Tomi on 9/12/2018 at 15:17
I'm hopefully just about to start playing Kingdom Come for the first time (installing right now and then I'll keep my fingers crossed that it runs somewhat well on my computer!) and I see that there's a bunch of DLC already available for the game. Is there some DLC that you folks would recommend for a first play through? Is the DLC something that I can just add to the game later if I wish, and don't have to start the game all over again to access the content?
*sigh* The game is taking so long just to download that I might as well wait for the Xmas sales and see if the DLC is on discount. :p
Severian_Silk on 15/12/2018 at 22:15
The DLCs are short (around 3 hours each), but they improve the game. They're best done as early as possible (you can't access them immediately though). There's also an armor DLC which is actually pretty cool too. And a tournament DLC for free.
Tomi on 3/2/2019 at 00:19
Okay, so this game has taken most of my free time for the last month or so, and I finished the main story as well as most of the side quests yesterday. I can safely say that KCD is one of the best games that I've ever played in my life, a really unforgettable and unique experience.
It's just so refreshing for a change to play an RPG like this with no elves and dragons and magic and whatever. The world of KCD feels like a pretty authentic place - so authentic, in fact, that I kept wondering what things in the game were based on fact and what was fiction. It's clear that they've done a lot of research on all that stuff, and it really does make the game a whole lot more immersive to me. The game starts off very slowly, and it takes a long while before you get to see any proper "action". I'm fairly sure that a lot of people have given up on the game after the first two hours or so, but I actually liked the slow build-up... especially when the first proper plot twist is a bit of a jaw-dropper. I don't think I've ever genuinely felt "distressed" while playing a game before, but the bit where you return to your destroyed home village and see the massacre was a truly shocking yet amazing experience.
You get introduced to all the different gameplay mechanics a little by little, and everything may feel a bit overwhelming at first, especially as you've got to figure out most of it by yourself, but you'll soon realise that they're not really that complicated. Learning how things work and exploring the world is the best thing about KCD, and the first half of this game is especially good as you've still got the whole big world to discover, and you actually feel really vulnerable when you bump into enemies. Sadly that balance flies out of the window somewhere around the half-way stage of the game, as always seems to happen in games like this. Soon enough you won't have to worry about money, you'll have acquired an unbeatable combination of gear and skills (and you'll also learn to play the game and take advantage of the AI) so none of the enemies will bother you too much, and all that ruins some of the fun. I kind of wish that I could have switched to the hardcore difficulty halfway through the game.
Anyway, as for the exploration that I mentioned earlier... it's really enjoyable! Again I'm running out of superlatives here, but I don't think I've ever seen such a well-constructed game world before. The area that you can explore is fairly big (although it starts to feel a bit smaller when you get yourself a fast horse!) and you'd think that a forest is a forest for example and they all look kinda similar, but there are so many little details placed all over the place that each place has its own thing going - in other words, this isn't your usual copy-paste world where everything looks sort of identical. On the top of that, KCD looks truly gorgeous. Seriously. Admittedly I only just bought this new computer a few months ago so I'm a bit out of touch of modern gaming perhaps, but I didn't know that games can even look this good. :D Screenshots won't do it justice either; you'll have to see the lighting and weather effects in action. I must have spent numerous hours wandering around Bohemia just admiring the views. Things always look so much better from the first person perspective.
I've read negative comments about the English voice acting, but I thought that it too was top notch. Of course our protagonist Henry here doesn't sound like the stereotypical male protagonist with a deep "manly" voice, but then again he's not exactly your typical RPG hero either. He sounds like an ordinary village lad who's excited to be on an adventure, just as he should. Perhaps I haven't paid enough attention to what all the random villagers sound like, but I for sure can't say anything negative about the voice acting of the main characters.
