Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Review

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For fans of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, it’s been a long 7 year wait to see what the team at Warhorse Studios would come out with next. When we finally learned last year that it was going to be a Kingdom Come sequel, I, along with many others were thrilled to hear it. And now it’s finally arrived. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II builds upon everything that made the original game great, while tweaking things that weren’t received as well, to create a game that is larger and deeper than anything we got in the original. It’s deep web of systems, slower pace and grounded themes won’t be for everyone, but for players that are interested in immersive role playing experiences, and fans of the original game are going to find a lot to love within Kingdom Come: Deliverance II.

The story of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II picks up almost directly after the events of the last game. As you did in the first game, you still play as Henry of Skalitz, acting as bodyguard to your noble companion Hans Capon as you continue your quest to track down the Sigismund forces responsible for the decimation of Skalitz and to retrieve the stolen sword of your Father. The game’s opening hours do a fairly good job of reintroducing the characters, their dynamics and some key moments of context that are crucial for understanding Henry’s goals and motivations heading into this game after the cliffhanger ending of the first game. 

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Hands-On Preview Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Review

If you haven’t played the first game though, you shouldn’t be put off from trying Kingdom Come: Deliverance II if it’s something that looks interesting to you. While there isn’t a dedicated story recap of the first game before you start, nor does the game hold your hand and hit you with massive exposition dumps, it does bring you up to speed on key events via natural conversation and some well designed dreams and flashbacks that Henry has in the opening hours of the game. It gives you enough context to be able to understand what specific characters want before really kicking things off in the sequel. But for those that would like a more detailed recap on the events of the first game, or perhaps need a refresher if it’s been some time since you’ve played, there is a full recap video that has been recently uploaded to the official Warhorse YouTube channel.

Henry begins this game already feeling more capable than he was in the first, retaining a number of the core life skills picked up in the original. But an incident that occurs towards the start of the game causes some of his stats to suffer a bit of a reset and cleverly gives you the opportunity to once again grow and improve and relearn certain systems in a way that feels like a natural tutorial for the player.

The game’s first few hours are built around setting up the core premise of the story, introducing you to some key characters and the game’s most crucial systems. This portion is a fairly linear experience and acts as a lengthy, yet engaging tutorial. But following that, the game really begins to open up and you’re given the freedom to explore the world as you see fit.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Hands-On Preview Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Review

And that’s when you’ll begin to understand just how massive this world is. But it’s not just large in terms of land mass. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II’s world is dense, detailed and absolutely packed with objectives to do, things to see and moment to moment gameplay that is so packed with new points of interest that you really don’t know what you’ll witness next on your adventure. I often found myself getting distracted on the way to an objective just because something else crossed my path and took over my focus in that moment. There are many times for example where speaking to an NPC not only progresses the quest that lead you to talk to them in the first place, but the conversation with them ends up giving you 3 new points of interest to check out or full blown quests or investigations to do for them.

It’s one of those games where the objectives do keep growing and growing, thankfully in a good way. This is something that could have really hurt the flow and enjoyment of the game, but the character writing and the wide range of quest types and objectives really help keep the game feeling fresh and not exhaustive. 

While the story of the game is interesting, the thing that really drew me in and kept me addicted to playing was this world. It’s really unlike anything I’ve played in other games in recent years, and also really encourages you go invest yourself within the roleplay aspect. The world itself feels alive and it does a great job at making you feel like just a small part of what is a living and breathing setting. It’s not like other RPGs where you’re this super powerful, prophetic being and the story and world feels like it’s built for and fuelled by you. In Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Henry feels like a capable and powerful person for sure, but the world feels as though it continues to exist not just because the plot of the game needs it to. And it does. There are quests for example that are time critical and will play out whether you engage with them or not and you’ll have to deal with the consequences of that and the FOMO that comes when you wonder what you may have missed out on because you were occupied doing other things instead.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Hands-On Preview Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Review

Another core aspect of the game that really sells realism is when the characters of the world act in context of you and the actions you’ve taken. For example, If you’ve been marked as a criminal, people in the town may know and treat you accordingly when you speak with them. If it’s been some time since you’ve bathed, people will comment on that and barely engage with you because of the smell. If you’ve barely scraped out of a duel and head into town bleeding all over the place, it will draw a lot of attention too. I loved the attention to detail and really made me feel immersed in this world far more than any other game of recent memory.

