KINGDOM COME: DELIVERANCE

When the story of Kingdom Come: Deliverance first began via its initial Kickstarter campaign in the (relatively) distanty January of 2014, a wide variety of gamers of varying tastes had a reason to be excited, as the game promised "freedom and open world similar to Skyrim, a setting similar to Mount and Blade, Witcher-style plot development, challenging battles similar to Dark Souls", all wrapped up in a package of historically realistic medieval Bohemia. A few days after the official release of the game, we can say that the initial expectations were both fulfilled and denied at the same time, as Kingdom Come manages to be an adequate "tribute" to the gameplay and/or spirit of the above mentioned titles, but at the same time it doesn't resemble any of them completely and is something unique, perhaps unprecedented, in the gaming world. However, this doesn't mean that it will completely satisfy all fans of the above games, for many different reasons... but let's take things from the beginning.

At the core of the game's historical background are the political machinations of the royal houses of Europe in the early 15th century. These are depicted in a way that is 100% faithful to history and involve kings of states, popes, emperors, other lower nobles and clergy, castle and city governors, Cuman mercenaries, but also the common people who are just trying to survive in any way they can while the above are involved in their shady games. The action is specifically centered in the area that stretches a few kilometers southeast of Prague ( an area that is rendered in amazing detail and fidelity to its real-world counterpart), where we meet our main character, named Henry, the son of a blacksmith in the service of a local lord. Henry lives as a typical young man of the time, running errands, drinking beer at the inn, and throwing manure with his friends at the homes of residents who dare to badmouth the rightful King and the Pope (exactly as we do today, of course), until the dramatic events of the prologue inevitably push him to take part in the aforementioned power play, and to influence it decisively.

The notable difference between KCD and other games that deal with similar stories of "an obscure protagonist who, through dramatic events, ends up a big shot" is that Henry's influence is not carried out under the status of a "chosen one" or "savior" - throughout the entire story, it becomes clear (both to us and to our game character) that we are just a cog in the wheel, a pawn of the powers that be, a mere agent following orders, a peasant who unwittingly finds himself brandishing a sword, always in as realistic a context as possible. As such, don't expect that suddenly after a few hours of gameplay you'll be able to raze a legion of enemies on your own (a respectable portion of the prologue deals with... the desperate flight from such a legion), that you will acquire the most expensive weapons available for sale (of course, even if you could acquire them at the beginning, you probably wouldn't have the necessary stats to wear them), or that you will at any point in the game receive as a reward your own mansion (it is telling that, after completing a "heroic" act further down during the plot, we receive as a reward the right to... sleep in a small room next to the stables of a castle!). Also, don't expect the world to revolve around you, that everyone has your best interests at heart and that quests will wait for you forever - once someone says "be here tomorrow at midnight to do the job" and you don't show up at the right time then the quest simply moves on without you. Don't even expect to find "dungeons", mythical creatures or various kinds of othe features you might be used to in other fantasy open-world games scattered every 100 meters on the game map - KCD's "realism" results in the world being mostly filled with nothing but wildlife (not missing various kinds of points of interest, obviously), with the bulk of the action taking place in the small or large urban centers of central Bohemia, as you'd expect it to happen in reality.

It is to this status of the game as a historically accurate and "realistic" representation of life in medieval Bohemia that its quite "hardcore" mechanics are due, without a doubt one of the most unique (for good or bad, depending on the player's perspective) features of the title. Rather than go into a thorough analysis of the individual mechanics (that would require a 5-page article on its own), let me just say that there are separate mechanics with their own, separate rules for almost EVERYTHING in the game.

