Kingdom Come: Deliverance: Review

Studio Warhorse released one of the most ambitious works of recent years – a medieval immersive sim, thought out from historical to everyday details. Thanks to experts, it was possible to recreate the kingdom of Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) at the beginning of the 15th century: castles, hunting grounds, camps for charcoal burners and lumberjacks, and even tanneries where men process hides in buckets of urine. On the other side, Kingdom Come saddles the player with a bunch of everyday, not to say physiological, worries. Such a craving for realism always causes skepticism among the public, so it’s time to find out whether the authors managed to achieve their goal, or whether their ambitions remained an advertisement on Kickstarter.

The goose is not a friend to the pig

Imagine yourself in the role of an inconspicuous, poor man, the son of a blacksmith from a village near the walls of Skalick Castle. Your most risky action is to throw manure at the house of your German neighbor, and your longest journey is to run to a tavern for beer for your father and extract a favor from a local drunkard. But in 1403, historical events tear you out of the rural idyll and throw you into reality, where the country is torn apart by brother kings Wenceslas IV And Sigismund, where thousands of ordinary people die due to the wars of feudal lords, where robbers kill for a handful of pennies, and you can’t get gratitude for your help from anyone. Where there is no dad, no mom, no friends, no Blanca, with whom you danced so happily in the evenings.

This is precisely the situation in which the boy Jindrich found himself. Although no, his situation is much worse, because he cannot read and write, he does not know which side to hold a sword and bow, and he is in trouble with other skills useful for survival. And such and such a teenager needs to comprehend the wisdom of medieval life from scratch, learn to get money and food, gain the trust of Czech aristocrats, comprehend the basics of military craft – all for the sake of revenge on the murderers of his parents and the search for the bandits who robbed him in the ashes of his native village.

While the drama develops, the hero manages to be a thief and a murderer, a poacher and a treasure hunter, a soldier and a tramp, a detective and a wedding planner, a novice of a Benedictine monastery and a page, a ladies’ man and a defender of the disadvantaged. However, unlike most RPGs, Kingdom Come does not show how from a trembling creature grows a superman who breaks birches with his hands and spits on kings. For the nobility of Bohemia, Henry will remain a man of low birth. You can put fabulously expensive armor on him, make him a master of eloquence and a rich man, but only people as smart as himself will fall for such tricks. The gameplay also does not allow for the omnipotence genre familiar to fans: situations like “beating seven in one fell swoop” are basically unrealistic here. Although where the sword fails, ingenuity comes in handy.

Repetition is the mother of learning

Deliverance points a finger at historical information from the encyclopedia, punishes for mistakes and immerses oneself in the virtual world, cleverly imitating its everyday life. The change of time of day is not an empty formality here: in the evening, most of the characters, including merchants and artisans, go home, robbers gather in gangs on the side of the roads, guards are just about to detain a traveler without a torch in their hand, and the darkness around is such that you could even poke out your eyes. Bad weather and walking through mud get your clothes dirty, which in turn spoils your charm and narrows your dialogue options. Products become unusable, so a breakfast of rotten sausage with rotten apples can easily cause poisoning. And victory in battle can turn out to be Pyrrhic if the wound is bleeding and there is nothing to bandage it with.

Character development is organized with exactly the same meticulousness. Forget about the simplifications and indulgences that role-playing games have indulged in in recent years. To make the hero a real thief, you need to adhere to a special style of clothing without clanking plates and foppish patterns, resort to secrecy more often, safely sell stolen goods, get your hands on picking locks and groping other people’s pockets. Practicing alchemy requires at a minimum the ability to read, obtain recipes, and correctly mix ingredients in a crucible while the potion is being brewed. And if you decide to turn the blacksmith’s son into a warrior, find him normal armor and tirelessly practice fencing, learning new techniques and strengthening Henry’s muscles.

A gamer’s dexterity means Kingdom Come no less than the hero’s skills, and battles are a prime example of this. They vaguely resemble For Honor with its trajectories for strikes and blocks. Only in the work Warhorse everything is much more complicated: here we cut from five directions or stab at a point selected on the enemy’s body, and also dodge enemy attacks in time, use a shield, kicks, grabs, hit the enemy with the handle – and all manually. Whatever feints you discover as you learn, you have to cram them, not Henry – for example, hit first in the right shoulder, then in the left leg and stab in the face. The authors do not provide for the moment when you can relax and just hammer one key at a time, so even a homeless person with a cleaver has a chance to kill a knight armed to the teeth.

The same difficulties await you when handling a bow: there is no sight, you won’t be able to keep the string taut for long. To finish off the first hare in the forest, you are unlikely to need less than five or six shots. Is it any wonder that when you meet a tramp in a remote area, you want to fight with him to practice techniques, and use the corpse of a hanged man hanging on a pole as a training target??