I also loved that the game encourages you to see and explore the world too, as the map is shrouded until you actually visit a location. And even upon entering a new town, the key locations aren’t just automatically included on your map for instant reference. You’ll have to actually walk through the town and discover the locations of the points of interest, such as the inn, tailor, butchers, alchemists benches etc before they’re scribed onto your map.

As touched on before, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is going to be a real treat for players that like to immerse themselves in the roleplaying side of RPGs. The game has many systems that play a part in how you progress Henry’s skills which you can choose how much or how little you’d like to engage in. Things such as cooking, using alchemy to craft potions or blacksmithing weapons and gear are systems that I had a fairly fun time interacting with, and the perks of doing so become clearer over time, but the game doesn’t force that upon you if it’s an area of the game you’re really not interested in. 

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Review

This layer of choice and decision making is what’s going to make your Henry feel like your Henry. The game lets you engage in what you want to engage in. It offers varied playstyles, especially when it comes to your player skills, loadout and approach to combat. And like Skyrim, you level up your skills and individual attributes by actually doing those things. Skills such as lockpicking, hunting, crafting, speech craft etc get better the more you actually do them. Alongside that, there is a deep, multi-layered skill tree where you can spend accumulated skill points to help further shape Henry and his active perks to your liking. 

Speaking of combat, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II’s combat has been streamlined and improved compared to the first game. It’s still slower and more methodical than what you may expect from a typical RPG game, but is built upon an intuitive system that ensures you watch the combat, block methodically, assess risk and actively choose when to engage because the consequences of messing it up are high. Messing up snowballs downwards pretty quick once you take a few hits in a row and fail to block them or read the enemies strikes as well as you should.

From a technical standpoint, I didn’t encounter performance problems or hard crashes during my time with the game. I did encounter various bugs that have come to be pretty common in large-scale RPGs. There were many times though where I did encounter visual bugs and glitches such as items clipping through characters, sometimes with hilarious results, noticeable texture pop in, something mostly seen when traversing the open world and character ai glitching out forcing NPC’s to act in strange ways that were clearly out of the norm. It’s nowhere near the scale of what was witnessed back when KCD1 launched but was still present. Just note, I have had access to this review copy for quite some time and there’s a good chance many issues and bugs will be addressed with the upcoming day 1 patch, but I feel like it’s something worth calling out for now just in case they aren’t addressed and you’re hoping for a flawless experience. 

Also on the technical side, it’s worth mentioning that Kingdom Come: Deliverance II has received a noticeable visual uplift compared to the first game. The world is dense, lush and very well detailed. Something that continued to impress me the more I played, given just how large in scale everything this game aims to be. Character models have also been overhauled and offer a wider array of expressions and facial animations for both main and side characters.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Hands-On Preview Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Review

Final Thoughts

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is an incredible RPG masterpiece. It offers so much freedom and the ability to make your own decisions and be left to deal with the consequences, good or bad. And that’s quite refreshing these days. It’s deep, immersive and driven by its characters and interactions. It’s slower pace and deep, layered systems may not be for everyone, but for those that want to immerse themselves in those aspects and be a part of a world that feels alive, it’s going to be an experience that is unforgettable.

A PS5 review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.

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9.5

Played On: PS5

  • + A world that feels alive
  • + Flexibility with character build and plenty of choice and consequence
  • + Well written characters and questlines
  • + A highly immersive world that really encourages roleplay


  • - Does have some noticeable technical bugs

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