KickStarter Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Dan Vavra's medieval chad simulator

[Makabb]

4/10 average review lol

That's what happens when the journos do not get their doritos :D

 

[Infinitron]

Is the game out or not? I'm still seeing "Pre-Purchase" on the Steam page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/379430/Kingdom_Come_Deliverance/

 

[conan_edw]

i7-6700k and 1080 TI
playing on 1440p and tried to max everything out including viewing distance for everything
I get 67 in the open when there's no one but damn in the city it's not stable at all
it goes down to 20 fps sometimes and hovers between 40-50s

 

[Elex]

Except for board games. EU>NA at board games any day of the week.

Eurogames are gay shit. They are always about cooperation, there's hardly any interaction between players, God forbid negative interaction and all you do is place workers and earn fucking victory points. Disgusting. The worst part is that I can't kill the other fuckers with my Troll Strength: 6, Craft: 1.

warhammer is europan.

 

[Makabb]

The combat is absolutely disgusting, slow, sluggish,boring

where is the day 1 combat mod....

 

[Parabalus]

Spellforce 3 got bombarded with bad reviews because of supposed bugs, but it was perfectly playable. Best to take journalists with a grain of salt.

 

[Makabb]

i7-6700k and 1080 TI
playing on 1440p and tried to max everything out including viewing distance for everything
I get 67 in the open when there's no one but damn in the city it's not stable at all
it goes down to 20 fps sometimes and hovers between 40-50s

damn thats pretty bad

 

[Jenkem]

Is the game out or not? I'm still seeing "Pre-Purchase" on the Steam page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/379430/Kingdom_Come_Deliverance/

It's out. I have it installed right now.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/kingdom-come-deliverance-review-in-progress/

Kingdom Come: Deliverance review in progress
A reactive world, a likeable hero, and a hilarity of bugs.

I’ve been playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance pretty solidly for the last few days, but it’s a colossus of a game, and I’ll need to put more time in before I’m comfortable reviewing the thing. In the meantime, here are some scattered impressions from my first 25 hours in Bohemia.

The setting is beautiful

I wasn’t sure about the idea of a medieval RPG without any dungeons and/or dragons, but I’m finding the grimy, understated realism of Kingdom Come’s setting really refreshing. The world isn’t as vivid or dramatic as places like Skyrim or Skellige, but it’s enormously atmospheric, with some of the finest virtual woodland I’ve ever seen in a game. I recommend taking a break from questing, finding the nearest forest, going for a wander, and listening to the birds. It’s wonderfully peaceful, at least until a wild boar knocks you on your arse.

It rarely holds your hand

In a lot of modern RPGs I feel like I spend more time blindly following icons on a map than exploring. This is a problem Kingdom Come brilliantly avoids by only marking the general area where something you need to find is. If you need to track someone down, it won’t mark their location on the map, just the town they live in. And it won’t mark the location of a bandit camp, but the swathe of forest it's hiding in. This forces you to do some of the legwork yourself, making for a much more satisfying and immersive role-playing experience.

The world reacts to you

I’ve been sharing notes with other writers who are playing the game and I love that we all have stories to tell: about quests we completed differently, fun stuff we found while exploring, or moments of accidental chaos. A complex simulation governs Kingdom Come’s world, and while it’s a bit creaky and prone to bugs—it often feels like it could collapse at any moment—it makes for a wonderfully dynamic, reactive world. You can go to jail for a variety of crimes, highborn NPCs will be friendlier if you’ve had a bath, troublemakers will back down if you unsheathe your sword, you'll get a hangover if you drink too much… and those are just a few random examples. There's a lot to discover.

You can get creative

This reactivity extends to the way the quests are designed. There are multiple ways to approach objectives by gaming the systems and being creative: to the point where Kingdom Come often feels like an immersive sim masquerading as an RPG. Sneaking into a man’s house at night, keeping his dogs quiet with scraps of meat, stealing a ring from a chest in his bedroom as he slept, I couldn’t help but think of Thief. And that’s just one of several ways to get the ring. Other people I spoke to took a completely different approach, including one who just killed the sleeping dogs with a bow. Jesus.

