Honest review. 6.5/10

[devlos]

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II – A Mediocre Medieval RPG

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II isn’t a bad game, but it’s certainly not the sequel fans were hoping for. While it retains the immersive historical world and attention to detail of its predecessor, it stumbles in execution, bogged down by questionable design choices, tedious mechanics, and underdeveloped systems. Instead of refining what made the first game great, it feels like a marginal improvement at best and a frustrating step backward at worst.

The World is Beautiful, but Hollow

The world is gorgeous and full of historical detail, but interacting with it often feels restrictive. 90% of objects are static props, making basic things—like finding a usable shovel—more of a guessing game than a gameplay feature. Want to wash up? Despite the hundreds of rivers and ponds, you can only use a handful of designated wash areas. Hunting has been made more frustrating by removing blood trails, forcing players to rely on their dog instead of actual tracking skills.

Stealth and Saving: A Test of Patience

Certain stealth sections are long, unforgiving, and lack proper save points, leading to frustrating moments where one mistake means replaying lengthy sections filled with slow, tedious tasks. Saving is still tied to Saviour Schnapps, meaning you either waste resources to save or risk losing progress. Over 3 million players downloaded a mod to fix this—because the developers wouldn’t.

Combat: Simplified and Sloppy

Instead of improving combat depth, master strikes are now limited to swords and longswords, making other weapons feel secondary. There’s no hit registration unless you have a targeting reticle on the enemy, and shooting an opponent in the leg does nothing unless you have a perk for it. Fighting multiple enemies? The best strategy is to abuse AI pathfinding, forcing them into a "conga line" so you can fight one at a time. The developers didn’t fix combat balancing; they just gave you a dog to compensate.

Tedious Mechanics That Waste Your Time

The game forces players to engage with certain mechanics but refuses to make them more convenient. Auto-brewing potions was removed, meaning you have to manually go through the tedious brewing process every single time—even after learning the recipe. Shop hours and restricted areas are vague, leading to players wandering around aimlessly or getting arrested without warning. Simple quality-of-life features that could have made the experience smoother are completely absent.

Guards and AI: A Missed Opportunity

Guards seem more like background decorations than actual protectors. You can be mauled by wolves in the middle of town, and they won’t react. If you commit a crime, however, every guard instantly knows, as if they telepathically communicate across the entire city. NPC pathfinding and AI behavior often bug out, making stealth objectives frustrating and inconsistent.

Final Verdict: 6.5/10 – A Marginal Improvement at Best

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II has its strengths—a visually stunning world, great motion capture, and immersive historical detail—but it falls short where it matters. Many of its mechanics feel half-baked, restrictive, or outright frustrating, making progression feel like a chore rather than an adventure.

[fvincentj]

Originally posted by devlos:

The World is Fake, and So is Your Freedom

Need to wash yourself? Too bad—you can’t just use the hundreds of rivers and ponds around you. Instead, you have to hunt down one of a few specific washing spots like a medieval peasant on a scavenger hunt. Want to pick up a useful item? Good luck, because 90% of the objects in the world are static props. Need a shovel? Only a couple exist in the entire game, and good luck finding one when you actually need it.

I think this is the most freedom you can get in a game tbh...you can choose not to do certain things (like washing), but obviously that will have certain consequences but can open other paths, like npc's telling you to clean up. Same for items, but I think it's pretty thought out - like of course you won't find a shovel anywhere BUT you might probably find one where people dig, like in a cemetery or a farm where they bury animal poo.

Originally posted by devlos:

Stealth and Saving: Designed to Make You Suffer

The game throws in forced stealth sections that drag on for hours with zero saves. And just to make sure you suffer even more, it takes away your saviour schnapps, so one mistake means redoing an eternity of mundane tasks. This isn't difficulty—it’s pure, unfiltered time-wasting. No wonder over 3 million players downloaded a mod just to add a basic save system.

