Game review: Kingdom Come Deliverance II (2025)

Posted on by The Fake History Hunter

This article was originally (partially) a thread on social media, which is why it is formatted with lots of images and short responses.
The text is about the image below that paragraph.

Game review! Time to talk about Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 (and DLCs). I got early access and a free copy, just so you know, but I can still say what I want.

Some background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_Come:_Deliverance_II
And the trailer:

Fair warning: I’ll be hunting for errors and going on about tiny little details, it’s what I do.
There will also be spoilers, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.

First the story. A bit unlikely here and there, the story is fun and keeps you invested, in part because the characters grow on you, if they hadn’t already in the first game. Dialogues are fun, the storyline is interesting and you just care about what happens. I love these lads.

You’ll easily get 50-80 hours of gameplay just playing the main storyline, but there’s so much more to do and of course there are the DLCs!
I’ll write a bit about those at the end as well.
There’s a lot of fun, but also a lot of fighting and some truly horrible experiences as well, which only makes the game better.
It makes you care about what’s happening.

BTW it all looks AMAZING but is incredibly well optimised, I was sure I would have to buy a new computer for it but it actually runs perfectly on ultra settings on my Katana 15 B13V. Only some lag when you try to wipe out Kuttenberg, not that I would of course…

Too much happens for me to write about, but in short you get ambushed, lose everything, meet lots of great people, do tons of missions, solve crimes like Cadfael, do bad things, do good things, experience sieges and if you play your cards right there’s plenty of romance too!

ou get to be guest at a wedding which is a lot of fun:

Enjoy a party in a castle:

In my review of kcd1 I mentioned that I wish I could experience a castle siege from within a castle as well as outside one and I got my wish, in KCD 2 you get to experience several sieges and not just action packed one but also one that just involves waiting & hunger. Loved it.

But you also got to be a servant at a meeting, which involves filling glasses while fancy men chat.

Which is a lot less exciting but still fun, especially when they brought up my favourite subject:

In my previous review I also complained about a castle that was damaged magically being back to normal again soon after, not this time, damaged castles remain castles and it’s quite eerie to walk around the now quiet places of previous battles. Excellent!

Didn’t expect the… 😉

Anyway, you have a lot of adventures and at the end the developers found the only way that might actually make you think about your actions: your dead parents talk to you and point out the error of your ways while also admiring you for the things you did right.

And yes, I know, I’ve always been cold as ice and hard as stone, but the last few years I’ve suddenly become an emotional old fool and this ending actually got to me. I did a little cry. But luckily my parents were mostly proud & understanding of what I did.

Anyway, now we get to what you’re really here for… did I spot any inaccuracies? Yes. BUT before I go on, I’ll say that this is one of the most authentic medieval games I’ve ever played and is much more accurate than even some big budget films. Hats off & compliments, its super!

It wasn’t called the Black Death till centuries later, but it’s true that bathhouses had nothing to do with it:

Some of the wells don’t go down very deep or not at all. I told you I was going to be annoying!

We did a long research thread together a while back about when clothing hanging from lines became a thing and we couldn’t find any evidence of it existing till the 18th century, you can read that here;

When did we start hanging laundry across streets and using clothes pegs?

In that same article we also tried to figure out when clothes pegs first became a thing. You’d expect them to have been around since for ever, but we found no evidence for them existing till centuries after the middle ages.

The hanging pole that you can also find in the game is a lot more authentic, we have examples of this being a thing!

I also loved seeing this, laundry drying & whitening in the sun. I’ve done this, linen smelling of grass is delicious

You’re really going to hate me for this next one because you may find it impossible not to check every single fireplace you see after I tell you this… but… quite a few of them are not connected to a proper chimney! I mentioned it in the KCD1 review but it happened again.

Without a connection to the fireplace people would not be able to live here very long 😉

In some rooms there isn’t even a chimney or hole for the smoke to escape. Life here would be unbearable.

I LOVE the beds in the game, there are many different ones and some are truly gorgeous. People still don’t sleep under blankets but I can understand why, it sounds like it would be a hellish job to put in the game.

