Coming from Warhorse studios, Kingdom Come: Deliverance is the studio’s first attempt at a large open world RPG. One of the most refreshing aspects of the game is that it is set in a realistic version of the middle ages.
You won’t be fighting dragons or throwing fireballs here in Bohemia, it’s all about steel, grit and determination.
The protagonist is a young lad named Henry, a village layabout that spends his days getting drunk, flirting with the barmaids and fancies himself a bit of a soldier.
It doesn’t take long for his norm of waking up with a hangover and begrudgingly helping his Blacksmith Father to all get turned upside down.
From there it’s all about vengeance and how to get it.
The attempts to make the world feel as realistic as possible are intriguing and infuriating in equal measures. There are a plethora of gauges that need to be maintained like Stamina, hunger and even cleanliness. I’m sure some will find that these to engaging but I found them to be a hindrance.
The constant need to be making sure that I have had a good batch before carrying on with a specific quest seemed like wasted time.
What didn’t feel like a waste of time was travelling around the beautifully detailed world that Warhorse has created. The lush woodlands and beautiful expansive fields were vivid with a rich palette of colours.
As I traversed the settlements they all had a feeling of life and people going about their day. Much like real life, this did mean that quite often people would be in my way and when I tried to squeeze past them they cry about how I had caused them alarm.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is at its best during the melee combat. In a style not dissimilar to For Honor, it’s all about placing attacks where your opponent least expects it.
You’ll notice this the first time you have a fist fight with the village drunk as you have to outmanoeuvre him and place the perfect hits just at the right time.
This then carries over to the bladed combat as well. It takes a while to get used to but once it clicks, you begin to feel like you can take on any adversary.
We’ve come to expect a certain level of bug with open worlds games and even though many of them are just minor inconveniences, my time with the game showed that there were too many and too often.
Not being able to get down a flight of stairs or a quest not letting me continue for unknown reasons started to grate on the whole experience and threw me out of the immersion of playing a game aiming for realism.
I wanted to love Kingdom Come: Deliverance more than I ended up doing. The idea of a realistic RPG that has a gorgeous visual style sounded like it would be right up my street.
It’s a shame then that an overbearing survival system and constant issues caused me to not enjoy my time in this interesting world as much as I’d have liked.
For every beacon of hope, I was disappointed to find something else that would pull me away.