More than most modern RPGs, the Kingdom Come: Deliverance series is willing to inconvenience you. Peasant-turned-knight protagonist Henry is back after learning to swing a sword and maintain reasonable hygiene standards in the 2018 original, but it’s clear from my hands-on Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 preview in Prague that he still has far to go in his adventure across 15th-century Bohemia.
I enjoy KCD for its quirks. There’s a sometimes charming, sometimes irksome fussiness to its systems that urges you to slow down, think, and plan ahead. Rather than striving for outright realism, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2‘s peculiar details cultivate a certain believability that you are this person and you exist in this world with its own soft and hard rules. You’re not Sekiro or Raiden, but a man of average build, speed, and strength, who at times appears woefully ill-equipped for his mounting problems, especially as he enters the alien circles of nobility.
KCD’s heavy, faux-real combat is a game of directional stabs and slashes that forever feels like one illogically or poorly timed move away from tripping into farce. Battles can also easily be won or lost before they’ve even begun. Your combat ability might carry you to an extent, but a dull blade and impractical armor will inevitably turn you into easy pickings for the roaming bandit gangs.
Similarly, Henry can oscillate between surprisingly cunning and brutish in conversations depending on how you want to play him. But while your in-the-moment decision-making is important during dialogue, how you’re dressed, whether you’re washed, and your standing with the person you’re talking to all play into how you’re perceived. The best offense is therefore a well-stocked and organized inventory, a diligently serviced and selected arsenal and attire, and – when galivanting – a sensible cross-country departure time.
Henry has developed from a largely defenseless, penniless peasant to a knight in the employ of nobility. Now that he can read, write, fight, and do more than simply eke out an existence during wartime, I was concerned that KCD 2 would resemble a more generic, straightforward RPG with little room to complicate the genre’s traditional power fantasy. From a development perspective, Warhorse is now a much bigger team with a larger budget and no doubt greater audience ambitions. All of this would suggest that the sequel might sand off the original’s eccentricities, but after playing several hours of KCD 2 in Prague, I came away confident that the team has doubled down on what made the first game special.
This beautiful and intimidatingly huge RPG begins with a flash-forward to a grisly siege where returning character Father Godwin attempts to hold enemy hordes at bay with a crossbow. My first three shots miss their target; of course the bolts don’t shoot straight, instead curving oddly in the air – this is Kingdom Come, after all. From there I’m reintroduced to Henry and his enemy-turned-pal Hans Capon as they attempt to deliver a message to a local lord. It doesn’t take long for complications to arise after we bump into a band of roving bandits, one of whom seems oddly familiar.
The linear two-hour introductory sequence packs in a lot of tutorials, so you won’t have to wait a dozen or so hours to get fully up to speed with systems like combat, alchemy, stealth, and reputation this time around. I just about kept up with the whistlestop tour, but even I found the early-game exposition detailing everything from the murder of Henry’s family to his friendship with Hans to be a bit much. Still, this is all in service of making KCD 2 a more welcoming and quickly understood entry point for new players, so I can forgive the onslaught of information.
During the intro, I grew suspicious of Henry’s high level and impressive arsenal. Sure enough, in a cruel but enjoyably literal loss of power, the poor guy takes a tumble off a cliff early on, wounding himself terribly and losing a bunch of level-ups in the process. While KCD 2 doesn’t quite put you back to square one, you’ll still spend a good bit of time building Henry back up to his previous peak and beyond. I had a nosey through the upgrade options and, yes, they appear to be even more extensive and varied than the original’s. Expect to pore over many potential disciplines, from specific combat styles to more vocational pursuits.
This is all music to my ears. I was relieved to see the (from memory) dozens of unique upgrade options as opposed to only generic buffs to health, stamina, carry capacity, etc. I’m equally glad that Warhorse didn’t go for a more traditional hack-and-slash combat system for the sequel, opting instead to fine-tune the old approach and focus on making every successful blow and counter feel just that bit better.
This doubling down on depth carries through to the game’s missions, where the oft-promised, seldom-delivered ‘play your way’ approach feels mostly fulfilled and dovetails nicely with the broader open-world mechanics. During one mission, I infiltrate a heavy-filled building in search of a sword as part of a flimsy scheme to draw a rival fighter’s guild into a tournament (it’s a long story). It’s still daytime and everyone’s wandering from room to room, so it doesn’t take long for a confused resident to spot me crouched in a corner.
While I escape with the sword, news of my thievery spreads to the law, halting my progress. I have to turn myself in to move on with the quest. So, after sidestepping through the streets for a while, I approach a guard and await the inevitable ‘stop right there, criminal scum’ call-out. Instead, he appears unaware that I’m lugging around a back-breaking assortment of stolen goods. I ask a nearby dev what’s up and he explains that, because I’m in a different part of town, news of my crimes hasn’t yet spread to the locals. I’ll have to wait and either surrender some cash, spend a bit of time on the stocks, receive a reputation-harming brand, or pack in the side quest and accept my new life as a runaway thief.
Clumsy old Henry is no Garrett, so I report and pay for my crimes in coin before heading to the arena to earn glory alongside my two accomplices. But our rivals are snitches, unfortunately, and they tell the ref I was the one who stole the sword and laid the trap that forced them into the fight against their will. As such, we now have to do battle without our full armor. All of this because I didn’t bother to wait six in-game hours for nightfall before attempting the theft. There’s also no ‘John will remember that’ equivalent here; the game just rolls on, with your mistakes sneakily circling around to bite you on the backside.
Sure, the grand illusion slips here and there, such as during the intro when I escape danger by giving pursuing bandits the old ‘he went that way.’ I was especially surprised to see this pay off given I was still covered head to toe in their buddy’s blood. But when the stars align and it all comes together, it really does work. I’d take the frustrations and specificity of a Kingdom Come over the numbing frictionless of many other open-world RPGs any day.
The Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 release date is set for February 11, 2025.