Kingdom Come: Deliverance (2018)

I have beaten the game! I don't write reviews since I am generally just writing down my thoughts as I played, so here's my final thoughts.

I did all the optional side quests for the Siege main quest, of which I am unsure if it helped at all. It was a satisfying resolution to the whole thing though and set up a second game well enough.

The part that extremely soured the experience is that near the end when you ride with Hans Capon before the very ending of the game, you cannot actually see the very last, short, impactful cutscene unless you finish The Amorous Adventures of Bold Sir Hans Capon DLC. If you do not own this DLC, then you can just get right to it and you're done! And it's a fine ending to a very nice bit of chatting you do at the end of the game.

However, if you do own it, and want to beat the game, you MUST complete the DLC, and it's really just about being Hans' wingman and showing how awful of a person he is. He truly is the worst. I was fine with him until I had to play this, and it soured me on my experience with him, as well as the ending as a whole.

I'll move on and get to the second game, which I hope doesn't have the insane restriction as it did here, but I've only heard good things. We'll have to wait and see!

I think I am coming up on the last bit of this game now.

I managed to make it through the monastery, almost by accident, and was able to jail the guy who I was after instead of killing him. Having a way into the bandit fort now, I did get tortured and saw the big reveal of who Henry's real father is, and the stealth moment afterwards was pretty fun too.

I cleaned up a few side quests and activities, but honestly, I am ready to be finished with the game. I am currently prepping for the Siege of Talmberg and just need to brew a lot more potions. The witches in the forest quest was pretty fun to go through though while getting all this prep done. I have finished all other optional side quests for this one main quest.

I do want to go through the DLC stories too once I am done, but we'll see how I am feeling after finishing up the main story.

My current status with this game is just having a good time with it. I've gotten to the point where the combat is mostly a joke, with some frustrations still. Clashing and grappling has made it a lot faster/easier. Head Cracker is a helluva perk, making long, drawn out battles over in maybe one to two hits if I am lucky, especially in fist fights and jab grabbing opponents which makes me knee them in the head.

After using the above tactics to get some information from some brawlers, I managed to get myself into the life of a monk by joining the monastery. I am not far into here but I feel like this is going to be a very long part of the game I need to deep dive into. I'll dive back into it this weekend and see if I can push through this part.

I pushed the story forward today a bit, curing the plague from a town by crafting them a potion. I didn't get very far otherwise as I got distracted by trying to win one of the Rattay tournaments. I finally did, and then hit a brick will with Black Peter. What an absolutely insufferable fight they put in the game. I managed to kill him in the end but I continue to feel like the combat in the game is the weakest point of the whole thing. It reminds me of the original Assassin Creed games where if you just got good at countering enemies they would die in one hit, but here you have to do it over and over and over again. It doesn't seem like there is a good way to master strike and properly follow up with one of the many combos you learn by honing your skill with a weapon type, and when you try to, you just get parried back and hurt. In Black Peter's case, that meant getting a poison on you that actually relatively quickly killed you.

At least his armor was worth some money. Will continue the story again soon :)

I put this down for a bit while the holidays were wrapping up but managed another small play session on December 27th. I took notes of what I did as to not forget, and it honestly wasn't much in terms of story progress!

I did a lot of fighting (on purpose and accident) to level up my proficiency with swords and my strength so I could get pack mule 3.

I still have lost every tourney I have done but I'm getting better. I'm gonna win some day. I did some more side quests for the millers and I am definitely not cut out for the stealth life but ive somehow managed.

I'm really enjoying just exploring and finding little things here and there and have been saving up money for a horse.

Currently I'm working on helping a town which suffered a raid and has the plague. There's an NPC I am unable to find but I also refuse to look them up so I'm just being stubborn. That's what I left off on, with all the DLC to also cover. I am excited to see how rebuilding the northern town plays out!

Continued with my second session last night, and focused on some of the main story. I've reached a point where I am trying to sabotage a camp full of Cumans, however I think I need to find better stealth clothing to sneak around, or find Cuman armor to maybe be able to blend in? I am unsure if that is a feature in the game, but I will test it and find out.

