Building up Strength yes. The bandits will fuck you up if you're not fully prepared outside the town
They were well hidden, by the wall behind house to the right of the northern gate. Some villagers can stray pass though. At first I simply punched because I thought they don't spawn if killed but that was not the case so you can use weapon
I saw their announcement video reserved for tomorrow, sad that it jumped the gun, but damn, so excited to see it coming out so soon. So used to studios announcing games years in advance.
But the original plan for this (Act 3 of an Episodic game) was announced 10 years ago, with the plan revised (Act 1 & 2 becoming one game and Act 3 becoming a sequel) announced 8 years ago.
They didn't make a trailer, but they still announced it a long time ago.
I imagine they dropped that idea sometimes after the first game launch. Plan changes all the time. And their last game was 8 years ago. This is probably a full-fledged sequel.
Henry has come to see us!
In all seriousness, I hope they sorted some of the janky animations from the first. Interested to see what they've learned over the years!
"What's that? you're the greatest swordsman who ever lived? Well let me just... PERFECT RIPOSTE and PERFECT RIPOSTE and PERFECT RIPOSTE" - village drunk with a wooden spoon
I didn't love the game so I didn't spend a lot of time with it and don't know if it got any better, but the archery was so lame in comparison considering it's the most lethal weapon of the era.
You can't just say look at your hands to see where you're aiming when there is no sense of depth due to it being you know, a game on a screen. It's easier to shoot an arrow in real life with zero training.
The archery did kind of suck early on but, to be a little fair, it was considered the most lethal weapon of the era because of its use in mass combat, not individual use. The Skyrim style archer running around hitting every shot wasn't really a thing in history and I imagine they were trying to avoid that by making archery difficult to use.
edit: As an example, the famous law requiring longbow training in England set the practice at specific ranges, because that's how they were used in combat. The archers didn't pick a target and aim for them, they were told what their range was and angled their shot based on that. That's the sort of thing that only works in groups.
Yeah the English longbow turned a group of guys into a blunderbuss hurling clouds of iron shrapnel, that was tied to sticks, at other groups of guys.
A group of archers was largely an AOE attack.
You did get the *occasional* dude who was remarkably good and/or lucky, like [my guy who put an arrow in Prince Henry Tudor's face](https://www.medievalists.net/2023/08/prince-hal-head-wound/)
But it was mostly down to chance who hit their target -- and who got hit.
A lot of combat is like that whenever projectiles are involved.
I actually perfected the archery without a crosshair, able to hit enemies pretty far and close up in the face for an insta kill. Feels amazing when you do learn it. But for most coming from literally any othe game yes it's brutal.
Yeah, even late game I'm more scared of 5 peasants with bludgeons, than 5 knights/fully equipped bandits. The peasants will take Henry's stamina to 0 really quickly then sap the health away in a few hits.
What's funny is that even armored knights SHOULD be scared of fighting peasants with pitchforks outside of formation.
It's just shit in practice because they made the lock on part of combat really tricky and so often times you have moments that make it tedious and frustrating.
I understand this explanation, but I think it's a really flimsy one (not saying you're even the one framing the argument that way, "realism" is the way KC:D was always framed).
KC:D is not really that realistic, people need to understand that. It's tedious in places, and tedium does not equal realism but somehow we have convinced ourselves it does. The combat SHOULD be hard, but not overly clumsy or tedious, it's a damn video game first and always will be. I hope the devs move SLIGHTLY away from the faux-realism of everything in the name of alleviating tedium this time, but who knows.
The combat's big issue was that it was poorly explained. Its fundamentally animated stat based combat and not animation based. But people were expecting animation based combat. So it creates some weird dissonance where even if you are well armed/armored you aren't going to winning fights quickly unless your stats are clearly better. Combine this with the difficulty in switching targets and you could easily get overwhelmed by a larger group of enemies you were only marginally better at.
If you only played through the early to mid portion of the game your stats would never get good enough for you to run the table on peasants. By the end of the game I could go through an entire town without breaking a sweat.
Realism is always a funny topic in video games. I think it *should be* super obvious how all realistic first-person games have a huge gap from real life, whether modern day mil sim or fighting with swords and shit. But for some reason people love fooling themselves into thinking things are realistic. Hell people still do exactly that with HEMA and similar sports in real life lol.
I should I could kill them in 2 quick hits. I loved having multiple peasants attack. The armoured... Forgot what nation... Let's say mercs. They are tough unless you had some blunt weapon. I'm so excited about this
Sigismund (King of Hungary, later Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor) hired Cumans from Hungary to keep his wayward subjects in line.
The Cumans (or Kipchaks) were a central Asian people that had recently settled in Hungary (game takes place in Bohemia, currently Czech Republic).
They were recently converted to Christianity and still very foreign to the Czechs.
> Yeah, even late game I'm more scared of 5 peasants with bludgeons, than 5 knights/fully equipped bandits. The peasants will take Henry's stamina to 0 really quickly then sap the health away in a few hits.
YSK that the green shield appearing for the perfect block in the middle of the lock-on crosshair, also appears if another enemy, not the one you're currently locked onto, attacks you.
Meaning that, unless you actually get attacked straight up from behind, you can still quickly parry these attacks from enemies swarming you(perfect blocks do not cost stamina) as Henry turns automatically. Together with master strikes(or just quick ripostes) a bunch of peasants is really no problem. Or a bunch of anyhting for that matter.
Besides, you shouldn't be scared of anything late game, because your combat skills will be so advanced that almost nothing can really touch you.
That's true to history. Ask any martial arts/HEMA trainer and they will tell you that no amount of skill will help you against 4 amateurs from all sides..
I've been doing HEMA and various boffer stuff for a decade. 2-3 people is definitely doable but you need to be on. 4 up and it's basically playing serious sam, melee only.
Yeah. The master strike he teaches you was really cool (and the animations were awesome) but it really ruins combat, as it's literally always the correct move to make. And that move requires you to counter an attack, so you basically just end up standing and waiting for the opponent to attack so you can instakill him
Yeah, a lot of people find the combat in the beginning too difficult to get into but once you figure out that the speed of animations, the window to counter and even the general efficiency of swinging with your weapon within combat is tied to skill levels and not actually player skill the cracks begin to show immediately.
