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The road is long, my feet are sore.
I'd buy a horse, but I am poor.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an immersive and authentic role-playing game. Set in Bohemia during the Middle Ages, your character scours the dangerous lands to avenge their parents’ death, and get back at the ones responsible for the destruction of their village.
Blue skies overhead, green grass underfoot, beautiful girls… and a fine steed under your backside!
This title has, genuinely, some of the best-looking outdoor areas in video games to date. Distant forests and terrain are downright beautiful, particularly when basked in the gentle haze that comes with sunrise or sunset. The package continues with stellar art direction, great lighting and shading, excellent texturing and good model quality to really immerse you into the game’s world. Nvidia users are even graced with Ansel to take cinematic pictures with, in spite of its awkward implementation. Just a shame about the occasional blemishes in visual quality due to culling or limited animation… or the not-so-uncommon and quite distractingly low-quality rain effects. Weather phenomena look wholly flat, and the skies never seem to be cloudy enough for it.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2780967542
Built on the CryEngine, you can be certain it’ll make your system cry. With a mix of high and very high graphical settings at 1440p, my Ryzen 9 3900X, 32GB RAM, 1070 Ti, Windows 10 Pro system, most exterior scenes play at 60fps, but reaching the low 30’s is far from uncommon. Usually this isn’t an issue due to the slower pace of gameplay. What is a problem is the abundance of bugs of various kinds: animations, broken quests, infinite loading loops, busted inventory screens and at least one instance where returning a quest item breaks its interaction for the rest of the playthrough… Tread with caution, and try to save often.
Audio design is rather sound, too, if you pardon the pun. A bit unfortunate that the music is repetitive, for the composed soundtrack is otherwise brilliant: violins, flutes, drums and all manner of implements come together to create an engrossing rustic atmosphere, no matter if in civilized areas or out in the wilderness. Remaining sound effects are solid, if a bit on the bland side – I suppose realistic foley is less dramatic in general.
But the true winner has to be the dialog, as it’s almost entirely stellar voice acting with plenty of hilarious moments and tense, dramatic discourse. If you can get past the oddity of most everyone in medieval Central Europe speaking in a British accent, you’re in for a treat to the ears.
Life is one long series of problems to solve. The more you solve, the better a man you become.
For Henry, the son of a blacksmith lazily living in the mining town of Skalitz, an otherwise normal summer day turns to disaster. A massive army invades and destroys the settlement, with much of the villagers – including Henry’s family and many of his friends – killed in the attack. Losing everything he had, most importantly including the decorated sword that his father smithed, and which he was meant to deliver to the king’s hetman, Henry embarks on a quest for revenge… but must first learn to not be total arse at absolutely everything.
In short, it’s an RPG with a fixed backstory and fixed character, but which makes up for this with a gripping storyline, splendid historical authenticity, and a good degree of freedom in its rich gameplay.
I'll find that thieving rat who took my sword and run him through with it!
Such a high degree of authenticity means Kingdom Come: Deliverance has quite the steep learning curve, and a familiar-but-no-less confusing jankiness to the game feel. Reaching to grab or fiddle with something is awkward because of rigid animations (often with locked perspectives) and short interaction ranges. Being too slow to climb steps or enter doorways may have you stuck momentarily until you gather momentum, while bushes, big and small, act as impenetrable obstacles for you and your steed.
Saving the game is limited initially, as only sleeping in a bed or consuming certain expensive and alcoholic beverages reliably save your progress. Archery has no crosshair, so good luck aiming straight even at contact range. Alchemy is easily exploitable but rapidly turns absolutely tedious. To project bodily harm unto someone, you must first realize that Henry is most likely going to lose a fist-fight against the town drunk…
Combat itself is a mixed bag. You swing and stab from preset regions on a target, while managing your stamina, positioning and preferably striking and deflecting when most opportune. Weapon choice makes a big difference as enemies slowly transition from wearing plain cloth, to chainmail and plate that effectively resist slashing strikes. That being said, all this falls apart when multiple opponents gang up on you. Even if NPC AI is generally… undercooked, this game’s lock-on targeting mechanics make it no easy feat to come out of such melee in one piece, especially early on. With compounding damage worsening one’s ability to fight, once a side starts losing a fight, they’re likely to keep losing until death or surrender.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2783877731
But not all is bad, for your character is also graced with the legendary ability to learn. Henry has plenty of opportunity to improve and grow as a person, mostly through repeated practice. Developing his skills will take time, perseverance, and possibly a lot of reloaded saves, but it will be worth it when those bandits you dreaded dozens of hours ago become pushovers that cower under your threatening words, or keel over from a stick swung to the head. Most quests across the expansive world present multiple solutions, which align with the stealth-diplomacy-aggression archetypes people expect of RPGs. Murder is a solution most of the time, but the results may be less preferable to simply redistributing an item, or convincing someone to do your bidding. Said combat also becomes a little too easy past the mid-game, but no less annoying when enemies Master Strike you from every other attack of yours.
It bears repeating again: this game is tough, especially early on. Many mechanics are obtuse or downright infuriating (such as most of the stealth skills…), others are just boring (level up your herbalism by crouching and picking flowers! over and over.) People react to your wrongdoings, whether you’re just talking in the wrong manner or swinging a longsword at them. But few games ever represent the journey from zero-to-hero as well as this. If only the game let you know somehow that following the main storyline up to a point provides lots of useful rewards, including a free horse and nigh-essential sparring lessons.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2779536773
Between tons of unique quests, a handful of repeatable activities, a massive world to explore, dozens of attire and equipment types to mix-and-match, and a fair selection of skills and perks to gather and specialize in (even if many are not that useful), there is a lot of game to go through. The main story alone could take over 30 hours to complete. The fantastic DLC content can easily stretch this into potentially triple digit hours of playtime for completionists. I can definitely say my journey was worth it, even if it wasn’t the smoothest ride out there.
God be with you, Henry.
Ambitious, massive, and rough around the edges… but Kingdom Come: Deliverance rewards patient players with surprisingly rich history lessons, and a fantastic immersive-sim RPG.
Past the fallen tree, take a left and follow the path to Tomato’s Bag of Games. You’ll find great reviews on great games there. God be with you!