It’s buggy as hell

But all this comes at a cost. Like many games with this level of depth and ambition, Kingdom Come is a festival of bugs. Some of these are harmless, like characters getting stuck on walls or floating in mid-air during cutscenes. But in some instances I’ve been left with no choice but to reload a save or, in severe cases, completely restart the game. In an archery contest my opponent refused to take his turn and left me trapped in an endless limbo. After a tavern brawl, a three-second loop of my character grunting wouldn’t stop playing, forcing a restart. And I’ve had a couple of good old-fashioned crashes to desktop.

And that’s fine

Here’s the thing: I don’t care that much. I usually have a low tolerance for buggy games, but I’m having so much fun existing in this simulated medieval world that it hasn’t deterred me from playing it once. I’ve always had an affinity for scrappy, ambitious games that bite off more than they can chew, and Kingdom Come falls neatly into this category. You’ll just have to decide whether its general lack of polish is charming or, well, annoying. I’m leaning towards the former, although I imagine some of you won’t be quite as forgiving.

Shame about the performance

One thing that definitely isn’t charming is the performance. I have a GTX 1080, an i5-6600K overclocked to 4.5GHz, and 16GB of RAM, and the frame rate is all over the place. It’s fine in the countryside, clinging to 60fps with a few dips to 50-55. But when I go somewhere with a lot of geometry, like a big town or a castle, it sinks as low as 20-25fps. This makes moving around feel sludgy and unpleasant. I tried lowering my resolution from 1440p to 1080p and bringing the graphics settings down to medium, but the stuttering was still there. I’m not sure if this is a problem with my specific setup or the game itself, but the inconsistent frame rate has been a problem since I started playing—and is continuing even after installing the latest, patched up version of the game.

The save system is... interesting

My worst gaming habit is quick-saving every five seconds. About to pick a lock? Quick-save. Moments away from a big fight? Quick-save. But in Kingdom Come, you have to drink booze called Saviour Schnapps to quick-save, which gets you drunk and is quite expensive to buy. So I just don't bother. I rely entirely on auto-saves, which happen at key points during quests, and sleeping. But you have to own or rent the bed you sleep on for it to save. It's a clunky, slightly arbitrary system, but does give your decisions more weight.

You can be a detective

Occasionally Kingdom Come turns into a medieval police procedural. Henry finds himself investigating a brutal murder on a horse farm, which involves questioning people, chasing leads, and hunting for clues. It's a long, entertaining series of quests, and it's even possible to completely screw up a line of investigation, forcing you to find some other way to solve the crime. Henry doesn't have Geralt of Rivia's fancy Witcher senses to help him find the culprit, but he's a competent amateur sleuth all the same.

Henry is a nice boy

I’m surprised by how invested in the story I am. The setup didn’t sound particularly interesting or imaginative: bad people burn village down, man embarks on quest for vengeance. But the easy, likeable charm of protagonist Henry—the unassuming son of a blacksmith thrust into a world of lords, ladies, war, and politics—gives the game a solid, relatable foundation. Strong supporting characters and varied, unpredictable quest design make for a compelling narrative, and I genuinely care about this lad.

But Geralt he ain’t

He can handle himself in a fight, but within reason. I learned this the hard way when four hard-looking bandits clad in armour were trying to squeeze some information out of me. I told them to bugger off and they destroyed me almost instantly. Because of course they did. You almost have to rewire your brain when you play Kingdom Come and remember that you aren’t Geralt: you’re just some bloke who’s a bit nifty with a sword, but basically untrained. The combat is fantastically weighty and violent, and every single fight (of which there have been surprisingly few for me) feels like it really matters.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a really interesting game, and as soon as this is published I’ll be wading back in for more swords and not sorcery. Look out for the full, less rambly review in the next couple of days.

More PC Gamer writeups:
https://www.pcgamer.com/kingdom-come-deliverance-beginners-guide/
https://www.pcgamer.com/kingdom-come-deliverance-how-to-make-money-guide/

 

[Makabb]

thank god i did not preorder, i knew cuckdex will get cucked again..... -70% sale it is then.... game will be patched by then also.

 

[norolim]

warhammer is europan.

