Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 Review: Skyrim Exploration vs. Survivability Management

With over 100 hours in the game, we review Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, an incredibly immersive medieval action RPG with in-depth mechanics and storylines.

The long-awaited sequel to Kingdom Come: Deliverance has finally arrived, and it’s safe to say that for fans of the original, the wait will have been worth it. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 takes everything that you loved about the original — its historical accuracy, immersive open world, and deep role-playing elements — and builds upon them. Consequently, offering an even richer, more refined experience.

In this Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 review, I’ll walk you through the various elements of the game, including combat, graphics, gameplay, replayability, and more. With over 100 hours in the game, I can say that the complexity and immersiveness will be a strong selling point for a certain type of player. However, some of the difficulty and time consuming mechanics won’t be for everyone. Below are some of the details used for this Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 review:

• Platforms: PlayStation®5 / Xbox Series X|S / Steam® / Epic Games®
• Reviewed on: PC
• PC Specs
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS
  • RAM: 16 GB
  • OS: Windows 11 Home
• Release Date: February 4th, 2025
• Developer: Warhorse Studios
• Publisher: Deep Silver
• Gametime: 100 hours

What is the Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Game About?

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is an upcoming action role-playing game set in the medieval Kingdom of Bohemia, continuing the epic story of Henry of Skalitz. A blacksmith’s son, Henry begins the game with few skills and very little support. Driven by a desire for vengeance and personal growth, Henry fights against the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund and seeks personal vengeance for the destruction of his village.

What separates KCD2 from other RPGs is its complex mechanics and focus on gritty survival elements of medieval times. You feel a part of the 1500s, for better or worse. This adherence to stick survival gameplay rewards players with a high level of immersion at the expense of non-stop busy work. It’s a trade-off you get in a game that excels at exploration and environmental storytelling.

Background and Story

In 2018, the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance released and took the gaming world by storm with an unforgiving portrayal of the world of medieval Bohemia.  The game was praised for its immersive storytelling, historical accuracy, and realistic gameplay, and it became an instant RPG classic.

In Kingdom Come: Deliverance, you played as the protagonist Henry, a blacksmith’s son whose peaceful life was shattered when mercenaries burned his village. This attack ends with his family gone, his home in ashes, and his father’s sword stolen. Consequently, Henry vowed to seek revenge and make something of himself in a world torn apart by war and political turmoil. 

In Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, we pick up right where the first game left off. Additionally, there are some new and returning characters:

• Hans Capon: A young nobleman from Bohemia and Henry’s close friend. Known for his flamboyant, carefree demeanor and exceptional archery skills. 
• Katherine: A courageous and resourceful woman whose works as a skilled spy. She provides critical intelligence to the resistance throughout the story.
• Father Godwin: A fan-favorite character from the previous game, Father Godwin is a fictional priest known for his fondness for drinking and sharp intellect.
• Markvart von Aulitz: A key antagonist, he orchestrated the raid that led to the death of Henry’s parents. Markvart is a German noble who leads Sigismund’s Cuman and Prague armies, playing a vital role in his campaign for domination.
• Istvan Toth: A Hungarian nobleman responsible for the theft of Henry’s sword. He escaped at the conclusion of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, leaving Henry determined to hunt him down and seek justice.

One of the best parts of Kingdom Come: Deliverance was its dedication to historical accuracy, and the sequel doubles down on this. 

Exploration

The setting of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has seen significant enhancements, with the game world doubling in size compared to its predecessor with two huge maps. First, you start off in a large map of theTrosky region, then later the main quest will lead you to Kuttenberg, which is even larger.

Moreover, your method of exploration will set the tone for the overall gameplay, where every choice carries a potential risk.

For instance, without a horse or fast travel, you can only walk to your next location. This will take time, however, and you run the risk of bandits. Once such instance where I was tired of dying in combat, I moved into the trees. Then, I went up a hill to observe the ambushers discussing what they were going to do to whoever turned the corner. By staying hidden, I was able to avoid them and progress.

Every element of exploration has consequences and especially early, you want to avoid unnecessary conflict when possible.

Secondly, what stuck out to me in Kingdom Come 2 is how dialogue interactions differ from other games. Typically, you have a massive quest marker on whoever you need to talk to, quickly read some dialogue and move on. But in KCD2, each person, however inconspicuous, can provide a quest, a hint, or a fight just through dialogue. Therefore, this makes the world way more engaging than your standard RPG.

Overall, the exploration gameplay reminds me of Fallout 4 on survival mode. You start out without gold, food, water, shelter, or weapons. Consequently, every square inch of the world matters and has some hidden lore, crafting materials, or camp site.

While I don’t think Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is for everyone, the immersion and exploration is second to none of games I’ve played to date. 

