There are many things I hate about Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. I hate that I have to start off without a single Groschen to my name and have to find a job. I hate that people refuse to talk to me because I haven’t had time to shower.
There are also many things I have come to love about Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. I love that I’m forced to find a literal job for money and do menial tasks so that I can survive. I love that I have to pay special attention to how I look and dress in order to command attention.
Warhorse Studios’ latest open-world RPG is a masterclass in immersive quest design and exploration, and a fantastic improvement over its predecessor.
Picking up directly where we left off in the first game, our protagonist Henry and Hans Capon travel to Trosky Castle to deliver a letter in an effort to recruit allies in their fight against Sigismund. What makes Kingdom Come: Deliverance II stand out from other medieval RPGs is its historical roots and dedication to realism. Whereas most other RPGs have you play as the Chosen One, who’s naturally great at fighting monsters and becoming the hero, this game starts you off as a complete nobody. You’re a peasant with no combat prowess, no one respects you, and everything needs to be earned.
This makes Deliverance II feel unapproachable at first, and it can be. It can take a few hours before things finally start to make sense, and that time commitment required before the game actually gets good can be a complete turnoff. But that payoff is worth it.
The good news is that things aren’t quite as unforgiving here as they used to be. After all, Henry has grown since those early days in Skalitz. Unlike in the first game, where Henry starts off completely untrained and helpless, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II does give you a few resources and tools at your disposal to begin with.
The entire tutorial segment runs over the basics of melee combat and other survival systems, and it immediately feels so much more welcoming and digestible as compared to its predecessor. The sword fighting was one of my biggest pain points while playing the first game, and while things do remain largely the same here, the tutorials make it more digestible, and a couple of minor changes also help to streamline it further.
Over the course of my playthrough, I found that I was able to change stances with ease, and pulling off a parry and riposte felt so much snappier and responsive. Hardcore fans may balk a little at these more casual-friendly changes, but I think they were necessary for onboarding new players who may not be accustomed to this sort of game. And trust me, the game is still plenty hard for the unprepared.
As soon as the game releases you into the open world, you’re pretty much free to do whatever you want. Except you’ve got no money to your name, no horse, and yes, you smell like a sewer. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II starts off as a really tough grind as you’re basically unable to do anything of import at the start. Getting to another town can take ages on foot, you can’t afford a stay at the inn so you have to wander around at night, and even trying to complete what seems like a simple side quest could become a real tangle.
Now I realize I’m making Deliverance II sound like a complete slog, and that’s because it is at the start. But as I mentioned earlier, stick with it long enough, and you’ll see that the wait was worth it. The beautiful thing is that while the side quests can be tough as nails — often requiring you to pass high Speech checks or risk combat and getting in trouble with the law — they’re also very rewarding. The key here is to just throw yourself into the thick of things and not worry about the consequences. As you do more of a certain thing, you become better at it.
For instance, constantly trying to haggle with NPCs and persuade them to see things your way may cause you to take a hit to your reputation from time to time, but your Speech skills will get better. Over time, you’ll start to realize that those dialogue checks have become easier, as you’re able to convince most NPCs to just give you the information you need.
The same goes for combat. While killing NPCs is a surefire way to get you sent to the executioner, you can practice on animals in the meantime or try your luck at a tourney. There’s an NPC who can train you in sword fighting as well, and the more you hit things with your weapons, the faster you level up and the stronger you become. Soon enough, you’ll be able to take on small groups of enemies even when you’re alone.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II rewards patience and diligence. It’s not the kind of game you can rush. If you’re willing to meet it on its own terms, though, you’ll find that it’s the kind of game you can just lose yourself in for hours on end.
It certainly helps that the quest design is so good, too. An early quest that I happened to stumble upon by complete chance required me to serve some food to a group of Cumans (basically the scum of the earth in this universe). When a fight breaks out between the Cumans and the locals, I’m forced to step in, and the townspeople tell me to hunt down the Cumans and kill every last one of them. Sounds straightforward at first, but if you’re playing Henry as a more complex and nuanced protagonist, you might see that these Cumans in particular may not be all that evil. And yes, you will be given a choice to either kill them or spare them.
Needless to say, the Mass Effect Paragon in me demanded that I spare them and instead spend time getting to know them. I won’t divulge all of the details, but choosing to hang out with the Cumans ended up sending me on this whole other journey that involved getting absolutely wasted while trying to matchmake one of them with a local girl who didn’t speak their language. It’s one of the best early game quests I got to complete in the game, and it’s just one of many examples of how deep and involved the side quests are.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II isn’t without its faults of course, and I did run into the occasional obstacle here and there. While my playthrough was relatively bug-free (impressive, considering the sheer size and scale of the game), sometimes I would find myself in situations where objectives from two separate quests have overlapped with each other, resulting in near-impossible combat situations that I simply couldn’t get out of without reloading an earlier save. I did also run into one bug that prevented me from taking out my torch one night, which led to me stumbling off a cliff and to my death, which was frustrating, to say the least.
Thankfully, these instances are few and far between, but they’re worth keeping in mind anyway. These are otherwise very minor blemishes on the face of an incredibly ambitious and immersive RPG.
While Kingdome Come: Deliverance II will no doubt be the source of many a meme just like its predecessor was, I was also pleasantly surprised to see it really swing for the fences when it comes to its story and presentation. Don’t let the goofy animations and dialogue fool you; this is still very much a tale of bloody revenge and trauma, and while Henry may be able to find time for bathhouses and tourneys, he never forgets what he’s here for.
Without getting too deep into spoiler territory, Warhorse Studios clearly wasn’t afraid to experiment a little bit with the narrative structure. There are some seriously impressive sequences that try to play tricks on your eyes, in an attempt to convey Henry’s messed-up psyche and give you an idea of just what haunts him.
So yeah, there is a lot about Kingdom Come: Deliverance II that will frustrate you, but there’s also a lot to appreciate about how dedicated it is to preserving that sense of realism in its open-world. If you’re able to look past the jank, you just might find yourself engaged in one of the most well-realized role-playing experiences we’ve seen in the past decade.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II releases for PC and consoles on Feb. 4, 2025. A review code for the game was provided by the publisher. Reviewed on PS5.
