Yeah, in general, the writing and most of the voice work is quite good. A couple of voice actors sound like programmer voices, but most are really quite appropriate, and the dialog, even the repetitive stuff, is appealing. And it’s so easy to just find yourself wandering around chasing rabbits or exploring for quite a while. In some ways, I can see how people might be turned off, because unless you beeline for the main quest–which it seems you definitely should not–the pacing can be pretty relaxed. I like that, as the encounters you do have can be pretty intense.
From an interview that Dan Vávra did with a czech speaking russian, that was translated from czech into russian and then from russian into english via google translate:
E.Kanakova:
All right. I want to hear your top 3 games. But not from the ones you made (laughs).
D.Vavra:
Well, let’s say, Shenmue, a Japanese game, had a great influence on me. Of the new games, this is probably Witcher 3, although it is still quite new, so it does not yet have the status of classics. But this is definitely a game that I really like. Red Dead Redemption - this game is similar to what we do, so I was very impressed. And there are many old games that can not be played anymore, because they are old, but Laser Squad, Moonstone, Ishar … almost nobody knows them now. But these are the games I really grew up on, and I love them. But now nobody plays them, because they are very old.
E.Kanakova
And now I want to hear the three worst ones.
D.Vavra
(laughs).
E.Kanakova
Just do not tell me everything, everything is bad everywhere!
D.Vavra
No, actually, I think that most of the games today, I will not name anyone, it’s impossible, but … I write a column in Czech magazine, for about 15 years, every month, is called “Jama pekel” (Czech “pit of hell” ), in which I criticize games. And unfortunately, all the time there is something to criticize. It seems to me that most of the games today are bad. Even the good ones are also bad. Most often they have bad stories, compared to films or books they are really bad. That is, a person plays a game, they like it, but they know, or at least I know, because I’m doing it, how much better it could be if there was a better written script, or if they were not afraid to experiment and not only repeat what has already been tested in practice. It seems to me that the games repeat only what has already happened, do not try to invent a something new, something to change, because large companies that have money are afraid to do something different, because they do not know, or do not want to invest in something they are not sure of. And small developers - unfortunately, it’s very fashionable to copy something else - it means that someone will make Minekraft, and everyone starts to make Meinkraft too. Someone will do ARK: Survival, and everyone does Survival. Now everyone will do PUBG. The same goes for small games for mobile. Just a lot of clans, and very few original games. Another extreme is the contrary, too original games, that is, when the experiment is already completely meaningless, they go too far, the game is too abnormal. Therefore, it seems to me that now there are very few normal games that offer unique experiences that people are interested in. And I think it is for this reason that people in such a delight when it comes out something like God of War, or our game. This is due to the fact that there are few such games, and everyone is waiting for them, but for some reason such games are done rarely. But God of War, I think it might be better if there were less action, and more other elements.
E.Kanakova
Well, every game could be better.
D.Vavra
Oh sure. We have very little action in the game, there are really few fights. It was very risky to do so. Until the last moment we said that people would eat us up for this, they would say - I play eight hours, and I have not fought with anyone yet. But this did not happen, no one actually complained about it later. But in every game everything happens differently, a person starts to play, and in the beginning there is some scene, a very emotional relationship … and then you need to kill 30 monsters. And then again deep emotions, psychology … and 40 more monsters. At the same time, it is not necessary there at all, these monsters spoil everything, this is too much. But everyone is afraid not to add it to the game, because they think that if this does not happen, people will complain that there is not enough game. And I would say that we are proof that this is not so, it is not necessary to do so. You can always add something else, which is also a game, and people like it, and people will not even notice that there are fewer murders. But almost no one does so, all are afraid. Even in Red Dead Redemption, my favorite game, there were very long action sequences that made me very tired, and most of all I liked this game in moments where there was no action, when I was doing the usual things there - grazing cows, going for walks with some farmer, where there was no need to kill anyone. At these moments, this game was for me the most interesting.
I 100% agree about most games having way too much unnecessary combat. RDR was a great example, lately for example Vampyr could use a lot less of it.
Cool, thanks for that interview translation. One of the things I also like about this game is that the designers did not feel the need to force-feed combat to you. The world is dangerous enough, and combat nasty enough, and the game doesn’t give you much in the way of a safety net; to have tons more combat would be odd, to say the least.
So after roaming around the countryside doing various missions I finally get back to Rattay after dark. Since the armorer keeps late hours at least I can drop off some of the things I looted off bandits along the way. I figure since it’s too late to do anything else in town might as well get a bath before bed. Well, apparently the baths close at 10pm so I was out of luck there also.
When I arrived in addition a couple of townspeople leaving on their way to bed I saw Zedna sitting outside the bathhouse. A moment later this guy comes out and mounts up to ride home.
By his attire I guess he was playing dice again.
I know NPCs keeping schedules isn’t something new, but like a lot of things in this game it’s done really well.
