Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Review

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, the highly anticipated sequel from Warhorse and Deep Silver, continues the journey of our everyday hero, Henry. Having risen from peasantry, Henry now serves as the bodyguard of Sir Hans Capon, a loyalist retainer to King Wenceslas IV of Bohemia.

After an ambush by bandits, Henry and Capon barely survive and, unable to prove their identities, are forced to start anew as vagabonds. With their mission in jeopardy, they must race against time to outmaneuver the forces conspiring against them. As they quickly work their way back from vagabond status to their noble positions, players are treated to a medieval adventure that must be experienced to be believed.

Take up your sword, young Henry, and embark on an epic journey through medieval Bohemia in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II!

Everyday Hero

Your enjoyment of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II will not diminish if you haven’t played the prequel. In fact, having personally experienced the previous title, you might be better off not knowing the crushing “hardcore RPG” experience (unless that’s your preference). The previous game had a reputation for being arduous, yet still attracted a cult following, so it would be wise to know what you’re actually getting into.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is a true RPG and may remind you of similar first-person titles like Skyrim. However, it differs from the typical RPG by offering a more grounded appeal, foregoing the power fantasy, and adopting a more realistic interface. Many conventions are absent, such as magic, a robust skill tree to vanquish multitudes of foes, and the ability to walk off most injuries.

Just like a normal human being, Henry will get hungry, tired, and injured, and taking on more than one enemy is asking for trouble. He does have his wits, experience, and knowledge, allowing him to use any tools in his arsenal to get out of sticky situations, open up opportunities, and accomplish his tasks.

While this description may sound intimidating, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II does a fantastic job balancing the experience. Unlike the previous game, where you felt feeble as a peasant, Henry has gone through many circumstances that have made him hardy and experienced. This makes Henry’s ill-fated journey through Bohemia an immersive adventure where decisions truly determine your ultimate fate.

The game stands out from typical RPGs where you can kill your way out of trouble and choose the most logical speech choice to curry favor. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II delivers more nuanced interactions and respects the NPCs as living and breathing denizens residing in a world filled with injustice. Henry is just one of the luckier ones whose fate has allowed him to rise above the rabble.

While starting from the ground up as a peasant may sound daunting, the plotting and progression of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II take you by the hand and guide you on a sweeping journey that makes you forget how powerless you are in the face of opposing odds. It’s also one of the rare games that genuinely play by the rules and logic of the world. For the most part, if you follow the rules, you can blend in with the rest of society without attracting too much attention.

You can also tread the less-beaten path and see how interesting the world gets. You can start breaking the rules and embark on your power fantasy, showing how much of a noble you can be. However, as mentioned, it’s difficult enough to take on a single enemy while managing your needs, and it becomes even more challenging when you become a wanted man and the long arm of the law decides to chase you.

Thus, your reputation becomes your most valuable resource in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. Every town and every person you interact with will determine your ultimate reputation. Every piece of dialogue, how you handle a situation, and every action affects your reputation. Due to an earlier plot point, you start with a bad reputation, and it is up to you whether you live up to being a vagabond or build up your reputation once again.

This is where Kingdom Come: Deliverance II truly excels in storytelling. Many titles boast about how their decisions ultimately matter, but Kingdom Come: Deliverance II takes it to another level where every action counts. Succeeding in one quest may lead to a crushing failure in another. In a main quest where you have to infiltrate a wedding, your choice of which path to take will close off another path. Trying to play both sides ultimately ends terribly unless you are immensely lucky.

Fortune Favors The Bold

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is a rich, immersive title that will take you hours on end to complete and, depending on the way you play, maybe even more. As previously mentioned, the branching quests will undoubtedly keep you busy. Multiple playthroughs will be necessary for the curious gamer who wants to experience every possible outcome. Ultimately, how you play is up to you. You can choose to be an honorable blacksmith, following a righteous path, or a roguish anti-hero where freedom is the ultimate goal. The choice is yours.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II has countless quests, side quests, and tasks. If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself overwhelmed with errands, making it easy to lose sight of your initial task. These quests often branch off into smaller side quests, as interacting with certain characters can open up conversations where they ask for favors to progress a previous quest. While this leads to hours of immersion, it can also turn you into a convenient handyman, so choose wisely!

Similar to Skyrim, you can improve your skills with practice. Your speech improves with more conversations, your stamina increases with more labor and walking, and your combat prowess can be enhanced by learning from masters or fighting more opponents. You can also learn trades such as blacksmithing and alchemy, which can help you earn more coin or improve your equipment for future use.