Just look at these lovely beds though:

The very simple beds also got an upgrade, the ones in KCD1 were really awful, just some framed straw, not even enough to get some good sleep on. I should know, I’ve slept on straw.
First a picture of the old version, then one of the KCD2 version, much better:

Some people still sleep on benches, which I think makes no sense, that does not work, maybe one night, but it would soon drive you mad.
I know people did sleep on benches, but the ones I’ve seen in illustrations were bigger, wider benches with often backboards, etc.
I LOVED seeing these truckle/trundle beds and wish they had used these or rolled out mats in stead of benches.

Another thing I spotted is something we discussed before as well; when did people start using chopping blocks for firewood? Again something you just assume has always existed but did it?

We had a long discussion about it on social media and you can read the article I wrote with my conclusions here:
When did people start using a chopping block for firewood?

Unfortunately we still have a lot of torches being used as permanent fixed lighting, which would be odd as they rarely burn for longer than 40-50 minutes, so someone would have to go around and replacing them all the time.
Also a bit peculiar to have them burning during the day…
More about that here:
https://fakehistoryhunter.net/2019/09/10/medieval-myths-bingo/#torchesallovertheplace

There are some much nicer lights as well though! I especially liked the oil lamp chandelier, beeswax candles cost a fortune back then, but we can just say that the ones in the game are tallow ones to make it a bit more realistic to see them being used by not so rich people.

I also think the streets are often too muddy & filthy. Luckily it rains a lot so they can sort of get away with it but I just don’t like seeing them depicted as such.
It’s also a bit odd for such an important and rich city with lots of heavy traffic.

Cities cared a lot about their reputation and what visitors thought of the place but this city has two markets, an industry and would have lots of heavy carts driving around, it would make dirt roads impossible to use.
Maybe the researchers found out something specific about Kuttenberg that made this city different, but I can’t help but doubt the streets were the state they’re in in the game.
I wish there was more pavement, stone or wood like there are in some parts of the city and that’s very authentic:

Very nice to see people cleaning the streets though, but they should clean harder 😉 Also there’s a lot of horse manure but… very few horses! There wouldn’t be many because horses were expensive!

I also found a few things in the codex I am not sure about. I’ve written about this a lot, yes sure, some cities, some neighbourhoods, had waste problems now and then but this was rarely a permanent issue, medieval people had noses & thought bad smells could kill, literally.

This I disagree with, Europe was no more or less hygienic than most of the world back then. The green underlined bits I agree with. No, they didn’t throw human waste out of windows into the gutters, there were laws against that. Cholera didn’t reach Europe till 19th century…

You can read more about that here:

Medieval people had relatively easy access to clean water and drank lots of it. Ale was a cheap and tasty way to consume grain and provide drinkers with nutrients, carbs and proteins. But they didn’t just drink it as a replacement for dangerous water.
More about that here:

Okay, that’s most of my complaining out of the way, please remember that this is nothing compared to all the errors we see in most games, films, tv, shows, etc. This is still one of the most accurate depictions of medieval life I have ever seen! A world created with love, a world that makes you want to snack:

So now we move on to all the cool things I saw!
Oh the bathing… my friends, there is so much glorious bathing in the game! Baths everywhere!! In castles, cities, villages, bathhouses and even army encampments. You even get to co-manage a bathhouse! I was delighted!
I’m obsessed with medieval hygiene and debunking myths about that subject, so I was delighted to see it play such a big and important role in this game;

Exploring the bathhouses was such a delight, I wish we still had medieval bathhouses like these everywhere;

But I must say I was a little disappointed that I saw no evidence of any running water being piped into these bath places, no big ovens, no steam rooms, no heating stones, etc. There were drains, but I wish we could see where the hot water came from. One cauldron wouldn’t have been enough.

It was also a shame to see very bathhouse depicted as a brothel. Many didn’t even allow prostitutes to use them, these bathhouses were used by families with kids, you’d meet your neighbours there. They weren’t the naughty fun places people often think they were.
More about that here:

Having said that, I still had a lot of totally clean & innocent fun there in the game, honest.

I don’t remember what happened here…

Well we did have a lot to drink…

Another detail I loved seeing everywhere were these washstands, both fancy & common, for washing hands & face. Very authentic and another way to show players that medieval people were not the mucky dirt lovers people keep saying they were.

Also, cats but no kids. I like cats but would have loved to also see children in the game. Yes a lot of extra work but you do kind of miss them to complete the picture. As for violence, I’m sure you can program them to run off when bad stuff happens.

