Kingdom Come: Deliverance Is a Game Worth Learning

Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s hyper-realistic take on the RPG genre is far from what players are used to seeing, but it’s a game that begs to be understood by setting aside these preconceived ideas.

This isn’t a full review of the 1400s RPG from Warhorse Studios and Deep Silver – not yet, anyway. For a game that has as much to take in as Kingdom Come: Deliverance does, it’ll take some time to progress deeper into medieval Bohemia and get to know Henry better, a protagonist who’s a refreshing detour from the beefed-up, spell-slinging RPG heroes we’re used to seeing. There are also more than a few bugs need to be resolved, but with no exact dates for when those issues will be fixed, we’ll just have to make do for now.

But after spending many hours with the game, it’s clear that buried underneath a few clunky animations and frustrating bugs there exists a game that’s worth the time investment.

Realism Is Fun, Mostly

The realism that the game strives for adds many additional layers to the RPG formula that makes it seem as though you’ve mistakenly turned on the “hardcore” mode with hunger, rest, health, sickness, and even the cleanliness of your clothes being factors to consider when embarking on any adventure. Explanations for these stats admittedly aren’t presented in a very digestible way with walls of text and icons that you’ll soon forget tossed up on-screen during the prologue and tutorial (which take hours to get through), but the system comes naturally once you start to get the hang of it. Food and washing stations are plentiful, so managing these elements that may seem overwhelming initially isn’t difficult and actually makes you feel more in control of your experience by bringing Henry fully under your control.

There are times when the realism seems a bit inconsistent, though. During an escape from an allied keep, I sauntered off the edge of a bridge onto some rocks below, a short drop, with no issue. After getting caught and brought back to the keep, I tried the same drop, only this time Henty apparently landed wrong and received a bleeding wound that eventually leads to death. Perhaps I did something wrong that time, but there’s also the chance that there was an RNG realism effect that just happened to be working against me that time. The game also deviates from the realistic formula once or twice, but not necessarily in a bad way. I harmed a town chicken to see what everyone would do which resulted in an explosion of feathers and a freshly plucked chicken laying on the ground. Not exactly realistic, but not something worth complaining about.

Henry Is a Lovable, Useless Goofball

Henry is absolutely worthless at times, and that’s exactly what makes him one of the best protagonists I’ve seen in a while.

As the son of a blacksmith, Henry’s illiterate, mediocre at best with a weapon, and seems to be just bumbling through Bohemia. He gets chastised by parents, wants to go see the world, and shirks responsibilities to visit his girlfriend and throw dung at houses with his boys, all things that players can get behind. He’s relatable to the point that you feel a pang of sorrow during his worst moments and cringe when he embarrasses himself while also reveling in his accomplishments. Compared to other protagonists like Geralt and the Dragonborn, Henry feels much more like an extension of the player.

Henry will also frustrate players at times due to his inadequacies. Whereas other games will present players with a difficult early game enemy that can be beaten with practice, Henry simply can’t win sometimes. He’s got no gifts or mentionable skills despite his tenacity, but you’ll learn to love him all the same and appreciate him as one of the most engaging parts of Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

Bugs, Bugs, Bugs

It’s already been said that patches are coming in the coming weeks to fix the game’s frustrating bugs, but that can only do so much at the moment to pacify the feeling I experienced after having to restart the game more than once.

Bugs aren’t uncommon in a launch, especially one with modest beginnings on Kickstarter, but when coupled with the game’s peculiar save system, the frustration compounds. Sleeping in a bed, autosaves, or drinking an item that’s expensive early on are the only ways to save, and autosaves can be few and far between at points. This means that when you’ll inevitably encounter a bug that forces you to rewind to a previous save, it’s hard to say where you’ll end up.

One of these bugs came from riding a horse, a process with a learning curve itself, albeit a much smaller one. Where other games might let you scale nearly vertical mountains, my horse got stuck in a shallow ditch and couldn’t get out with my dismount action disabled as well. After restarting to a previous save that luckily wasn’t too far back, my horse and I wound up in the same ditch due to some poor steering. After being rendered immobile again, the start menu only froze the game even further and resulted in force-closing the application.

These bugs will hopefully be ironed out in the next few patches, but they certainly don’t do the realism any favors at the moment.

A Game Worth Replaying

I’d probably be further into the story had I not loaded different saves to test how involved the decision-making actually was, a common RPG element that is surprisingly deep in Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

Starting with the poo-throwing escapades Henry’s friends rope him into, there’s a decision to be made on whether Henry joins them. Saying yes is obviously the more fun route, but after completing that, I hoped to see what the alternative was. While other games will inevitably force you into the same outcome regardless of your decisions, Kingdom Come: Deliverance is fine playing out events whether you’re there or not. After telling Henry’s friends to sling dung without me the second time, they did just that. The whole scene played out without me taking part with all involved parties totally ignoring me. A similar situation took place when I punched a guard to see how much Henry could get away with, which isn’t much. I was promptly jailed in the starting town (which earned me a trophy) and was met with a long cutscene that made it seem like something big was happening. Turns out, the town got invaded while I was in jail and everyone forgot about me which resulted in a fire that caused my death and a quick “Game Over.” The world is cruel, and that’s one aspect the realism element got right.

There were a few other scenes like this that occurred later on, though I didn’t play both sides again for the sake of keeping things moving. That being said, depending on how the rest of the game plays out, it seems like an adventure I wouldn’t mind replaying to see what happens through a completely different playthrough.

A full review of the PlayStation 4 version of Kingdom Come: Deliverance will come soon after a bit more time is invested into the realistic RPG.