Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

The first Kingdom Come was a great game wearing a hostile interface. Locks, combat, saving and even reading were systems that punished you for not already knowing them, and the tutorial's answer was to shrug. The sequel keeps all of those systems and teaches them, and that single change is worth thirty points of accessibility and about two of score.

The best medieval world anyone has built

Bohemia here is not a fantasy setting with the magic removed. It is a functioning economy where a stolen shirt is traceable, a nobleman's word outweighs yours in a dispute, and a village has opinions about the war that reached it last month. Quests resolve through conversation, bribery, theft or violence, and the game tracks reputation finely enough that a solution in one town closes doors in the next.

I spent perhaps twenty of my hundred and six hours doing no quests at all — hunting, drinking, getting arrested. The world holds up under that.

Hours

106

Times arrested

9

Quests failed permanently

4

Combat finally reads

The five-direction system is reduced to four and given clearer feedback, and the difference is enormous — you can now tell what an opponent is doing and why your strike bounced. It is still slow, deliberate and lethal, and a fight against two armoured men remains something to avoid rather than solve.

Where it slips

The second region opens roughly sixty hours in and repeats the structure of the first, which is a lot of game to ask for before a change of pace. Several late main-quest sequences also force stealth in a game whose stealth is functional at best.

Performance in the largest city is uneven, and the save system, while improved, still loses more progress than a 2025 game should.

The verdict

A hundred and six hours and the most convincing historical world in games. It asks for patience in the first ten hours and gives back more than anything else in the genre afterwards.

Do the side quests. The main story is the weakest thing here.