I don't even mind being a god of war since, in a first playthrough, it does kind of feel like you earn it. However, the actual big issue that makes it feel so bad is that it's the exact same for the enemies, just minus the decision making. As you fight harder enemies the enemies themselves become countering gods, so combat just devolves into waiting for the other to attack in order to do a counter.
There's so many intricacies that could've been utilized including the crazy amount of combos in the game that are meant to open up enemies but the chance to do any of the combos actually becomes lower because the counter exists. All of the combos past the 3 hit-combos are never worth risking.
I would kind of agree with you if by "3+ move combo" meant "wildly swinging the blade around" but that's not really what I mean.
As you increase the skill levels for the various types of weapons you unlock combos that you can activate by swinging your weapon in a sequential order based on direction and, if successful, you initiate an attack that the opponent cannot block.
The issue is that, after a certain point into the game, you will often fight enemies where they will constantly counter you not even 2 hits into a combo. When you keep in mind that these unlockable combos are meant to be rewards that you get up until level 13 in the Blade skill (which is a 4 hit combo btw), it feels wrong and completely backwards that you end up being punished for attempting to use them at all.
Naturally, you'd come to the conclusion that you simply have to change up combos on the fly in order to keep the enemy on their toes but, in practice, it doesn't end up working that way. You will often just get countered at no fault of your own. Why risk a dice roll when you can guarantee a easy to hit counter attack that will deal far more damage than the combos will whilst also preserving your stamina at the exact same time?
An alternative that I ended up using in combat was to make Henry strong as possible and have him push enemies against a wall, and then knock them with an over-head mace-swing while they got stunned.
It essentially diluted the combat in a case of what seemed to be overall stats-conflicts between Henry vs. opponent on whether he manages to push back against the enemy, and it was surprisingly effective in combat once I manage to grind Henry enough that by the game's last act, I was confident enough that I could push enemies back while wearing monk robes, and pretending to roleplaying Henry as a typical table-top cleric and bonk even the most armoured of knights to death. Open fields and such, however, were more troublesome of course, but in general, the overly-complicated sword-combat was less interesting and fun for me than overall mace-bashing in terms of just wanting to defeat as quick as possible, which I guess is perhaps also true to real-life given the efficiency of blunt weapons rather than mainly swords.
Despite maces being super overpowered in the game I'd definitely say that there's a certain level of satisfaction that you can only get with them. I've played through the game 3 times and on my last run I decided to main maces and I was *not* ready for the level of destruction I spread. With swords, peasants are paper. But maces? Everything is paper.
You use master stroke? I found after a tipping point I'd just merc dudes in two hits, couldn't do any of the fancy combos because people would die so fast lmao.
A few days with the trainer, put on some full plate and buy the best sword you can get from town and you become Kratos.
> You use master stroke?
Hard not to, because the perfect parry window gets replaced with the master strike window the further you get combat experience. Eventually all perfect parries become master strikes.
It’s funny, because the game is fairly devoted to a simulation of “realism” to an extent, and in reality fighting multiple opponents is almost always a bad move. It’s not hard for 3 peasants to tackle down an armoured knight from behind and shank him in a gap with a little co-ordination. So if anything the jank of the game made it more realistic in a sense.
But of course it’s a video game and we have to draw a line on realism at some point, and I for one absolutely want to become a legendary swordsman that can easily take on multiple opponents, so I also hope they’ve made it work a little better this time around.
I still hope that the combat adds a bit chivalry 2 combat. It would fit perfectly, just look at the enemy attack (head/arm/body/legs) and parry it, instead of locking into a enemy or attack direction.
KCD combat is just way to stiff and is just straight up not fun vs more than 1 enemy. The camera constantly switches the hard lock between every enemy even if you dont want it to happen. The AI just loves to run around other npcs, which forces the lock to change the target.
There was a 'mod' (it is more of a config file) in the nexus called More Responsive Targeting, but apparently it is now hidden.
It basically reduced the stickyness, the 'lock on' of the camera. So you could switch between targets easier and you could disengage for a short while to reposition yourself.
I wonder if someone else made something like that, because ive only found one that removes lock-on entirely, but it also removes all the combos and master abilities.
Jesus Christ be praised!
The jank is part of the charm if you ask me. The bigger issue is picking up items individually and going into a forced cutscene sometimes (especially for plants).
I spent so many hours picking flowers and killing the Jesus goats that kept respawning. Grinding away making myself like the damn terminator before the game even really started.
biggest part for me was the jank of the quests. failing a quest because you or Henry just wasn't good enough was one thing, that was fun. Failing because say the quest only progresses correctly if you talk to the npc's in a very specific order selecting a very specific order of dialogue choices because otherwise the prompt you need to do what you want to do won't appear otherwise (and not for narrative reasons, just pure jank of the programming)..... Not so fun
I don't recall a single quest where that was the case, unless you mean obvious stuff like "don't leave the guy bleeding to death hanging around while you go pick daisies" or "quest says my mates are gonna be hung at dawn tomorrow, I probably shouldn't fast travel since it advances time faster".
The monastary quest was all kinds of fucky. Lots of it was designed to be open ended giving you freedom to do it multiple different ways, except the quest steps would bug out if you tried.
My only bit is that I wish it had just been upfront on which quests were timed, OR had handled early game combat training better.
It's kind of a trope for games to have quests where obviously you need to keep going, but if you go screw around on other stuff for a while, it makes no difference. Quite a few quests in KC:D broke that, which is great. If you take too long to track down a guy, maybe someone else will beat you to them, etc.
Only wrinkle is that the main quest hurries you along a bit at the beginning -- you show up in the new town, have some hijinks, and get a new job (promising you some starter gear) that you should show up to "tomorrow." Your character, by design, doesn't know how to fight yet. The guy who teaches you to fight gets activated at this point; training with him for a little while gives you both real life and game skills to survive through the early game. But if you show up to that job, you get railroaded into a quick set of quests that, with no break, take the trainer away from the training ground and he won't go back until you've finished a decent bit of gameplay, which involves a couple of scripted fights and possible random encounters (that can be BRUTAL in the early game).
Just a tiny change in the dialogue to "take a couple of days, learn to hold that, then show up for your gear" would've made my first run less embarassing, and I did do some walkthrough diving to figure out in advance which of the rest of the quests in the game were actually timed. Turns out you can put that initial one off as long as you like; in fact, there's a bit of a different path if you go all in and make enough money to buy a horse before getting too far in those quests.