A dice roll determines your skills and feats. The predetermined choices for conversations can turn things in your favor, but it depends on your skill level. If your speech is low, you could ruin the outcome of a conversation or encounter. Your current disposition can also affect how citizens react to you. If you stink after hard labor or are covered in blood after hunting, it can repulse some citizens or increase your intimidation against weaker-willed peasants.

This is where Kingdom Come: Deliverance II can be challenging for some players. Just like Henry, there is a steep learning curve for the more involved tasks in the game. From combat to lockpicking and crafting, the tasks can be more involved, unlike most RPGs, where you just pick and choose. You will eventually get used to it, but they may start as inconvenient and laborious.

Combat has been improved from the previous game, becoming more fast-paced. Depending on visual cues, you can move your weapon in the direction facing your opponent, block, parry, and riposte. These actions take up quite a lot of stamina, and you’ll be forced to catch your breath. Combat continues until the enemy asks for mercy and runs away, or you ultimately vanquish your opponent.

Even simple combat feats require you to consider how they will affect your equipment condition, health, and social standing. A few unmitigated blows can destroy even the hardiest armor. Getting injured can impact your combat prowess, and resting can take away from your adventuring time. If you have the misfortune of picking a fight with someone of a higher class, your reputation will be affected, and you may need to save face by paying bribes, which is already difficult enough to earn.

Bohemia is a vast area to traverse, and walking takes up considerable energy, subjecting you to unwanted encounters. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II has the most impressive day-and-night sequence compared to most games. Depending on the circumstance, some actions are better performed at different times of the day. Nighttime affects visibility but allows you to infiltrate areas better. Daytime grants you access to most areas and enables you to engage citizens in conversation.

The attention to detail in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is remarkable, even down to saving the game, which is limited to certain conditions. You can save when sleeping in your bed, after essential events, and only when you acquire “Savior Schnapps.” The level of immersion is impressive, and this review cannot do it complete justice as we’ve only scratched the surface of what the title has to offer. It deserves another playthrough, as in this game, we’ve taken the role of a righteous blacksmith, and it will be interesting to see the path of a freedom-seeking rogue.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II PC and Steam Deck Performance

We played Kingdom Come: Deliverance II on the PC, here’s the system we used to play with:

• Ryzen 5 5600x, 16 GB DDR4 3600 RAM, NVIDIA 4070 Super, 1TB NVMe SSD
• Steam Deck OLED

The PC version of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is a fantastic experience, proving to be an optimized release. Using DLSS set to balanced, playing at 1440p will see frames fluctuate between 90-110fps at ultra quality settings, even peaking at 120fps at times. Switching to DLSS performance paired with optimizing some settings like lowering vegetation, shadows, and lighting, you can even hit upwards of 120fps.

Without DLSS, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II will run at the same frame range of 90-100fps but down to high settings instead of ultra at 1440p. Whatever the case may be, the game is extremely playable, with a good number of graphics toggles, such as object quality, global illumination, shadows, textures, and much more.

Playing on the Steam Deck OLED, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II performed surprisingly well. At low settings and TDP limited to 15W, you can play through the game almost locked at 40fps, granted you are activating FSR set to balanced, with battery life lasting around 2-3 hours.

Expect some dips here and there during busier scenes inside towns, and there are some environmental pop-ins, but not enough to discourage players from playing the game on the go. Players can also expect some dips here and there during busier scenes inside towns, but Warhorse Studios’ optimization work is commendable, and it definitely shows.

Verdict: Buy It!

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is an exceptional experience for RPG enthusiasts, offering a fully immersive adventure where the sky’s the limit in the choices you make. Despite the steep learning curve, the game eases you into its massive world during the first dozen hours, providing a smooth entry.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II retains the grounded experience that captivated its cult following while making it accessible to a mainstream audience. With a sprawling plot, ease of entry, and a fully living and breathing world, the intimidating mechanics become second nature in no time. It isn’t for everybody, and while it won’t change your mind if you didn’t like the first game, the target audience will absolutely go nuts for it.

Warhorse has crafted a masterpiece with Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, delivering a fully optimized title ready to play from day one. Whether you choose to play it at home or on a portable device like the Steam Deck, it offers a fantastic adventure to kick off 2025 with a bang.

*Kingdom Come: Deliverance II has been reviewed on a PC and the Steam Deck with a review code provided by the publisher.