Should I stay with Kingdom Come: Deliverance?
I've had a lot of extra time on my hands lately, so I decided to take a crack at some highly acclaimed games I never got around to.
I love a big RPG and some of my favorite gaming experiences were playing Skyrim and FNV on the settings were things like eating, sleeping, and staying warm were an important part of the game. KCD seemed like a good fit, so I bought it on sale and have put in about 30 hours so far.
I want to like it. I want to enjoy fucking around in a medieval setting and appreciate the many details in this game. The story has me sucked in so far, and like I said, I love the prospect of a gigantic RPG. But wtf is this gameplay? I get that it's not supposed to be easy, and I can look past the weird puppet feeling when I try to fight, but I feel trapped. I'm a broke idiot with no charisma and I get my ass kicked everywhere I go. I thought the whole point of video games was to escape real life. I decided to take a break from the main story, so I tried to go hit up the Miller's daughter to see what my options were. Next thing I know, I'm hunting down flower petals and linen with her like she's Big Boss on a total stealth mission.
Does it get better? And by better, I mean manageable. I'm worried I stumbled into something that's out of my league as an older, unskilled, semi-casual video game player. I'm not a masochistic Souls-like player that needs punishment in order to feel something. Should I stick with this game, or am I better off learning how to swordfight and pick locks in real life?
Edit: I'M GOING BACK IN FOR SOME MORE TIME WITH BERNARD! Thank you all for your feedback.
If you're not having fun, quit.
KC:D is my favorite game, but if you're not having fun with it, why keep playing?
That said, two tips:
Use a Mace
Practice in the Arena with what's-his-bucket until you can unlock the Master Stroke and then you'll be killing everything in sight.
Yeah use a mace and definitely don't use a 2h weapon with a shield...
Sounds like you stumbled into the DLC quest from A Woman's Lot? That one is famously kind of long and not representative of normal gameplay. My advice is to play through the main quest until you unlock combat with Bernard, fight Bernard until he teaches you master strokes, and then go gallivanting around doing stuff.
Early combat is rough. Even at higher levels, combat against multiple enemies is not easy. My advice for evening the odds:
I want to reinforce this. I got a ton of equipment to sell by creeping into some inattentive padfoots' camp and slipping some basic-ass sleeping potion into their pot, then waiting a few hours (exact length of time given on wiki) and knocking them out as they sleep, or if they wake then they're at a severe disadvantage.
I clearly did not play this game right...
Neither did I! Because after I robbed them blind I ate some of that stew too! Henry of Skalitz promptly got a bit sleepy and was promptly murdered when everyone woke up, real Wet Bandits incompetance there.
Alright, this is what I'm going with. I only did one round with Bernard and skipped learning how to read, so it seems like that's where I went wrong. The early quests felt pressing so I moved on with them too early it seems. Also, I'll take my shot at love with someone else next time.
What I found out from talking to people that struggled with the combat is that most of them hadn't unlocked master strike.
Assuming this is KCD 1, you do this by training with Bernard. So follow the main quest for a little while before going off exploring. Then combat is mainly a matter of masterstriking while making sure you don't get surrounded. Once you get the hang of that it becomes much easier.
Honestly, I found that you could just cheese the game by
spoiler / exploit
semi-spamming master strike even if you're surrounded. Seemed to work 360 degrees for me. You just had to meet the timing criterion.Yes. If I had to criticise the game in any way it would be this.
They throw all these fancy mechanics at you for combat like e.g. combos. I'm not sure I ever successfully executed one.
It's mainly a trap for new players. What works best is just getting good at masterstrikes, which isn't too hard.
Yeah, that was an unfortunate part of the combat system. They had these neat combos, but they were hard to actually complete successfully; but they put in master strikes, which are relatively much easier to perform successfully. On top of that, harder opponents can master strike to interrupt your combo, so double disincentive. I haven't tried KCD2 yet, but I wonder how combat has changed in that.
I am playing KCD2 now. It has the same issue. Master strikes are still dominant from what I can tell and combos are useless. Though now only swords can master strike, so they are OP.
I quite like the game so far, but the combat system still has issues.
I know this is tongue in cheek, and I too was intimidated away from Souls-likes for a long time. But rather than masochism it's that the game is just the game. At least for me it's more like watching/reading long form content rather than shorts or reels. People say they're hard, rather I'd say they just take concerted effort. These games require doing. It sounds to me that's what you liked about Skyrim and FNV with those mods.
So have you tried Elden Ring? xD
I will say that Elden Ring is a good starting point for someone who doesn't love the idea of banging your head against the difficulty. Up until the endgame, you pretty much always can turn around and do something else if you're getting stuck or frustrated with something. The game pretty actively tries to teach you to do this, tbh.
I call these games skill grinds, and it's why I like them. They create a game that you can't be good at without building the skill - both memorizing patterns and move sets, and working on your timing/technique.
In a typical grindy RPG, the grind is repeating the same level of difficulty until you reach an arbitrary goal. Often if there's a skill challenge, it's the characters skill that matters and you're just making a skill number go up through repetition.
But in games like Souls, the grind is against player skill. You repeat until it's no longer challenging, then you pass. You the player are what changes each iteration, not the character's character sheet.