Now imagine you made a mistake—getting into a hopeless fight, choosing the wrong line of dialogue, or getting caught stealing—without the money or eloquence to avoid jail—and you want to replay the scene. But that was not the case! In 15th-century Bohemia, to save you have to drink special schnapps, sleep on your own bed, or achieve important plot twists. That is, losing an hour or an hour and a half of progress due to an absurd accident is the order of the day here.

To some, such meticulousness will seem hardcore, but to others it will help immerse themselves in the gaming world seriously and for a long time. Because you perceive every victory in it as your own achievement, and not the result of properly leveling up the hero, and failures encourage you to think about the mistakes made instead of shouting curses at the crooked developers. Add here the freedom of role-playing: where a fighter cuts down a gang of robbers on the spot, an insinuating speaker divides and eliminates one by one, and a quiet saboteur poisons by pouring poison into a pot in the middle of their camp. If you like to ride, you also like to carry sleighs, as they tell us in Warhorse. At least it’s fair.

160 hectares of beauty and bugs

Another reason to feel the https://incognito-casino.co.uk/games/ atmosphere of the game is its open world. And it’s not about the beautiful landscapes, although because of them it’s worth wandering through the forest at dawn or walking along the river while the birds sing. The advantage of virtual Bohemia is its independence, detachment from the hero. It seems that if Henry dies, everything will remain as before: a wandering knight will offer to test his strength with someone else, fishermen and lumberjacks will wake up as usual in the morning, idle revelers will begin to argue about politics in the tavern, the herbalist will sell the unfortunate women a love potion, and Pan Ptacek will take a new page hunting. For Deliverance random scenes like a fight between two hillbillies appearing right in front of us are rare and in bad taste.

This is largely why, instead of theatrical trickery, the authors offer everyday concerns: go to the bathhouse, read a book, brew a potion, bargain for a dozen pennies from a merchant at the market, dig up a treasure, finding it using a map bought from a strange guy near the mill. To search for food, after all, we are not in a fairy tale, but in a more or less reliable simulation of the Middle Ages. But how charming and picturesque the studio turned out Warhorse world, technical errors that destroy the effect of presence in it are just as offensive.

Here the characters grow together into the amusing Gromozeka, but here the hero’s horse, Sivka, freezes in an absurd pose over the stream. The camera behaves like a schizophrenic during dialogues: it either looks into the soul, or shows a conversation between two hats instead of faces. Sometimes interlocutors simply fall from the sky or appear out of thin air. I don’t even want to talk about the corps de ballet with the frame rate, belated textures, animation glitches and similar shortcomings – there is enough of this in any game from a small team. But since Kingdom Come: Deliverance requires a serious attitude, let him reciprocate. Although, to the credit of the authors of the work, its technical clumsiness is its main drawback.

The Middle Ages at maximum speed

Trying to understand Deliverance, it is compared to other games: the world here works like in Gothic, interface with character development methods taken from The Elder Scrolls, and in the setting the developers followed in the footsteps Mount & Blade. Even with "The Witcher 3" parallels are drawn, although from him there is only an Easter egg with Geralt’s horse, Roach – otherwise the Poles and Czechs have released completely different RPGs. Even if there is some truth in comparisons, it’s better to throw them out of your head by appreciating Kingdom Come without bias. It is original, if only because you don’t play it – you live in it.

Adjusted for game conventions, bugs and healthy teeth of characters, employees Warhorse managed to create an interactive and comprehensive tour of 15th century Europe. An exciting adventure that currently has no equal – both in terms of the theme and the elaboration of details. Here you will learn about the difference between Emperor Charles IV and his son Vaclav, about the schism in the Catholic Church, about life in castles, villages and monasteries, about medieval crafts and the nuances of life, and at the same time you will take part in events that reverberate far beyond the borders of Bohemia. In other words, get exactly what we love about historical games.

Pros: brilliantly revealed setting and connection to real history; multifaceted role-playing system with freedom to roleplay and solve problems; a beautiful world with a simulation of medieval life; The fencing system is designed in such a way that victories bring a lot of pleasure.

Cons: difficulties that you need to get used to; the technical part needs improvement even after a huge patch.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Best comments

Raisins could only be placed by a person who did not complete the game. I was addicted to the game until the siege of Talberg began – this is game design hell. Terrible sagging in the plot, quests give and bring all over the map and other horrors of game development. This greatly blurred the final impressions of the game. Commendable – yes, but clearly not amazing yet, the authors have room to grow and work on it.

I’ll start with the second sentence: the game is not about realism 🙂 It has its own details, but there are quite a lot of conventions in the game so that you can call it pseudo-realistic, but nothing else. But I’m nitpicking, now closer to the body.

