Hands-on: Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Makes Getting Medieval Easier [CNET]

The period action RPG is bigger and better than Kingdom Come: Deliverance, with smoother entry to combat.

The period action RPG is bigger and better than Kingdom Come: Deliverance, with smoother entry to combat.

At Gamescom 2024, I got hands-on time with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, the upcoming action RPG game from Warhorse Studios. The original Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s combination of a historical setting in Bohemia (modern-day Czech Republic) with brutal, realistic combat met with popular acclaim — and everything fans loved is seemingly bigger in the sequel. 

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 picks up where the original left off. Protagonist Henry is still making his way through 1400s Bohemia seeking revenge for the death of his parents, getting enmeshed in local politics and skirmishes. This time around, the power struggles ramp up, explained Warhorse public relations manager Tobias Stolz-Zwilling at Gamescom.

“In Kingdom Come: Deliverance, you were mainly on your own as you dealt with bandits and some local lords in relatively rural areas, but now they invite you to the big stages in a fight between kings,” Stolz-Zwilling said. “You’re becoming a part of a gang that is trying to do guerilla warfare against an invading king. It’s more of a buddy story like Ocean’s Eleven or Inglourious Basterds.”

The game will conclude Henry’s story of revenge, but it’s not just the story that’s been refined for the sequel, which Stolz-Zwilling said would take 80 to 100 hours to complete.

“We took every element from the first game and made it a few levels bigger — even the dice minigame,” Stolz-Zwilling said. “Everything in combat is more improved. We took a lot of feedback from Kingdom Come: Deliverance.”

Warhorse set out to make a combat system that was easy to learn and hard to master, although players felt the combat was tough to pick up in the first game, also addressed in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Stolz-Zwilling said. “It’s still very deep if you want to invest your time, but if you don’t want to do it, there are different weapons and movement sets that are more straightforward.”

In a booth decked out in flags and props to look like a Bohemian-era marketplace, I sat down at a PC to play the demo: in a sidequest in a smaller town, Henry finds himself drawn into a squabble between a new swordmaster, who has the exiled king Wenceslaus’ blessing to form a sword-fighting school, and the town’s existing sword-fighting school. As a swordsman himself and a man of honor, Henry feels obligated to help the swordmaster — or at least that’s how I played him. In the preview room among a room full of players alongside me, Tobias advised us to make a specific dialogue choice to keep the quest on the rails — an example of how minor choices change the game’s world. 

As Henry, I followed the swordmaster’s plan to sneak into the sword school after midnight, steal its ceremonial sword, and hang it outside the town hall to signal a combat challenge. Lo and behold, the school can’t back down, and a challenge is issued for which sword master gets to lead the town’s official school. Unfortunately, I had been seen during the theft, and the town official granted the school’s fighters permission to wear armor in the non-lethal three-on-three duel, while the swordmaster, his assistant and Henry had only padded shirts.  

Small decisions, big impacts. 

Combat was a huge part of the first game, and I felt the smoother ramp for lesser-skilled fighters like myself. Sword fighting is all about timing — knowing when to swing and when to block, although a good parry can create a great opening. I was able to hold my own, although I mistimed swings and blocks in a way I felt could become a lot more precise the more I played the game. We only got to use swords, so I didn’t get a feel for how different weapons felt this time around.

The dialogue system has also been revamped a bit, with choices grouped around different kinds of appeals: In the aforementioned argument between the new-to-town swordmaster and the xenophobic swords school members, I could either try to browbeat the haughty school folk by saying something intimidating, urge them to honor their absent king Wenceslaus’ wishes, pressure them into a combat challenge, and more. The success of each is based on stats that grow as you progress through the game gathering experience and making connections.

The game’s area is twice the size of the original game, with the city of Kutná Hora (at the time it was the second-largest city in Bohemia, behind Prague) adding plenty of opportunities for players to discover medieval lifestyles, Stolz-Zwilling said: “We wanted to show immersive play even deeper into the game, showing players how medieval city life could have looked like, how problems of regular people could have looked.”

A lot of what we’re told has changed in the combat, dialogue and maps wasn’t featured in the demo; with less than half a year until the game launches in February, Warhorse is keeping things close to the chest for now. It’s a promising look at a sequel to a game with a very devoted fanbase and Stolz-Zwilling assured that Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 delivers on what the first game promised. 

“Generally, [Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2] is the game we always wanted to do but couldn’t before,” Stolz-Zwilling said.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 comes out Feb. 11, 2025, on Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC.