Continue with Gamestar Plus
If good games are important to you.
Special reports, analyzes and backgrounds for role-playing heroes, hobby generators and single player fans-from experts who know what is played. Your advantages:
All articles, videos & podcasts from Gamestar
Free of banner and video advertising
Simply canceled online
Life in the Middle Ages was not a sugar and this also applies to the entry into. Warhorse's role -playing game is more demanding in many areas - you could even say: more uncomfortable - than other genre people.
We start with almost nothing and have to earn every little step in fighting, conversations and bare survival without the RPG really taking us. It only helps to always think, be vigilant and to work out creative problem solutions.
But not only that: by the way, we also have to adhere to the strict rules of society in historical Bohemia. Otherwise the adventure ends very quickly at the pillory or six foot underground. But it is precisely in these challenges as well as the living world, which reacts extremely dynamically and diverse to our actions, the unique strength of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.
If we get involved in the very special gaming experience with all its slowness, then we almost feel the drizzle on the skin, smell the smoke of the campfire mixed with human evaporation - and are suddenly as far as with hardly any other game .
The story: It could have been so easy ...
At the beginning of the 15th century, two rulers and their respective followers argue about Bohemia: the faction of the previous King Wenzel and the troops of the ruler Sigismund invaded from Hungary.
Nevertheless, the life of the prospective knight Heinrich, whom we control from the first person perspective, runs in a regulated path at the beginning of history. He accompanies his friend and gentleman Hans Capon on the way to Burgherr Otto von Bergow. They should bring him an important message, a supposedly simple job.
However, the undertaking takes a look when the young men are attacked by bandits and narrowly get away with life. The incident sets a chain of unfortunate events in motion, in the course of which Heinrich gets into the fierce power struggle.
He lands on his adventure in dark dungeons, is caught up in bloody arguments and political intrigues, finds new allies and also meets old acquaintances.
On detours from Castle to Burg
The approximately 50 to 60-hour main story by Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 repeatedly throws up tense highlights and has a few successful twists in stock. Towards the end, the pace attracts a lot and we are feverish when it gets going to the main characters.
In between, the story could have saved one or the other detour. In principle, the main story is relatively simple, it is only repeatedly thrown back by new complications. Of course, this fits Heinrich well, who despite his important role in the conflict about Bohemia is a comparatively normal type. But sometimes the story puts on the reins a little too hard.
Hans goes through a lot in the course of the plot and you notice that too.
There are also those who have really inspired us among the main characters and others who do not keep up and have a significant effect.For example, we were surprised what a multi-layered and sensitive character is behind the sneering kackbratzen-behavior of Hans Capon.
He makes a really strong, well written development and has grown properly, just like noble woman Rosa. Although it is not one of the most important players in the game, it is directly up with a bang and was immediately sympathetic to us with her clever but spirited.
Katharina, who provides Heinrich and his allies with important information, is one of the figures that remain under their possibilities. The spy always mixes somewhere in the plot, but in our opinion remains too pale despite interesting approaches and in the background.
We would therefore like to do without a few characters in order to give others more development options. Nevertheless, the main story entertained us well overall - not least thanks to the great cutscenes. Regardless of whether there is a high dramatic or absurd funny: developer Warhorse has a knack for staging.
The technology of KCD2:With very few small exceptions in performance mode, our test pattern was largely stable and liquid on both Xbox Series X and on the PS5. We have repeatedly encountered bugs and glitches, but it was almost exclusively to be presented.
The most frequent lighting errors occurred, such as sudden flashes of light or light sources in places that fell from behind through mouths and eyes of NPCs. From time to time there were also animation or gravity errors such as corpses that floated before they fell into the lake in which we wanted to sink them.
The problems described disturbed the atmosphere of the game, but never got in the way of gameplay technology. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is a huge and very complex game in which many systems interlock and worked really well in the test phase.
Only once did a quest want to go on, which was fixed after a restart.
Optionale Story-Highlights
In our opinion, the best stories in Kingdom Come 2 are in side missions anyway - or in purely optional interactions with main characters. The RPG is always astonishingly nuanced.
There are simply knitted, clam -like missions, for example around small crooks. Some quests and dialogues are also much more profound and rain to think. Many of the more serious optional stories relentlessly address social injustice, violence and hate - or simply incomprehension and ignorance.
Among other things, we also meet a group of nomads, to whom the villagers encounter with mistrust, women who laboriously want to build up a better life, homosexual persons or those with “mental suffering”.
The small moments in which predominant grievances are exposed or questioned are particularly strong - but we do not want to reveal the details here. In some cases, we also even experience conciliatory or beautiful, hopeful moments with which we would not have expected.
The world is the great star of the game
Since we are already at “beautiful”, we absolutely have to speak to the world of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. For us it is the absolute star of the game. It is divided into two large open areas, with the second map and city of Kuttenberg only accessible in the course of the action.
On the way in nature we had to stop more often and use the photo mode.
From the colorful flowering flowering on the edge of the forest to slogged dubious Spelunken to streets littered with horse cocks in the middle of half -timbering and wall paintings: the locations are a feast for the eyes and are only brimming with loving details. The wonderfully dynamic lighting reinforces the atmosphere and makes the game world one of the most beautiful in which we have ever been on the move.
More than just graphic power
But even more impressive than the graphic beauty is how alive the world of Kingdom Come 2 works. All NPCs follow their own daily routines and react to pretty much everything that Heinrich does.
For example, if we drive around in private areas such as the bedroom or the pantry of a farmhouse, the owners become suspicious. But not only if you caught us in the case - you also notice when we are outside again, but a coat is missing or a door is open!
Even if we sneak around in the dark at night without a torch, waking are suspicious. After a first warning, we got serious trouble, we can only try to talk ourselves out, buy free or land.
Heinrich, on the other hand, can make a really impression when he cleans himself out, pay attention to body hygiene and regularly let his clothes wash. Then he can convert his counterpart more easily and knock out better prices from dealers. On the other hand, he gets a muffling and bloodless, stuffing blacksmith and grocer.
The missions are excellently interwoven
Also how we approach missions in Kingdom Come 2 feels organic and intuitive through the organization of the world. Between the main quests limited to small areas, we move freely on the menu and take side tasks due to your mood.
These are very well interwoven with the main story and never feel like employment therapy or checklist. We always meet familiar faces and where we dagger image teaching and markers in other games, we only consider in Kingdom Come 2 with the help of a few rough information in the diary and a compass, which is the next logical step.
For example, we spontaneously come up with the thought of asking a friend from another quest in a village about a missing person. And in fact, the one piece of the puzzle part, with which we get the next point of contact together. This also makes the world “real” and the whole of the play less like typical video game logic.
It was a lot of fun for us when testing. Of course, this approach is also a little more cumbersome than in other role -playing games and Kingdom Come 2, it is not necessarily a game for relaxing, because we hardly get any further without patience and a certain level of concentration.