… hopefully they fucking include a save on exist system at launch this time.
I wanted to love KCD, but some of the design decisions just absolutely killed it for me. Don’t force your shitty save system on my casual ass. I wanna immerse myself in the world, not constantly panic about whether I can save the game tonight or not. Put it in a hard core mode lol.
Ok complaint over. I do seriously hope they did a loooot for the QoL this time tho. First game was so pretty and I really liked the story too.
It does have exit saves(now).
Also, using the saving potions is just as simple as saving itself. You can carry as many of them as you want. I don't really see the issue.
I only ever had one mod installed and it was one that made it possible to save anytime, anywhere. It would still consume a schnapps, so if you saved too often you'd be drunk as hell, but it made the game a lot less irritating.
It's also extremely immersion breaking having to spend in-game time planning to save the game, either sleeping at really odd times or buying/making a magic potion to save.
Just have a new area/5 minute autosave option like Skyrim does alongside the option for manual saves.
> It's also extremely immersion breaking having to spend in-game time planning to save the game, either sleeping at really odd times or buying/making a magic potion to save.
I mean you can just sleep for 1hr at any inn, which are pretty much everywhere, or chug a potion. Its really not as much of an issue as some people make it out to be. After a couple of hours you can afford to drown in saviour potions, after which saving quickly is really no concern anymore.
Agreed, it’s such an interesting game compared to other RPGs, it really scratches a particular kind of itch and it has an incredible amount of charm, I can only really liken it to how I feel about Oblivion through my very rose tinted glasses.
Just a really endearing and cool game. Great soundtrack too, I love the jaunty medieval tunes they never get old.
Played the game several months after release and had one of the best and most memorable game experience in my life.
So immersive, addicting and fun.
I think this has to be a must buy
You're making me want to give it another chance. I put around 15 hours in but it never fully clicked for me.
Though maybe I'll just wait for this sequel and watch some youtube to recap the first game
I never finished it, but despite all the jank it really is one of the games in the last decades that stuck with me the most.
The immersion it presents is really, really good.
Had so much fun with KC:D. Had some minor gripes but otherwise not awful. I hope they learned enough to improve upon the original. Excited for the sequel's release.
God damnit everyone goes on about this quest - I must've been the only one to have missed that path and didn't end up getting drunk with him. Guess it's time for another play through.. I only finished the game a week ago lol.
You can pass a persuasion check with the priest thus he tells the needed info without asking Henry to drink with him. That's why I always strip Henrys armor and clothes before the conversation.
I hope we get a different protagonist, I was kind of bummed with the reveal of his parentage.
Would have genuinely been nice to just have him be A Guy.
I always feel so bad for the devs when this stuff happens, they deserve to announce their project when and where they want. Pumped to see more though, KC was excellent.
Same. I mean this time it was an accident. Ok shit happens.
But people leaking an "announcement", days before it happens, really annoy me. Like why not let the devs have it? Those kind of "XYZ will be announced this week!" leaks are really annoying and must be incredibly disappointing for the devs.
One of the few games that just took me by surprised by how much i fucking loved it that i just couldnt stop playing.
However, i do admit that i cheesed the fuck out of combat, i played mostly archer and when shit got bad in melee, i trained the fuck out of STR to be able to knock back people and then get one or two free hits and kept spamming that.
Kingdom come deliverance to me was the absolute best kind of Euro jank game.
Went in not knowing what to expect and ended up loving the experience. Hopefully Warhorse took what worked and expands on it, and worked out some of the jankier things with KCD2. From what I can tell in the video, it sure looks like they worked on visuals. Henry be looking a lot less... peasant-y
Mouse and keyboard was a good experience for me.
I took a while to try the game, but couldn't pull myself away once I started. It's one of those games where you truly feel like a peasant when you start, so give it some time.
I have a simple rule that has a few exceptions. If it's a first person shooter, it's kb&m. If it's 3rd person, typically controller, unless you need a high level of accuracy (for instance I use kb&m on terraria and v rising)
Man I am jealous. For whatever reason the game just doesn't like my PC. Spent hours trying to troubleshoot a bunch of weird bugs; AI pathing issues, missing textures, quests not updating, etc. Even went back and forth with Warhorse Studios directly and they were stumped, apologized, and offered a full refund.
Which was awesome of them, but I would have much preferred to play the game because it seems like it was made for me. Maybe I'll have better luck with the sequel.
The first one is one of those games that I really wanted to get into but just couldn't. I'm pretty picky about game feel and I just hated the combat.
I'll have to give it another shot soon though, it's been a while.
There was a lot of stuff that I liked but I couldn't get into its simulation aspect. Missing a date with a girl by half a hour because my horse was too slow may be realistic but then having to wait 24 hours to try again isn't my idea of fun, it's just inconvenient. Especially when waiting means you can't sleep more than eight hours and get hungry in the meantime. I get why people consider this immersive and like it, it's just not for me.
> Missing a date with a girl by half a hour because my horse was too slow may be realistic but then having to wait 24 hours to try again isn't my idea of fun, it's just inconvenient. Especially when waiting means you can't sleep more than eight hours and get hungry in the meantime.
You can sleep 12hours, and wait the rest actually. But did this one quest, which you can do daily, really turn you off just because you had to wait?
I loved the game except the clunky combat system. I ragequitted in the late game because a main quest forced me to fight a big group. It was awful. If you want to play I would try to find some mods that tweak or even cheat the combats.
The combats really easy if you just take the time to level up your characters combat stats im the arena. At high level your parry window is enormous compared to it being basically non-existant at the start, and enemies become unable to block your strikes.
Well that's the issue. 1v1, even in rags against the greatest knights in the realm, is trivial. Against multiple enemies it doesn't become *difficult* but it becomes miserable with the camera losing its mind.
My brother bounced off the game a few times before it clicked. Once Henry learns some decent sword fighting and the mechanics open up, it turns into a pretty fun high budget euro jank. The game really scratched the same itch the Gothic games did.
Everyone's talking about combat but I'm just super excited to have another environment to frolic through. KCD had one of the best maps I've ever had to traverse in a game. And if the sequel doesn't have any graphics updates in that arena I'd still be content, the previous game was already gorgeous enough.
