Kingdom Come Deliverance / Kingdom Come Deliverance II

I've not played the first one. I'm trying to get into the second one. But man, this is a tough game to start. I'm enjoying it... but I don't know if it's fun!

Just as I Thoguht I was starting to get the hang of things, my character has decided that he's going to be either tired, hungry, or in need of healing. But attending to any of these basic human needs usually involves travelling somewhere which uses calories and usually gets me in a fight.

Speaking of which, I'm TERRIBLE at combat. I practiced with a swordmaster, Tomcat, and he just kept shouting at me and telling me I was doing it all wrong - this went on for AGES despite me seemingly doing what he was telling me.

My character, being basically a Tamagotchi on hard mode, is always grumbling about being hungry. But I've not money and food is so scarce. I've tried stealing food, but people get very angry and chase me for miles, by which time I've used up all my calories and earnt a bad reputation with them.

I would try and pickpocket people but the risk is high and the pickpocketing game looks super complicated and fiddly.

Other than that, it's a very beautiful game and it's lovely to walk around medieval Bohemia like a bum with no shoes.

Anyone else playing this? I heard there were some controversies with the developers, but I can't find a great deal about it

https://aftermath.site/aftermath-hours-podcast-kingdom-come-deliverance-gamergate

i bought this years ago before i knew what was up with the designer and i'd left it unplayed, honestly kinda forgot about it. didn't want to waste 40 bucks though so here i am-

it brings morrowind jank in a way i find nostalgic and comfortable and often fun/funny: two characters sitting on a picnic table indoors (facing a wall for some reason). one is teaching me to pickpocket as the other repeatedly pops back and forth between standing on top of the table to standing on the floor. when the convo with the pickpocket trainer is done, obviously, i immediately pickpocket them both. he goes back to his ale and the other fellow continues phase-shifting and briefly entering his walking animation.

that pickpocket minigame is fun, in fact i love the dopey little minigames it's got all over the place. the alchemy one is especially trying, it's nearly a rhythm-based cooking sim and is incredibly poorly explained, frustrating, and inconsistent. the inventory system is totally clumsy, and of course there is the legendary save system... which i also think is good.

the story is entirely boilerplate but somehow feels weird and completely 'off', pacing is always an issue with a video game, but i don't think this explains it. (i assume nobody here is actually going to play it but spoilers i guess?) right away they build up this evil lord who is the palpatine, with his memorable big-baddie-swordsman-who-you'd-never-stand-a-chance-against (who you then end up killing about two hours later). this jarring stuff isn't done artfully, it's just confusing

then you proceed to spend about 20 hours 'investigating' some raids on local villages as if there is a mystery about who is doing it. previously it's been established that the evil lord is in league with a fairly racistly-portrayed band of ~FOREIGN~ hordes (hungarians, egad!) but for the entire course of your investigation you are just dealing with local ruffians. around the time you 'solve' the investigation ANOTHER big bad is introduced who has no character or any interesting traits or even any traits at all. and he works for some other bad guy, i think. who works for the evil lord? i dunno.

lots of quests are 'go talk to dude A, who tells you to talk to dude B, who tells you to go get X item, then tells you where dude C is, then you fight dude C and his minions and dude C advances the plot with his dying words'. i enjoy this because it gets you out moving around the world. though i unfortunately borked what could have been one of the coolest quests, infiltrating a monastery to solve a crime, by going to the monastery days before and robbing it... a task suggested in-game by a quest-giver. it was a cool premise to have to follow this slow-ass and tedious monk schedule with menial tasks like transcribing and praying, and the church/cloister is very lovely to look at. i really wanted it to work right but even giving the game wide berth, it bugged out in thirty different ways, which is also a bethesda retread i guess

there are sorta-big battles which are pretty cool and i assume are the showcase setpieces for the game, but you're still mostly just clobbering local drunkards and brawlers. i laugh when several of these rabble die quickly and then 5-6 of the 'good' guys including my character all surround the one pitiful guy remaining, who has far worse armor, and hack him to bits. maybe there is one last big battle but i sense i'm getting to the end of the story

the primary motivation of the main character, Henry, is to retrieve his deceased father's stolen sword and 'wreak vengeance', but nobody including the (pretty good) voice actor believes he cares about that at all. dotted throughout are opportunities for your character to lecture others about the folly of revenge, though. i rather like him though, he's clever and i think the player would care for him even if they hadn't forced him to experience a generic tragedy. i wish the story fit him better though- a sheltered, weak little villager with no life experience is a compelling angle, but easy potential beats such as, i dunno, the first time you kill someone, are not remarked on. i guess it's the video game problem of continually needing to become more powerful because now i guess he's secretly royalty blah blah blah

the writing is often embarrassing, i can occasionally nearly hear the actors cringing through their reads. when you go on your first date with your girlfriend the only thing the sexist pig who wrote it can think of that you could do with a girl is... suddenly go on a footrace? later you play hide and seek? i suppose it's a videogame- the opportunities for character interaction are limited, but there are enough other creative choices elsewhere here that this stuff makes me almost ashamed. it's truly 13-year-old boy stuff in every possible way. the dialogue has a 'basics of screenwriting' feel in a manner that's so noticeable it becomes hilarious. one tic in particular is characters, when concluding their blocks of dialogue, will end by saying some 'madder than a yak in heat' shit like 'he was stomping around louder than a starving boar at feed time!' to add 'color' and 'authenticity'. see, the character is likeable and clever! there's humor! and we used 'boars' instead of 'hog' or 'pig', you see- sounds medieval, right? it's historical! last, every english voice actor has some flavor of british accent despite this being set in (and made in) Czechoslovakia

but, i honestly am enjoying myself. and it's quite pretty. i just wish this old-school feel wasn't packaged and sold by such an odious and dumb guy

I sunk a lot of cost into this game. I really did not get kn with it. A friend says it was her most played game of 2025. I still want to play it for some reason but I hated nearly every moment of it.

Same. I keep meaning to play it again for same reasons as GT says, spent money on it and didn't play for very long. I felt it had potential but it was lacking a spark or a sense of fun maybe. The beginning just felt full of tedious chores, and p much every thing you had to learn was easily forgettable or clunky, like combat and alchemy for example.

This is the sequel I'm talking about, didn't play the first one.

I might go back and I've heard people say it's amazing, the freedom and the proper open world seems really appealing, but it really didn't hook me in.