important skill because it allows Henry to make Savior Schnapps, a potion that allows you to save anywhere. This is huge because the only other ways to save the game are by sleeping in a bed or when the autosave triggers from a quest. Another important aspect to keep in mind is that Henry has to eat, sleep, and take a bath pretty regularly. If Henry gets too hungry, his max health and stamina bar with start to decrease, ultimately making him weaker in battle. Fortunately, the game provides plentiful food pots in town and at camps spread throughout the world to help. When Henry goes a couple days without sleep, he starts to get really tired, causing him to fall off his horse while riding or straight to the ground if walking. He can even be so exhausted he just passes out where he lands. Bathing is equally important because, over time, Henry will start to smell which enemies can detect when trying to sneak up on them. It also messes up his charisma when interacting with people, affects his ability to convince others with words, and causes them to comment on his appearance.
COMBAT
Fighting in Kingdom Come Deliverance comes in many forms such as using fists, melee weapons, and bows. Fistfights usually involve Henry and one other person going at it until one or the other has been knocked out. Melee combat is a bit more involved with a five-point star that has a circle in the middle of it which displays on enemy combatants. One of those six sections will be red to indicate that it is selected and each section represents a different part of the body to target. The top point of the star is an attack aimed at the enemy’s head while the top right is the right half of the torso, top left is the left half of the torso, bottom right is the right leg, bottom left is the left leg and the center circle is the stomach area. You can unlock weapon combos that help Henry break through enemy defenses such as a shield wielding enemy by using consecutive attacks and changing to different sections with each strike. Weapon type can also have an effect on combat with each weapon having their own unique combos to master. Blunt weapons such as a mace tend to be more effective against plate armor where swords do more damage to those wearing lighter armor. Melee combat can get quite difficult early on in the game when fighting more than one enemy, and the auto lock-on can be a little bit frustrating when 3 or more enemies are present. Bows are another type of weapon in the game and can be used to hunt game or attack enemies a distance. I find it easier to manage multiple enemies with a bow than with a melee weapon as you can buy different types of arrows to match the situation. I would like to mention that as of now, the bow can be a little hard to use. There are no crosshairs to aim an arrow with and it seems to not be very accurate. The best way I found to hit a target was to aim down and a little to the right of the target while I was getting a feel for the bow.
OPINION
I really enjoyed my time playing Kingdom Come Deliverance for the most part. Henry made a really cool main character to play and it was refreshing to control someone who was just an ordinary guy. The story was alright and kept me interested, but it was easy to put off doing story quests in favor of exploring the land and looking for side quests. The side quests are what really held my interest. They were mostly well done and enjoyable to complete with some really good content. However, there were at least seven quests that I could not complete because of bugs. I ended up losing hours of progress and had to keep reloading previous saves to try and progress to no avail. I also did do a no-kill playthrough and felt it took away from the game a bit. During some of the bigger required battles in the game, I had to sit off to the side while my allies did all the work. This caused the battle to take twice as long and wasn’t really fun. There was also the occasional instance where some of the buildings didn’t load all the way after a cutscene. It took a little bit of time to find my way out after all of the doors disappeared. Things, like traversing the world or working on quests, seemed to move really slowly, leading me to feel like I wasn’t making very much progress. I think this can be attributed to how spread out things are on the map. Different objectives on a quest could have you travel to distant locations just to talk to someone and then send you right back to where you were.
RECOMMENDATION
When everything is said and done, I would recommend giving this game a shot after a few more patches are released and the price comes down a bit. The main thing that really ruined the game for me was having to fight with game breaking bugs. I spent at least four hours trying to complete one quest and was unable to do so. This was a similar issue for the other quests that were also bugged. Once most of the issues are fixed, I would have no problem coming back to nab the platinum trophy.
Kingdom Come Deliverance Guides and Walkthroughs
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