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Kingdom Come: Deliverance (Kingdom Come) is a medieval role-playing game developed and published by Warhorse Studios, as well as published by Prime Matter. It was released in February 2018. In Kingdom Come, you play as Henry of Skalitz, who is on the path of revenge to find the faction that raided his hometown of Skalitz. This review will cover the story, mechanics, and technology. I will likely post separate reviews of Kingdom Come’s four DLCs.

Story / Environment

Kingdom Come is set in Bohemia, along the Sasau River. It features a number of cities, castles, and villages, all unique in their own nature and reminiscent of the history of Bohemia. Crucially, these locations are known for their particular features and this is replicated in dialogue throughout the game. For example, Sasau is the religious centre of the province and is building the St. Procopius monastery, and there is dialogue from travellers moving to Sasau to work on the construction, and it is these little things that builds worldly immersion.
Across my 111 hours of play, Kingdom Come has an excellent and well-built story. It is paced incredibly well and it progresses beautifully throughout. It fortunately peaks at the conclusion but the calmness of the storytelling makes the end not seem abrupt, but rather a logical progression given how the story would unfold in history.
Kingdom Come provides flexibility in opting between the main story and side stories, and the side stories are mostly engaging and well-written. They are diverse and quests are open-ended, but the highlight I like is the character progression in this element, where even after you conclude a quest-line (main or side), most of the encountered individuals remember your choices and actions and their behaviour is adjusted appropriately.
This is likely a sub-set of the ’reputation’ system, which your behaviour in different locations in the province determines your likeability and trustworthiness among the population. And while the reputation seems abstract and secondary to the game, it provides another layer of immersion and realism in the province, like in life, because ultimately, historical villages and cities did not have near the level of population experienced in society today.
Circling back to the main story, Kingdom Come’s character development is phenomenal in that throughout the story you see the transformation of a number of characters. An added bonus here is seeing these personalities grow over time and how they address issues and other characters and their contrasting motives. The only glaring issue here is repetitive character models and glitchy animations (i.e., weird facial expressions, stiff, and scripted animations, characters walking into a wall, those sort of issues).
Nonetheless, character development is a key highlight of the narrative and one aided by superb and targeted dialogue, and by targeted, I mean gives you the plan and motives with the right balance of context. I will also note here in the context of character development, dialogue, and the very good, if sometimes robotic, voice acting, the journal system (codex) helpfully rounds out just about every element of the game.

Combat System

I will note mechanically, I think Kingdom Come’s combat system is good and fun. Duelling is clean and tactical and it rewards patience with a focus on defence, blocking, and counterattacks. These focusses become especially crucial in the later stages where you do not become overpowered because you're levelled higher than others, which is pleasant.
Unfortunately, the duelling system becomes messy when you are attacked by multiple enemies because the system is built on facing one opponent, blocking their strikes, and so forth, and that does not translate to when you face multiple people, particularly when combined with frequent performance issues (discussed below).

The other issue hindering the combat system is the interaction between the animation system and the environment. Flora and the geometry in the environment act like invisible walls, so attempting to flee through a bush and being blocked, for example, becomes frustrating. There are also other instances of your character backing off and unintentionally climbing some smaller trees, so it is a issue affecting combat in confined spaces.

Performance

I understand Kingdom Come is built on CryEngine, an engine with reputation of producing beautiful environments and gorgeous graphical details, at the cost of performance. This view is correct in the context of Kingdom Come, a beautiful video game excelling in the level of detail in the scenery, features of characters, and buildings and objects, but there is still areas of poor performance.
For context, I meet the recommended settings and trialled medium and high settings. I noted that on high settings I averaged around 65FPS when in villages like Skalitz and Samopesh and the countryside, but I would drop to an average of about 35FPS in the cities and castles like Rattay and Talmberg, and medium only added a few more FPS, nothing notable. Ultimately, the performance of the game did disrupt my experience often and is one of two real issues throughout my play.
Specs:
CPU: Intel i5-6600k (3.5GHz).
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4-3200 speed.
Storage: Intel 540s Series SSD 240GB.
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1070 8GB G1 Gaming.

Conclusion

Kingdom Come is an excellent game featuring a fantastic story that is well-built and intense. The story particularly shines with a great set of characters whose personalities are visibly impacted by the story and the world around them and whose behaviour and actions mature and change as it unravels. I equally praise the richly detailed environment and beautiful towns that provide unparalleled immersion.
Unfortunately, Kingdom Come is fundamentally impacted by fairly poor performance across the board and an animation system that struggles within the interaction between it and the world, suggesting another level of polish is needed. That said, this is a game that bought me into the narrative and has sold me on a sequel and I really look forward to what’s next. I recommend this at full-price.

Rating

8.5/10

Pros

• An excellent and engaging story.
• Beautiful setting and worldly personalities.
• Great character cast with superb and realistic personalities given the historical context.
• Eye-popping graphical and art details.

Cons

• Poor performance optimisation across the board.
• Profound number of bugs and glitches, impacting various areas like animation and combat.
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/379430/Kingdom_Come_Deliverance/