Game Review: Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2

Image: Reddit user TMGreycoat

I spent probably 250 hours on Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. More time than I had. It harmed my writing. My dreams. My job, probably my relationship, my sobriety. My physical fitness and therefore my health. My finances.

The game is so good, and so long, and should be played so slowly, that it's a life destroyer for about 3 months. February March and April gone.

I'm done now but the DLC comes out in two weeks.

And I have to learn to do other things now like people learn to walk again. I have to learn to write like Jerry Garcia had to relearn guitar after his coma. I'm glad GTA 6 was delayed.

But: it's a whole beautiful novelistic world. When I finished the story and the credits rolled I clapped, alone on my couch. Sat through them all. And I thought: every person did an excellent job. They listed the orchestra that played the music. A hundred violin players. They must have had people come in for a day, but put their names in the credits. Every one played beautifully. Every note was perfect. Every leaf and its every shadow was poetry.

The story has twists and turns. I won't talk about them. The way you should play Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is to not read about it. Not look at screen shots or videos. Don't ask for advice when you get stuck. Play the character, Henry, exactly as you'd behave if you were him in 1403 Bohemia. Don't say anything he wouldn't say just to exhaust a dialogue tree. Treat the game as though it were a real world. The characters real people. Don't think about missing loot or cutscenes or the chance to fuck or kill some person. To get some horse or outfit. Play it like Henry's a human being and do what you think he'd do. If he were in a town where he didn't know anybody, with nothing, and had to get a job.

And you can't rush it anyway. You can't do anything at first, you have no money no weapons no clothes, so you have to walk around and it gets dark at night and you're grateful for the torchlight and if you have a place to sleep.

Those are the best moments of the game.

And if you think he'd drink to forget his pain, do that.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is not some Disney cog in a cash printing franchise. It's a cathedral made with loving care. Every brick laid in service of something higher, by a person who believed. The woodworker sanding the pews till they're perfect. The artist sketching the window and the glazier setting the glass. The credits roll on and on, it must be a thousand people. All believers. If any of them weren't you'd feel it.

The people who wrote Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 are power nerds obsessed with a specific window of Holy Roman Empire history, and they want to share it with you. And by God it's really interesting. If you like A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman, with its ironies and wars and colors of medieval life, this game is like walking around in those times. Stop and look at the book within the game, the codex, and the gorgeous illustrations and perfectly short little blurbs about the life and times. The nobility were like a mafia. I didn’t know that, but of course.

And by the end the story's on rails and its turns are foreordained, and you're overpowered, almost watching it like a movie. And that's good too. But the best times are when the game opens up and you're left with nothing. Literally worried about your next crust of bread, but the birds are singing, and you're walking through groves and meadows, hearing the clang of the blacksmith's hammer knowing a village is near, watching two drunks fight by the tavern.

And it's funny, it's angry, it's sad, its happy- it's got range and every emotion is real.

If you worked on this game I want to tell you that I felt every second of your work. It was for something. I'll remember it for a long time.

In conclusion: five stars.