As far as side activities go I took part in some fist fights, working on training with Bernard in Rattay to just adjust to fighting with different weapons, and otherwise took my time helping out people in need around towns. I also spent some time with Theresa to advance Henry's relationship with her.

I am still a bit lost on the melee fighting, I have Master Strike but it sometimes just doesn't function. Melee battles turn into long slogs, and I feel like most of the skills for different weapons just do not matter because in the middle of your swing chain, an enemy will just parry and attack, not allowing you to finish it.

I'll keep pushing through and training and look for better armor, but so far while the story is fine, the combat makes it difficult to push through.

I started my playthrough of KCD for the first time yesterday, and I am still unsure about it. I am about 5 hours in or so, and while I am enjoying Henry's journey narratively, I am unsure about it mechanically. I've let myself do some side questing and get some gear, levels, and money. I've been finding bandit camps in the forests and loading up all their gear onto poor Henry's back to try and get back to town for a bit of coin.

I did decide that maybe I just needed to progress the story, and I am glad I did. I got a horse finally without having to resort to stealing one (I do not want to be thief Henry unless I am being paid for it). The saddlebags made my bandit hunting adventures a lot more lucrative. However there was one particular bandit fight I did in the story that gave me a lot of frustration, and mostly due to how melee battling works when there is more than one target. I just get absolutely shredded. I also almost killed myself from bleeding out by using my bow because I forgot to put my vambraces on to protect my left hand.

These are good learning opportunities to be sure, and it's unlike other games I have played in some respects. I am just unsure if they will become more of a hindrance than a boon the further on I go. I don't want to grind out skills as some have suggested to become a super soldier early on cause I feel that would take some of the joy of growth away from it, but I still haven't hit the point where I feel even slightly comfortable holding a sword. Hopefully some more training today will fix that!

The combat is starting to get to me now, I'm being ambushed by 3, sometimes 6 dudes all in armour and it's incredibly hard to fight your way out. The lock system encourages you to tackle one enemy at a time when they could all be swinging at you. Side stepping is an option to position yourself better but often the enemy has already surrounded you within seconds. You can lock onto a different enemy by edging your aim towards them but when the movement of your aim also dictates the type of attack you'll do it makes it very hard to perform the action you want to do when switching enemies. I've resorted to getting on my horse and running away like a coward, waiting for them to forget about me because they all have 3 second memories and then walking behind them and stealth killing them lol.

Still enjoying the world and locations though, the market areas are great and could honestly just become a full time trader instead of doing the missions.

I've been on a personal quest to return to Skalitz since things turned south, forcing you to leave at the beginning of the game. Bandits roam the area now and I haven't been able to fight them off... Until now! I've spent the past 10 hours or so messing around instead of doing the main quests but in the process I've almost mastered the clumsy combat system, and I've racked up over 6k coin and bought myself some shiny armour.

What started out as a fun idea turned into a 4 hour whirlwind that perfectly sums up why I love the game so much.

I found myself interrupting a witches ceremony, hallucinating and thinking I was a bore, murdered a priest, entered the local fighting tournament and won, then the loser tied a rope between two trees outside my house which knocked me off my horse and ambushed me with a poisoned sword, fought enemy soldiers in the woods and barely survived, stumbled to an abandoned farm house to heal and awoke to a mercenary offering a friendly duel challenge outside, met a riddler who made me feel like an idiot, and got the jump on some bandits settling down for camp outside of Skalitz... and then I finally made it to Skalitz. Funnily enough all my preparation wasn't even necessary because guards from a nearby town had turned up and fought the toughest bandits as I approached. Hooray?

Something I adore about this game is how it makes you really think about every single interaction. Partly because of the limited saving features, but also because of how the smallest action can have a consequence.