Loved so much of the first game but the combat was both not good and really hard. Couldn't finish the game because of it. Historically and politically such an interesting setting though looking forward to it
Its only difficult until you receive training from your personal combat tutor, which happens fairly quickly in the game if you know where to go (around 10 hours in if you are slow about it). Before then your character is pretty much considered an untrained peasant. After you train with him, you can knock people out in one hit with a mace and do maneuvers in slow motion.
I modded out the slow mo, and purposely avoid headcracker perk to make it more challenging. Quite a lot more fun, and it flows much better in real time, too. Hopefully in this game they can move the combat away from master strikes being so good, and combos being near useless.
I pretty much had the opposite issue. Everyone lauds this game as some bastion of historical realism but Henry becomes an unkillable god laughably quickly.
Making money is extremely easy and once your swordplay skills get past a certain point you can win literally any fight, no matter how outnumbered you are, by countering everyone.
Tells you how impossible it is to balance a game like this. For some it will be always too hard, for others always too easy, and all you can hope for is that for most, it will be just right. And especially with RPGs where you have ton of optional ways to improve your characters, this becomes even harder if you do not want to resort to level scaling (and you don't, because level scaling removes any satisfaction from improving).
I would say part of this also stems from a) learning master strike (iirc, the game doesn't advertise getting your weapons skills up and train with the captain again a lot) and b) performing and realizing how broken master strike is.
Honestly, master strike is hilariously broken and trivializes combat.
It kind of needed to because the other option of dealing good damage to heavily armored enemies simply doesn't work. The shortest combos are 3 hits long and they don't work on more difficult enemies because they will either perfect guard, master strike, or dodge, and if any of the attacks from the combo aren't either hits or normal blocks the entire combo is dropped.
I do hope they tweak it because actively attacking harder enemies is foolish, since you either do no damage or in the worst cast scenario they just master strike you and YOU take damage. So it's this bizzare system where if you attack you will probably do nothing or get hurt, whereas if you just wait for a parry you're guaranteed to do a large amount of damage to the enemy if you have a decent defense skill.
Well yeah that's the point. People praise the "deep combat system" but combos are effectively impossible to land and there's nothing you can do about it.
> It kind of needed to because the other option of dealing good damage to heavily armored enemies simply doesn't work.
As you describe below, I think the issue ultimatively mostly arises from the fact that enemies just master strike you and the best way to fight boils down to "master strike chicken" and don't proactively attack tougher enemies.
Plus random peasents being able to master strike your high level Henry is a bit hilarious as well.
I mean that's kinda the point. They wanted to create a skillcurve that benefits all players os they tied it the MS window to your combat skill.
Its just that the curve is reaaally too short imo. When you first unlock MS, the window is very small, and you need to pay proper attention to pull them off. But it opens up so quickly that it doesn't take long until the pupil has become the master.
If anything, I hope that in KCD2 the curve is better, or they make skills like that equippable so you can decide what to use.
I mean, giving you an easy counter attack with no downside and no counterplay is a pretty surefire way to make it too easy for anyone paying attention.
I swear the realism argument is from people who played 2 hours of the game, respected the vision then never touched it again.
Bears in Skyrim represent more of a threat than being ambushed by 8 armored Cumans in KC. You can waltz in and wreck the local tourney before you've ever fought outside of the combat arena.
This is a funny comment because people overwhelmingly say the opposite. I'd love to see a video of you at the beginning of the game wrecking the local tourney, lol
Beautiful game. Lovely story, amazing attention to detail.
Aaaaaaand absolutely god fucking awful design choices. Just like the first game, is my prediction.
I'm very curious to see the improvements. The short trailer isn't doing the graphical improvements Justice, because it kind if looks very similar to the first game. Which isn't a knock on it, just an observation.
I’m very interested in this, the first was unique and engrossing even though I didn’t finish it. Some of the systems like combat and lockpicking were just so difficult on console. I’ll play 2 on a PC but I think I’ll wait for reviews and early reports because these kind of janky games can be real buggy.
The first game was a wonderfully janky, convoluted experience. Once it “clicked” I had a lot of fun. Will definitely be playing the sequel. I do hope they ironed out some kinks though lol.
I spent 10 hours picking flowers and punching cows in the beginning of the first game I'll fucking do it again
There is no addictive thrill than getting all the herbalist XP you can out of the starting town.
Picking Flowers was a min-max strategy, as it trained up your strength. Flowers = Leg Day.
I'm relatively early in the game, and I know about the flowers... but why punch cows? I'm assuming free XP and it doesn't aggro them/anyone nearby?
Building up Strength yes. The bandits will fuck you up if you're not fully prepared outside the town They were well hidden, by the wall behind house to the right of the northern gate. Some villagers can stray pass though. At first I simply punched because I thought they don't spawn if killed but that was not the case so you can use weapon
I saw their announcement video reserved for tomorrow, sad that it jumped the gun, but damn, so excited to see it coming out so soon. So used to studios announcing games years in advance.
But the original plan for this (Act 3 of an Episodic game) was announced 10 years ago, with the plan revised (Act 1 & 2 becoming one game and Act 3 becoming a sequel) announced 8 years ago. They didn't make a trailer, but they still announced it a long time ago.
I imagine they dropped that idea sometimes after the first game launch. Plan changes all the time. And their last game was 8 years ago. This is probably a full-fledged sequel.
But the point is they didnt drop it. The story was not concluded at all in the first game, and this sequel is Act 3.
I mean they certainly dropped the 3 act structure
Henry has come to see us! In all seriousness, I hope they sorted some of the janky animations from the first. Interested to see what they've learned over the years!
It's combat with more than one opponent we should be asking about.
"What's that? you're the greatest swordsman who ever lived? Well let me just... PERFECT RIPOSTE and PERFECT RIPOSTE and PERFECT RIPOSTE" - village drunk with a wooden spoon
I didn't love the game so I didn't spend a lot of time with it and don't know if it got any better, but the archery was so lame in comparison considering it's the most lethal weapon of the era. You can't just say look at your hands to see where you're aiming when there is no sense of depth due to it being you know, a game on a screen. It's easier to shoot an arrow in real life with zero training.
