Review: KINGDOM COME: DELIVERANCE II Offers a Noble Experience

Recently, Warhorse Studios and Deep Silver released Kingdom Come: Deliverance II on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. The game continues the story of Henry, a blacksmith turned warrior, and it’s something that I think a lot of people will like. The team was kind enough to provide me with a PC code for this review, but all thoughts below are my own.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II continues the journey of Henry, a blacksmith-turned-warrior, in a thoroughly crafted 15th century Europe. With evolved gameplay mechanics, enhanced combat, and a richly detailed world, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II immerses players into Bohemia in 1403, embroiled in war, feuds, and political intrigue. The journey will test your resolve and place you in a world like no other. Adventurers must choose whether they save those around them…or punish them for their sins.

This is the part where I put in some caveats and basic information. First, yes, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is a direct sequel. No, I have not played the first game. This game does a good job of being a sequel that does not require that you play the first game. At no point have I felt like I’m missing key information because I didn’t play the first game.

I’m sure it would enhance the experience to some degree, but playing the first game is not required playing, in my opinion. Second, I did get a Steam key and it runs okay on Steam Deck on the lowest settings, but at the end of the day, I did spend most of my time playing the game on my gaming desktop (with a controller) where it performed on high settings with FSR set to quality typically averaging between 100-125fps at 1440p.

• Desktop Specs:

  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X

  • GPU: AMD Radeon 6800 XT

  • RAM: 32GB DDR4

  • SSD: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is not a game for everyone. It is very intricate and detailed and quite frankly overwhelming. This does not mean it is bad and it does not mean it is good, we just need to make sure that we know what we’re getting into.

I want to start by talking about some grievances that I have with Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. First, I am not a fan of the menu system and controls. For instance, when I pull up the map, I instinctively want to use the left thumbstick to move the cursor, but instead that can change which submenu we’re in.

In the map section, you move the cursor with the right thumbstick. They let you push the triggers to move across menus or just use the left thumbstick which genuinely just didn’t feel good to me personally.

It also bothers me that when you’re in a menu, you can see basic information, but to see more detailed information, you have to press left or right depending on the screen. For example, when you pull up the inventory, you can hover over items and see how it impacts your current build, but you can see part of a panel with more information which requires you to push left to see which then means you lose out on seeing other information that used to be on the right of the screen.

This is all just ignoring how I don’t like the button layout for accessing the menus. The Start button gives the menu for saving, changing settings, quitting, etc. The other button (previously called Back or Select) is all about resting.

Instead, you press up on the D-pad and this bothers me because I have been conditioned by just about every other game that one of the middle buttons is supposed to pull up the menu. It’s a small thing, but really does drive me a little batty.

Something else that bothered me has to do with the character models. We’ll talk about the graphics overall in a moment, but I want to address one part of characters that I am a little disappointed in. Maybe I’m crazy, but I feel like the characters all have just had botox and their faces are more or less stuck in one expression with very little variance.

Next, let’s talk about dialogue. This can be hit or miss with how sometimes what I select ends up being much harsher than I expected. For instance, I was talking to some Cumans and I picked a dialogue option that seemed neutral and Henry starts being a little racist towards them.

As the player, I was caught off-guard by this. If I had known about that part of the dialogue, I would not have selected the option. There have also been other times where I selected a dialogue option because I thought it was helpful, but then an NPC would yell at me for overstepping my bounds and such.

I do wish some of these dialogue options were a little more transparent. It’s also weird to me that after the blacksmith first teaches me how to do it and says that I can work for him, I talked to him and he sounded so pissed off at me just for starting a conversation so that I could trade or ask a question.

Now let’s talk about the positives that come with Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. There are quite frankly, a lot. I mentioned I was disappointed in the lack of facial expressions that I felt I encountered in the game, but just about everything else related to graphics is good. The environment, textures, and overall character models all look good.

This ties into the art style of the game which is really awesome. In the main game, it’s all going for a more realistic style, but when you go to menus those look really nice. I know I complained about the overall navigation of the menus, but the overall aesthetics are really good. The illustrated maps, the layout for equipment, and the illustrations in the Codex are all fantastic.

In addition, the sounds and music are all perfect. I don’t want to sound corny, but the audio does do a good job of helping transport the player into an immersive experience.

There’s so much you can do in this game, I’ve barely scratched the surface in my gameplay and have really touched on the story even less, so I don’t really have thoughts on that aspect. From my little experience so far, I like how it’s starting, but can see it become either very mid or it could be good.

Speaking of all there is to do in the game, I do conceptually like how immersive Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is. When it comes to crafting, you don’t just select the materials from a list and then wait 30 seconds. You actually have to more or less perform the crafting.

One of my favorite things has been blacksmithing. You have to heat the steel, hammer it out evenly, ensure you are keeping the steel hot, and eventually quenching it. Sometimes the hammering is a little annoying (especially when making horseshoes), but I could genuinely get lost in that aspect if I had infinite recipes and resources.

One big part of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is the combat. This is one of the most intricate combat systems I think I’ve ever encountered and it’s really intriguing. With melee weapons, you have to select which of four angles you are going to attack your enemy and you’re trying to make sure it’s not the side they’re blocking at the moment. It’s really involved.

You can also try to time blocks to hopefully parry and riposte and get them, but that doesn’t always work. Ranged attacks actually take time to reload, especially things like crossbows, which make them very situational.

Meanwhile, armor has to be donned in specific orders to be effective. All of this is unique and gives it a place to be itself and shine. I am really bad at the combat in this game and I genuinely don’t know that I’ve actually won a single combat without it being a huge struggle for me, but I can really appreciate it and know that better people will eat it up and love it.

The intricacies in combat and close attention to details really make Kingdom Come: Deliverance II stand out. It really feels like the closest thing we have ever had to a medieval European knight simulator and I applaud it for that. I think it does a really good job. I just don’t know if it’s for me.

I really struggle with the combat and while there’s a lot to do, if you’re not willing to get at least decent at the combat (in my case that would take quite some time) then you are limiting yourself. That said, if you are decent at the combat, or willing to put in the time to get at least decent at the combat, then I believe that you will have a blast with this game. I think it accomplishes a lot of what it aims for.

There are some areas that I think could use some work, but in the grand scheme of things, they are fairly minor in all honesty. On a personal level, the score would be closer to 7.5/10, but I think on a more general level it’s much better and people will love it.