Agree - stealth and saves are annoying in the game, but I kinda got used to this one from playing KCD1, elden ring, or black myth wukong. But i think they did improve it from the first one (ex. auto-saving on certain quests/activities).

Originally posted by devlos:

Guards? More Like Background Decorations

You’d think guards would protect you, right? Nope. You can be mauled by wolves right in front of them, and they’ll just stand there like statues. The AI in this game is so bad it’s actively hilarious—but only until you realize it ruins any immersion the game pretends to have.

While I haven't encountered this unfortunate event where guards just stare at you while you die trying to fend off wolves, and true that it might ruin some immersion - I think the game has one of the best AI's in recent games...I mean, they react and remember things you do or don't do; like if they notice their door was opened when they got out and closed it, they will try and look and see if anything was stolen. If you wear clothes differently, ex like a knight vs muddy clothes, they say different things to you.

Originally posted by devlos:

Final Verdict: 6.5/10 – Painfully Unfinished, Comically underdeveloped
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is not immersive, not realistic, and not fun. It’s a buggy, poorly designed slog that forces you to cheese its broken systems just to play properly.

I wonder how DA:V or Starfield would score like...considering they come from 'AAA' established studios. While I don't think this game is considered from an 'AAA' studio yet, it feels and looks way better, and plays even better than most mainstream game studios.

[Rayn]

Originally posted by BingusDingus:

The first one is legitimate criticism, all the rest however is just you not being good at the game and bugs.

As someone who is good and literally had to mod more difficulty into the first game even in hardcore mode. This game's combat has less depth than the first game. Not to say the first game's combat had a lot of depth anyways

[F A T B $ $ $ R T D]

dont forget, you cant even enter a SINGLE FKN CHURCH

[theo]

Originally posted by Rayn:

Originally posted by BingusDingus:

The first one is legitimate criticism, all the rest however is just you not being good at the game and bugs.

As someone who is good and literally had to mod more difficulty into the first game even in hardcore mode. This game's combat has less depth than the first game

Yeah but this is not what OP complains about

[Cassidy0z]

Oh I can't wait for the people who back steam reviews to now claim steam reviews are all bad and fake.

[Frank]

any way to not have the dog < keep it at home > like in first game , i never dd like that dog or want to use it

[Rayn]

Originally posted by theo:

Originally posted by Rayn:

As someone who is good and literally had to mod more difficulty into the first game even in hardcore mode. This game's combat has less depth than the first game

Yeah but this is not what OP complains about

I suppose. I didn't really see much in his comment that would equate to a skill issue though

[Rayn]

Originally posted by Frank:

any way to not have the dog < keep it at home > like in first game , i never dd like that dog or want to use it

Yes. In both major zones of the game he will hang out at a designated spot when you send him away.

[Ranbato]

Good to see people pointing out this is buggy early access at AAA pricing.

[Metro Gnome Holding Metronome]

Originally posted by Ranbato:

Good to see people pointing out this is buggy early access at AAA pricing.

It's overall strictly worse than the first game on top of being a buggy mess.

[lordlethal28]

Hmmm... I wonder where I might get a shovel from? Oh, i know the only merchant, in the first town would seem like a logical place to start.

[Kero]

Seems that stupidity scaped from X to land on steam, audentes fortuna iuvat.

[devlos]

Originally posted by lordlethal28:

Hmmm... I wonder where I might get a shovel from? Oh, i know the only merchant, in the first town would seem like a logical place to start.

That was never the point , but instead the amount of shovels sprinkled around the world that are uninteractable decorations like so many items that sometimes actually can be interacted with.

[theo]

There aren't any shovels that are uninteractable decorations. Only seen some hoes that I confused with shovels from a distance.
If you can't tell them apart it's even deeper than a skill issue

[Metro Gnome Holding Metronome]

Originally posted by theo:

There aren't any shovels that are uninteractable decorations. Only seen some hoes that I confused with shovels from a distance.
If you can't tell them apart it's even deeper than a skill issue

That's genuinely just factually incorrect.