Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Short Review

I dived into a hardcore run with all negative perks right after the hardcore patch dropped as my first playthrough. DO NOT do this for your first playthrough. Seriously, if you haven't touched the first game, or even if you have, save this kind of punishment for a later run. My experience was likely way different than a standard playthrough because of it.

Not played Kingdom Come 1? Don't sweat it too much. The game does a decent job with in-game codex entries, history bits, and cutscenes or dialogue to get you mostly up to speed on Henry's story and what went down before.

The Clang of Steel: Combat

Let's get to it: the combat. It's still a bit of a janky mess, much like the first game. It really feels like it was designed purely for one on one duels on perfectly flat ground. When it works, with the animation locks and target focus, you get these cool, cinematic dueling moments. But throw a few enemies at you? Get ready to pull your hair out. You either die fast or get stun locked, camera swinging all over, until you're dead.

Early game on hardcore was brutal. Every bandit encounter was a potential game over. Picture this: you, with a basic hunting sword, against three bandits. One's in medium plate armor with a shield, another has a crossbow, and the third is swinging a longsword, all of them wanting you dead. My longest duel against one of those plated bandits in the early game lasted a good 10 minutes. I had to play perfectly because one hit was pretty much it, especially before you learn master strikes. Later on, it feels like bandits scale with you; I ran into plenty decked out in full plate armor sets that would cost a fortune, like 10k Groschen plus lmao, why are you even banditting at that point.

But, as you level your skills, learn new techniques, and gear up, combat does become much easier, even on hardcore with all the negatives. Towards the end, I honestly just ran around unarmed, punching, grappling, and throwing enemies. The weapon variety is okay. Melee weapons mostly feel the same, just with different damage values. Ranged weapons are a bit "eh." I was hyped when I finally got a pistole, but that excitement died fast. The five plus second reloading animation is a killer, and the accuracy is terrible. Yeah, it's probably historically accurate, but it's just not fun to use. I ended up sticking with regular bows for ranged. Both the pistol and crossbow force you into those long reload animations. A funny thing with the guns: if you shoot someone, it's often an instant kill. But if they're mid attack animation when you shoot them, they'll still hit you then ragdoll. Annoying, but also kinda hilarious.

The Story

The story itself is alright. It’s got a strong start, with plenty of twists and turns. You’ll find yourself on a quest for revenge with your homoerotic buddy Sir Hans Capon, caught up in a civil war involving King Sigismund. However, there are definitely moments where things have to happen a certain way for the plot to move forward, which can make some of your choices feel a bit pointless. The cast of characters, though, is pretty fun and overall, it’s an enjoyable ride through 15th century Bohemia.

The World: Big, kinda Empty

Now, the world. It's... eh. There are huge stretches of land, like the areas around Trosky Castle or the big city of Kuttenberg, that feel like they're just there to make the map big. One of the characters even jokes about it. You'll find villages with basic shops that don't serve much purpose beyond "immersion." Most points of interest turn out to be bandit camps, some funny Easter eggs, or hunting spots. Very few offer really engaging content.

"Immersion" Overload and Quality of Life Woes

This brings me to my biggest gripe: the whole "immersiveness" obsession. I honestly feel like the developers got so caught up in making everything "immersive" they forgot to make parts of it fun or respect the player's time.

Take the minigames. Alchemy? Seriously? After a tutorial that drags on for over five minutes, making you do every mundane step and watch every single animation to brew one potion, there's no option to speed things up or skip animations for potions you've already made. Quality of life? Player choice? Apparently not. And did I mention you have to watch a little animation every time you pick an herb? It's Red Dead Redemption 2 levels of pointless animation watching.

Blacksmithing isn't quite as bad, but it still doesn't respect your time. It can take 5 to 10 minutes to make a single item. And for smaller things like horseshoes, you don't get the aiming cursor for the hammer, so it's pure guesswork whether you're hitting the right spot. It's genuinely grating when you smack the anvil after being sure you were lined up.

The rest of the minigames honestly aren't even worth mentioning. Yes, they're all optional. But the best gear and potions are often locked behind them. Some quests and dialogue options are too. It's just frustrating that there are no options or quality of life improvements for these systems. Sure, a few people might enjoy this level of detail, but I bet most players don't. Give people options to enjoy your game! How many times can you watch the same static animation before you think, "I could be doing something else"?

A Static World and Lazy Quests

"Static" is a good word to describe the world too. Outside of occasional road events or a tavern brawl, everything feels pretty fixed. Bandit camps will always be there and just respawn after a while if you clear them out; the bandits are basically just stationary lootboxes. People might react to your reputation with different greetings or random insults, but big things only really change through quests.

And the quests... some of these are among the worst mechanically designed quests I've played in a big RPG recently. The majority are fetch quests, making you talk to people from one end of the map to the other, follow an NPC while they talk endlessly, or search for something in a huge, vaguely described area. It's some of the laziest quest design I can remember, even if the actual story content of some quests was fine. Remember I played on hardcore? No fast travel. No compass. No map markers. Can't even ask for directions properly. So when Villager A tells me to get something from Villager B at the complete other side of the large and mostly empty map, or find something in a massive forest with only a few clues... yeah.

Here’s a quick story from my early game: the infamous "gypsy" questline. I found the woman in a hidden cave with her injured man. She then tells me to go all the way back across the map to get medicine and talk to people. My immediate reaction was to tell the quest designer to stuff it. This was a first for me in an RPG I was otherwise enjoying; I just said no. So, I tabbed out to see if the quest was going to be as bad as I suspected. And what do you know? A wolf apparently rushed into the cavern and shot both NPCs with a crossbow! Two bolts to the head! Such a shame. Oh well, Henry was off to do other things. (And yes, that questline was straight up one of the worst designed in the game).

And here's the kicker: for all their self-congratulatory focus on "immersion," a lot of actually fun and meaningful immersive features are completely missing. Things like carrying an unconscious body on your horse, tying someone to your horse, giving alms to beggars you see on the street, buying a proper house and customising it, or even hiring people to work for you. You know, the kind of immersive stuff that actually adds to roleplaying and makes your interactions with the world feel more significant? None of that is in. Instead, we get to watch Henry pick every single herb individually. It's a strange set of priorities.

Sounds of the Era & Big Battles

The voice acting and general speech, including the multilingual aspects, are great for immersion. Though, some modern phrases and words definitely slipped in here and there. For the most part, the voices are excellent and fitting, the combat insults and swearing are hilarious, some of my fav: "I'll sort you out nicely!", "I'll shoot you a second arsehole!". It does get a bit grating once you notice the same few voice actors being used for multiple named characters and random NPCs.

One thing I really enjoyed were the big siege battles. They make the combat way more exciting and add a lot to the tension, that feeling of being in a big battle and having to use all at your disposals was unmatched. I honestly felt we could have more than just the main 2 we got in the game, hell make it a proper DLC with like a castle conquest/defence mode!