Interactions

Another powerful element of immersion in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is that the world interacts and changes around you based on every little detail about your character.

For instance, if you’re dressed poorly or covered in dirt, NPCs will judge you accordingly, refusing to take you seriously. However, cleaning up your appearance and donning fancier attire can shift their attitudes, leading to new opportunities for dialogue and quests.

Additionally, if you decide to focus on combat and physical strength, people might treat you with fear. Especially if you’re walking around with blood-stained armour. Conversely, if you live a quieter life, focusing on crafting and blacksmithing, NPCs may avoid you due to the smell of dirt and herbs. These personalized playthroughs contribute to a high level of immersion, making every decision feel important.

The title strongly emphasizes realistic social dynamics, where the complex web of systems—such as reputation, NPC behaviours, and even physical appearances—creates a world that doesn’t revolve around you but rather reacts to you. This makes the world feel truly alive. 

Furthermore, choosing to involve yourself in random events can have long-term consequences, affecting your relationship with others or the outcome of the main quest.

The developer’s commitment to simulation extends beyond simple exploration. The systems in place mean that the game world continues to evolve, regardless of your direct involvement. Consequently, this ongoing development adds to the game’s immersive quality.

Additionally, the world is highly reactive, with Henry’s actions influencing his standing in the world. 

If you kill certain NPCs or make enemies, they are gone for good, and their absence could have ripple effects throughout the game. If you think Skyrim was great because an NPC said “so you killed the dragon” then this will blow you away.

Combat

My number one issue with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is its slow-moving combat. To put it simply, I find it extremely off-putting and unenjoyable.

The combat in this game is an odd system that I found unenjoyable and slow. Combat gameplay is all about realistic simulation of a one-v-one sword fight where you have to block, riposte and attack. Moreover, you must manage your stamina and at first, you can do barely anything besides back pedal and attack once or twice.

I understand wanting difficulty, especially in a realistic game where your character begins with few skills. However, in the early levels specially, resource management and constantly darting in and out for hits feels slow and unsatisfying.

Furthermore, the combat system is not intuitive and difficult to figure out. For instance, you can strike three times, but you need to move your mouse to left, right, up or down to get the red arrow to line up. However, I just wanted to not lock onto the target and get the flank and ended up frustrated and dead at the start of the game.

Now I will say, for people who love thrilling high stakes combat, this is exciting. But the early levels are a trial twice over as you learn how combat works while you are underpowered. Just be aware that this will either be a huge plus or negative depending on what you enjoy in videogames.

Gameplay

The second major issue I discovered with the game were some of its gameplay systems, especially the save mechanic. The game auto saves when completing various quests or check points within the quest. However, most of your game time is exploring. As a result, you spend sometimes 1 to 2 hours exploring only to be ambushed by a high level warrior and die with 5 seconds.

Consequently, all of that time you spent, gathering materials, picking flowers, selling items, advancing skills, is gone. Personally, I don’t mind dying over and over because I suck, but I cannot stand having to repeat quests that I just did because I forgot to save. Furthermore, you can buy consumables to manually save but they are rare and expensive.

Other game mechanics that are important are the potion brewing or alchemy system. You can make potions to sell or use them yourself as you will always need them. However, you don’t have a way to skip ahead with many steps and tossing in ingredients for mass production.

Finally, there are mini games in every element of the game, even doing laundry. Unfortunately for me, this is where the game started to become annoying. If was blood soaked from a battle, NPCs wouldn’t talk to me. I could wash outside the tavern but not all my clothes. Next, the game wanted me to go use all my gold and buy soap, a bucket, and do laundry in the river.

Sure that is very immersive, but I have laundry to do in real life. Is this really respecting my time as a gamer to do busy work and chores in a game? The mini games are great, but I wish there were a mechanic to do it once, then bypass it. 

Questing

Quests in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 are another huge, dynamic system in the game and one of the major highlights of playing. You’ll find most quests in this game very complex, with many steps to complete. There won’t be a lot of basic ‘fetch’ quests to be seen here. Furthermore, there is usually very little fighting and more exploration and investinging to complete them..  

Sometimes you have to talk with many NPC and use persuasion or charisma to get the information you want to progress the next part of the quest. Again, think big immersion here, where you really need to investigate and take action vs the game just doing it all for you.

Many of the main story quest will have multiple choices or options you can take. Typically, these would involve helping another NPC and ultimately completing one or more sidequest for the NPC.

In Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, the questing blended the best of RPG elements, impactful choices, small interactions in conversations that rewarded investigation, and exploration. You could complete the quest in multiple ways, thus giving you agency over your story and character.

