Kingdom Come: Deliverance Review (AuronUmbra)
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is dangerously close to beating Skyrim as my favorite game of all time. I avoided it for years mainly because it's first person only and you play as a given character, rather than your own, but in this game, it works well and I'm in love with Henry.
The stories and dialogue in KCD are well written, blending humor, drama, and tragedy with grace. The acting and mo-cap is excellent. The world is unfathomably rich, vibrant, beautiful and alive; immersion is effortless.
At the start, everything feels like a challenge, combat especially; but as you, the player, better understand the systems and Henry grows, learns, and trains, there's a feeling of achievement like I haven't felt in any other game. To accent your climb, the dialogue seems tailored around the way your progress works. Even scripted lines give me a feeling of pride, like I've actually done something no one expected from a commoner.
To that point, your choices have consequences and you have a lot of them; much of the time there are ways to change outcomes or even cut to the chase by paying close attention to the clues. Then there's daily life, waking in the morning, cleaning up, getting dressed, having a bite, and setting off; in the evening, you find a place to sleep, read a book by candlelight once you learn to read or play a couple rounds of dice with a local over a tankard. Even potion making and honing swords is unexpectedly immersive. It's hard to overstate the quality of the role-playing.
I understand why some call the combat "clunky" and that's because it is when Henry is weak and slow; that said, the unique style of combat used in KCD definitely takes some practice. You can't dodge roll and button mash your way to victory, so every combat encounter feels genuinely tense and demanding. I've honestly grown to enjoy the combat, which is saying a lot for me.
That's not to say there aren't frustrations. One of my biggest complaints with the combat is that, because it depends on one v. one mechanics, the game itself often gets confused about which enemy to deal with when facing more than one, resulting in a mess that has you attacking toward someone ten paces away while being bludgeoned into a stun lock by someone right next to you. Then, when you just need to turn tail and run, the auto-lock often makes this impossible, so you just have to walk backward until the enemies get stuck in a bush.
Another complaint I have is with the manual saving mechanic, which requires a relatively rare, expensive in-game item (it is craftable though). When game developers try to up the stakes by limiting saving, they forget the many, many other reasons it's good to have a recent save, like for unexpected crashes, bugs, and even just trying out unfamiliar mechanics. I considered using the mod to enable normal saving, but did eventually get used to it and leveled up alchemy making the saving potion.
I could go on and on about how much I love this game, the world of medieval Bohemia, the characters, the gameplay, the commitment to realism and historical accuracy; I just regret not playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance sooner and can't wait for the next chapter!