Have you ever thought I want more Elder Scrolls but set in 15th century Bohemia with a heavy dose of “realism” thrown in for good measure? I can’t say that the thought had actually crossed my mind before I had heard of the Kickstarter for Warhorse Studios ambitious historically set RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance but the idea did intrigue me enough to plop down some financial support for it. Four years and a couple scandals of varying degrees of severity later and Warhorse has delivered the game.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a host of different things wrapped in to one package. That may sound mighty cliche but in this case it is 100% accurate in describing the game because Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a mighty complicated product. Starting with its controversial creative director and lead writer Daniel Vavra, continuing with its excessive abundance of gameplay mechanics, and wrapping up with its technical issues. There is no shortage of things that you will or will not be enraged or delighted by.
Let’s get the big one out of the way first. Daniel Vavra, co-founder of Warhorse Studios and Kingdom Come’s creative director and lead writer, has a history. Of course everyone has a history but Vavra’s is public and his endorsement of the Gamergate movement is one that is going to be a non-starter for many people. And that is entirely fair. Separating the art from the artist can be a hard thing for people, we all have to make our own calls.
Some may feel that this type of mention doesn’t belong in a review and I respect that opinion but I disagree. Artists, just like their art are open to criticism and often times the art and artist go hand in hand. Art criticism shouldn’t be formed from a vacuum. For my money, I’m not sure that I would have supported the Kickstarter if I had known of Vavra’s stances and endorsements prior.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that Kingdom Come is littered with overt indicators of Vavra’s personal leanings. There are things here and there in the game that knowing about Vavra may make you think twice but for the most part the game doesn’t feel any more controversial than say something like the critically acclaimed The Witcher III: Wild Hunt. And The Witcher III is an apt comparison to Kingdom Come because both games have come under fire for their lack of diversity in the game.
Warhorse’s fallback for the lack of diversity is that the game is a fictional historical record of Bohemia. Warhorse employed a hefty team of historians and researchers to help them be as historically accurate as possible. Is it possible that there were Moors in the vicinity at the time? Yes, but it is also not impossible that Moors did not range out in to the rural areas that Kingdom Come takes place in. I do think that Vavra’s far-right political leanings make the supposition that diverse characters were left out of the game on purpose is an easy one to make but it also is only that a supposition. There is no hard proof one way or the other.
But enough about controversy, let’s talk the game proper.
Unlike the Elder Scrolls games, Kingdom Come offers no direct character customization from the start. Everyone that plays the game will play as Henry, the son of a blacksmith. Henry’s story starts with his father sending him on an errand in to town. This serves to introduce players to a variety of tutorials for some of the games many mechanical systems, such as fighting, bartering, and player choice. This introductory area is both engaging and anger inducing. While I enjoyed roaming the town of Skalitz, talking with the locals, and learning about the world, I also ended up in a seemingly never ending battle with a local drunk I was trying to collect money from.
Combat in Kingdom Come is going to be something people either love or hate. Personally, I hated it. Melee combat is done on an nine point scale where you have to pick a compass point and depending upon which one is chosen, it will perform a particular move that can be blocked or countered by the enemy AI. I never mastered it and was actually awful at it most of the time, resulting in me finding cheap system breaking ways to get around combat when I was forced in to it.
The good thing is that combat isn’t the one and only solution most of the time. Henry, if you so choose to play him as such, can talk his way out of many encounters. There are of course encounters, including a poorly designed boss battle about halfway through the game, that can’t be solved without combat but the option to talk my way out of things more often than not was much appreciated.
Those forced combat encounters though I found tiresome and cheesed my way through them by shooting my enemies in the head with special arrows. I’m not sure what broke immersion more for me, trying to actually sword fight certain enemies and failing over and over or running around and shooting goons in the head at point blank range but them not dying.
