Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 Xbox Series X Review 9.75/10 "Welcome back, Henry" ⚔️🐎 @KingdomComeRPG

The first Kingdom Come: Deliverance had a huge impact on my life upon my first playthrough four years ago, It was my ‘go to’ game in the days when my fiancée was pregnant and often napping or getting comfortable in bed whilst chugging back bottles of Tums. 

I’d pop KCD on the Xbox in our bedroom and get lost in 15th century Bohemia, my beloved often chiming in, whistling along to the music, commenting on my less savoury deeds, and questioning why the main character – the son of a Czech blacksmith – spoke as if he’d never left the borders of Mousehole. What does she know, eh?

My point being that I pumped almost two hundred hours into Kingdom Come: Deliverance (Well, 150 in hours of actual game time and probably 50 hours of LOADING SCREENS, something that is thankfully, thankfully remedied in this sequel) over those last few months before we became parents, and the game now reminds me of a pretty special time of my life, so getting the opportunity to lose myself again in the world of Henry of Skalitz was an exiting proposition to say the least!
The game picks up not long after the original, with Henry now the bodyguard of Lord Capon as they travel on horseback to Trosky castle to deliver a message to Otto Von Bergow, as emissaries of Rattay. Needless to say, things don’t go according to plan, and through a sequence of events, Henry and Hans find themselves penniless, friendless, and needing to gain entrance to Trosky castle to deliver their message as the rumbling turmoil of an encroaching civil war slowly whips around them.

The game very much feels like a continuation of the original, with a lot of familiarity in all aspects of the game, from the voice acting through to design choices and presentation. That said – in terms of the varying game mechanics, as well as the web-like narrative and depth of immersion is quite astonishing and lends itself to a game that truly feels like escapism in the best form. 

Jan Valta returns to handle the musical compositions, and they are as subtle and entwined as they were previously, underpinning the on-screen action and events, without resorting to bombasticism or grand-standing. I was also incredibly impressed with just how smoothly the game ran, not just in terms of the pretty solid 60fps frame rate, but the absolute lack of issues with the things that usually plague open world RPGs; quest locks, visual glitches, crashes, impossible side missions, and ropey stealth segments. 

There are minor issues that crop up, but it’s clear to see that this is a game that has been play-tested to a serious extent, and is released when it’s ready, and not at the insistence and pushing of shareholders, which is a relief in these times.

Combat was a bit wobbly in the original, but here it feels tightened, all the while keeping that sense of chance and clumsiness that can happen in skirmishes with multiple foes, it’s exhilarating to get caught in a roadside bandit trap at night, getting your dog involved, yelling at him to savage the more heavily-armoured of the group as you fire a few arrows into the remaining scallywags before charging in with sword and shield, fending off blows as you hammer away at your foes, always keeping your stamina in check. I’ve genuinely found my eyes drying out as I forget to blink in these scenarios, and only as I was searching the bloodied corpses for loot did I realise that my entire body was tensed up, as I thought death was assured, but barely scraped through to deliver the killing blows. Good.

Henry’s quest is as engrossing and yet oddly expansive as roaming the bucolic Bohemian countryside, you’ll get involved in myriad roadside incidents ranging from friendly boxing matches, through to scurrilous banditry, drunken vagabonds and more, each feeling perfectly-placed in this earthy and grounded tale that is more concerned with the interplay of human status and goals than more whimsical matters. 

It’s also relatively unique in that this is a game that can be dipped into for brief sessions as well as day-long binges, so large is the scale of the game that you can spent hours just learning trades and crafts, or even picking flowers in the countryside to brew potions – something that rarely appeals to me – instead of tackling the more combative components of the narrative, and it’s this sense of Henry traversing a richly detailed and believable world that keeps drawing me in. 

It’s one of those games that keeps me distracted from the main quest, because I know I’ll get that bittersweet sigh when the main plot wraps up and I feel ‘done’ with the game...and then possibly have to wait years for another game to come along and pull me in quite as intensely.

SUMMARY
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is the perfect follow-on from the original, and it tweaks and fine tunes every aspect, from drunken dice battles through to tense and weighty conversations that can easily spiral out of control, and the inevitable myriad scrapes you’ll get yourself into – and have to talk yourself out of! 

The only downside that I can see is that the pacing of the game, and the deep, incremental levelling up system may be off-putting to some.

I am not one of those people.

9.75/10

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