Combat is a pain with more than one enemy, especially early on, so when I was galloping towards a quest and noticed 8 enemies fighting amongst each other I chose to slam the brakes and just watch. Most games you could have a fair shot at picking them off with ease, but in KCD it's usually always certain death. I weighed up the value of the loot and just sat tight. Sure enough after a while only 4 were left, I split them into groups of two and made one group chase me away so I could deal with them separately and then went back for the others. In other games enemy bodies wouldn't mean much, but the armour, weapons, goblets, and coins were enough to triple my current hoard. It really is a jackpot moment when something like that happens as the risk is usually so high it's hard to come across that kind of money. The only downside is that you start looking at deadly and horrific scenarios as major money earners...

Later that evening I made friends with a priest we got drunk, got naked, rang church bells at midnight, and woke up in a field of sheep all because I said yes to a beer. What an incredible game!

Sunk some more time into this and still really impressed by the depth of the role play! I've spent the past 3 hours in the first town after the opening act and it's crazy how such a small area just becomes your entire world, even though there's a whole map to explore.

I've been working on a little side quest that's taken me hours. It involves "retrieving" a ring from a dead man. Not only do you have the option to decline the quest on moral grounds, but you also have to physically learn the skills required to pickpocket and lockpick. Both skills are trickier to learn than say the Skyrim equivalent.

There's so much weight behind each decision here it's really interesting, even learning pickpocketing and lockpicking puts you at risk of slipping into a life of crime. If someone sees you sneaking in the wrong place or if a dog barks whilst you pick a lock, your reputation is on the line and people will gossip and be mindful of you in the towns, traders might comment on your actions, and guards will ask to search you. It makes your role playing decisions really meaningful and where as I might have lockpicked any old door in Skyrim as long as no one was looking, I'd really think twice about doing it here.

As I was sneaking towards the objective, still unsure if I wanted to begin my life of crime, it was pitch black and my torch barely lit up the field in front of me, it was so immersive that when the guard dogs barked I dropped everything and ran back home through the woods lol. Perhaps I'm just not destined for this criminal life. Instead, I picked flowers the following morning and then sold them for a nice profit.

You need potions or beds to save the game, so save scumming is not encouraged at all - You're meant to commit to your decisions and then live with whatever happens after! I did eventually go back to the location to get the ring and dropped meat to keep the guard dogs quiet (cool detail) and then picked the lock to the executioners house, got the ring and stole a few saving potions. I wanted to test what would happen if I killed his farm animals and guard dogs to sell the meat at the butchers market which is in the town next door (lord forgive me for my sin). I thought I'd gotten away with it as it wasn't marked as stolen goods, but the traders weren't happy to see me when I approached them. A guard also shouted for me to stop, presumably to search for the stolen potion, but I drank it before he got to me and then he let me go lol.

Played a few hours of this today and it's really refreshing! The RPG aspects are way more in depth than I thought they would be, there's just tons of detail packed into everything here. The opening act is incredible, haven't been able to put it down for hours! Loving the environments and architectural details too, haven't seen this much variety and attention paid to a medieval setting in forever.

I can see the complexities of this game being its undoing though in many ways. Having to eat, sleep, haggle, repair clothes and keep track of food spoiling etc. It's also got the Skyrim levelling system but taken to the nth degree. You gain skills by actively doing the task, except you are pretty awful at just about everything in the game to start with, and so begins the gruelling task of slowly levelling everything so you can be competent. You even have to learn how to read first before you can understand a book... I'm a sucker for immersion though and this certainly ticks a lot of boxes.

Recommended mods:

• Bow Dot Reticle - normally there's no reticle

• Bushes- Collision Remover - removes magically impassable bushes

• Instant Herb Picking - no picking animation

• Sectorial Lockpicking - shows sectors on locks for easier picking

• Stay Clean Longer - Get Dirty Gradually - you don't have to insta-clean yourself as often

• Unlimited Saving - this is the first mod and the most popular one... save without using an item

• Unlimited Weight - i don't wanna do inventory management without getting paid for it

Finally, and perhaps most importantly:

Master Strike Begone - i wish i had used this, this might make combat fun again