This is a thread to specifically talk about the game and not the surrounding politics as several people in the release thread have requested. If you want to talk about Daniel Vavra and how/whether consumers should be conscious of a persons political beliefs external to the creative product talk about that here: https://www.giantbomb.com/kingdom-come-deliverance/3030-44790/forums/kingdom-come-deliverance-is-out-now-1818753/#209 [Is now locked.]

This thread is not an attempt to ignore or silence opposing views it's just simply to allow discussion of the game itself to be separated to prevent derailing and locking.

To kick it off I'll throw out a couple tips.

• Manage your stamina well in combat, the higher your stamina is when you take hits the less injury and health damage you will take.
• Make sure to return to Captain Bernard after sparring with him he can teach you how to riposte after perfect guards and combo attacks. He will also offer the ability to pay him a sum of money to train certain skills every 5 levels you gain in those skills.
• You can resharpen found weapons at a grindstone to get their durability back to 100 netting a larger sale profit

What even is this thing? Open-world action RPG? Are there narrative choices and stuff? Or is the story just the story. I thought it waas like an open-world crafting thing with some emphasis on combat, but then a few months ago they released a story trailer and I was surprised to see what looked like a pretty substantially produced narrative.

@theht: The best description I can give is a grounded Oblivion. It has similar quest structure and pacing to Oblivion but it doesn't have any magic or underground cults. So far for me it's been a peasant simulator. The game has you doing a lot of mundane tasks like getting jobs for refugees, learning to read or poaching to help feed fellow peasants. Most people would find these thigns boring but because it's grounded and contextualised in this game I find it rather enjoyable.

For those who've played it: How's the sword fighting? are there other weapon types? Does it feel satisfying/deep? I know there's more to the game but the combat's gonna be the biggest draw for me personally (aside from the setting which I feel's a known quantity). Sorry to just splurge questions but I'm interested to know some deets.

@ivdamke: I find it really refreshing to play as just some horribly below average peasant who is constantly making bad decisions, getting his ass kicked at every turn and screwing everything up. He's not out to go on some grand journey to right all the wrongs of the world, he could practically be some random NPC, but he's out to at least try to make something of himself, even if he kinda just sucks at everything. Hell, he can't even read (which makes complete sense in the time period and his social status, but still). Maybe eventually Henry becomes super badass after 50 hours or something, but I'm enjoying being terrible at everything right now. This is certainly not something everyone will be into, though.

I just got through most of the intro and really enjoyed it. Ran fairly well, granted I have a 1080ti.

Also enjoying it on Xbox. Haven't run into any bugs on that version yet. Just a bit of weird jank like people's clothes appearing to change when I rode towards them on a horse. And the camera having a mind of its own during a cutscene.

The story seems interesting so far at only 4 or so hours in though. Sword fighting seems fun and unique though I hear you learn a lot more like dodges and stuff which I haven't found yet. Never into the sleep/hunger mechanics in games but it hasn't been a problem yet. And my clothes are always torn to shreds; haven't seen a place to clean/repair them.

@handlas: You can (sort of) wash your clothes yourself by interacting with water troughs in town or pay and get them washed at a bath house. As for repair, I've only gotten to Rattay, but there are tailors, cobblers, and smiths who you can pay to repair your gear. They also sell repair kits, but they're expensive, and I think your skill determines the cutoff point where you can't even use that to fix your stuff.

Great. I thought my warnings in the topic were enough but I guess people either have trouble reading or just following instructions.

ANYWAY, I think I've found my first possible mod to install for this game but I'm wondering if installing mods would prevent me gaining achievements. Increased Bandit Encounters mod

Then again my celibate run got ruined by surprise but that quest in the end turned out to be worth it and probably one of my favorite RPG quests of all time.

@someoneproud: The sword fighting is pretty deep in-spite of what it feels like at the start. You start as a peasant that does not know shit and the fighting feels like shit at the start because of it. As someone who practices medieval swordsmanship, I have to say that this is some of the best feeling/realistic swordfights that I have seen. You can also use maces/hammers, axes, and some polearms (but they are hard to find and don't have a skill tree). Some real life german sword techniques have been put into the game as combos, and armour actually feels like the real thing and protects you, until you fight someone with an armour piercing weapon and/or get hit on enough to break your armour.

