Kingdom Come: Deliverance (2018) by Warhorse Studios

I was interested in Kingdom Come: Deliverance on release but read reviews and decided it wasn't for me. It sounded buggy and unstable, which I can't stand in RPGs—broken quest flags infuriate me. And the save system sounded awful since I can't stand games that don't allow you to quicksave and instead force you to rely on checkpointing, which is almost never as good as your ability to quicksave.

So I decided to pass on it. It sounded like more frustration than it was worth.

2 years later, Epic Store offered it for free so I finally decided to check it out. I recalled the save system being tied to potions you had to buy and decided to check and see if there was a mod available that allowed you to quicksave instead. PC modders—being the amazing people they are—had indeed made one! So I installed the game, installed the save anywhere mod, and booted the game and fooled around a bit. The devs have patched most of the bugs and instability out of the game by now, the dialogue writing was of a far higher quality than I was led to believe, and I liked the premise of being a peasant in medieval times rather than a nobleman or some kind of hero. So the game had me interested from minute one.

However, I got to my first combat engagement in which a drunk made a fool of me in a fistfight. The whole thing felt like bullcrap. I had no idea what I was doing, and I rage quit and uninstalled.

But the fight stayed on my mind. I thought about it more and more and considered that I was a kid with no combat experience, fighting a practiced brawler much larger than me. It made sense he would beat me up. I realized then that the game was aiming for a level of realism much higher than that of other RPGs. I reinstalled the game and decided not to confront the drunk. Like an immersive sim, there are various emergent ways of solving these problems—I ended up doing a favor for my tavern buddies, and in return, they came with me and beat the crap out of the drunk together.

From that moment on, I was completely hooked.

This game has a hardcore group of fans that sing its praises, and after playing for nearly 30 hours I'm starting to see why. It's unapologetic in its identity: It's a hardcore RPG that aims for a level of realism not found in other RPGs these days. It reminds me a bit of Skyrim with a thick coat of realistic paint: There's no magic here, no fantastical elements, but there are survival elements in place of those—you've got to sleep, eat, and bathe yourself. Your inventory weight is going to be taken up mostly by your armor. Archery is insanely difficult, like it is in real life. And, perhaps most rewarding; combat will take literal hours of training for you, the player, to get right.

The game is historically realistic about what Henry, the peasant protagonist, can do. You don't leave your parents house a total bad-ass—you have to train! When I began fighting I would nearly always get my butt kicked unless I was fighting naked, starving bandits. If I got jumped by Cumans on the road, I had to run or I'd die. Luckily for me, you get to a certain point in the story where Henry has the opportunity to train under a Master-at-Arms. Sir Bernard beat me senseless with a wooden sword for a literal hour before I began to get the hang of perfect blocks and master strikes, which require precise timing to pull off. I spent—no exaggeration—2 straight hours (real-time, not in-game) simply sparring with Sir Bernard until I could train completely naked, with real weapons, and counter every move without taking a single scratch of damage. And the the process was actually fun—not grindy! I got better and better, slowly, as I watched for his tells to try and guess when he was attacking so I could counter. It was incredibly rewarding not only to master that and rough up Sir Bernard for a change, but then to take it out into the "real world" and be able to duel actual knights—who would have slaughtered me before I practiced so much—and make complete fools of them using not stats that I had increased, but my own increase in skill with the game's combat system. The fantastic hollow metal clangs make everything ring true and feel satisfying, and the first-person animations when you pull off a master strike reflect the work you put in the become so well-practiced. It's the single most rewarding first-person melee combat system I've ever played in a game. I'll never be able to go back to Skyrim again.

Where it gets difficult is when you're fighting multiple enemies. But I don't think is a flaw—rather, it reflects the realism of how difficult it is to fight multiple enemies and come out on top. It's rare that I will come across a trio of Cumans on the road in an ambush and escape without a scratch. The enemy AI is quite good in these battles: One will pull out a bow and fire at you repeatedly, one with a shield will engage you from the front, while the third constantly tries to circle behind you. And if they have a dog, forget it—the little mongrel will constantly circle behind me more quickly than I can move. The solution in these battles is usually to sneak around the ambush, or run. But rather than frustrating, this lends realism to the game. I never leave such encounters angry because the game is staying consistent with its commitment to realism.

This commitment is also beginning to show now that I'm later in the game and wearing heavier armor. I love vast power scales in games, and this game reflects the near-invulnerability of a fully plate-armored knight in the 15th century. Your errors in combat are so much more forgiving when you're wearing a full set of heavy armor that your opponents need to continue to wail away nearly until your armor breaks before they can properly damage you. It makes all of your war loot even more valuable, while at the same time depicting realistically the intimidating power of a heavy knight. The loot in the game is surprisingly compelling, too—mostly because Henry has nearly a dozen different armor slots for all the layers of armor and padding a medieval knight would wear. I had no idea they were so thickly armored before playing this game.

This sort of painstaking realism also applies to non-combat things such as reading, which no peasant was able to do in the 15th century. You have to go on a specific quest to find someone to teach you, which takes in-game days of practice with a scribe. This is the level of realism to which this game aspires, and I love that about it.