Combat is of course a big part of a game like this, but like someone pointed out earlier, it's not the main thing about KCD. Apparently you can even finish the game without killing anyone. The combat mechanics as well seem to divide opinions in here. I'm not sure what to think of it either, actually. They've built a rather complicated system for the melee combat; you'll have to keep your eye on your enemy all the time and match your hand position with theirs to block attacks and perform certain moves, but even though I spent quite a lot of time learning all sorts of different attacks, I don't think that they were particularly useful or necessary in the end. Perhaps it would have made a bigger difference with the hardcore difficulty, I don't know. The combat is much slower and seemingly more realistic than in most other games, so you don't go around performing fancy Mortal Kombat -style special moves or other over-the-top moves to finish your enemies, and I quite appreciate that as well. However, the biggest problem in my opinion is that the combat often feels like you and your enemy are whacking each other with cardboard swords - there's no "weight" to the weapons and it's sometimes hard to tell how badly you've managed to hit your opponent, or if you've hit them at all. Of course there's archery too, and I've read a lot of complaints that it's "too hard" or "impossible to hit anyone with your bow"... bah! There's no crosshair or anything and it is indeed difficult to hit your target at first, but it just takes a little practice. I think it's challenging but quite fun!
The skill system in KCD is nothing unusual: you need to work on a specific skill to level it up. Want to become a master archer? You better start practicing with your bow then, go hunting maybe? Want to become an alchemist? Start brewing those potions (it's not as hard as it seems at first). Want to become better at herbalism? Go pick some flowers! :p Would you like to be stronger and more agile? Carry a lot of stuff and jump over a fence a few hundred times! Well, you know how it goes... Actually, you don't have to really work on such things that hard; you'll level up enough as you play the game "normally", but it's good to try different things so that you don't specialise in just one weapon for example.
KCD was supposed to be a real bug-fest, or at least I got that impression after reading a lot of such comments before starting the game, but it seems that they've fixed the most serious bugs by now. I didn't encounter too many bugs during my play through (100+ hours), the game crashed maybe two or three times unexpectedly, and one NPC turned invisible in some cutscenes, but that's about it. Definitely nothing game-breaking. The save system is ideal for a player like me; the game is saved when you go to sleep in a "safe" bed, when you begin a quest or something remarkable happens (or is about to happen), or when you consume a saviour schnapps (an alcoholic drink that you can brew yourself or buy in taverns etc.) - that prevents you from save scumming and you can still save just about whenever you want... just not all the time.
I ended up buying all the available DLC, and while the new stuff is definitely quite fun and adds to the experience, I'm not sure if I'd recommend those for someone who doesn't love this game as much as I do. Apparently there's some more DLC coming out in just a couple of days, so at least that'll give me something more to play until I move on to some next game.
I just hate the feeling of emptiness when you finally get to the end of such an adventure. :D The main story ended in such a cliffhanger that I can't wait for the next chapter/act/whatever, but I have no idea when it'll be coming out. Hopefully some time soon enough.
demagogue on 19/3/2019 at 15:19
Now that I have a new computer with a decent graphics card, I'm catching up on games I haven't been able to play yet, and this & Prey were at the top of the list. So I'm going back and forth between them.
Anyway, I just made it through chapter one, basically just past the opening credits and at the mill. Even with that much down, this is already a classic. I didn't have high expectations for this I guess -- the few videos I watched didn't give me any idea of the real heart of this game, and it has immense heart -- this is some great storytelling for a great story. Fighting is wonky, but it gives the feeling of real fighting, the kind of tooth and nail brawling, so I even like it. And it's glitchy at times, but it seems some of the games with the most character are glitchy, like Stalker, like it's part of the cost of going out on a limb, but also part of its character itself, like a scarred face.
I'll give a review of it after I get through it. For now I can just observe that it feels like over the last two decades at least, a lot of the best games I've played, or my favorite ones at least, have been coming out of East Europe. Whatever they're doing, i hope they keep it up.
henke on 8/6/2019 at 13:40
Started playing this on PS4. I like the worldbuilding, tho a lot of the systems seem fiddly, and the combat is downright impossible.