The clothing is quite a bit better than in KCD 1, some truly wonderful details and even some fabrics that made me drool.

Combat is fun and exciting, no matter how good you become you can still be surprised and lose now and then. I still preferred using my longbow.

But swordfights are fun. Especially if you know someone called Arne in real life who is actually very good at sword fighting. Which made this part of the game a bit weird for me.

Oh there was also some controversy! I found this amusing, with KCD1 people complained because it wasn’t diverse enough. Now people complain about it being too diverse, too “woke”. I think creative types should be able to tell the story they want to, but still, oh the drama!
For starters they put a black man in the game, although they would have been rare, it’s not impossible and they created a sort of believable background story for him.

It didn’t bother me, what did bother me is that he seems to have been on twitter too much and was annoyingly going on about how great things were back home. Yeah, women were treated with greater respect in Mali… sure Jan…

And then this spices nonsense. Europe had spices and had been importing others via the silk road for centuries already. Not to mention that you can also cook fine meals with herbs. Medieval food was far from bland. I bet the cooks just didn’t like Musa the Annoying.

The game also shows us what life was like for Jews back then, we explore a little Jewish corner and experience a pogrom, we also discover that we have a Jewish half brother. I think it’s great that this side of the past is shown, gives gamers something to think about.

Well done to the devs, but adding this Jewish history storyline upset some sad internetboys. Luckily nobody cares about what they think.

But what happened next triggered some snowflakes even more, which I also found very amusing.
After bedding half of the female population, our hero Henry has one, yes just one, romantic session with a bloke, his best friend, the lovely and handsome Hans.
I cheered.

This of course resulted in more angry and confused internetboys of course, who don’t understand how that sort of thing can happen in the real world and/or that it happened in medieval times too. But I thought it was great and it was fun that it upset the people who cheered during the KCD1 controversy when people complained about the lack of representation etc.

Hell yes Henry, hell yes:

Loved this chat:

Just look at the details on those shoe soles:

No bright orange carrots but still all the same colour, I think it would have been better if they came in several colours, carrots all looking the same is from later, no, before you ask, the Dutch didn’t make them orange.

Superb realism: If you drop stuff, someone will come along and pick it up:

When there’s a fight, people stop to watch:

The tile ovens are so wonderful and you (almost) always can see where they put the wood in from the other side of the wall. Details!

So much wonderful pottery!

Graffiti! Love this so much, it brings the world to life;

I’m obsessed with the graffiti, so here’s more;

The castles in this game are some of the best I’ve ever seen, glorious reconstructions that actually look like nice warm places to live in in stead of the bare, grey, plain stone horrors we see in most films. Painted walls everywhere!

Yes, I’m also obsessed with windowsills, I mean just look at these pictures! I want to sit there all day, every day. I need a castle. When did you last see a castle in a film or tv show that looked nice and had rooms you wanted to live in?

More random gorgeous details:

And away from the pretty rooms, we have the essential indoor well and a big busy kitchen, LOVE IT.

And then there’s the city of Kuttenberg, it… is… amazing.

I’ve always wanted to visit a real medieval city and the game did not disappoint. Although some of the houses couldn’t be accessed, it still felt like a busy city with so much to see and do!

Especially lovely buildings:

Just splendid;

A public fountain, a wooden sort of aqueduct, people having access to running water!

The NPC’s are also superb. They have their own daily schedule, you can follow them around from getting up in the morning, working, eating, having a drink at the tavern to going to bed again.
A woman’s work is never done:

The NPCs get into fights, gossip, judge you when you need a bath, etc. KCD2 manages to create a realistic, immersive, believable world that is just such a joy to explore;

Henry is a mucky boy, when you don’t wash yourself regularly, you’re going to be judged, very authentic and yet another way the developers help us debunk the old image of the dirty middle ages:

The game is sometimes so gorgeous I actually gasped, out loud.

Oh I almost forgot: there are SO MANY TOILETS!
Outhouses everywhere but also latrines and garderobes, usually their placement makes sense…

Other times I have doubts. This castle has a garderobe with its waste falling down in the courtyard below in stead of outside the wall. Miasma man, miasma!
I doubt anyone back then would find this acceptable;

And yes, the Romans weren’t the only ones who had these fun group toilets:

So, almost done, phew. I love this game but what I love even more is that it shows millions of gamers a medieval world that’s colourful and (mostly) clean. A world that has a beautiful side with people that experience joy, not just poverty, pain & filth.