Moreover, it seemed like your quest log was always full with seemingly endless list of things to do and people to help. And for game time spent, I think you could easily spend hundreds of hours questing and exploring similar to Skyrim.  

Graphics

The graphics and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is utterly god tier. I’ve played the game on both a 4070 Geforce Laptop and a 4080 Geforce desktop. My laptop had 16 gb of ram with 32 gb in my desktop. Overall, I had no issues with performance at all on both PCs and literally zero crashes.

Even with graphics ramped up, performance was smooth as butter for me on my PC. On high settings at 1440p, performance is solid, with frame rates around 50 FPS. This is perfectly playable, though not the peak for visual quality. Dropping the resolution to 1080p with high settings will boost performance to the 60–70 FPS range. 

When DLSS is activated, frame rates jump above 100 FPS, with no noticeable drop in visual quality. For ultra settings at 1080p, the game looks stunning, but performance suffers, dropping to just over 50 FPS. Unfortunately, it feels laggy and unresponsive compared to high settings, despite the improved visuals.

For players with mid-range GPUs (e.g., a 2080), DLSS offers an optimal balance between visuals and smooth gameplay. 

The environment, flowers, green grass, and lush vegetation made exploration a dream. What really stuck out to me though was night time exploration. The dark really felt annoying to deal with and you needed a torch to see anything. However, running around with a lit torch was a signal for bad guys that you were prey waiting to be devoured.

So you had this interesting choice from the day and night cycle perspective, making the nighttime feel more threatening, especially at the beginning.

Overall, the graphics really emphasizes the country side exploration vs. perfect textures on NPCs. I don’t think the game’s graphics are mind-shattering, but they are amazing to get you in that exploration wander-off-for-hours mood.

Sound

The sound in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is also incredible, with hours and hours and hours of dialogue that are fully voice acted. According to the developers, spoken dialogue comes in at more than 2.2 million words.

One thing that initially stuck out was the banter between NPCs. Even while riding your horse you hear trash talk between guys and can intercede. One such situation I encountered resulted in a hand to hand brawl where I got wrecked. But the banter back and forth gave a massive immersion quality that I felt playing games like Mass Effect.

The music is also great for the time period and enhancing the atmosphere during exploration. I typically play games without in game music on and listen to soundtracks like Hogwarts or Mass Effect because I enjoy that style. However, I never did that for KCD2, because it fits the scenarios and exploration perfectly. 

Even the ambient sounds of nature are finely tuned. Walking near a creek, you can hear the rustling of the trees, birds chirping, and the gentle rush of water. 

Moreover, different surfaces produce unique sounds as you walk over them. For instance, walking through puddles produces a splashing sound, and the sound of the brush being disturbed when you are in forests adds a tactile layer to your movements.

You can hear folk songs throughout the game, bringing a cultural authenticity to the setting. The melodies complement the historical context, enhancing the world’s immersive nature. Overall, the combination of detailed sound effects and a rich, evocative soundtrack makes for a deeply immersive experience.

Although KCD1 had some awkward voice-acting dialogue in some interactions, those issues have been refined in the sequel.

Replayability

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 will give you significant replay value due to its branching storylines, numerous side quests, and hidden content. With an estimated 120 hours for the main story, completionists can expect a much longer playtime. 

The vast world and varied paths ensure that there’s always more to explore and experience. With the upcoming post-launch content this can be the Baldur’s Gate 3 alternative you were looking for. Even without them, the base game here is incredibly huge and worth the the cost of the game.

Who Should Play Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2?

I would recommend that you play Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 if you loved the exploration in Skyrim, Witcher 3, or any other similar fantasy RPGs. The game’s story, choices, environment, and atmosphere are incredible if you enjoy tinkering around exploring and doing busy work.

Furthermore, if you enjoy hardcore gaming mechanics that blend survival and a unique combat system you will have fun with this game. Additionally, you will love the game for the European lore and story telling giving you a fantastic sense of immersion in the days of the Holy Roman Empire.

However, I do not recommend this game if you cannot stand busy work, hardcore gameplay elements, or don’t have countless hours to complete the game. This is an in-depth, hardcore game with multiple complex systems that you will have to slowly chip away at in order to get more powerful. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is not something you can rush through and beat in an extended weekend and at times it will test your patience.

Score

It’s hard to give Kingdom Come 2 a score. For some people, it will be 10/10 because this is their kind of game. Others will hate it and refund it after losing 2 hours of progress due to the save mechanics and slow combat.

However, in 2025, I think Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 will be a broad success in the RPG market. With all of the detail and immersion involved in this game, it’s impossible not to respect the time and effort the developers put into make something special. The exploration, graphics, character interactions, story and quests are all top-notch, and overall I’d give Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 an 8 out of 10.

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