Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Review – Good, but not quite throne-ready

Reviewed February 4, 2025 on PS5

Platforms:

PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S

Released:

February 5, 2025

Publisher:

Deep Silver

Developer:

Warhorse Studios

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, the anticipated sequel to the 2018 medieval RPG, is here, letting players control Henry of Skalitz again. With a lot of moving systems, ambitious immersion and striking graphics, it buckles a little under all those promises. Have you ever had a game that you so desperately want to love but is fighting you at every turn? After nearly 70 hours with the adventure, that’s exactly what we’ve got here.

Kicking off soon after the events of the first game, the Blacksmith’s son and loyal hand to Lord Hans Capon is a changed man. Having lost his family and home in a brutal massacre, Henry is seeking vengeance from those who took everything from him. A mission with Hans where they’re to deliver a message to a far kingdom to seek allies in the war is Henry’s first sign that he’ll get to fulfil his wants. From there, the game expands into the epic that it is, filled with political intrigue, warring lands and being a downright medieval menace. 

What Kingdom Come: Deliverance II strives to do while you’re working through its story is truly immerse you more than any RPG ever has. In the preview where I got ten or so hours with the game, I praised these efforts. You can drink booze regularly and it’ll temporarily boost stats for our hero, adding to his strength, charisma and speech. This can quickly take a downfall though where he can get addicted to the stuff and suddenly suffer a lot of debuffs and will often stumble around in a stupor. Combat is authentic because, well, it’s kind of deliberately a bit shit. Whether receiving or trading blows from a sword, fist, axe or other weapons, everything takes a lot of effort, requiring players to direct the angle they’re attacking from with the right stick. Quickly, your stamina evaporates and everything is laboured.

Henry levels up the skills the more he performs said task. Say Henry regularly gets into barfights. Suddenly you’ll see his unarmed combat level expand tenfold, only bolstered by the passive and active skills you receive. If you lockpick a lot it starts to become easier not just because you’re more acquainted with how to look for the soft spot to manipulate, but it generously becomes easier to identify in the HUD, the soft spot icon larger than before. A lot of RPGs in more recent years have players grinding an overall player level to then doll out and attribute to random skills. With Kingdom Come, you’re choosing what you invest in actively by the shenanigans you get up to. It’s a refreshing resurgence of RPG play that we haven’t seen in quite a while.

These shenanigans are delightful and are some of the biggest gameplay highlights the fans will engage in. I invested in petty thievery early and was having a pleasant old time slowly looting houses and shops, gathering up greschel and junk to hock off to merchants. Now, while I was doing this tomfoolery I let myself not pay attention to all the systems at play here. You see, Henry got in a prior swordfight and got himself coated in blood. He then started to smell, and, to my hilarious horror, I was caught on one of my stealth looting jobs because of this smell. It’s these kinds of genius emergent gameplay mechanics that make Kingdom Come: Deliverance II feel like an immersive sim full of charm. It’s in these moments that it feels like Warhorse Studios have really thought of everything.

However, the more you play Kingdom Come: Deliverance II the more the glass ceiling breaks and you see the limitations of immersion. Players can make many choices that bear weight and influence the story. Though a lot of these are well done and are determined by a lot of other factors, it didn’t take long to find instances where some of the choices you’re told are important but ultimately aren’t.

A relatively early example of this occurred in the first half of the game when as part of a quest I took out a bunch of people in a town. It was cruel of me to do, perhaps, but if it weren’t for me making this choice I wouldn’t have come across the oddity that happened next. I bumped into someone who was familiar with the locals and knew who Henry was and what he’d done. He looked at me in mourning and disgust, saying he didn’t want to talk to me but then was suddenly okay with answering questions and whatever else I wanted with him. He was stone-faced and chatty enough, the polar opposite of what he was just two seconds prior.

Other instances can take you out of the experience, and though they’re of a different sort, they’re not too dissimilar to the issues found in the first game. The first Kingdom Come: Deliverance wasn’t all that kind to races that weren’t native to the lands the game is set in. Specifically, the Cumans (nomadic Turkish people) are depicted as little more than murderous psychopaths.

The sequel somewhat rights this, actually offering one of the most heartfelt sidequests in the game where Henry stumbles upon a group of Cumans, coincidentally the same few that slaughtered his village. However, Henry learns they were merely contract mercenaries needing the work. Instead, they share a solemn drink. In broken English, one of the leads of the Cuman group manages to get sobering words to Henry. The words that in War, no one wins. These people might have caused Henry misery but they’re not the powers that be, they’re not the enemy. This is a vast improvement to what we had prior (there are finally queer characters and at least one person of colour that plays a major role is finally present). I only wish women in the universe were treated with the same grace.

Henry crosses paths with many women in the game. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say all of them are written horribly. None of them have agency. All are women either surrounded by tragedy and trauma or are pieces of meat for Henry to have sex with. More often than not also both. There’s zero in-between. Every time you reach what you expect to be a well-written character, another shoe drops that drops all that promise. I won’t spoil where the major character Katherine’s story goes, but yes, I’m even talking about them. Most egregious is a side story where you’re investigating the disappearance of several women. The outcome for most of them isn’t pretty, their bodies butchered in inhumane ways. Warhorse Studios simply does not know how to write women.