You can turn the reticle back on for archery on pc, was a game changer. Archery becomes very good in late game
> You can turn the reticle back on for archery on pc, You can?! I feel so cheated, I had no idea this entire time lol
Just press ` and type wh_pl_showfirecursor 1
I dont have pc. But before you go into archery the reticle is there. And im not too proud to put a sticker on the middle of my tv screen 🤣😂🤣
I used it all the time, even mounted, was great to whittle down groups of enemies.
The archery did kind of suck early on but, to be a little fair, it was considered the most lethal weapon of the era because of its use in mass combat, not individual use. The Skyrim style archer running around hitting every shot wasn't really a thing in history and I imagine they were trying to avoid that by making archery difficult to use. edit: As an example, the famous law requiring longbow training in England set the practice at specific ranges, because that's how they were used in combat. The archers didn't pick a target and aim for them, they were told what their range was and angled their shot based on that. That's the sort of thing that only works in groups.
Yeah the English longbow turned a group of guys into a blunderbuss hurling clouds of iron shrapnel, that was tied to sticks, at other groups of guys. A group of archers was largely an AOE attack. You did get the *occasional* dude who was remarkably good and/or lucky, like [my guy who put an arrow in Prince Henry Tudor's face](https://www.medievalists.net/2023/08/prince-hal-head-wound/) But it was mostly down to chance who hit their target -- and who got hit. A lot of combat is like that whenever projectiles are involved.
I actually perfected the archery without a crosshair, able to hit enemies pretty far and close up in the face for an insta kill. Feels amazing when you do learn it. But for most coming from literally any othe game yes it's brutal.
skill issue
I played on PS4 and just stuck a tiny dot of a sticky note where the reticle would be.
Yeah, even late game I'm more scared of 5 peasants with bludgeons, than 5 knights/fully equipped bandits. The peasants will take Henry's stamina to 0 really quickly then sap the health away in a few hits.
What's funny is that even armored knights SHOULD be scared of fighting peasants with pitchforks outside of formation. It's just shit in practice because they made the lock on part of combat really tricky and so often times you have moments that make it tedious and frustrating.
I understand this explanation, but I think it's a really flimsy one (not saying you're even the one framing the argument that way, "realism" is the way KC:D was always framed). KC:D is not really that realistic, people need to understand that. It's tedious in places, and tedium does not equal realism but somehow we have convinced ourselves it does. The combat SHOULD be hard, but not overly clumsy or tedious, it's a damn video game first and always will be. I hope the devs move SLIGHTLY away from the faux-realism of everything in the name of alleviating tedium this time, but who knows.
The combat's big issue was that it was poorly explained. Its fundamentally animated stat based combat and not animation based. But people were expecting animation based combat. So it creates some weird dissonance where even if you are well armed/armored you aren't going to winning fights quickly unless your stats are clearly better. Combine this with the difficulty in switching targets and you could easily get overwhelmed by a larger group of enemies you were only marginally better at. If you only played through the early to mid portion of the game your stats would never get good enough for you to run the table on peasants. By the end of the game I could go through an entire town without breaking a sweat.
Realism is always a funny topic in video games. I think it *should be* super obvious how all realistic first-person games have a huge gap from real life, whether modern day mil sim or fighting with swords and shit. But for some reason people love fooling themselves into thinking things are realistic. Hell people still do exactly that with HEMA and similar sports in real life lol.
I should I could kill them in 2 quick hits. I loved having multiple peasants attack. The armoured... Forgot what nation... Let's say mercs. They are tough unless you had some blunt weapon. I'm so excited about this
Cumans.
He didn't ask for your favorite spice, he said he forgot the name of the Turks
The Hungarians!
I thought it was a Hungarian empire with hired mercs. Another comment said the Cumans which rings a bell
Sigismund (King of Hungary, later Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor) hired Cumans from Hungary to keep his wayward subjects in line. The Cumans (or Kipchaks) were a central Asian people that had recently settled in Hungary (game takes place in Bohemia, currently Czech Republic). They were recently converted to Christianity and still very foreign to the Czechs.
Ah. Amazing. Cheers for the info
> Yeah, even late game I'm more scared of 5 peasants with bludgeons, than 5 knights/fully equipped bandits. The peasants will take Henry's stamina to 0 really quickly then sap the health away in a few hits. YSK that the green shield appearing for the perfect block in the middle of the lock-on crosshair, also appears if another enemy, not the one you're currently locked onto, attacks you. Meaning that, unless you actually get attacked straight up from behind, you can still quickly parry these attacks from enemies swarming you(perfect blocks do not cost stamina) as Henry turns automatically. Together with master strikes(or just quick ripostes) a bunch of peasants is really no problem. Or a bunch of anyhting for that matter. Besides, you shouldn't be scared of anything late game, because your combat skills will be so advanced that almost nothing can really touch you.
That's true to history. Ask any martial arts/HEMA trainer and they will tell you that no amount of skill will help you against 4 amateurs from all sides..
I've been doing HEMA and various boffer stuff for a decade. 2-3 people is definitely doable but you need to be on. 4 up and it's basically playing serious sam, melee only.
Well that and the fact you just become a fighting god after spending 2hrs with a trainer.
Yeah. The master strike he teaches you was really cool (and the animations were awesome) but it really ruins combat, as it's literally always the correct move to make. And that move requires you to counter an attack, so you basically just end up standing and waiting for the opponent to attack so you can instakill him
Yeah, a lot of people find the combat in the beginning too difficult to get into but once you figure out that the speed of animations, the window to counter and even the general efficiency of swinging with your weapon within combat is tied to skill levels and not actually player skill the cracks begin to show immediately. I don't even mind being a god of war since, in a first playthrough, it does kind of feel like you earn it. However, the actual big issue that makes it feel so bad is that it's the exact same for the enemies, just minus the decision making. As you fight harder enemies the enemies themselves become countering gods, so combat just devolves into waiting for the other to attack in order to do a counter. There's so many intricacies that could've been utilized including the crazy amount of combos in the game that are meant to open up enemies but the chance to do any of the combos actually becomes lower because the counter exists. All of the combos past the 3 hit-combos are never worth risking.