Speaking of armour, I love that it have been divided into different layers. The torso and arms have 6 layers total, undershirt/gambeson, mail, breastplate, over-armour livelry, arms, and hands. Add in 4 more slots for the head and legs each, and this is the most deep armour system that I have seen in games.

The only part of combat that seems halfbaked is the mounted combat. While fighting on foot, you lock onto enemies, so hitting them is about range and them not blocking/dodging, but on horseback, it is really hard to hit with a melee weapon. Fighting with a bow on horseback is easier, if you have the skill high enough not to shake too much, just because it is rare to fight other mounted people, and you can take your time kiting them.

@someoneproud: I find it to be reasonably satisfying, and while it has potential to be quite deep (You can attack from five different directions, stab, block, dodge, parry, feint, reposte, repostes can be parried as well so things can get pretty wild) the importance of stats shallows it somewhat, although not necessarily in a bad way. The reason for this is that unlike say, Skyrim, where your basic attack string is identical for the whole game and increasing your sword skill stat just increases your damage (and makes your power attacks do slightly different things), in KC:D a sword skill of zero is like someone who has never picked up a sword before, and a strength of zero means you have noodles for arms.

The result is that at the start of the game your character clumsily swings around his sword like a stick, and if you try to fight a properly trained soldier it is not a fight that you can win, since he'll dodge and parry such poor strikes and can hit you two or three times before you can recover. Towards the end of the game this reverses somewhat, or at least it did for me, where everyone other than a skilled fighter is zero threat unless I get attacked by a large group because I'm such a big strong boy that they can't block my attacks effectively, and my armor deflects most hits.

The main weapon types are short swords, long swords, maces, axes and bows. The combat feels satisfying to me but I know it doesn't to a lot of people, because for the most part things tend to be rather understated and a little bit on the weightless and floaty side of things.

I think one thing to note about the combat that I found interesting is it plays much better than it presents. It looks quite clunky and sluggish but once you give it a bit of time to learn its quite satisfying and varied.

I'll also say if you're going into this game expecting combat to be the main draw you might come out disappointed, not because of the combat itself but due to the infrequency of it. Combat scenarios are very brief and they only come about every so often. I'm about 10 hours in and I could probably count how many times I've been in combat on 2 hands.

How's the performance for you guys? I got a 780 Ti and a i5-3570 which I consider to be pretty crappy by today's standards, and I assume it's not enough to run the game at respectable settings.

@cure_optimism: I have a 1080ti and i5-4690k and I get 60 in most areas it drops to around 45 in towns. Playing on Ultra High at 1440p.

@cure_optimism: Performance is my biggest issue with this game. On a 970 OC 200 Core, 420 memory with 16GB RAM and a 4690K OC @4500mhz I can only maintain 60fps with occasional drops at full low settings 1920x1080 resolution.

The upside is the game still looks quite good on full low so it hasn't bothered me too much.

@ivdamke: I have roughly the same rig and it's running just fine for me. However I did have horrible drops/freezing issues until I went in and made sure that my physx processor was set as my GPU and not 'default', as suggested on the steam forums. May be worth trying it.

@rk92: So with a i5-2500K 3.3GHz, 1060 6GB and 16 GB RAM I should be able to run it fairly well at 1080p at least? The performance is one of the reasons I have waited a bit (also having a lot of other things to play)

My one real question is this: How long are the days? Do you feel you get the things you want done done, is it too long, or is it just right? Seeing how this has the near requirement of sleeping at decent times, that will be a factor for me. I am one of those crazy people who modded Skyrim to include food, water and sleep requirements, temperature and no fast travel. So this games seems to be made for me in a way.

And regards to the saving, has anyone made a mod that just makes a save when you quit? I feel that is the one thing I would need for the save system to make more sense. I wouldn't want to just quicksave every five seconds like I am used to, and having the quicksaves be something you brew with what sounds like an awesome and cool alchemy system is kinda genius.

@jaqen_hghar: The Nexus has an unlimited saves mod that I've been using without problems. https://www.nexusmods.com/kingdomcomedeliverance/mods/1

@dave_tacitus: Yeah, I know about that one. If I just can't deal with the save system once I get the game, I guess I will get that one. But I know myself, and I know I will abuse it. I am a chronic quicksaver and I am prone to save scum... Which is why I would like it more if the mod had a "only save on quit" option or something.

@jaqen_hghar: Auto saves are fairly regular, so there's that I suppose.