And immersion is something that Kingdom Come tries hard to deliver to its players. Henry will get tired and hungry on the regular and this needs to be managed diligently or it will cause detrimental effects to the way the game is played. If Henry is too tired he’ll start to lose stamina and eventually als focus and blacking out. If he is too hungry, he’ll lose value to his energy. He’ll also continually complain about how hungry or tired he is. Keeping him well fed and rested though is only part of it. Eating too much can also cause detrimental effects and drinking alcohol will leave Henry inebriated for a certain amount of time making him wobbly on his feet and ineffective in other tasks.
Similar to Henry requiring management like an actual human being, the rest of the world operates on a regular schedule. Shops, inns, other public places will close down at times that seem reasonable. Merchants won’t accept stolen goods and if they lose in a bartering attempt, they will hold a grudge against you. In fact, each town has a reputation meter that applies to Henry and while you may be the local hero in one little town, the next one over you won’t be the hot stuff. And your appearance can impact your interactions with certain people, so be sure to keep your armor in good repair (for combat purposes too) and maybe bathe on occasion.
As just mentioned, armor needs to be kept in good repair. Each individual piece has its own stats and durability ratings and to be best protected you’ll want to keep it well maintained. The same goes for weapons as they will lose functionality as they deteriorate. Henry can bring his items to the armor and weaponsmiths for repair or he can learn to maintain them himself (saving some much needed coin in the process).
Most interesting in Warhorse’s desire to be immersive is that Henry starts off being unable to read. Considering Henry’s station in life, this makes sense but the option to teach Henry to read is available and doing so opens up new avenues in certain quests for him. However, learning to read isn’t as simple as just paying the local scribe to teach you. You actually have to decipher some texts and answer questions on them so that Henry can utilize the skill in the game. It’s a cool little touch that I thought added a bit to the game.
Of course, Kingdom Come is still just a game though and no matter how much Warhorse attempted to be immersive there would be breaking points. The biggest one is the studios concession to allow for quicksaves and special potions for health recovery or stat boosts. Quicksaves aren’t just available from the menu, Warhorse wanting to limit save scumming to a minimum made quicksaves a consumable called Savior Schnapps. Drink one of these and you can save without being at a bed but it has the detrimental effect of getting you a bit buzzed too. These special schnapps cost a pretty penny, although you can brew them yourself through the intricate alchemy system and the resources to do so are pretty plentiful.
There are other little items that can pull you out of the experience too if you start looking for them. Like the fact that there are pots of food lying all around the world waiting for you to eat out of them and that there are only a handful of facial models for common people which means you start to see the same one’s over and over as the game progresses. That said though, it does a pretty good job at creating an immersive experience.
And the story is pretty OK too. Look, Kingdom Come isn’t going to knock your socks off with its narrative prowess and it is a pretty standard story we’ve seen in fantasy fiction since the beginning of time but it is engaging enough to pull you through. And early on, when Henry is nothing more than just a low ranking servant of his Lord, it actually sets you on some pretty well thought out quests lines where Henry, playing against the standard knightley type, is acting as a medieval investigator.
There are issues with the story, particularly its handling of female characters, to be nothing more than plot devices or figures to pursue sexually and then dispose of. It also gets extraordinarily linear in the final third of the game as it wraps up to an unsatisfying conclusion.
Most unsatisfying though is the game’s many numerous bugs and crashes. Open world games of this size and scope are given quite a bit of leeway in regards to open world jank, take any Bethesda Elder Scrolls or Fallout game as an example, but Kingdom Come exceeds this. My time with the game saw bugs that cost me hours of progress multiple times and quest bugs that wouldn’t allow for quests to complete despite the requirements being met. Others have reported serious crashes and frame rates dipping to near unplayable levels with some of the best hardware money can buy (I played on medium and had little issue in that regard). One’s tolerance for both open world jank and actual game breaking bugs will severely impact how you come out on Kingdom Come.
For my part though, Kingdom Come offered a near 40 hour experience that had more highs than lows. The game delivers something different enough in a familiar wrapper that I was able to let slide its most outlandish technical issues. It’s also just a good one of these types of games and I’m glad I played it, even if I am a bit conflicted on its most public creator and his influence on the game.
This review was written with material provided from backing the project on Kickstarter for PC by the reviewer. For more on our review process, please read here.
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