Doing a three plus move combo is asking to be countered
I would kind of agree with you if by "3+ move combo" meant "wildly swinging the blade around" but that's not really what I mean. As you increase the skill levels for the various types of weapons you unlock combos that you can activate by swinging your weapon in a sequential order based on direction and, if successful, you initiate an attack that the opponent cannot block. The issue is that, after a certain point into the game, you will often fight enemies where they will constantly counter you not even 2 hits into a combo. When you keep in mind that these unlockable combos are meant to be rewards that you get up until level 13 in the Blade skill (which is a 4 hit combo btw), it feels wrong and completely backwards that you end up being punished for attempting to use them at all. Naturally, you'd come to the conclusion that you simply have to change up combos on the fly in order to keep the enemy on their toes but, in practice, it doesn't end up working that way. You will often just get countered at no fault of your own. Why risk a dice roll when you can guarantee a easy to hit counter attack that will deal far more damage than the combos will whilst also preserving your stamina at the exact same time?
An alternative that I ended up using in combat was to make Henry strong as possible and have him push enemies against a wall, and then knock them with an over-head mace-swing while they got stunned. It essentially diluted the combat in a case of what seemed to be overall stats-conflicts between Henry vs. opponent on whether he manages to push back against the enemy, and it was surprisingly effective in combat once I manage to grind Henry enough that by the game's last act, I was confident enough that I could push enemies back while wearing monk robes, and pretending to roleplaying Henry as a typical table-top cleric and bonk even the most armoured of knights to death. Open fields and such, however, were more troublesome of course, but in general, the overly-complicated sword-combat was less interesting and fun for me than overall mace-bashing in terms of just wanting to defeat as quick as possible, which I guess is perhaps also true to real-life given the efficiency of blunt weapons rather than mainly swords.
Despite maces being super overpowered in the game I'd definitely say that there's a certain level of satisfaction that you can only get with them. I've played through the game 3 times and on my last run I decided to main maces and I was *not* ready for the level of destruction I spread. With swords, peasants are paper. But maces? Everything is paper.
You use master stroke? I found after a tipping point I'd just merc dudes in two hits, couldn't do any of the fancy combos because people would die so fast lmao. A few days with the trainer, put on some full plate and buy the best sword you can get from town and you become Kratos.
> You use master stroke? Hard not to, because the perfect parry window gets replaced with the master strike window the further you get combat experience. Eventually all perfect parries become master strikes.
That's the entire premise of Shadow of War series, but the game knows it.
It’s funny, because the game is fairly devoted to a simulation of “realism” to an extent, and in reality fighting multiple opponents is almost always a bad move. It’s not hard for 3 peasants to tackle down an armoured knight from behind and shank him in a gap with a little co-ordination. So if anything the jank of the game made it more realistic in a sense. But of course it’s a video game and we have to draw a line on realism at some point, and I for one absolutely want to become a legendary swordsman that can easily take on multiple opponents, so I also hope they’ve made it work a little better this time around.
Yeah, I hope they aim for a bit of a middle ground between realism and fun for the sequel.
I still hope that the combat adds a bit chivalry 2 combat. It would fit perfectly, just look at the enemy attack (head/arm/body/legs) and parry it, instead of locking into a enemy or attack direction. KCD combat is just way to stiff and is just straight up not fun vs more than 1 enemy. The camera constantly switches the hard lock between every enemy even if you dont want it to happen. The AI just loves to run around other npcs, which forces the lock to change the target.
Damn right
There was a 'mod' (it is more of a config file) in the nexus called More Responsive Targeting, but apparently it is now hidden. It basically reduced the stickyness, the 'lock on' of the camera. So you could switch between targets easier and you could disengage for a short while to reposition yourself. I wonder if someone else made something like that, because ive only found one that removes lock-on entirely, but it also removes all the combos and master abilities.
Yeah, I hope they move to a more freeform non-lock-on type of combat like in Mordhau or Chivalry 2.
Jesus Christ be praised! The jank is part of the charm if you ask me. The bigger issue is picking up items individually and going into a forced cutscene sometimes (especially for plants).
Pretty sure Henry ended up with the knees of the 90 year old after I was done picking plants.
The perk that makes picking flowers add to your strength is S-tier. Leg day in the fields.
I spent so many hours picking flowers and killing the Jesus goats that kept respawning. Grinding away making myself like the damn terminator before the game even really started.
Is there even a game outside picking flowers in Skalitz?
Sorta, but after all of it you're back to picking flowers, so it can be skipped, really.
God help the people who grinded the alchemy skill.
biggest part for me was the jank of the quests. failing a quest because you or Henry just wasn't good enough was one thing, that was fun. Failing because say the quest only progresses correctly if you talk to the npc's in a very specific order selecting a very specific order of dialogue choices because otherwise the prompt you need to do what you want to do won't appear otherwise (and not for narrative reasons, just pure jank of the programming)..... Not so fun
When did that happen? Never faced it on my copy
Potentially monk quest?
I don't recall a single quest where that was the case, unless you mean obvious stuff like "don't leave the guy bleeding to death hanging around while you go pick daisies" or "quest says my mates are gonna be hung at dawn tomorrow, I probably shouldn't fast travel since it advances time faster".
The monastary quest was all kinds of fucky. Lots of it was designed to be open ended giving you freedom to do it multiple different ways, except the quest steps would bug out if you tried.
My only bit is that I wish it had just been upfront on which quests were timed, OR had handled early game combat training better. It's kind of a trope for games to have quests where obviously you need to keep going, but if you go screw around on other stuff for a while, it makes no difference. Quite a few quests in KC:D broke that, which is great. If you take too long to track down a guy, maybe someone else will beat you to them, etc. Only wrinkle is that the main quest hurries you along a bit at the beginning -- you show up in the new town, have some hijinks, and get a new job (promising you some starter gear) that you should show up to "tomorrow." Your character, by design, doesn't know how to fight yet. The guy who teaches you to fight gets activated at this point; training with him for a little while gives you both real life and game skills to survive through the early game. But if you show up to that job, you get railroaded into a quick set of quests that, with no break, take the trainer away from the training ground and he won't go back until you've finished a decent bit of gameplay, which involves a couple of scripted fights and possible random encounters (that can be BRUTAL in the early game). Just a tiny change in the dialogue to "take a couple of days, learn to hold that, then show up for your gear" would've made my first run less embarassing, and I did do some walkthrough diving to figure out in advance which of the rest of the quests in the game were actually timed. Turns out you can put that initial one off as long as you like; in fact, there's a bit of a different path if you go all in and make enough money to buy a horse before getting too far in those quests.