To say that revenge is the lot of unhealthy people, you need to know something about this revenge itself, have some personal experience. And of course don’t generalize. What is normal for one is abnormal, for another normal is quite adequate. Revenge in general deserves some philosophical debate. Why a person who has committed evil should not be pursued by revenge? I would like to note that revenge does not in all cases have to entail mortal punishment, it can simply be justice, humane or not, decide for yourself. This is the desire to respond to the evil committed, with every fiber of your soul, to do everything possible to calm this anxious feeling. Yes, in a civilized society it is generally accepted that revenge is bad, it destroys a person, this is true. But there is also the second side of the coin, if they did something wrong to you, and you did not respond, then you are to some extent weak and they can repeat it to you. Therefore, turning your back and forgetting in such a situation is also not right. This is what makes a person so difficult, that it’s difficult for him to turn off natural feelings, that’s why everyone behaves differently. And the reasons for revenge can be very different: something can really be forgiven, something small, but there are also entire tragedies that ruin a person’s life, the death of a loved one is one of them, and it is very difficult to forgive this. Perhaps forgiving enemies is no less absurd than taking revenge on them. If only because people hate those they harm.

Agree. Only the plot motivation for the main character, I think, is not the only drawback, but I would talk about the advantages that the author diligently listed throughout the review.
And first of all, why in the review, mechanics or features of the game, which did not appear in this project, and were not performed in it at the highest level, are certainly considered as advantages?
Well, like: the influence of the night on the ecosystem of the world, the sharpening of weapons, the lack of teleport to uncharted territory, the monotonous leveling of a skill through repeated actions, the need for charm and literacy in order to pay off or avoid punishment, the influence of appearance on the perception of the player by NPCs, the need for food and rest, etc.d.
All this has been covered by other games and sometimes, it’s much better!
And I will even say that a strange craving for realism gave rise to a number of paradoxical conventions in Deliverance, such as: Why does the hero survive only on his bed or must he drink for this?? Why does soiled clothing hinder the speech apparatus?? I’m silent about fights in the crowd..
Well, okay, let’s return to the above-mentioned “advantages”. Yes, maybe all these mechanics were not used in one game at once, but were divided between, say, Mount & Blade, Fable and Skyrim (where for the most part, in my opinion, they were implemented much better or more creatively, and those who will now say that creativity in delivery has been removed for the sake of realism, let them remember the book for saving). At the same time, the mixture of these mechanics does not give rise to some essentially unique gameplay experience like, say, Horizon, where a solid third-person action game with a decent plot, and an open-world sandbox with a thoroughly developed Lore are competently intertwined.WITH. there, too, everyone sleeps in the cities at night, but for some reason I didn’t read this in the laudatory review).
No, Dilivers is a standard and far from original RPG in the open world, with decent, but not revolutionary graphics and mediocre animation (the same Witcher or Horizon being games of the past, but about wildlife were much more picturesque), but even if you forgive this flaw in favor of a modest budget and forget about the scanty and sluggish story about revenge (it seriously could have happened in any era, unlike the stories of Aloy or Geralt, tightly integrated into the setting), then it turns out that all the advantages here simply rest on the collection of already well-worn mechanics under the auspices of PECULIAR, but we should agree with the author, historically accurate realism? And it’s AMAZING?
Here in the same (from the point of view of independence, of course) last year’s Senui had unprecedented graphics for an indie project, unprecedented sound design woven into the gameplay and an unprecedented mocap game by Milena Jurgens! And she received COMPLIMENTARY! Although, in my opinion, Deliverance coped with its task much more effectively as a genre product on the market. Or now its evaluation directly depends on the volume of the product and the fact that Diliverence is a complex, bloated RPG initially puts it above the chamber history of Senui.
And it’s not that I don’t like realism as a setting. GTA 5, also (especially on high difficulty) is not the easiest game, in a quite realistic setting. She just makes the most of this setting! And I’m silent that there is actually a thick and multifaceted story about a depressed family man from Beverly Hills who betrayed his friends, a young ambitious black man from a shabby ghetto and a crazy loner who went against the system! And all this is topical, recognizable and filled with a bunch of details and themes relevant to the setting. Yes, Favreau didn’t have all these budgets to debug the colossus he had built, but who stopped him from coming up with a really good story, focused on the world in which the heroes live??
What could also be emphasized here is the fact that this project was made with the participation of the audience, like last year’s Divinity 2 (which did not present itself as something outstanding in the genre, but is a strong example of an old-school party RPG, not without truly innovative functions, such as multiplayer), and nevertheless can compete with the studio giants… Well, like Mass Effect Andromeda)

The patches will fix the technical part, but after the monastery they will not change the plot and the missions. And these missions are terrible. Night foray – senseless and merciless hell, siege – hell from the give-and-bring series all over the map, visit all the herbalists, innkeepers, etc.d., The rocket isn’t very pleasant either. No need to talk about the budget, my complaints are not about the technical part, but about the script and game design. Everything was great until the siege of Talberg, then it went to hell and at the end of the game it really spoiled the feeling. Before the siege of Thalberg, I wanted to shout at every corner that this was the game of the year and the best RPG in years, I was having a blast. Since the siege, the game has only made me suffer.

