PLFT Games

Kingdom Come: Deliverance was a surprising joy to play this year. I bought it at deep discount during a sale on PSN. I’d always heard good things about it, even from friends, but the initial appeal was lost on me. The combat seemed overly difficult with a penchant for realism over fun, the save system sounded burdensome, and the setting just wasn’t doing anything for me. No judgement against it, but it just didn’t seem like something made for me.

Still, I bought it at a super discount with the intent of trying it out. Eventually, I did, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Something that immediately stood out to me, and was surprising, is that with all the systems-based gameplay, it immediately felt like an immersive sim. If you’re not an immersive sim player or familiar with them, they’re games that are heavily systems-based, with lots of freedom to approach situations. Examples of immersive sims would be games like Deus Ex, Prey (2017), Dishonored, BioShock, etc. I’m not saying KCD is an im-sim, just that it felt like one to me. Pitchforks down please, im-sim fans.

So, what is KCD? Briefly, it’s an open-world first-person RPG set in medieval Bohemia, in the year 1403. There’s a war of succession and an invasion. As Henry of Skalitz — son of a blacksmith — your hometown is utterly destroyed by an invading Cuman army, your family is killed, and you barely escape with your life to a nearby town with a keep. Throughout the game you build friendships, hone your martial prowess through training and combat, and uncover more information about the invasion while in service to a local lord. That’s a very surface-level summary of the story to avoid spoilers. 

I was originally going to go into discussion about the cast of characters you’ll meet along the way in greater detail, but I think much of the joy of this game is in experiencing the moments that define those characters for oneself, rather than being told in advance what the characters are like. I will simply say that there is a wide cast of characters that I think are both well-written and well-performed, each with their own rewarding storylines and interactions with Henry.

Throughout the story and in different towns you will find bandits, invading Cuman camps, conspiracies, schemes and scams, love interests, merchants, trainers, etc. The open world really shines here. 

This feels like a difficult article to write for a couple reasons: 1. I played and finished the game many months ago at the time of writing this article. I began this journey of 12 games in 12 months in January, and it’s now October. 2. So much of the main draw of the game is the story, in my opinion, that I feel compelled to write more about systems and experiences that are representative of the whole, rather than key moments in the game.

Starting off in a more general and wide scope, I’ll say again that the game feels very much like an immersive sim, and that the interplay of different systems feels great. Not every system felt great to me, and there’s certainly room for improvement in the systems I did like as well. Across the game you’ve got what I found to be fun systems with armor and weapons; combat; lockpicking; alchemy; horse riding; and fast travel. There’s also a pickpocketing system, but I found it both overly challenging and unrewarding. There’s also a system where you can fence stollen goods, but it just felt burdensome and not worth the effort. Stealth also feels very unrewarding.

The most robust and probably most relevant system is the combat and progression system. Closely intertwined are armor and weapons. Combat is all first-person view, where you have a 5-point star in your HUD, and you both strike and block in one of each of the five directions. There’s also a dodge mechanic, and a system for setting up combos, parrying, riposte, etc. It’s a very deep and rewarding combat system once you get used to it. It’s intimidating at first, and while I felt like I got better at it through the course of my playthrough, I never felt like I quite mastered it, so much as I mastered the basics and then was carried by good gear.

Speaking of gear, it feels very rewarding, and you get a strong sense of power and progression from acquiring and wearing better armor and weapons, along with levelling up your character. I mention the progression system in the same breath as weapons and armor because the progression system allows you to get the most out of your gear with abilities such as unlockable combo moves, and special advantages that come with increased stats in strength, blocking, etc.

Once you get the ability to train with a weapons master, you can really increase your in-game stats as well as your personal prowess with the combat system easily. Not only that, but I found the training/sparring system to be a lot of fun. It’s nice going from practicing with wooden weapons and getting your ass kicked, to being able to beat up your trainer. 

You’ll need to get good at combat to enjoy the game. So much of it is based around combat. It’s not like a traditional or “actual” immersive sim since there aren’t ways to circumvent a lot of combat scenarios. Many moments in the game center around battles and raids. You’re very heavily incentivized to clear out all the bandit and Cuman camps because there’s no level restrictions on what gear you can use, only stat restrictions and even then, only on weapons from what I remember. So, if you can manage to wear down a powerful enemy, you can take their gear.