I see the appeal to both but I like the latter. It also adds replayability because you don't have to regrind skills you've already developed, so you can focus on lesser challenges like trying a new weapon.
I think this is actually a large reason why I personally dislike them. I am against any kind of grind in games generally but at least with a character one there is generally a better possibility to short circuit it using external tools even if manually tweaking difficulty is vastly worse than the developer just adding options. And ideally not including filler.
It is personal preference of course but I consider design that relies on repetition of being killed to be unenjoyable. I think that ideally a decently proficient player with prepared character should be able overcome any boss on first try, or at least game design should be geared towards that possibility.
I would say that's pretty much the one defining feature of an RPG video game honestly. RPGs involve your character becoming more skilled, since you're ostensibly roleplaying that character.
Every other type of game, you're not, even if you're controlling an avatar on the screen.
The genres have gotten so muddy over the years that virtually every mainstream genre has RPG elements nowadays, but it's still the defining feature of RPG vs not RPG.
I strongly dislike Souls games, but I heard so much buzz about Elden Ring that I went for it... and strongly disliked it. Yes, it was more enjoyable than Demons Souls or the Dark Souls games, but I just realize that the Souls games, especially the From Software variety are just not for me.
As a side note, the only game in the genre that did click for me was Final Fantasy Origins. Maybe it was because I have always been a big Final Fantasy fan, but the heavy story focus as opposed to the barely any from the typical Souls game really pushed me to want to keep playing even when parts were unenjoyably difficult.
That's fair! I can understand that through the fact I feel almost entirely opposite.
For me those "sticky" sections are when I can really listen to some music or a podcast. Then it's just reps and I really enjoy it. In other games I get into that rhythm then a custscene, audio log, or whatever interrupts my flow. But it's different strokes, I really like story heavy games, just in much smaller doses.
The only super difficult games I tend to enjoy are 2D platformers, like say Super Meat Boy or The Messenger. It is probably from growing up with NES games that had no qualms about crushing you.
I definitely don't have this myself. I also grew-up with NES games kicking my ass, but these days, I have almost zero interest in 2d platformers. I look at them and can't help but think that they can't possibly be doing anything remotely interesting to me, aside from be difficult.
But I'll bash my against the wall all day of a Souls-game or something like KC:D.
Coincidently this happened to me too recently. I tried Dark Souls 1 when it first came out for like 2 hours and hated it. But I came back to Dark Souls 3 in my Steam family account for a laugh and loved it.
You're exactly right in my opinion about the hard vs concentrated effort.
It took me a while to clap the Nameless King but it was really learning his moveset and what did/did not work against him more than anything else.
Not to piss on your bonfire, but if I wanted to fail hundreds times before getting slightly good at something, I'd pick up a hobby that I wouldn't be embarrassed to tell my gf's friends about. Maybe that will change for me someday when my gf gets better friends, but for now, I'm not worthy of the challenge. I will, however, always tip my cap to those who are.
I also recommend Water Sort. That's a video game my partner likes. You can let her know some guy on the internet said a woman in his life gave it the "cool" seal of approval.
Yes. Stick with it. Get the mod for unlimited saves, and it simply becomes a great, albeit challenging, RPG.
The game is designed to test your patience like few others, but it rewards you fairly. I beat it in 66.6 hours, and enjoyed it more and more as I progressed.
Use a guide. Plan ahead. Steal some armor. Save before any fast travel. These methods won't ruin the game, but they will help you make the most of your limited time.
Be aware that it's often an option to avoid combat, or even just turn and run if you happen to get into a fight. Having lighter armour on helps with this, as (if I recall correctly?) you run faster in lighter armour. In some situations, you can talk your way to success, rather than fight. As you progress, stealth, bows, and horseback riding become additional available tools for avoiding direct hand-to-hand combat.
Another slightly amusing option is poking a hostile, then running and luring them into a populated area with guards; then the guards do the fighting, or at least act as an aggro sink. One thing to be aware of with this tactic, though, is that sometimes unarmed civilians get attacked by the hostile, and (as far as I could tell) they suffer from perma-death. Just mentioning this, in case it bothers you from an ethics standpoint. I suspect you might lose some small quest givers this way, too.
Anyway, all told, I encourage you not to give up, but, it's true: why spend dozens of hours on a game that isn't enjoyable for you, or is only enjoyable much later? Try some of the advice in the comments here before giving up, I think.
Laughed out loud at this (and still can't tell if the first statement refers to RL or IG)
both. definitely both.
If you're up for even more Skyrim or fallout, have a look at wabbajack.org, there are plenty of good modlists to sink hundreds of hours in
I recently tried to play through this game too since I saw it on sale on steam. I had more or less the same experience as you did and I decided that I have far too many viable games to play if I still wasn't enjoying myself after 8 hours of gameplay.
Same here, I thought I would love it. I actually love realistic/grindy games if there's some goal or big pay off in the end, but the realistic setting killed it for me personally.
Like I can play a sci fi game where you start in an escape pod and grind for hours to eventually get a battleship because that's cool. But I don't have the same motivation to start as a peasant to grind for... Plate armour lol.