While it may naturally fall to the other party/side whenever such a personal claim is made, going into (and subsequently coming out from) early impressions of any game, there’s an effort from one’s end not to oversell or over-promise. Consider it an internal balancing between one’s own faith on one side, with all the cynicism and uncertainty weighing on the other, but if I were to try and offer an honest take: I’d seldom consider myself someone prone to misleading or exaggerating in one’s claims. The only times I’ve dared hail or otherwise proclaim a game to hold immense importance or quality, was when it was supported by the content underpinning it, let alone the emotional reaction/experience produced as a result.
When I claimed the originalKingdom Come: Deliverance"more than deserves to be heralded and praised…as one of the best, worthwhile and more so unique RPGs to release in recent times", I meant it. It’s been nearly seven years since Czech developer Warhorse Studios took a gamble at an RPG premise that, on paper, had all the hallmarks of an abject, disconnected failure. A medieval-era fantasy devoid of many of the otherwise mythical, supernatural or otherwise imaginative trappings most RPGs serve as standard. Placing one’s self in the shoes of young Henry of Skalitz, against the backdrop of 15th century Bohemia. From its grounded setting, to its slower and more methodical take on first-person combat, Deliverance was very much a game neither afraid nor ashamed of its intentions.
Bohemian Rhapsody
The end product at the time of release wasn’t short of a noticeable number of bugs, issues and other such shortcomings, however, butKingdom Come: Deliverancestill earned its rightful place among that notable covenant of releases colloquially referred to by many as the typical “7/10-type game”. Games with clear direction, passion and heart ingrained, but for whatever reason faltered just enough to deny it reaching more acclaimed heights. Coming into its sequel, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, as much a proponent of the first game I remain, my interest and as much expectations were tempered. Not from a lack of confidence in Warhorse and their claim to make the sequel, in their words: “the game that Kingdom Come: Deliverance was supposed to be”, but more to do with the prospect that this year’s sequel would indeed be more about refinement and addition, than necessarily some radical overhaul.
A sequel not to coax naysayers and harsh critics of the original in, but reassurances to the eight million-plus users who’ve now purchased a copy of the original game, their faith back then has been paid back and then some. Booting up the second chapter to Henry’s tale across Bohemia, I was prepared for an inevitable but fond case of déjà vu. Familiar in all the right ways, but maybe too soon to really draw any major conclusions about the sequel’s placement. Both within and outside the confines of 2025’s “major” releases. Well, here comes the first of this year’s [possibly fateful] claims that may or may not turn out to be some such overselling: on its opening ten-or-so hours alone, Kingdom Come Deliverance II could very well end up one of the best releases of 2025.
Not just in its respective genre of RPGs, but with an opening salvo that finds Warhorse excelling in a multitude of ways: technical production, artistic direction, music, writing and further afield in its casts' performance, a sequel that so fittingly builds on what came before…and then some. A game whose system-atop-system cascade of situations to deduce, amid ever ongoing consideration for what may happen one, five, maybe thirty minutes later on;Deliverance IIis the type of game whose very structure seems almost too ambitious for its own good. Ready to burst at the seams or fall like a house of cards the moment one really starts to wrestle with its mixture of survival-esque meter-management, role-playing level progression and general exploration in a world abundant with choice.
But at its heart, the key pillars of Warhorse’s debut remain. For those who skipped out or were put off by its unrelenting and unforgiving nature, suffice it to say there isn’t much in the sequel to suggest Warhorse have compromised on their past creative vision. Beyond minor touches to combat, for example – matters such as parrying to then lead into a potential counter/riposte – the moment-to-moment dance of eyeing up foes and waiting for an opening (no matter how long that may feel) remains relatively untouched. This does mean that some of the original’s jank and restraining of one’s decision-making do make an unwelcome return. Getting bitten by a feral wolf out-of-shot or having your perfectly-timed riposte strangely not count as a hit, remain frustrating.
Review: Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Visually, technically and mechanically sound its foundation is, Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s performance is an unruly and occasionally unpredictable beast.
Firing on All Cylinders
Look past the blemishes and what you’ll find inDeliverance IIis Warhorse flexing their creative muscles with a world and environmental backdrop that is as sprawling as it is absorbing. Perhaps one’s own personal circumstances in living in my home country’s respective countryside are coloring things here, but it’s truly astonishing just how well Warhorse capture the minute details. The blemishes of color atop flowers growing in pastures of green; the way certain paths break off from the main public roads. It may sound like a trivial element to gawk over, but it’s the kind of scene you can’t help but take a step back from and admire in all its painstaking detail.
All of which wouldn’t hold as much sway, were it not for the fact that Warhorse have done an equally commendable job at making sure all of this runs as well as it does. Even playing on a far from prestige build as I may be on PC, Kingdom Come Deliverance II is well optimized. Finding one’s self pushing the game towards its highest capabilities, yet still managing to average a consistent 90FPS during one’s exploration. A few instances of micro-stutters in one or two cutscenes as well as one brief moment of ascending a set of ladders tanking performance to the mid-30’s aside, Deliverance II is the type of game where any semblance of performance mishaps or issues are those you’re mainly, painstakingly trying to hunt down.