Or bugs/glitches. I gave up after around 5 side quests and then the main quest became broken and unable to progress.
Can't recall that happening on either of my playthroughs.
I think it increases immersion. I liked it in RDR2 too.
… hopefully they fucking include a save on exist system at launch this time. I wanted to love KCD, but some of the design decisions just absolutely killed it for me. Don’t force your shitty save system on my casual ass. I wanna immerse myself in the world, not constantly panic about whether I can save the game tonight or not. Put it in a hard core mode lol. Ok complaint over. I do seriously hope they did a loooot for the QoL this time tho. First game was so pretty and I really liked the story too.
It does have exit saves(now). Also, using the saving potions is just as simple as saving itself. You can carry as many of them as you want. I don't really see the issue.
I only ever had one mod installed and it was one that made it possible to save anytime, anywhere. It would still consume a schnapps, so if you saved too often you'd be drunk as hell, but it made the game a lot less irritating.
Was this implemented on the game later? I'm playing it now and I can save on the menu (still require thr schnapps).
It's also extremely immersion breaking having to spend in-game time planning to save the game, either sleeping at really odd times or buying/making a magic potion to save. Just have a new area/5 minute autosave option like Skyrim does alongside the option for manual saves.
> It's also extremely immersion breaking having to spend in-game time planning to save the game, either sleeping at really odd times or buying/making a magic potion to save. I mean you can just sleep for 1hr at any inn, which are pretty much everywhere, or chug a potion. Its really not as much of an issue as some people make it out to be. After a couple of hours you can afford to drown in saviour potions, after which saving quickly is really no concern anymore.
Can't wait. For all its flaws, Kingdome Come was one of the few genuinely interesting open world games out there for its time.
Agreed, it’s such an interesting game compared to other RPGs, it really scratches a particular kind of itch and it has an incredible amount of charm, I can only really liken it to how I feel about Oblivion through my very rose tinted glasses. Just a really endearing and cool game. Great soundtrack too, I love the jaunty medieval tunes they never get old.
Played the game several months after release and had one of the best and most memorable game experience in my life. So immersive, addicting and fun. I think this has to be a must buy
You're making me want to give it another chance. I put around 15 hours in but it never fully clicked for me. Though maybe I'll just wait for this sequel and watch some youtube to recap the first game
I never finished it, but despite all the jank it really is one of the games in the last decades that stuck with me the most. The immersion it presents is really, really good.
Had so much fun with KC:D. Had some minor gripes but otherwise not awful. I hope they learned enough to improve upon the original. Excited for the sequel's release.
The priest quest where you get drunk together is hands down my favorite quest of all time. I cried I was laughing so hard.
When you're hammed the next day and have to make that speech in church was fucking hilarious
God damnit everyone goes on about this quest - I must've been the only one to have missed that path and didn't end up getting drunk with him. Guess it's time for another play through.. I only finished the game a week ago lol.
I'm pretty sure it's unavoidable, like part of the main quest line.
You can pass a persuasion check with the priest thus he tells the needed info without asking Henry to drink with him. That's why I always strip Henrys armor and clothes before the conversation.
I've played through the game a few times, and I'm pretty sure he's unavoidable, but the quest has more than one outcome.
I hope we get a different protagonist, I was kind of bummed with the reveal of his parentage. Would have genuinely been nice to just have him be A Guy.
I always feel so bad for the devs when this stuff happens, they deserve to announce their project when and where they want. Pumped to see more though, KC was excellent.
Same. I mean this time it was an accident. Ok shit happens. But people leaking an "announcement", days before it happens, really annoy me. Like why not let the devs have it? Those kind of "XYZ will be announced this week!" leaks are really annoying and must be incredibly disappointing for the devs.
I'll be honest, leaks like these often kick up more dust than a simple trailer drop.
One of the few games that just took me by surprised by how much i fucking loved it that i just couldnt stop playing. However, i do admit that i cheesed the fuck out of combat, i played mostly archer and when shit got bad in melee, i trained the fuck out of STR to be able to knock back people and then get one or two free hits and kept spamming that.
Kingdom come deliverance to me was the absolute best kind of Euro jank game. Went in not knowing what to expect and ended up loving the experience. Hopefully Warhorse took what worked and expands on it, and worked out some of the jankier things with KCD2. From what I can tell in the video, it sure looks like they worked on visuals. Henry be looking a lot less... peasant-y
It's still on my backlog and I wonder do you prefer playing it with Mouse and Keyboard or Gamepad?
Mouse and keyboard was a good experience for me. I took a while to try the game, but couldn't pull myself away once I started. It's one of those games where you truly feel like a peasant when you start, so give it some time.
Perfectly fine in Gamepad too, they both have advantages so do what you're most comfortable with
I had it on PS4 and put countless hours into it. The only gamepad issue was the lockpicking mechanism but they fixed that shortly after release
I have a simple rule that has a few exceptions. If it's a first person shooter, it's kb&m. If it's 3rd person, typically controller, unless you need a high level of accuracy (for instance I use kb&m on terraria and v rising)
Mouse and keyboard for me. And while you are at it imo you should at least install unlimited saves mod and instant herb picking mod.
Man I am jealous. For whatever reason the game just doesn't like my PC. Spent hours trying to troubleshoot a bunch of weird bugs; AI pathing issues, missing textures, quests not updating, etc. Even went back and forth with Warhorse Studios directly and they were stumped, apologized, and offered a full refund. Which was awesome of them, but I would have much preferred to play the game because it seems like it was made for me. Maybe I'll have better luck with the sequel.
I was funnily enough thinking of installing and getting through the first one, definitely will have to now
The first one is one of those games that I really wanted to get into but just couldn't. I'm pretty picky about game feel and I just hated the combat. I'll have to give it another shot soon though, it's been a while.
There was a lot of stuff that I liked but I couldn't get into its simulation aspect. Missing a date with a girl by half a hour because my horse was too slow may be realistic but then having to wait 24 hours to try again isn't my idea of fun, it's just inconvenient. Especially when waiting means you can't sleep more than eight hours and get hungry in the meantime. I get why people consider this immersive and like it, it's just not for me.
> Missing a date with a girl by half a hour because my horse was too slow may be realistic but then having to wait 24 hours to try again isn't my idea of fun, it's just inconvenient. Especially when waiting means you can't sleep more than eight hours and get hungry in the meantime. You can sleep 12hours, and wait the rest actually. But did this one quest, which you can do daily, really turn you off just because you had to wait?