Mechanisms for melee weapon fighting, mechanisms for archery, mechanisms for the noise we make depending on what clothes/armor we wear, mechanisms for horseback riding, for stealth environments, for lock picking or pickpocketing, for bargaining with merchants, for the way our clothes and weaponry get dirty (!) and for how this dirtiness affects the behavior of those around us (!!), mechanisms for our sleep and our hunger, for the way food spoils, mechanisms for grinding weapons, for distilling potions, for our resistance to alcohol, for our reputation in each area - EVERYTHING is implemented in the game with specific rules that we have to follow at every step. So sword fights are implemented in a way similar to e.g. Ubisoft's For Honor (but on a much deeper level), distilling a potion requires collecting the appropriate materials, processing them, preparing the base of the potion in a marmite and boiling the materials for the appropriate amount of time specified in the recipe (which recipe we can OBVIOUSLY only read if we have learned how to read first, considering that peasants in the Middle Ages rarely knew how to read and write by default), while at the same time we have to sleep at regular intervals (if our "energy" stat drops dangerously low then Henry starts yawning, his eyes start closing, and eventually... he just drops from exhaustion) and eating (with overeating leading to "bloating" and feeling heavy which lowers our stats and energy, and eating bad food leading, obviously, to food poisoning!). A particularly humorous incident, also indicative of the game's philosophy, is that if, while riding our trusty steed, we attempt to go under a low pass or a very low and sturdy tree branch, our head hits it and we fall off the horse!

It becomes clear that navigating the world of Kingdom Come takes place in an environment similar to Fallout: New Vegas' Hardcore Mode, but 10,000 times more brutal and unforgiving. Indeed, on a scale of 1 (Skyrim, open world, zero worries, zero repercussions, dragons everywhere and dungeons filled with shiny loot) and 10 (real life, with taxes, bills, rent, wars, depression, love frustration, corrupt politicians and rude fellow citizens) KCD is somewhere around 9, occasionally reaching the level of a LARP. "Casual-unfriendly" would be a good description for it. Perhaps the only factors that remained deliberately "game-y" and break the intended realism in everything are the fact that once we own our own horse, then wherever we are in the world we can whistle and it will beam up and magically appear next to us like in Witcher 3, and the fact that we don't have to take a leak every few hours (although I'm sure some modder is already working on something to fix this issue).

Regardless of the elements of games listed as the creators' inspiration in the introduction of the review, the emphasis placed primarily on "realism" certainly makes Kingdom Come a game that is not for everyone. Despite its open-world nature, Skyrim fans looking for something similar in KCD will be discouraged and probably give up within the first half hour. While it's sufficiently "sandbox" in the sense that we can go wherever we want on the map, fight the way we want and be good guys or delinquent goons (with the appropriate consequences), Mount and Blade fans will find KCD's action environment and lack of fully custom character creation quite limiting compared to what's on offer in M&B. Likewise, Witcher fans who simply want to see a beautiful "'Slavically Authentic' story interspersed with thunderous action, beautiful scenery and the occasional romance will be put off by the amount of detail (and the required dedication of effort and time) required to perform even a simple process such as distilling a potion.

But even if one chooses to ignore ALL of the above and just wants to enjoy the game for what it offers, one may still run into bugs, glitches, exploits or various AI issues, which have been reported completely randomly by players (which means that someone lucky may not encounter a single bug but someone else may not even be able to load the game, meaning that the bugs are real and waiting for the unlucky one to stumble upon them) and which indicate that Kingdom Come might have needed a few more months of polishing before its official release - a good indication of the situation is that, according to an interview with the Lead Developer a few days after the game's release, some of its bugs and glitches are only noticed by the developers after the official release for the first time, by watching... twitch streams or youtube videos.

I realize at the end that it's quite difficult to try to objectively rate Kingdom Come with a simple number from 1 to 100. The bugs and glitches, but also its rather "special" save system, are probably the only "objective" reasons one could raise to downrate it at this stage - from there, most of the enjoyment (or... misery) one will derive from it is purely up to what expectations one has from it and how much effort and time one can invest in the truly unique character of a game that, as I mentioned before, is definitely not for everyone. Personally, having invested about 60 hours in the game (in which I managed to complete the Main Storyline once and... about 1/2 of the available side quests), and being lucky enough not to encounter a single serious bug (apart from the expected frustration resulting from the one and only crash-to-desktop that happened to me just before completing a quest), I can't help but admire the final product. It's an overambitious but ultimately successful kickstarter story, with its (justified or unjustified) flaws but also with impressive elements, both in terms of its unique hardcore mechanics and in terms of fidelity to the historical reality of the era, that I haven't encountered in any other game so far. With the developers already committed to removing technical flaws and releasing the extra content already planned since the kickstarter campaign (whether it's DLC or the last planned Act of the main story of the game), Kingdom Come is undoubtedly destined to shine like the sun over the dense and lush forests of Bohemia.

Many thanks to Enarxis Dynamic Media for providing the review code for the game.

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