The original Kingdom Come: Deliverance began its journey as a Kickstarter game in 2014, after the Czech studio Warhorse exhausted funding options to attract investors. The first-person, sim-heavy game was released in 2018 and was a smash hit, despite being quite janky and notoriously difficult. Earlier in 2025, the studio released Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, the hotly anticipated follow-up. With a bigger budget and team, the studio set out to deliver the game they initially wanted to release. Did they succeed?
In short, yes! Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is an awesome game and a huge step forward relative to its predecessor. And much like The Witcher 3, you don’t need to have played the first one to enjoy this one, despite it opening shortly after the events of the previous game, but you’ll benefit greatly by having the context of the first game. In the game, you once again play as Henry of Skalitz, a former blacksmith who finds himself embroiled in the affairs of nobles and knights circa 1403 in Bohemia. After an ambush at the start of the game, Henry’s stats are effectively wiped from the player board due to an injury, which resets Henry’s skill tree and progression, giving you a fresh start for this campaign. From there, Henry must regain his compure and figure out who ambushed him and his band, as well as continue the threads set up from the first game (which are presented to the player in a recap and exposition).
Much like the first game, this is a systems-heavy game. Set in the first-person except for cutscenes and dialogue options, this is an RPG that puts you deep into the world. Have mud and blood on your amour and have to talk to a lord? Well, you’re going to have a penalty on your speech stat. Need to forge a sword? Well, here’s a blacksmithing mini-game, where you have to hammer the steel at the right pace in order to not to butcher the job. Hunger and sleep have to be managed, as does your reputation in each area. Get caught stealing, and you’ll be branded a thief. All this immersion is bolstered by a dialogue system, which allows you to steer conversations in certain directions based on your stats (do you charm or intimidate a character, for example, and what would happen if you fail that stat check?).
The first-person combat is much tighter this time around. It was fairly janky in the original game, but with experience and a larger team, the devs have made a much more rewarding and fleshed-out combat system for KCDII. The combat is similar to the first, but refined. Gone is the five-point reticle, with a more focused four-star directional option to choose which direction you’ll be attacking. It also doesn’t feel as cumbersome. That said, and I’m not sure if this was something that got lost in translation, but some of the tutorials were downright awful. I had no choice but to resort to YouTube links to see how exactly to do certain tasks. It just wasn’t explained well at all, to the point where what I was being told to do and what I actually had to do were vastly different inputs. This is definitely a skill-based system, where you need to combo, parry, and counter to be effective. Wearing the right armour is critical, and a helmet with a visor will offer extra protection at the downside of limited vision. Any damage to your armour will need to be fixed after battle, which can be expensive the longer you wait. Thankfully, the game allows you to swap between three different outfits at a time, so you can go from knight to blacksmith, to noble with the press of a few buttons, all tailoring certain skills and playstyles. It’s good to keep these distinct builds on hand, so if you’re a thief in the night, but a blacksmith by day, you can take advantage of the perks associated with certain armour sets. The game also introduces firearms, but much like archery, I didn’t make too much use of them, opting more for a diplomacy-first, sword-second approach. Later patches included a hardcore mode, which removed elements from the map and UI, introduced permadeath, made combat more lethal, and removed fast travel. It also forces you to play with three burdens of your choice, including getting less XP, having crime punishments carry for the whole game, and less carry capacity, for example.
The maps (yes, there are two!) also feel rich and detailed, with one emphasizing more of the natural forest and small towns, while the second focuses on a bustling metropolis to the eastern side of the map. It’s all really stunning and very well detailed, and the soundtrack helps sell the fantasy of being someone living in this period of history. There are some notable downgrades; that said, relative to the first game, due to the bigger scope and where that’s most apparent, I found it was NPC behaviour. In the original game, people would, for example, run for cover when it started to rain. But due to the size of Kuttengburg city, there’s just not enough memory to have the citizens do this. So they just carry on with their business with more obvious routines. When it’s late at night, there’s an exodus from the city as the people make their way back home. It looks like the end of a concert, with people queuing for the exit. It never breaks the game; it’s not like it’s a janky mess or anything, it’s just a noticeable limitation that has to be paid for a wider scope.
If you like systems-heavy RPGs akin to Morrowind and enjoy the more grounded medieval approach, a world without magic or elves, then this is a must-play. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II has a rich story, great gameplay, a rich and vibrant world, and plenty of variety and opportunities. A big recommendation from me.
