A rare gem of a game

It’s truly a treat when one gets to sink their teeth into a genre defining game and in the current landscape of the modern AAA titles, that event comes once every blue moon. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is one of those rare gems that will be remembered through the ages as a timeless masterpiece in storytelling, world design and gameplay.

At the very outset you realise one thing, you are in for a visual treat. Kingdom Come: Deliverance plunges players into a living, breathing world and this immersion is achieved in no small part thanks to the visuals. The vistas, lighting and the environment are breathtakingly beautiful, the cities, towns and villages expertly crafted to the point that the player feels like they are literally taking a stroll down Medieval Bohemia. Yes, there are graphical issues like texture popping and the occasional clipping issues that makes climbing stairs a right pain in the backside, but in my 30 hours with the game thus far, I am yet to encounter a bug that even remotely hinders the experience or breaks the immersion.

While talking about immersion, my personal opinion on how this game manages to draw the players in and gets them so invested in the life of Henry, the protagonist, is the gameplay and how it evolves. This is an RPG game with no magic, no dragons or even a hint of anything remotely supernatural. You are a human living your ordinary life, and are pretty much garbage at everything. You have to learn how to fight, ride a horse, cook food, read and literally every trope in RPGs that make the protagonist a one man army has been done away with here. If you get into a fight with two or more people, rest assured it will not end well for you, regardless of how levelled up or geared up you are, just like in real life. And that’s the central theme of the gameplay, its focus on realism and that was what drew me in so deep. I literally spent hours in real time practicing with a sword and shield and with the bow and arrow, levelling up the skills and putting skill points in their respective skill trees before I became even remotely confident to venture out into the wild. This is a game that demands your time and manages to give you an immense sense of satisfaction for the time that you have invested into mastering its nuances and quite frankly difficult combat system. There are a lot of other nifty touches that transcend words in the gameplay and I sincerely advise people to try the game to get a taste of it all.

However, we all know that most RPGs live or die by their story, and let me put all doubts to bed, the tale of Henry as told in Kingdom Come: Deliverance is spectacular. The premise is simple, it’s Henry’s quest to avenge the murder of his parents. However, the writers have managed to take this rather simplistic plot and mutate it into one of the most fulfilling RPG stories in recent history. The voice acting is immaculate as it really brings the characters to life!  On top of that the best part is that how you choose to interact with the NPCs and the decisions you make have a humongous impact on how the story unfolds and what events get triggered.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is one of the finest RPGs I have played in a long long time. It has its flaws and the occasional bug, but nothing comes even remotely close to overshadow this masterpiece of a game. Do yourselves a favour and pick it up.