Yeah, I know. I meant the style: eurogame vs amerithrash & other styles.

 

[Perkel]

You can save in a bed or by drinking some saviour schnapps.

That is great actually not a minus.

Typical journos...

 

[Makabb]

You can save in a bed or by drinking some saviour schnapps.

That is great actually not a minus.

Typical journos...

nah it is a minus, saving by checkpoints is a console feature

 

[Burning Bridges]

Btw, after I hit Escape for about 30 times, I was actually allowed to walk around my parents house.

The first impression is very good. Nice, very fluid graphics, 60 fps all the way. And I did not have to change the default settings (only motion blur OFF).

Tbh, if this game was without cutscenes it would actually be very interesting. But the cutscenes ruin everything, because you know you are just looking for trigger points on a story graph, and it will be the same everytime you play. If this was open world/sandbox it would obliterate games like M&B. What a waste of a good game, just as Mafia but without taxi driving.

One good thing already is that this will raise the bar for other games in the sanity department. The world is truly a little time capsule.

P.S. You can't alt Tab without task manager that is a bit annoying, especially during those neverending sequences where you just watch and wait.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamesn.com/kingdom-come-deliverance/kingdom-come-deliverance-pc-review

Kingdom Come Deliverance PC review in progress: as satisfying as it is cumbersome

This review-in-progress is based on the game before the 20.5GB day one patch, which will hopefully address the game’s many bugs and stability issues, some of which I mention below.

I am 20-odd hours into medieval RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and I haven’t achieved all that much. If you need some hares hunted, I’m your man. Granted, you can get to within about ten feet of them before they scarper, so this is hardly an exceptional offer.

What else can I do, then? Well, I’m courting a rather lovely mill wench (game’s terminology, not mine) called Theresa, the daughter of a miller who has proven an invaluable fence for shifting my pilfered goods onto. I have also murdered - of course I have - but only a handful of people so far as I’m /still/ not much of a fighter. I’ll get there one day, perhaps. In the meantime, I am having rather a nice time bimbling around the fecund countrysides of Bohemia.

It is an absolutely beautiful place. Yes, you will have seen more dramatic and imaginative videogame scenery before, but I’ve never played a game that evokes actual nature as much as this. Distant hills undulate elegantly across the screen, forest floors are covered in bobbles of hand-crafted moss, and rich foliage leans into your vision from all angles. In the towns, too, the attention to detail is sublime.

Perhaps it appeals to my nostalgia for the many summers I spent in areas not far from where the game is set. Either way, this world - while not huge - is painstakingly created. It sounds great too, as the pleasing medieval score of flutes and mandolins makes way for grasshoppers and crunching branches underfoot when you go deep into the wild.

But the Bohemian wilderness is not only an easy way to escape the bustle of modern life. It also serves as a means to get away from the many stresses and frustrations of the rest of the game, some of which are there by design…

... while others aren’t.

Kingdom Come is a slow burner, brimming with intricate systems for you to understand. You need to eat and sleep to survive, but should you go foraging in the wild, don’t eat any old mushrooms you find as food poisoning can be deadly. Meanwhile, manual skills like pickpocketing, lockpicking, and honing your weapon are probably about as close as games have come to replicating the real thing.

To sharpen your weapon, for instance, you need to lower your blade to the spinning grindstone at the perfect angle, with flying sparks denoting that you are doing a good job (just remember to keep rhythmically tapping the button to keep the grindstone turning). It is very satisfying. Lockpicking, on the other hand, feels borderline broken on a gamepad but fine on mouse and keyboard. Every time you utilise a skill, you are not only levelling up that ability, but genuinely feel like you are improving your own technique in tandem.

But the success of these simulation elements is not consistent. The game would benefit from some of them being less realistic, lightened up if only a little. For example, to save you need to either find a bed to sleep in, wait for an auto-save during a mission, or buy a pricey ‘Saviour Schnapps’ - the last one I found after the day one patch was much cheaper than the rest, so maybe the issue has been addressed. Then again, I did buy it from a roadside beggar. This means I have had times, usually when idly exploring the world, when I would go a couple of hours without saving. Given that the game is alarmingly prone to glitching and crashing, the current save system really doesn’t sit well with me at the moment.