One final thing before I move on to the DLCs; please devs, give us a multiplayer version, no, not of the full game, just of the world.
I want to invite everyone to come hang out in a castle have drinks at a tavern and just go exploring. Can you imagine how much fun it would be to hang out here with friends?

Here’s a video of a livestream I did of me exploring Kuttenberg;

And here’s a fun video of a local historian also looking around that amazing city;

Now it’s time to move on to the DLC’s!

The first DLC is called ‘Brushes with Death’.
It’s a fun, slightly weird story with supernatural tendencies that involves helping a rather confused painter with all sorts of little quests.
Eventually you help him make a masterpiece, which is rather rewarding.

I enjoyed it but was mostly just excited about having an new location to check out, a medieval artist’s studio is fun to look around in!
Isn’t this gorgeous?

Of course I then wondered if easels & palettes were a thing back then and if they looked like that, but they did, so nothing to complain about here;

St. Luke painting the Virgin in Geoffroy Tory, Book of Hours (1533), Ms. Library of Congress, Rosenwald ms. 10.

But this is what made me smile, just looking around all the pigments and ingredients the artist needed:

There’s also a lovely painter’s attic;

Another fun part of this DLC is that you can have a custom shield painted for you, lots of fun options to choose from but there can be only one favourite of course:

Unfortunately you can’t completely design your own shield, so I had to cheat and do it myself with Photoshop:

The next DLC was called ‘Legacy of the Forge’ and was absolutely fantastic.
Henry gets the change to take over an old neglected forge in Kuttenberg, it is in a terrible state:

Through lots of fun quests and also by making swords, axes and all sorts of things for the locals, you save up, improve your reputation and eventually get to upgrade the whole building.

It’s a lot of work but so very rewarding!

Before & after:

Okay, I went a bit too far with Henry’s room, but I so badly wanted all the pretty stuff:

Maybe I’ve been playing the Sims too much, but I’ve been waiting for this, it’s such fun to have a little place of your own here in this amazing Medieval world.
If Warhorse gives us a DLC to built & decorate our own castle, I’ll never leave again.
Anyway, as I said, you get to do a lot of forging and making stuff, and here’s where I spotted another inaccuracy, Henry kept doing it topless!
Oh wait, that isn’t the developer’s fault, but mine, somehow I kept forgetting to make him wear the proper leather apron…

I also forgot to regularly clean him, which is odd because being clean is very important in the game and I am always telling people about how important that was during the middle ages, yet somehow I kept forgetting…
What a mucky boy.

Luckily if you manage to get enough upgrades you get to have your own tub in your basement!

Even comes with a little toy:

I’m still regularly shocked at how gorgeous this game is:

See, he wears clothes sometimes!

It took a lot of work and time, but eventually I reached the ultimate upgrade and had a mural painted on the outside of me and my father, which frankly was a bit emotional because the damn writers and developers actually made me care about this silly lad and his dead parents:

And of course, because I keep telling everyone how much medieval people loved colour, I had to paint my forge in all the colours I could find:

It looks like a bloomin’ Efteling house.

Such a fun DLC, lots to do, lots to forge, loved it.

The next and last DLC is Mysteria Ecclesiae takes almost completely place behind the walls of the Sedlec Monastery.
It was disappointing to see that none of the churches were accessible, especially as they all looks so amazing in KCD 1, but with this DLC the mods make up for it by giving us this glorious building to explore;

It’s truly gorgeous, I could and did explore this place for hours, regularly gasping at what I saw;

Come on, this is just ridiculous, this is all just too pretty, too impressive, made with so much love and eye for detail, KCD 2 is making all the other games look bad:

Its details like these that make me stop in my tracks and stare, which is not good when you’re being chased, but I couldn’t help myself:

Look, a handwashing station, medieval people cared about hygiene!

Just like in KCD 1 you’re there to solve a mystery, once more I feel like I’m in a Cadfael episode, luckily I loved that show!
But you soon realise that there’s something more happening here, a mysterious disease is going around, is it… the plague?!

But there are also less pretty sides to this monastery… but I still got very excited of course because I’m talking about a subject I am very interested in: toilets!