Agree. Moreover, in addition to the provisions in the plot and problems with game design, we must not forget about the frankly so-so technical component. The game can be praised for many things, including the fact that they made SUCH A GAME for such ridiculous money, but the game still has too many problems to be amazed at it.

What is funny money?? Lam is a Kickstarter. But the game has a publisher and about 4-5 only official budget. We don’t know how much Deep Silver was actually poured into the game. So we have TripleA with bugs, crooked combat, outdated graphics (CrayEngin), lack of physics, wooden plot. Etc.d. And yes, at least 4 and more likely about 6 years of development with graphics downgrade. I’m wondering why all this is criticized in Mafia or Andromeda, but not here? Because there are no blacks? But feminism with “independent” women was introduced in the 14th century.

Revenge as a motivation is not bad and never has been, it all depends on the presentation. It’s too easy to reduce this to acceptance and non-acceptance, but not to screenwriting skills, because in general in the world there are about 36 similar motivating plots scraped together according to Georges Polti. Mastery depends not on the choice of plot engine in the form of motivation, but on how this motivation is played out.

I couldn’t resist and bought it. But why not?? Anyway, there’s no other way to play Oblivion with mods on PlayStation 4. 😀
Kidding! I really just want games like this to collect cash and continue to appear. I hope that not only Vavra will make “author’s” games of this level.

It struck me wildly, even if it’s already familiar.
The very feeling of a seemingly typical fantasy beginning, even with an army of “terrible orcs”, but then you realize that the typical beginning has an absolutely magnificent historical background, it was the terrible orcs that the Europeans of those years saw people like the Cumans, and the main character is not particularly chosen (not without a bit of this, however), he was just unlucky to live in a town with rich mines during the civil war.

There is still one drawback in the game: when you take the top equipment, everything becomes more than dull. Random skirmishes during fast transition are more striking. Such a knight is riding, in full armor with weapons, and he is attacked by 2 homeless people with clubs. Dementia and courage)

Came from Zhakir Stoli? Lambda from kickstarter, 5 from the publisher. Total 6. We can only guess about some other money, but I don’t like to do that. Before us is AAA with bugs? Well, no way. You can think as you like, but KCD is not a AAA project in any of the existing realities. And if you want to call it AAA, then with a budget of 6 lyams – thank you for being alive. Crooked flaw (ok, let there be a flaw and let it be crooked), outdated graphics (Cry engine turns out to be outdated, well, yes, well, yes. ), lack of physics (I agree, but its absence here is just as important as in a sorcery), dull plot (so be it). Development time shouldn’t worry you at all as a consumer. This is the developer and publisher’s hemorrhoids, not yours. Why is all this criticized in Mafia and Andromeda? I don’t even know… MAYBE BECAUSE THE BUDGET IN THE MAFIA AND ANDROMEDA IS NOT 6 MILLION? You didn’t think about this? I’m not saying that the game is great – I’m saying that, be that as it may, the game has something to praise for. By the way, I didn’t like it at all, but that’s mostly a matter of taste. And you, before you climb in and prove something to people using other people’s (specifically Dakir’s and the useful demon’s) words, you would use your head and come up with your own arguments and counterarguments.

Did you even play to write all this?? Because he is not driven by revenge, but by the desire to get settled in life, at the same time returning his father’s sword. The killer of his parents after the prologue will appear only in the sequel at all.

Then brace yourself) And advice on how to save your nerves – don’t even try to complete the “Night Sortie”. The game will not say at all that this mission cannot be completed, but according to the plot you should fail. But without understanding this, any normal player will try again and again, thinking that he is just doing something wrong. I killed everyone using stealth and nothing happened, the mission did not move. And when I failed again and decided not to replay, the plot just moved on. It was tough. Well, then the siege hell actually began.

The main character’s motivation is not only to kill the dude who deprived him of everything he had – parents, home, girlfriend, but also to find himself in the world, first he went to his boss, then this, then that, whatever the player’s heart desires.
Revenge is used here as a reason to leave a familiar place, to put both the hero and the player in a position of uncertainty, so that we associate ourselves more with the hero, since both we and the hero don’t know anything about what’s going on here, and how this world lives.
How many plot twists completely knock the hero out of his usual framework, but do not limit the further narration??