Kingdom Come: Deliverance review

Reviewed on: PC

Or “pretending to be a medieval knight is much better than living as one”

By Aline P.

We already know the story: a young commoner saves the damsel in distress, becomes the lord’s trusted man, gets a sword and shield and sets off in search of justice against his master’s enemies, earning the community’s respect and becoming a knight. The canonical image of the medieval knight permeates our oldest dreams and, in an age of extreme poverty, high mortality, plagues, ignorance and intolerance, knights gave the population hope that nobility and honor would be rewarded.

The medieval period is still romanticized, often with little consideration that this period took place in different countries and cultures, usually restricted to people and events in present-day England. Eastern Europe, however, is one of the richest sources of this era, as shown by the recent interest of entertainment media based on Slavic culture, especially with the success of the The Witcher series. Kingdom Come: Deliverance puts on the table an interesting reading of a period wrongly seen as a step backward, and one that draws on the history of the east through a Slavic focus. But how did the Czech developer Warhorse Studios do with the undertaking?

Narrative

In a small village in southern Bohemia (present-day Czechia) at the start of the 15th century, a blacksmith lives peacefully with his son Henry and his wife. The shadow of war hangs over Bohemia when the king of Hungary and Croatia and future Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund, threatens to “keep order” in the reign of his brother, King Wenceslaus IV. Indifferent to recent events, the village is taken and plundered. You manage to flee as young Henry, but not before seeing your family massacred by the enemy army.

Despite the important historical moment, Henry’s story is simple, which in no way makes it bad. The protagonist adapts according to your choices, and can be a good kid who becomes a knight or a serial killer who gains more and more power. Finding himself in tragic circumstances, Henry is shaped by the way you play, creating unique situations and branches in the story, which are affected by your decisions and by the way you play. Kingdom Come: Deliverance gives you every opportunity to steer the narrative your own way, but for every action there is a reaction, be it lost money, a lost quest, reputation or your life.

Whatever your goal, the voice acting certainly convinces you that Henry is charismatic, despite his malleable personality, as it does with most of the NPCs, making the huge dialogues far more immersive.

The quests are local, encourage exploration and dialogue, and the characters have a chance to develop and win you over, shifting the focus to human relationships and their nuances amid an event much bigger than themselves.

Mechanics

Kingdom Come: Deliverance presented itself from the start as a realistic RPG, promising a game that would work as a kind of “medieval simulator”. Whether it’s perfect or not, the fact is that the game is very successful at this immersion: your weapons and armor get dirty and change how people react. Your cloth armor tears over time. You need to rest to regain energy and you need to eat. Battles can result in deep cuts and bruises, and can lead to death. In addition, some quests have time limits, but with common sense.

Beyond the basic needs, made harder by the precarious conditions of the era, the first hours of the game feel like hard mode, since Henry has no belongings and is unable to perform certain actions, being a mere peasant. To make your life even harder, there is no quicksave: you can only save at certain places or use a rare potion that lets the player save at that moment.

Henry is a nobody with almost no knowledge of battle, alchemy, horse riding or weapon maintenance. Before training, he can’t even wield a sword properly, only learning new skills and developing through training and exploration.

In addition, the game has a vast arsenal and clothing options, even for the horse!

Henry’s change throughout the game is clear and slow, altering the character’s behavior and how the people around him react, making the learning extremely satisfying.

Several skills have their own mini game: alchemy, for example, is a complex system of actions, with bases, cooking time, number of stirs, which makes the activity extremely fun, plus an incredible extra: to make the potion, you need to find and read books. But wait… HENRY CAN’T READ!

With a surprisingly delicate mechanic, Henry gradually improves his literacy and develops new skills. So, to read, you need to go to a scribe who will patiently teach you to understand the letters and writings in Latin, so you can finally read that complex recipe you found in a cave or bought for the price of a horse.

The combat style is hard, but rewarding. You can move your sword/halberd/etc. to five different sides and execute two types of command: strike and thrust. But it’s up to you to learn the enemy’s moves and figure out how to break their defense. There’s also the bow and arrow skill, which is absurdly difficult, especially because there’s no aiming reticle.

The map is reasonably large, and so are the cities. But unlike several open-world RPGs, the cities in Kingdom Come: Deliverance are complex and full of activities, with schedules, quests and merchants.

An important detail: Fast Travel happens in the game’s real time on the lovely map that resembles a board, which makes travel tiring and dangerous.

Audiovisual

Visually, the game falls short by a lot, but gets other aspects right.

Comparing the game’s graphics to something from 2006 might be an exaggeration, but the truth is that Kingdom Come: Deliverance often looks like a very good mod of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The facial animations are recurrently artificial and the bugs are countless: from the “charming” guillotined-head bug to dismounting your horse in the wrong place and getting stuck in the scenery. Considering how hard it is to save the game, it’s frustrating to lose one or more hours of play because of a bug.

The cities and the textures of clothes and scenery are beautiful, but they take forever to load and you may spend a few minutes playing as if it were set to low resolution. The game crashed at least twice while I was playing, and in one of them the computer simply restarted, for no apparent reason.

For the record, here is my PC’s configuration, which should run a game like this “smoothly”:

Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming 7, Intel Core i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070

32.0 GB RAM

Storage disk: Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB

All things considered, the details of the weapons, armor and clothes are excellent. You can see the research and dedication to show maximum realism in the flaws of the clothes, the stains on the weapons and the protagonist’s dirt after a long journey or intense battle.

The environments are beautiful (when they finish loading). The cities are dynamic and alive, and you’ll hardly find the same NPCs in exactly the same place all the time. They sleep, eat, stroll, live independently of you and are affected by your actions.

The soundtrack consists, obviously, of period music and sound effects of swords, walking in armor and galloping horses. It’s certainly not a The Witcher 3, but it manages to create an immersive environment. Note the HD sound pack available as a free download in the store.

Conclusion

Being honest: the game has several graphical problems, which is definitely annoying and disappointing.

Despite the controversial views defended by one of the game’s creators, Kingdom Come: Deliverance offers something that many developers of this generation lack, those with a lot to say and little to show: a good game that doesn’t try to be more than what it is. Period.

The game has a simple but effective story. The combat gameplay is different from almost anything you’ve seen. The historical setting is very well done, but it is not an anthropological scientific study of history (just like any other existing game). The open world is the appropriate size for a small team of developers. All in all, Kingdom Come: Deliverance doesn’t try to go beyond what it seems: an RPG about a young medieval knight.

This game is for you, Witcher 3 widow, who is patiently waiting for news about the next Elder Scrolls, doesn’t like the recent isometric RPG releases, but wants a roots RPG to pass the time.

SCORE

Narrative: 9.0

Mechanics: 9.0

Audiovisual: 7.0

FINAL SCORE: 8.3

Aline – Has a law degree and studies Library Science. Likes kittens, science fiction, sarcasm and Charmanders. Criticizes Bioware, but buys all the junk they release.