That there are toilets is nothing new in KCD, they’re everywhere, but this time we get to see what happens underneath…

So eventually you are wandering around and find yourself UNDER the toilets!
Yep, knee-deep in icky stuff and when you look up… something is coming down!

Yes, that’s a turd in action:

I screamed, laughed and felt unwell.
Brilliant.
And then I looked down…

Normally this would be a running stream so there shouldn’t be this much filth!

Anyway, part of the story is that we need to figure out what this disease is that’s going around and here I got to spot a few peculiarities.

For instance, back then it was not called:

Medieval people called the 14th century plague pandemic the Magna Mortalitas (Great Mortality), Pestilentia (pestilence) and all sorts of scary names, but the term Black Death wasn’t really used till centuries later, at least not in English.
Scandinavians did use the term, but also decades after it happened but the English didn’t till the 18th century.
And Bohemians (where this game takes place) also didn’t use the term till centuries later, so it would be inaccurate for the story we’re in.

When I heard this line my heart skipped a beat, I literally mumbled “Oh no!”:

The famous plague doctor mask with the bird beak is not medieval, it originated in the 17th century and was extremely rare, possibly just one or maybe a hand full of doctors wore it.

In the game we’re then told to go make a plague mask… I was so upset, so disappointed, honestly, how could this game that put so much effort into being historically accurate mess up this badly?!

I held my breath… what would the end result be…

Oh dear reader I laughed and cheered when I saw what Henry eventually put together:

Is this historically accurate?
Probably not, but it’s a lot more accurate than the bird beak mask.
Some contemporary records mention covering your mouth, wearing flowers, herbs, etc. and that’s good enough for me.
I was just very relieved they didn’t put the pointy mask on my Henry.

Anyway, the story is exciting and lots of things are happening, you get to see a lot of the amazing building, even get to examine bodies:

This was an amazing DLC that I enjoyed playing, a lot.

So, this is where my review of KCD 2 ends but unfortunately it might be where KCD ends completely.
It sounds like Warhorse is not going to make a sequel which is very sad.
Henry’s story is not done yet, there’s still so much to do, so much left to see, I want him to be at Hans his wedding, I want to explore medieval Prague, I want more sieges, more battles!
I want Henry to be there when an old grey Henry, surrounded by family and loved ones takes his last breath and run to his mum and dad!
KCD is doing so well, it’s an amazingly successful game, it would be odd if they stopped this franchise, but on the other hand Warhorse wants to try something else next.
Still, come on.

I know some Warhorse people read my tweets & articles (yes I spotted your like under my post ;)) so just in case they’re reading this as well;

Please, give us another KCD sequel.
But if you don’t want to… at least give us a multiplayer version of the KCD world.
No, don’t worry, I don’t mean a multiplayer version of the whole game, I don’t need to do the quests with others.
But the world you lot created for this game is too impressive, too good, to just be abandoned.
Let us walk around it with our friends, go to a bathhouse together, race horses, fight bandits or just sit by a fireplace in a castle and chat while we drink ale.
It would be so busy there.
Imagine our lord Capon (who has now become a streaming legend) hosting an event in that world and fans from all over joining him!
Imagine history teachers bring their class into that world and walking around Kuttenberg together while learning about late medieval Bohemia!

And although I’m not a game dev, it sounds like turning the KCD 2 map into a place more than one player can be in at once wouldn’t involve an insane amount of work.
It does sound like something that would entertain many thousands of fans for years to come.
And you know they’d pay for that DLC… and to get outfits that will make them look cooler than their mates… 😉

Anyway, conclusion;

KCD (1 & 2) is the best medieval themed first person games I’ve ever played, and I’ve been gaming since Pong!
Yes, sure, I’ve spotted a few mistakes here and there, but I was hunting for them and have an annoying eye for detail.
The medieval world built for this game is more historically accurate than most films & tv shows I’ve seen.
It’s amazing.
Even if you’re not into gaming (why are you reading this review?) I think you should get the game if you’re into medieval history.
Just walking around is such a rewarding experience.

I hope we will get another KCD.

I’ll leave you with this fantastic shot, it’s beautiful but a bit depressing, Henry, battered & bruised, in the dark, elsewhere with his thoughts but ready to do battle.
His fight is not over yet, his story has not yet finished.
Come back to us Henry!

If you enjoyed this review, check out this list of other reviews:

https://fakehistoryhunter.net/2022/11/14/my-reviews/

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