In addition to how it handles combat and the growth of both your abilities and your character's, there are a number of things the game does as-good or better than any other RPG of the past decade or so, and some of these things have not been mentioned nearly enough in media covering the game: It has some of the best story and character writing out there, and that is supported by phenomenal voice acting—I particularly enjoy the player character Henry's performance by Tom McKay, and that of Hans Capon. It has a fresh setting that hasn't been explored in this level of detail before, and it has a strong commitment to historical accuracy that lends weight to it. It has utterly phenomenal music and art design—I spent minutes at a time just looking at the frescoes present in churches.

This game hits on so many things I love: It's fantastic historical fiction, it tells a compelling story with a strong narrative hook, it has emotionally resonant characters who feel like real people. And it has challenging, rewarding gameplay.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Downloadable Content: From the Ashes (2018)

I'm surprised by the lukewarm reviews of this content because I loved it! It provides a nice motivational diversion from the main game. About halfway through the main campaign I found myself filthy rich simply from looting and selling all of the gear I acquire from sacking bandit and Cuman camps. This expansion gives you somewhere to invest that money. The way it ties in to the main campaign and allows you to 'recruit' NPCs you've come across via side quests is brilliant as well.

I haven't felt this kind of ownership since Monteriggioni in Assassin's Creed II. This content is absolutely wonderful and I adore it. Watching your settlement grow in real time and observing the NPCs living out their lives is such a rewarding pleasure, and it gave me more motivation to continue doing sidequests and amassing wealth. I think the folks who were dissatisfied with this were expecting something like a settlement builder which Fallout 4 features, however I'm much happier having things more rigid like this expansion, if it avoids the jank and tedium present in games like Fallout 4.

Wonderful DLC; highly recommended.

From the Ashes Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Downloadable Content: A Woman's Lot (2018)

A Woman's Lot centers on Theresa, which is great because she's very well-acted and a solid character. It also lets you get to know the people of Skalitz better, which is welcome. And, best of all, it introduces your dog companion, Mutt! Mutt is the best, he makes the main game so much more enjoyable. I'd honestly pay the cost of this DLC just for him!

However, Theresa's actual mission and, specifically, the objectives you're given, make this actual DLC campaign range anywhere from incredibly frustrating to, by far, the most boring things I've done in the entire game.

As previously indicated; I really liked Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Part of what I like so much is that honest effort went in to designing the quests and objectives. You're constantly invested in what you're doing because the story is so compelling and Henry's growth as a character feels real and earned. All of that is removed in A Woman's Lot. There's zero investment in Theresa because you know none of this carries over, and there's nearly no opportunity to develop her character through the course of the DLC. Beyond the novelty of playing the beginning events of the game from a different point-of-view, her entire portion is all but worthless. The story, too, is basically what you already know, with one or two little Easter eggs thrown in. But aside from that, it's utterly predictable.

I was interested to play as Theresa because I love her character and she provides a nice change of pace from Henry. And I hope they'll include the option to play as a female character in KCD2, but the quest design here is complete and utter garbage and just zero fun to play.

On paper, it seems good: Introduce the player to Theresa's everyday life to make the impact of Skalitz's sacking that much more severe. In practice it's simply not any fun. You're tasked with things like feeding chickens, picking stuff up from the blacksmith, and various other fetch-and-deliver quests that are about as fun as a trip to the dentist. And on paper, requiring Theresa to be stealthy and sneak past guards rather than fighting makes sense. But in practice this clashes severely with the game's controversial save system. The stealth mechanics in KCD are very realistic, which is something I appreciated in the main game; no more hiding right in front of bad guys because your stealth skill is 100, like in Skyrim. But having such realistic stealth mechanics mixed with the way this DLC makes you utterly powerless to fight or run leads to an incredibly difficult, punishing experience. Once you're spotted, you can't even run from the Cumans, so you basically just get killed. And because you're not free to save whenever you like, you're often losing 15-30 minutes of gameplay at a time and forced to start back at the beginning. I was cursing up a storm playing through these sections, which is a clear deviation from my experience in the main game, which I'm nearly always enraptured by!

The cherry on top of this turd pie was near the end, when you're tasked with collecting random things like 10 flowers, 6 bandages, and some water in the dark, as a Cuman patrols near you. The game tries to have your dog help you seek out the items, but this mechanic was broken for me, as the dog did nothing but follow me as usual. I couldn't use a torch without being spotted, so I walked around the same area, tediously, for almost an hour, looking for barely visible flowers in the pitch dark. It was easily the worst time I had playing through this entire game; an absolute nightmare, and if I didn't love KCD so much I'd have shut this down, uninstalled it, and never touched it again.

And then, to top it off! None of this crap you were forced to collect matters anyway! The task you were trying to accomplish by collecting these various worthless items fails regardless of what you do. Thanks, Warhorse!

Seriously though, Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an amazing game. And this DLC is worth getting at a discount just to have Mutt accompany Henry through the main game. But if I ever replay this game from the beginning, there is no way in hell I will ever play through A Woman's Lot again.

I would certainly like to have the option to play as a female character, but more importantly, I want it to be fun and satisfying! And this DLC just simply isn't.

A Woman's Lot rating: ⭐