Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

[one-armed dwarf]

This just got announced. There were a number of elements about the first that put me off, but this is a great looking trailer

 

 

The idea with it afaik is it's a RPG which is very into verisimilitude. Things being all realistic, even to a mundane and frustrating degree, but doing so in order to make its role playing feel immersive

 

I feel it's probably the kind of game I would like. The presentation here is pretty impressive, Witcher vibes

 

 

[radiofloyd]

Yeah that was a cool trailer. Have owned the first one for ages but need to play it. 

[shinymcshine]

KCD was alright - definitely a bit closer to Witcher than ES games (in terms of playing set protagonist) but also has that janky roughness of Risen (and the early game toughness of that and Elex - for a good while you are pretty poor at combat and can die easily).

 

The whole realism thing is often more a hindrance than bonus though - you need to actually master real hard skills (how controller & game mechanic works) in order to lockpick and use archery successfully - and the learning curve can be pretty painful (lockpicks & arrows are pretty scarce and expensive relative to your wealth, at the beginning, and it's really heartbreaking to break or lose them when you're getting to grips with the gameplay).

 

Even Alchemy skills meant carefully following a set recipe in specific order to make your concoctions (this isn't just chucking things into a pot BotW style, but it's mashing, mixing, boiling etc) - nothing here is given without making you work a bit for it.

 

Not really sure it delivers on its expectations and ambitions - but certainly worth a run through (if you've got the patience).

 

 

[Maf]

I never had any interest in this series but the trailer last night really sold me on it. One of the best looking trailers at the show imo. I might look at playing the first one if I can find it cheap as a sort of taster to see if I would like the new one 

 

 

[Maryokutai]

People who backed the first game at Duke-tier or above will get the sequel for free: https://www.pcgamesn.com/kingdom-come-deliverance-2/free

 

It only amounts to roughly 1000 people, which I presume is why the publisher is okay with it, but that's still a really nice gesture.

[shinymcshine]

I guess that if you give it away free then those people are more likely to give it higher reviews on Metacritic too !

 

Nice touch though.

[one-armed dwarf]

Reviews are out, forgot this existed tbh. Very strong reception, tho Eurogamer gave it a 3/5. Still tho, these are surprisingly high scores for a sequel to a 'eurojank', especially given how divisive the head of the studio has been. Maybe this is their Witcher III moment

 

https://www.metacritic.com/game/kingdom-come-deliverance-ii/

https://opencritic.com/game/17486/kingdom-come-deliverance-ii

 

I tried to play the original after the announcement and hated it, so I don't know I will try this either. Feels like the kind of thing where you really want to experience the whole story from youth to maturity with Henry or you miss out on things

[Maryokutai]

Was about to say the same, completely forgot about it but suddenly it's there and quite interesting as well. I would rather play the first one before getting into this though, even though I fear the slight survival elements will make me lose interest quickly. I think I've seen it on sale quite often for very little, so maybe that's the move.

[one-armed dwarf]

I will say my earlier post might age poorly cause PCgamer compares this with Morrowind, aka the greatest game ever made. Which means it could very much be my shit

 

But won't consider picking it up until and unless I beat the first one. 

[DANGERMAN]

the people that like the original absolutely love it, and it seems to have found more of an audience over time

[radiofloyd]

Reviews:

Destructoid - 9.5

PC Gamer - 90%

IGN - 9

Gamespot - 9

 

Eurogamer - 3/5

RockPaperShotgun

 

Sounds excellent. I do own the first game though so I’ll be playing that first!

[one-armed dwarf]

Have to say I really like the specs chart, looks cool lol

 

 

Apparently this scales rather well, on both the high and low end. Well relatively speaking, the previous game was monstrously demanding for the time

 

It's a Cry Engine game, don't get many of those these days

[shinymcshine]

Played the first one - was okay, but the sequel just sounds like an awful lot of the same (which will clearly  appeal to some, but having to hard skill learn the lock picking and archery mechanics all over again probably means I'll give this one a miss).

[radiofloyd]

A million copies sold in the first 24 hours.

 

https://www.gematsu.com/2025/02/kingdom-come-deliverance-ii-sales-top-one-million-in-24-hours

[shinymcshine]

Is that 1m copies in 24 hrs of a single player offline RPG, in the same week as EA said DA Veilguard underperformed (in sales) as it didn't have an online element.....?

[mfnick]

Yea. Still the director of this is a bit of an arsehole too.

Going off at reviewers for ruining his 90+ MC score.

https://gamerant.com/kingdom-come-deliverance-2-negative-reviews-woke-response-vavra-kcd2/
 

Wonder if he had it in his own Fantasy critic. Then I understand the pain.

[one-armed dwarf]

The director is a Gamergater and thinks the video game media is woke and has agendas and shit, so he's one of those types of geniuses

 

edit there's an interview with him here from ten years ago when the first game came out, kotaku is so rotten with bad adverts tho that you'll need adblock to actually read any of it

 

https://kotaku.com/my-e3-meeting-with-a-pro-gamergate-developer-1715511964

[mmmark]

But

 

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

[one-armed dwarf]

Stutter free on PC apparently, frametimes are a straight line, which is interesting cause that definitely wasn't the case for me when I loaded up the older one a few weeks back

 

He runs it on a 3600 Ryzen with a RTX 4060 and it's flawless apparently