NPC schedules almost drove me up the wall yesterday lol. I was scrambling to get all the meat for the Master Huntsman quest in Talmberg (like 500 units total, from 3 different animals), and one was close to expiring, so I go to Talmberg at like 16:30 and the fucking Chamberlain was already asleep.
Same goes for random quest npcs at quarries and such that I needed to talk to and were asleep at NOON. Lazy bastards.
Oh man, the Monastery quest is one of the best I’ve seen in RPGs. I went the sneaky route and it was super rewarding.
Gameumentary did a document on Kingdom Come, here is a trailer
Agreed. Sadly, unless you a) have loads of free carrying capacity, and b) are really fast with clicking, there’s no way to loot all those lovely corpses. And afterwards, you don’t even get the time-honored right to scoop up booty. And some of that stuff is good.
There is some truth to his, but at the same time, the term “Walking simulator” has kinda been embraced and lost a lot of its pejorative meaning…I think.
There are some walking sims that were extremely successful both critically and commercially (Firewatch, Ethan Carter, Dear Esther, Gone Home…quite a few) even if there are some people who complain they lack standard gameplay.
But I think Dan’s point wasn’t that games should be more of a walking simulators, but rather that it would be cool if games offered more options and variety of interactions. If instead of fighting 50 monsters you only had to five 5, each of those would be more meaningful. Or if you could use stealth to get around them, or if they were intelligent and you could convince them to join you via dialogue…etc, all that would be gameplay too.
Basically Fallout 2 and New Vegas are still best games.
I’d love more games to scale back to less frequent and more meaningful combat. I don’t need all this cannon fodder assaulting me as soon as they catch my scent. I’m enjoying my (latest attempt at a) playthrough of The Witcher 3 but if I don’t absolutely have to fight, I just haul ass out of there. Combat is tedious.
So far, I’m actually quite impressed with the combat in KC:D. It’s quite personal and tense and hard and mostly satisfying, and it seems to have quite a bit of depth to it, and so far, just the right amount too.
My thoughts exactly.
And the depiction of ‘mass’ battles is brutal. It’s downright gritty when you see how people get clubbed to death from behind when they’re fighting multiple foes at once. It actually made me think (as in, I was taken aback when I saw the scenes unfold in front of me), which is more than I can say for most games of this type.
On a related note - feints are actually super useful, and I can’t believe I’ve been neglecting them for so long. I wish that clinch wasn’t so effective (with the right perk) because it’s easy to 1-2 shot most enemies by winning a clinch and hitting them on the head with a mace.
But the thing I love the most about this game is that even at max level and clad in top of the line armor, I still think carefully if I should take on three+ heavily armored enemies at once. They can overwhelm you really fast if you’re not careful. And then there’s hardcore mode on top for all the people who start to think that combat is too easy.
I honestly don’t know if designers were just so good at eyeballing the difficulty parameters or if this game went through a ton of iteration.
I finally found the limits of my old 970 GPU, though, in one of those mass battles. The game is very smooth otherwise, but in that fight, things got a bit janky.
Okay, I’m sold. Between this thread and the first two hours I saw on the Thoughtful Gaming youtube channel I wanna get delivered to the coming kingdom.
Can anyone speak to the state of the PS4 version? I’d prefer to play on my PS4, but on release the reviews seemed to indicate the PS4 version was… problematic. Has it been all fixed up, or does anyone know?
Thank you!
Chris Woods
Pro or base? And what are your PC specs?
I’ve been browsing the KCD subreddit these last few days and saw a number of threads where people expressed their satisfaction with performance on PS4 after the latest patch.
I’m on PC, using a modest gpu, and while I have no problem out in the wilderness the cities and some battle heavy story sections of the game can drop the fps down to a slideshow, so I imagine it’s even worse on the consoles.
And finished, after ~80 hours. There’s not much to say other that this is currently the GOTY for me. Outstanding game that once again proves that stories borne from simple human interactions often make for the most intriguing material. AAA RPG devs, take note.
If I had to point out some flaws I’d have to say that mass combat, particularly targeting and animation locks (clinches etc), could use some tweaking, and the final part of the story could use some pacing tweaks. Siege quest was the biggest offender here, after a strong sequence of great story bits it completely broke the pace and the game barely recovered at the end. Fortunately the characters were so well written that I was engaged all the way until the end.
I’ve also ran into a number of bugs, but fortunately nothing gamebreaking. The game will only get better with time and I look forward to revisiting it a couple months down the line with more dlcs and tweaks behind it.
Glad to read you liked it. 80 hours is pretty substantial. Did you play it completionist way trying to do all sidequests?
Yes, completionist. The only thing I ignored were the miller quests and some pickpocketting/stealing activities, because I found them frustrating at early levels.
edit: I also failed the heretics quest for the Vicar because I got sidetracked with other stuff and never got the chance to see any of it because it failed automatically.
I love the game, but man, I suck hard at sword fighting. Two dudes in armor or Cumans and I’m toast.