Swordsmanship is the toughest craft to master. You target specific zones on your enemy’s body, and need perfect timing to string combos together - all of this while keeping an eye on your stamina bar, which can be quickly drained by a kick to your gut and a few swings at your shield.

It feels fine when it works, but the targeting system seems to get confused when you are facing more than one enemy. Also, I am yet to get a sense that the combat is as realistic and physics-based as it was touted to be. Enemies don’t go down instantly from axe swings to a bare head, for instance, and hitting them with your sword feels distant and spongy. I accept, however, that Kingdom Come isn’t a game of instant gratification, and that I have much to learn in this particular area.

That is not to say Kingdom Come is bereft of more welcoming RPG elements. The levelling system includes cheeky, irreverent perks - not unlike Fallout’s - while towns are filled with lively characters and chit-chat, where eavesdropping at the right moment can open up some intriguing side-quests (I have already done my fair share of grave-digging). I like how the game embraces mundanity, too: this isn’t a world designed to make you feel like a hero, so even going on patrol to clear beggars from the streets, or hunting your first hare, feels like an achievement.

I am yet to complete the story but, so far at least, it’s well-written, with a cast of hearty, foul-mouthed characters who are very much products of the recent popularity of Game of Thrones. The protagonist, Henry, makes a forgettable first impression, but is slowly growing on me. He is enough of a blank slate that you can either play the bastard or the golden boy without any qualms.

This is an ambitious game, polished to perfection when it comes to atmosphere, but rough and cumbersome in many of its moment-to-moment interactions. I am yet to be convinced by the Oblivion-esque UI, too. Even so, learning Kingdom Come feels like a craft in itself. It is intimidating and beautiful, if disconcertingly unstable, and for all these reasons is worthy of your time.

 

[Makabb]

What a waste of a good game, just as Mafia but without taxi driving.

What else did you expect? I was telling this ages ago, Mount and Blade 2 will be the game we all are waiting for.

 

[Perkel]

i7-6700k and 1080 TI
playing on 1440p and tried to max everything out including viewing distance for everything
I get 67 in the open when there's no one but damn in the city it's not stable at all
it goes down to 20 fps sometimes and hovers between 40-50s

Game has full complete Global Illumination option i believe which will tank every system today if switched on.

For those who don't know what it is it is NEXT GEN feature which was supposed to get into current games but it is still much to expensive. All engine makers like Epic or Crytek managed to get it for their engines but they had to scale it back as developers complained it eat up their graphic budget too much.

Try switching it off.

 

[Jarpie]

I'm not sure about the save system, as I generally hate to do same stuff all over again if I die, will be interesting to see how it works in practice.

 

[conan_edw]

I might hold off for couple of months since I wasn't planning to play it right away but the 20% deal was great and I think I will be playing it before summer anyway

 

[HoboForEternity]

I have the solution to the saving problems:

Save and quit function.

Like all of those old jrpg with save point but you can save and quit anytime.

That way it is safe for adults with jobs and families, which they can quit anytime, yet you cant use it to save scum like other F5+F9 spam

 

[Turisas]

P.S. You can't alt Tab without task manager that is a bit annoying, especially during those neverending sequences where you just watch and wait.

If it's an option, try switching from fullscreen to borderless windowed in the settings.

I'm not sure about the save system, as I generally hate to do same stuff all over again if I die, will be interesting to see how it works in practice.

You can save wherever and whenever you want though, you just use a consumable item to do it. And it gets you drunk if you spam it too much.

 

[cvv]

ACG Review is in the "great game but bugs, wait for sale" camp.

 

[Makabb]

save scum

Save scumming is a PC RPG feature, if there is no save scumming, it's not an RPG

 

[Burning Bridges]

And btw. Apples can indeed be picked up. At least the one's ostentatiously put on the table.

Of course you can also drop them and they will start to roll down slopes. Still not seen ground apples. I also tried but couldn't throw them in my fathers face.

 

[Perkel]

thank god i did not preorder, i knew cuckdex will get cucked again..... -70% sale it is then.... game will be patched by then also.

Says Betshedatard