KC pros, please look at this and tell me what I'm doing wrong:
[video=youtube;GZEy5Tu19dk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZEy5Tu19dk[/video]
Must've danced around this guy for half an hour, but as far as I can tell my sword didn't connect with him once in all that time, whether slashing or stabbing. Can't tell if my blocking is doing anything either. I know the combat in this is supposed to be terrible and hard as nails, but is it really this hard, or is the game just bugged out?
henke on 8/6/2019 at 17:54
Ok, nevermind.
After starting the game up again that guy went down with a single stab. The following couple fights worked as intended as well. Must've been a temporary bug.
Tomi on 8/6/2019 at 19:29
Yeah, that must have been a bug. It's probably not the last bug that you'll encounter, but the game's far from a buggy mess that some people claim it to be. I did one side quest in "wrong" order apparently and as a result I can't seem to complete it anymore, but that's really no big deal.
The melee combat is really tough in the beginning, but you'll learn it soon enough so that you'll be able to beat most opponents in a duel. Eventually with good gear and levelled up skills and a lot of practice you'll become a master melee fighter, but still you're probably not good enough to beat a gang of (decent) fighters on your own... and that's what I love about the game - you're not some epic hero who saves the kingdom all by yourself, you're just an ordinary guy who knows how to fight a bit. To be fair, I found the combat a bit too easy towards the end of my KCD journey, mostly because of the fact that you can magically summon your horse out of nowhere whenever you like and get away when things get tough, but I was unbeaten in the Rattay tournament as well. I suppose I could try the more challenging combat in my next play through. :)
demagogue, how are your KCD adventures going?
demagogue on 9/6/2019 at 01:06
Man, I fucking love this game. It's my favorite since probably Dishonored.
Right now I'm at the stage where I'm taking a hiatus from the main quest and started doing a bunch of side quests, and then just started roaming the countryside exploring or finding little tasks for myself as I go, kind of like the medieval equivalent of driving the loop in GTA V. I think I can sense that it's speeding along towards the later chapters and I'm not in a rush to get there yet.
It's buggy, but it's buggy in the way Stalker or Arma is -- ok like Eastern European games if I'm already down this road lol -- where it's not always unwelcome and sometimes more amusing than annoying. It means the world they're trying to simulate has some real complexity and nuance to it, and it sometimes muffs it up, but since the complexity is such a refreshing change from polished and shallow worlds, I'd rather have the complexity with a bit of bugginess than the alternative. It becomes part of the world itself.
I'm still not great at fighting, but a good fight feels like a real slog. You can feel the punches. And if it's two against one you feel like you're fighting tooth & nail within an inch of your life.
Edit: I didn't notice that I'm saying about the same kind of things as I said in my last post. But there you go.
PigLick on 9/6/2019 at 02:01
Yeh I'm loving this as well. I have gotten pretty far in the story I think, but have hit a big difficulty spike so now time to do side quests to level up my combat. Also there is a console command to add a crosshair for archery which makes it a lot easier.
Tomi on 25/9/2020 at 08:21
I recently finished this game for the second time, this time in hardcore mode and I played with my XBox controller. Hardcore mode is nowhere as bad as you might expect, and playing with a controller surprisingly felt much more natural than KB+M, especially in melee combat! My second play through dragged on a bit towards the end, as I had already explored pretty much everything and played all the side quests during the first time, but it was still an enjoyable experience.
I wonder what's going on with the KCD 2 development. I haven't heard anything about it since... well... ever. I don't mind the waiting though, in fact I hope that they take all the time that they can afford to polish KCD even further. I think it'll be glorious.
Okay, this wasn't even the real reason why I brought up this thread again. I resorted to a bit of thread necromancy because I saw this post by dema on the Thi4f forum.
Quote Posted by demagogue
I learned recently that Kingdom Come has great modding tools, which I thought was great news, since it's such an awesomely realized medieval world.
Modding tools? All the mods that I've seen have only been little tweaks for the game, like unlimited saving, or infinite inventory space, or crosshair for the bow. That sort of fairly simple stuff. I haven't heard of anything more complicated than that. Could the modding tools be used for creating some new content for the game for example? That'd be nice!