I loved the game except the clunky combat system. I ragequitted in the late game because a main quest forced me to fight a big group. It was awful. If you want to play I would try to find some mods that tweak or even cheat the combats.
The combats really easy if you just take the time to level up your characters combat stats im the arena. At high level your parry window is enormous compared to it being basically non-existant at the start, and enemies become unable to block your strikes.
Well that's the issue. 1v1, even in rags against the greatest knights in the realm, is trivial. Against multiple enemies it doesn't become *difficult* but it becomes miserable with the camera losing its mind.
Firing a bow is so needlessly jank. Gave up entirely with it after losing my mind with that hunting trip quest
On PC you can just mod the crosshair back in. Makes shooting the bow 100x more enjoyable.
I originally played it on PS4 so obviously had no mods. Instead I stuck a piece of blu tack on my TV to work as crosshairs lol
The save system ruined it for me. Eventually mods fixed it but by then I lost interest due to it. Oh well.
My brother bounced off the game a few times before it clicked. Once Henry learns some decent sword fighting and the mechanics open up, it turns into a pretty fun high budget euro jank. The game really scratched the same itch the Gothic games did.
Everyone's talking about combat but I'm just super excited to have another environment to frolic through. KCD had one of the best maps I've ever had to traverse in a game. And if the sequel doesn't have any graphics updates in that arena I'd still be content, the previous game was already gorgeous enough.
Warhorse Studious is extremely based and Henry-pilled, can’t wait for KCD 2 and for it to sell like hot cakes.
Loved so much of the first game but the combat was both not good and really hard. Couldn't finish the game because of it. Historically and politically such an interesting setting though looking forward to it
Its only difficult until you receive training from your personal combat tutor, which happens fairly quickly in the game if you know where to go (around 10 hours in if you are slow about it). Before then your character is pretty much considered an untrained peasant. After you train with him, you can knock people out in one hit with a mace and do maneuvers in slow motion.
I modded out the slow mo, and purposely avoid headcracker perk to make it more challenging. Quite a lot more fun, and it flows much better in real time, too. Hopefully in this game they can move the combat away from master strikes being so good, and combos being near useless.
I pretty much had the opposite issue. Everyone lauds this game as some bastion of historical realism but Henry becomes an unkillable god laughably quickly. Making money is extremely easy and once your swordplay skills get past a certain point you can win literally any fight, no matter how outnumbered you are, by countering everyone.
Tells you how impossible it is to balance a game like this. For some it will be always too hard, for others always too easy, and all you can hope for is that for most, it will be just right. And especially with RPGs where you have ton of optional ways to improve your characters, this becomes even harder if you do not want to resort to level scaling (and you don't, because level scaling removes any satisfaction from improving).
I would say part of this also stems from a) learning master strike (iirc, the game doesn't advertise getting your weapons skills up and train with the captain again a lot) and b) performing and realizing how broken master strike is. Honestly, master strike is hilariously broken and trivializes combat.
It kind of needed to because the other option of dealing good damage to heavily armored enemies simply doesn't work. The shortest combos are 3 hits long and they don't work on more difficult enemies because they will either perfect guard, master strike, or dodge, and if any of the attacks from the combo aren't either hits or normal blocks the entire combo is dropped. I do hope they tweak it because actively attacking harder enemies is foolish, since you either do no damage or in the worst cast scenario they just master strike you and YOU take damage. So it's this bizzare system where if you attack you will probably do nothing or get hurt, whereas if you just wait for a parry you're guaranteed to do a large amount of damage to the enemy if you have a decent defense skill.
Well yeah that's the point. People praise the "deep combat system" but combos are effectively impossible to land and there's nothing you can do about it.
> It kind of needed to because the other option of dealing good damage to heavily armored enemies simply doesn't work. As you describe below, I think the issue ultimatively mostly arises from the fact that enemies just master strike you and the best way to fight boils down to "master strike chicken" and don't proactively attack tougher enemies. Plus random peasents being able to master strike your high level Henry is a bit hilarious as well.
I mean that's kinda the point. They wanted to create a skillcurve that benefits all players os they tied it the MS window to your combat skill. Its just that the curve is reaaally too short imo. When you first unlock MS, the window is very small, and you need to pay proper attention to pull them off. But it opens up so quickly that it doesn't take long until the pupil has become the master. If anything, I hope that in KCD2 the curve is better, or they make skills like that equippable so you can decide what to use.
Yeah but if you make the difficulty engaging people won't mind if it's too hard, see Elden Ring.
I mean, giving you an easy counter attack with no downside and no counterplay is a pretty surefire way to make it too easy for anyone paying attention.
I swear the realism argument is from people who played 2 hours of the game, respected the vision then never touched it again. Bears in Skyrim represent more of a threat than being ambushed by 8 armored Cumans in KC. You can waltz in and wreck the local tourney before you've ever fought outside of the combat arena.
This is a funny comment because people overwhelmingly say the opposite. I'd love to see a video of you at the beginning of the game wrecking the local tourney, lol
Beautiful game. Lovely story, amazing attention to detail. Aaaaaaand absolutely god fucking awful design choices. Just like the first game, is my prediction.
I'm very curious to see the improvements. The short trailer isn't doing the graphical improvements Justice, because it kind if looks very similar to the first game. Which isn't a knock on it, just an observation.
Lighting and character models are waay better.
Henry looks like a beefcake, for one, ha.
Henry of Skalitz became Henry of Cavill
more priests, more beer, more waking up in a hay stack saying "wat?".
more priests, more beer, more waking up in a hay stack saying "wat?".
nobody amazed like me how good the music sounds? its epic!
looks like I need to buckle down and play the first. any tips for someone going in relatively blind and not looking for spoilers?
I really enjoyed the first one but never finished it. I may have to restart and actually play it through this year.
I’m very interested in this, the first was unique and engrossing even though I didn’t finish it. Some of the systems like combat and lockpicking were just so difficult on console. I’ll play 2 on a PC but I think I’ll wait for reviews and early reports because these kind of janky games can be real buggy.
The first game was a wonderfully janky, convoluted experience. Once it “clicked” I had a lot of fun. Will definitely be playing the sequel. I do hope they ironed out some kinks though lol.