This is how I encountered a significant power-scaling situation that was initially very much against me, and I turned it into something in my favor. 

There’s a section of the game where you approach a town that has been ransacked by Cumans. When you approach, you come upon a pitched battle of about a dozen combatants on foot. If you’re not prepared for that fight, it’s best to just avoid it. It took several save scums, but I eventually was able to wait out the two factions fighting, then opportunistically take down the remaining fighters who had been weakened in the battle. Doing this afforded me not only much better gear than I’d had up to that point, but lots of items to sell to vendors.

Gearing yourself up like a knight really paints a clear picture of how powerful and valuable they were on battlefields in real life history as well as in the game. Once you gear up to full-metal plate with chainmail, surcoat, full helmet, brigandine, etc. you can feel untouchable at times. Where I had once been intimidated by single combat against unruly townsfolk, I felt almost guilty cutting down a group of peasants-turned-bandits who ambushed me on the way to the ransacked town I just mentioned. They made the mistake of knocking me off my horse and attacking me with crude tools and weapons, and it was quite literally a slaughter by the time I was done.

When you become adept at combat, there are many weapons available to you: maces, shorts swords, longswords, war hammers, daggers, bows. There are three different damage types: blunt, slashing and piercing. For my money, the war hammer was best because blunt damage and piercing damage are effective against both armored and unarmored targets. There’s nothing quite like waylaying an armored opponent in the head and seeing them crumple into a pile of flesh and armor.

Not everything in the game feels as good as the combat, though. There’s a great alchemy system in the game. You follow actual recipes to produce poisons, healing tonics and an item called savior schnapps, which must be consumed to save your game. There’s a way around this, which I think involves sleeping and/or quitting to menu, but if you want to save freely before pivotal moments or just without having to make a potentially dangerous trip, then you’re going to need savior schnapps, and it’s much more affordable to make them than to buy them.

Some other small but immersive moments are needing to bathe and dress properly which will affect how NPCs in the world perceive you and interact with you; learning to read so you can read books and increase skills while resting; cooking and preparing food for travel; horse riding skills and outfitting your horses; etc.

There are a few moments in the game where you must engage in stealth, and I found them quite annoying. Steal is affected by what you’re wearing, which makes sense. However, when you dress for stealth, it leaves you very vulnerable if you are attacked, which I found frustrating because the detection by NPCs felt inconsistent to me. I wouldn’t even say that a stealth “build” feels very viable in the game, although you could technically do it. 

Travel in the game is enjoyable. Riding the horses around the countryside is fun. You can fight while on horseback as well, which can give a distinct advantage in combat. Just don’t get thrown from your horse. Travel is also an opportunity for conflict. Not only will you come across bandit camps and Cuman camps, but you’ll encounter Nere-do-wells waiting along the road to ambush you and scavenge your corpse for valuables. It’s quite satisfying to dismount and thrash would-be assailants, then rob their corpses.

There is a system of crime and punishment in the game. If you’re caught stealing or committing crimes, you’ll be approached by the local authorities and you’ll either have to buy your way out of punishment like any self-respecting person of means throughout history, or you’ll end up in the dungeon, withering away for a time.

KCD is a great game. I wouldn’t put it up there with some of the near-perfect titles I’ve experienced in the past, but it’s very well-made, and it can be very fun to play. The freedom of choice in many instances, as well as the openness of the world, the sense of immersion, and world traversal, even the vagueness of instructions on some quests harkens back to what would now be considered “old” RPGs from my youth. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowwind comes to mind. In Morrowind, you’re plopped into a large open world where you can go where you want and do what you want, build your character and advance according to how you play, and you can encounter various factions and events with sometimes multiple ways to solve a problem. If you replaced “Morrowind” with “KCD” in that last sentence, it would still be accurate.

There’s enough new here, or perhaps a return to form for open world RPGs where what was once old is now new again, that I think Warhorse, the makers of KCD, could take the crown of open world RPGs from Bethesda, makers of The Elder Scrolls series, including the legendary Skyrim. 

I was skeptical about KCD at first, but it became one of my favorite gaming experiences of the year, and I’ll definitely be buying and playing the sequel when I am able to, probably sometime in 2026. 

It’s a great first-entry into a series, and just a great game in its own right. It’s a unique gaming experience with a lot to offer, and it felt revitalizing to the open world RPG formula, even if it’s bringing back some older design sensibilities for a new era.