It’s frustrating for a few reasons. For one, immersion is again broken here as Henry can early on in the game elaborate on their devotion to Theresa, the primary love interest for the first game. Not once do they come up if you choose to pursue the new interests in the sequel. It’s also just at odds with other parts of the game. As evidenced by some of their improvements, the studio has shown they are willing to learn, bettering their representation despite their fans’ insistence that “historical accuracy” is more important. Yet these improvements feel one step forward two steps back, with a lot still to learn. Not entirely unrelated by the way, and perhaps worth noting, there are Gamergate ties to the studio head. Not entirely surprising then that someone who’s an outright supporter and part of a sexist movement may not be all that good at helping write women.

What will be the most hot-button topic for Kingdom Come: Deliverance II upon release is that despite the high fidelity and many joys you can find in its world, it lacks a lot of polish. It doesn’t quite reach launch Cyberpunk 2077 levels of unplayable, but it’s pretty close. The most bothersome is the intense screen tearing that occurs way too regularly. At least one of the root of the problems is the fact that rain seems to throw the experience and the world of Bohemia into disarray. The sky will open up and be horrid, drifting in and out of its beautiful form and awful flashes of darkness and light. When it’s raining outside in an important interior cutscene or dialogue exchange, the rain will for some reason still be pouring through the room you’re in. This led to hilarious but unsettling immersion breaks, including a scene where I was sat at a long dining table in an interior setting, rain pouring down on us and soaking the food we were eating and ourselves, Henry and the cast entirely ignoring it.

I played on PS5, but various issues seem to plague each platform. Issues that Warhorse Studio have detailed they’re aware of and clarify will be patched on launch and don’t even cover some of the other sorts of issues I’ve had. Now and then people will drop spawn into a new scene funny following a prior cutscene. I’ve seen NPCs walking up hills backwards in villages, a small hut that inexplicably looked to have about thirty people spawned inside it all in one room. I’ve borne witness to a room in one of the main castle towns that is just shrouded in darkness, a location I’ve come to label as the ‘void room.’ A quest didn’t spawn a necessary NPC until I reloaded several times and changed the world state, making everything trigger by doing something major like getting arrested, taken to a cutscene where I’m slotted in a pillory and then later getting out.

I consider myself lucky that I didn’t see anything like people’s faces melting or models getting twisted and bent up in funny ways when you, say, hit them in combat. However, I would heavily emphasise caution when trying the game on launch with the harsh flickering issues, especially if you’re prone to epilepsy. What all these oddities and technical failings remind me of is the late 2000s or early 2010s Bethesda game, rife with bugs but technically something you’re able to roll credits on. I understand that Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is an incredibly ambitious title, but that’s less charming and cute in a game in 2025.

Still, despite all of this, I keep returning to how entranced I was throughout the experience. Despite all the roadblocks, I was captivated by the early 15th-century Bohemia. Henry is a character that truly grows on you, only enriched by his deep bond with the preppy but charming Lord Capon. The pair go through a lot together and their connection and chemistry is a highlight. There are story moments, especially a late surprise that had me reeling and even (without hyperbole) cheering. Meanwhile, there’s still beauty to be found. When you’re exploring the open world and the emergent gameplay is working as it should be, the game truly sings. You’re exploring vast open fields and forests, with the highest fidelity game sky and environments I’ve seen in quite some time.

Its skill system and perks you net only bolster your self-improvement throughout the experience. For example, if you develop your speech enough it’s easier to sneak in selling stolen items with the rest of your loot to merchants. You can engage in bare-knuckle fist-fighting tournaments where the only things that got me through it were the meaningful perks that make things just a little bit breezier. Despite the immersion breaking in some of the choices you make and the cast you’re interacting with, the game isn’t lying when it says you can build Henry any which way you want.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II reminds me of an almost guilty pleasure. At so many turns it feels like an experience not built for me. It’s a game largely assuming you’re a straight male player (no doubt a ‘win’ for the conservative gamer crowd but a loss for RPG immersion potential and lovers of games in general), mostly interested in having sex with women and killing dudes. Yet I wouldn’t have played the game and seen through 70 hours of this world if I didn’t almost love it.  Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is one of those games that everyone has where they say “It’s good but…” and then go on to detail its laundry list of issues.

7

Good

Positive:

  • Many skills and abilities mean Henry can be anyone you want him to be
  • Emergent gameplay moments are exciting and joyous
  • Henry and Hans' bond is a big highlight
  • 15th century Bohemia is gorgeous

Negative:

  • Filled with disappointing bugs that take away from the experience
  • Female characters are written abysmally
  • Some narrative choices don't quite hold the weight they should

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is an incredibly ambitious RPG venture that soars when all its moving system parts and systems work as they’re meant to. As promised by Warhorse Studios themselves, protagonist Henry can be just about whatever you want him to be, whether that’s a wise diplomat, a mischievous thief or a drunk who finds himself regularly in barfights and down in the dirt. This is bolstered by meaningful skill specialisations, a strong bond between Henry and Hans and a story with exciting twists and turns. However, immersion is broken often with disappointing bugs, odd narrative choices that don’t bear weight and the fact female characters don’t get to do much of anything. A good game that could’ve been amazing had it been given a little longer to cook, Warhorse’s follow-up is a fun time despite all its obstacles but isn’t quite ready to be crowned victor just yet.