In this troubled period of the Middle Ages, we embody Henry, the son of the blacksmith of the town of Skalice, a small quiet town which prospered under the reign of Lord Radzig Kobyla. Unfortunately, in his quest for power, Sigismund perceives the local overlord as a threat and sends his army of Cuman mercenaries to raze the quiet village. Deprived of his family and of all sentimental ties after the massacres inherent in the battle, the young Henry will therefore put himself at the service of his lord, swearing to avenge his parents. If this is roughly the overall objective of the game, know that the road will be extremely long, and that many pitfalls will stand in the way of our hero. Here, there is no question of creating your own character, but we can nevertheless have a large influence on him (less on the story) depending on our way of playing and the choices we make during the game. revealed to you in the introduction, Kingdom Come Deliverance takes an extremely realistic approach, which is going to translate in a lot of ways. First of all, as the son of a blacksmith, our hero is rather part of the lower stratum of the population, the one whose living conditions are harsh, and whose existence is not worth much in the eyes of the governing bodies. . Likewise, our character is initially a total ignoramus, stripped of any form of education (if not the basics). Henry therefore does not know how to fight (a little with his bare hands, absolutely not with weapons), is illiterate (like 90% of the population), has no knowledge of science (alchemy or even the basics of physics) and is a good Christian devoted to his catholic faith. Fortunately, we can solve all these problems by taking lessons from NPCs and studying directly in-game.
ONCE UPON A TIME THE LIFE !
As much to tell you right away, the beginnings of the game will be laborious, since with almost every action that we want to do, we come up against a blockage due to the ignorance of our hero. On the other hand, this allows us to plunge directly into the reality of life in the XNUMXth century, and the educational value of the game then becomes evident. We learn a lot about the relationships between the different layers of society, and we discover the different backgrounds thanks to the rather rapid social ascent that Henry will succeed in, going from simple son of artisan to soldier. In the great vein of realistic RPGs, here no level or XP, but skills that are learned with practice (or thanks to our appearance which allows us to use certain specific responses during dialogues), and an inventory particularly demanding where each object has its own weight (as in STALKER) which will have an impact on the hero's ability to move. Indeed, Henry has a multitude of parameters that will have to be monitored. If the classic life bar is self-explanatory, it will also have to do with an endurance gauge, a hunger gauge (you will have to eat) and sleep (you will have to sleep). Each vital function must be carried out with meticulousness because overeating is the guarantee of difficult digestion, and therefore of diminished sports abilities. Likewise, a prolonged fast will be fatal to the hero, while feeding on spoiled food may do more harm than good. Each item in the inventory also has a lifespan, wear and tear for weapons, armor and clothing, organic decomposition for perishable foodstuffs. As in Zelda: Breath of the Wild, it will be possible to cook our food in order to modify its properties. Gathering is also on the program, whether it's getting something to eat, something to make a bouquet to seduce a lady, or getting into the creation of potions.
BOHEMIAN RAPSODY
Kingdom Come Deliverance offers a mountain of mini-games such as games of dice at the inn (with stakes), knightly duels with sword, bow or bare fists, and even a molding workshop for make sure our weapons stay sharp. Moreover, if the sword fighting system is particularly well done and realistic (developed with medieval fencing specialists) with its system of different guards and thrusting and cutting blows, other areas have shown less attention from the developers. Archery is for its part much more frustrating due to a more random aiming system. The worst remains of course the mini-game of lock picking, the idea of which necessarily germinated in the sick brain of a sadist influenced by the Devil himself. Totally random and requiring flawless coordination, this system where you have to follow the movement of a lock with a hook (directed by the mouse) while maintaining the same relative position will most of the time lead us directly to prison. As you can see, daily life will take a lot of game time, and embarking on a quest while neglecting the maintenance of the hero and his equipment is the best way to get killed quickly. Ah yes, each death brings us back to the last save, but the game only saves our progress during important moments of the quests, when we sleep (which must be done in a bed that is open to us, no question of stealing the sack of any NPC), or when drinking a specific bottle of Schnapps (a rare and ruinous alcohol to buy). Saving will therefore be particularly complicated, and it often happens that you have to redo the last hour of play after dying stupidly without having saved your progress.
Worse, the game is literally riddled with glitches, whether it's display problems, collision bugs, triggers that don't fire and force us to load a previous save, or downright crashes with back to Windows.
As long as talking about the things that annoy, know that if the fights, the narration and even the side quests are rather well done, the technical side of the game is a real disaster. In addition to using a dated version of the CryEngine which offers a fairly average rendering (despite nice lighting effects), the game is simply poorly optimized and full of bugs of all kinds. Even with a PC equipped with big hardware, it is impossible to avoid the big drops in framerate inherent in the rain, at night or in certain cinematics which inexplicably bring our hardware to its knees (i7-6700K and GTX 1080Ti with the latest drivers ). Worse, the game is literally riddled with glitches, whether it's collision bugs, display problems, triggers that don't fire and force us to load a previous save, or downright crashes with back to Windows. If we are ready to close our eyes to many problems, their multitude and variety inevitably frustrates the player and seriously impairs immersion. Several times we ended up with missing lines of dialogue during cutscenes, whether audio or subtitles, when the latter do not inexplicably change language.
Even with the huge day one patch (23 GB!) installed, the result is catastrophic, to the point of making some Early Access games look like super polished AAAs.
It is very difficult then to take advantage of the advanced dialogue system (with authoritarian, diplomatic, haughty responses, etc.) when only the first option is in French, while the rest consists of a mixture of English, Czech and German . It is also difficult to take part in a sword fight when our hero flies into the skies after a jump. Here again, you have to go back to the last backup which happens to have been made two hours ago, thanks to the very special system chosen by Warhorse Studios. Even with the huge day one patch (23 GB!) installed, the result is catastrophic, to the point of making some Early Access games look like super polished AAAs. Unfortunately, if the content of the game and its qualities are undeniable, the technique is far too catastrophic for us to ignore it, and we find ourselves more often on the verge of breaking screens and game peripherals because of malfunctions than amazed by the richness of the gameplay, the depth of the game and its solid historical foundations.