@jaqen_hghar: I believe the intention of the developer is to implement exactly what you're requesting in the future.

I made the purchase as I want to support the dev, but I feel like waiting a month or two to actually play will be a better experience. A possible patch and the addition of some mods will probably make it more enjoyable, but I'm really looking forward to having time to play it.

I had problems with Sword combat for a long time so i switched over to maces, witch seem to drain a lot of stamina from your opponent and even hit them when there trying to parry. having way more fun now with the combat. Although i lost 5 hours of gameplay yesterday cause a quest bugged out and was unable to save afterwords even with saviorsnaps :'(. I yelled a lot of "Oh C'mon !" after a quest broke 5 times in a row so be aware.

I am loving basically every aspect of the game. It reminds me of the first time I played Dragon's Dogma where traveling long distances requires planning, even if you're fast traveling. I enjoy the combat because it feels like a struggle and when you triumph it is incredibly satisfying. The wilderness looks pretty damn good and makes me feel like I'm just going on a hike.

I thought I'd be disappointed by the lack of character creation but I love how dopey Henry is too and having a hand in his (potential) rise from a peasant.

@sgtexo @faegbeard: Thanks, that sounds like the sort of thing I'm after. I guess it's to be expected the attacks don't have huge weight given the more realistic / effective armour they're going for but a sword fighting game with some finesse and a high ceiling is exactly what I wanna play.

The attention to detail in the world is really impressive to me. This might be the first time I have seen a water powered mill in a game that looks like it actually does work rather than just looking like set dressing.

I appreciate being able to read through the codex about characters that I'm not familiar with and be able to get a sense of the way things were.

I was having huge problems with the combat early on, getting completely devastated in every encounter, but recently I've ditched my shield and levelled enough where I was confident enough to take on four bandits fairly well. Now I've just got to find someone who will pay for these ears...

@someoneproud: You also have to remember that unless people have armour, you do not actually need to hit that hard with the sword, unless you are trying to sever a limb. Swords are sharp and do not require that much strength to hurt someone, just hit the right part and they will bleed out pretty fast and/or not be able to fight because of a disabling injury.

Talking about injuries, the game also tracks were you have been wounded, and differentiates between getting hurt and if you are bleeding (which can end very badly). Though I have never really started bleeding unless I was practically dead, but I think that is due to the armour I wear.

Bought this on Xbox the other day, after about 8 hours heres my initial thoughts:

The Bad: Jank. Not game-breaking bugs I've seen on twitch. For me they're usually little glitches with the quest-sequences. I went to a mining camp full of live NPCs I couldnt talk to, a minute later I was in a cutscene, back at the edge of the camp, with all the workers dead, as if I had JUST walked up to it. Animations are too slow, takes forever to talk to someone or pick up items. Combat is intriguing but hard to understand the feedback it's giving me. And of course, the state of saving is a real pain in the ass.

The Good: The story/characters/dialogue is great. The UI/menu/map is fucking beautiful, the Codex is fascinating. The world is a pleasure to walk around in and has great detail, I've never been tempted to fast-travel. Your run speed is plenty fast and stamina is generous. Being able to haggle with merchants is a lot of fun. I like that I have the option to kill a bandit or let him go unconditionally, or after dropping his weapons, and likewise I can ask for mercy if I find myself over-matched.

Overall: Lots of room for polishing, I still stayed up all night playing it and it will definitely be my main game for the foreseeable future.

The day/night cycle seems fairly long. I'm not sure the exact numbers, but it wasn't just flying through days. There's a mod that enables standard saving, and the devs did say they're considering adding a save on quit option.

Having played about 16 hours so far, I am really quite enjoying this game. I haven't found myself truly immersed in a game like this since I was 20, which was 7 years ago now. The story is really captivating, and I am super liking Henry as a character. He's a dope, but I feel like I am truly defining who he is with how I play the game.
The early-mid game turns almost into a medieval detective story, and the dialogue and characters are fantastic.
I have only fast traveled once in the entire game so far and that was totally by accident. Travelling in the world just feels like I am actually in the 15th century and once I got my own horse it felt so fun to truly explore.
The combat was really frustrating in the beginning, but once I got the hang of it and started learning how to keep my distance and wait for the perfect oppurtunity to attack and defend it really started to click for me. Taking on more then 2 people at once is quite a challenge, and there is one quest I had to get creative. I was supposed to kill 2 bandits in an abandoned camp. When I went straight up into attack mode, they kicked my shit in. I tried to focus on one, and the other would beat me up like crazy. So what I did was scout out there camp and see what they did.
There was one bandit who wasn't armored but had a sword that he was absolutely deadly with. The other bandit was armored but only had an axe. I waited till the sword wielding bandit sat down, snuck up behind him and choked him out. Now there was only the axe wielding bandit to deal with rather then both of them. I destroyed the armored bandit with my mace like he was nothing. Smashed the head in of the knocked out sword wielding bandit. Took their loot. The day was mine.
It's hard to describe how truly good this game really is. But once it clicks, it really does. This game is something else.