Even at its most blatant with such mishaps, Deliverance II’s occasionally immersion-breaking moments are brief and a touch comical at that. A horse-and-cart clipping straight through Henry and a fellow NPC during conversation, a “seated-down” character floating midair a few feet above their respective stool. And in classic Elder Scrolls-esque folly, one NPC walking straight into shot, directly betwee myself and the NPC I’m conversing with. To say the sequel is literally devoid of such inconveniences, would be untrue. But for all these minor nitpicks, it’s only because the game’s world – its exploration, its writing, its quest design and above all else, the performances of its cast – are the reason why I remain as fixated and as fascinated to see where the sequel’s tale will take me.
And while this is no slight against the bevvy of contributions from the game’s supporting casts, there’s no shying away from how great a job actors Tom McKay and Luke Dale have done already in their returning portrayals of Henry and Hans Copon, respectively. It’s Henry and Hans' chemistry, from the very beginning of the tale, that players will immediately gravitate towards. But it’s because McKay and Dale are able to harness and draw on the nuances of either character’s personalities that make the scenes they’re involved in all that more enjoyable. A pair whose interactions run the whole gamut of being brothers-in-arms dishing out banter one moment, to then act like childish, squabbling siblings the next. A dynamic that, due to story reasons, you’re able to’t help but feel compelled to fix and see continue.
Time Well Spent
Though admittedly, it’s been hard to stick to the main story quest, as it’sDeliverance II’s side content that, again, delivers a profound investment that finds minutes becoming ample hours spent off to the side. Very little of which is considered wasted or otherwise ill spent. Sure, finding one’s self drawn to an umpteenth game of Dice in the sequel isn’t all that shocking – that moreish mini-game from the original is back. It’s specifically in the side quest design thatDeliverance IIonce again shines. Scenarios that allude to solving/ending a particular scenario, only for said situation to unravel and unfold in ways both scripted and emergent alike. To think a simple case of searching for a lost (and as it turns out, drunk) huntsman, in one example, would wind up sneaking towards a bandit camp during the pitch-black hours, to reclaim said drunkard’s stolen horse.
Shallow fetch-quests, these are certainly not, and it’s through the game’s multiple-choice, decision-making mechanics specifically, that these more emergent qualities become the real highlight. I could go into a great many detail about the hundreds of dialog choices, gameplay approaches and such one has taken already – and of the up and down emotions experiences from having succeeded or failed at one’s intentions – but to do so would spoil the shock at just how deep these systems can go. How even the most seemingly-trivial, plain or unimportant decisions during, say, a conversation with a shop-owner can net you a boost to one’s Reputation level with that associated town or settlement.
Look past the blemishes and what you’ll find inDeliverance IIis Warhorse flexing their creative muscles with a world and environmental backdrop that is as sprawling as it is absorbing.
But this is perhaps the game at its absolute best and the reason why it’s as engrossing as its early parts have wound up being. And as a result: the flip-side to that aforementioned creative vision of a game without guard-rails: Warhorse want you (almost expect you to) to poke and prod at its finer details. To realize that if it seems plausible the game would acknowledge a certain action, it will in all likelihood register it. Going beyond the concepts implanted in the original when it came to how you dressed and how you approached conversations with individuals of a certain class or social rank. Now you have to keep track of what you were doing moments before, the actions (and likely consequences) undertaken prior. Did you steal something and thought you’d gotten away with it? Hunkered up to sleep somewhere out of desperation, not knowing if any nearby NPCs would take issue with it?
Shock and Awe-Inspiring
Again, on paper, the game’s emphasis on maintaining one’s self, managing certain conditions and properly considering the ramifications behind any choice – meager or otherwise – should be an immediate red flag. A game of such fine margins, added on top of, via meters governing hunger and sleep, let alone general health. Thankfully Warhorse again manage to land on the fair and reasonable side of that balancing act. Even after the first ten hours, the issue of sleep depravity only ever popping up once. But even then – similarly to an ill-informed decision on consuming food items far from fresh, resulting in one getting food poison and a depleting health meter – these recurring cases of emergent, player-made choices create an [ironically] exciting prospect to see if one can correct such mistakes. There’s simply so many ways it can go wrong, but rarely ever does this persistence to keep surviving, feel nagging or costly to the experience.
I could go on and on as to the recurring shock-and-awe at what Warhorse have been cooking up these past years. Even at the point of passing the moments to which my coverage is restricted, it’s a struggle to come up with another akin to Kingdom Come Deliverance II that has impressed me as widely and as vividly as this. To say this is indeed a sequel building up and out from the strengths of the original, would itself feel like a disservice. Rarely has there been a time spent in an open-world RPG whose enjoyment feels born from both the qualities of its content and as much the emotional response it’s provided.
Proof if there ever was need of such, that while my affinity for theXenoblade’s, theTrails' and the like remains unmoved, towards the other extreme like this can shine just as brightly amid the pantheon of personally-favored RPG entries. Warhorse Studios could have something truly special here. In a year chock-full of highly-anticipated RPGs, even at this incredibly early phase of the year, I wouldn’t bet againstKingdom Come Deliverance IIwinning out against them all. Indeed: a vision of what the original could’ve been, fully realized and delivering what could be one of 2025’s best games overall.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Release set for Early 2025, Will Feature Heavily at Gamescom 2024
Warhorse Studios today confirmed a release date for their upcoming RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, and revealed the game will show up in a major way
