Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 hands-on preview – an historic RPG sequel-Nick Gillett-Entertainment – Metro

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 – it seems to deliver (Deep Silver)

The sequel to historical role-playing game Kingdom Come: Deliverance is even prettier and more realistic than ever, and has a healthy obsession with cleanliness.

Playing Skyrim, Baldur’s Gate, The Witcher, or any of the other legion of role-players with Tolkien-esque settings you get a reassuring sense of olde worlde charm, filled with castles, horse riding, and potion drinking. Yes, there’s magic and mystical beasts, but what’s really missing from the historical side of their recreations of the virtual dark ages is the sense of utter, mud-soaked squalor.

Released in 2018, Kingdom Come: Deliverance more than made up for other role-playing games’ shortcomings in that department, by presenting players with a far grittier and more accurate representation of the medieval world. Set in Bohemia in the early 1400s, it treated players to a world with no wizards and griffons, but one where it was a job just to stay clean and presentable, with visits to the public baths and tailor absolutely essential if your character, Henry, wished to maintain his presence in polite society.

That’s because 15th century Europe was obsessed with social status, believing God had made everyone just as they were. It meant if you were born a peasant, that was your lot in life, and the aristocracy felt both socially and morally superior. That made Henry, the bastard son of a nobleman and a peasant, something of a conundrum.

He ends up as bodyguard to minor noble, Lord Hans Capon, and given how war torn and feudal Bohemia was during that period, it’s work that offers a lot of potential for misadventure. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 picks up the story just after the first instalment finished, with Henry accompanying Hans and his small retinue on a mission to take an important message to a local lord. As in the first game, things don’t go smoothly.

That’s partly down to Hans, who’s not the most serious minded peer of the realm. Along with an insatiable eye for the ladies, he’s also easily distracted and loves a drink. It’s a combination ripe for disaster, which is just what occurs in the opening scenes. After making an ill-advised overnight camp in the open, even though they know bandits are ravaging the area, their group is set upon and slaughtered, with Henry and Hans escaping, severely wounded, in nothing but their underwear.

It’s an excellent introduction to a game whose systems work together in complex and interesting ways. For example, all role-playing games demand your character wears and upgrades their armour and weapons, but Kingdom Come goes so much further than chucking out your shirt in favour of newly acquired chainmail. First of all, you can’t just put on armour. Henry needs a layer of protective padding underneath to make it bearable.

On his head there’s a cloth hood between the helmet and his skull, a padded gambeson goes under his chest armour, quilted hose protects his legs from the rattling metal plates that go on top, and shoes fit underneath the spurs that help him ride. Your inventory lets you create and swap between three complete outfits, which is just as well given the sheer number of elements that go into each one.

The detail doesn’t end there. Head out for a day in the countryside, and you’ll inevitably end up muddy. Get in a scrap and there’ll be cuts and tears to take care of, not only flesh wounds but in your armour and base layers. That requires a trip to the public baths (or in a pinch, a rural water trough) and a visit to the armourer and tailor to make repairs.

If you fail to do that, or simply can’t afford it, Bohemia’s deeply stratified society reacts accordingly. That’s important because Henry and Hans frequently get into scrapes, some comical and many life-threatening, but emerging from them unscathed is often a case of talking rather than fighting your way out. That involves more than a simple skill check against a single stat, but rather a whole suite of factors.

In conversation you can tell the truth, lie, bluster, intimidate, threaten or pull social rank, depending on the situation. As a nobleman you can arrogantly impose your superiority on lower class Bohemians, but that’s not going to work if you’re plastered in mud with torn clothes and no horse. It’s usually preferable to try and use your wits to evade aggressors though, because the first person melee combat remains clumsy.

Despite what it sounds like, it’s not set in the UK (Deep Silver)

While streamlined from the first game, fights are still deliberately slow and brutal. Choosing which direction to swing your sword, mace or axe from, you’ll also need to time defences and ripostes, managing your puny stamina bar to prevent yourself getting bulldozed. The parry window has been noticeably increased from the first game, making battles less frustrating, but we still found ourselves doing everything possible to avoid them.

It’s just as well conversations are so rewarding, with important protagonists’ voice acting just as natural and charismatic as it was, even if minor characters can still be more variable. It’s also very odd that everyone speaks in various British accents, which doesn’t help sell the fact that you’re supposed to be 900 miles away in what is now the Czech Republic.

Early on in our playthrough, our wounded heroes are rescued by a toothless old crone, who sounds oddly aristocratic, her conversation peppered with the word ‘ain’t’, which sounded about as authentic in its delivery as it would do coming from the Princess of Wales.

It’s a minor point, but along with a few flickering textures, and slightly clunky navigation on the map, you get the feeling it won’t prove a particular impediment to enjoying the game once you get your teeth into it. Deliverance 2 seems to have considerably fewer rough edges than its generally well received predecessor did at launch, which is a promising start.

Graphically it’s a huge leap forward, its gorgeous looking countryside and colourful (if you keep it clean) regalia looking noticeably sharper and more attractive than the first game could manage, even at maximum graphics settings on PC. While there’s a sense that everything has been refined rather than reinvented, the net effect is that the game already feels significantly more polished, while its other systems – forging weapons, brewing potions – are just as detailed and fastidiously accurate.

Whether all that holds up for the lengthy play time of the full game remains to be seen, but so far all the earlier indicators are good.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (previewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £59.99
Publisher: Deep Silver
Developer: Warhorse Studios
Release Date: 4th February 2025
Age Rating: 18

The first person combat is still clunky (Deep Silver)

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