Why would this launch without a save on quit option?

I did the lockpicking minigame on a horse's rear end.

@north6: that's the kind of game this is :p

also i met medieval alex

@nonesun: I totally wanted to post this yesterday spoilers the same model get's used multiple times so there multiple alexy

@north6: "Realism"

Here's a tip. Take a nap in a bed or go to the bathhouse to take a bath you will get a autosave after using them.

@thegame983: Glad to see i wasn't the only one who picked that option. Though it took me 5 times retrying that quest cause it kept breaking.

@nonesun: I thought the same thing. He was used as the model for the charcoal burner's assistant or something too.

Could be to avoid save scumming.

Sounds like the game play I like without the magic content I never really liked from TES. I think ten years ago I described a game just like this as something I would want.

Well I ran into my first major bug on Xbox One. Loaded up my latest save which was me sleeping in some random broken down hut. Loads up and none of the buttons work except the Y button (whistle for your horse). Couldn't even bring up the map or inventory. :(

Luckily I had another save that wasn't too far back.

I would love to see the beast crew do a QL on this. While it runs fine most of the time - if they happened to run into something really janky though... oh man. You could rest assured hilarity would ensue. Maybe they're waiting on the patch release set for next week? At any rate, I'd love to hear their thoughts on it. Especially Vinny.

I can't get enough of this game. It almost breaks every preconception I have about what a realistic RPG is. Although, if I had one gripe, it would be the hunger system. I mean, you eat 3 apples and you're still hungry? Get off it...

holy shit that looks just like Alex lol

@nonesun said:

@north6: that's the kind of game this is :p

also i met medieval alex

Yeah i'd like to see a quick look too, i've watched some streams of people playing it but the commentary leaves a lot to be desired. I've also watched/read reviews but it's hard to get an idea of what this game really is with a heavily edited video. I'm not in any rush to play it though and it seems like it will be a much better game once a lot of the jank has been ironed out.

I'm starting to have some fun random encounters. Came upon a brawl underway and recognized the 'good guy' colors and helped them out... one of the bad guys (bandits) with cool looking gear started to run and I was like "OH NO YOU GET BACK HERE WITH MY NEW ARMOR". Beat him down after a chase, looted his busted up plate, looted his friends then a deer came by and I nailed him with a rare good shot, took his meat... took it all back to town... cooked the meat, had a meal and a beer... slept in a tent (because I like it better outside)... woke up and sold a all that shit to the blacksmith to pay for repairs on my newly found plate armor.

I was feeling pretty good about myself so I went to see a wench at the baths.

Solid weekend. Solid.

Reputation is confusing. I think it's broken. I lose reputation even if nobody was able to report I did anything. I found a knight that wanted to duel me out in the middle of nowhere, he beat me and took my money, so I choked him out from behind and murdered him and took my money back. But it made my reputation in the area go down. Nobody was around to see me, and he certainly wouldn't be able to tell on me.

@rk92: Did you make sure he was dead? Because I think the stealth takedown is kinda busted. Even if they never see your face or notice you in any way, you'll still get in trouble after they wake up and tell the guard. I knocked out this one dude who was sleeping alone in his house with no one around and stole his shit, about a day later a guard arrests me for it.

I have watched some people playing this game and the writing seems kind of...not good, but it's hard to tell with this stuff. Give me honest opinions, is there a good story here or is it a good open world story?

I'm still astounded at how this game manages to make the most mundane shit just relaxing and enjoyable to me. Just roaming the woods hunting, helping out people who need medical attention or going through the long brewing process of potions.

Its less about challenge, fun or feeling powerful and more about immersing yourself in the world.