Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Final Preview

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The first two months of 2025 are stacked with some amazing releases, and one of the two that I am most anticipating next month is Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. The follow-up to the incredible medieval RPG, which was released in 2018, is shaping up to be a well-worthy sequel, and my time with it at Gamescom last year made me even more excited for the release. But thankfully, that's not the end of my time with it.

As the release date is coming up, I got to take a more in-depth look on my own time with the beginning hours of the game, getting to play some of the opening quests, running around, and checking out early progression. Ultimately, all the time did was make me even more excited for what the rest of the game had in store, and I was quickly getting invested in the story.

The opening of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 started off really strong. It gave us a little glimpse into what our protagonist Henry's future holds before bringing us back a few weeks earlier. From there, we encounter a string of misfortunes that bring us to a random town with almost nothing on our backs and stranded without a coin to our name.

One thing I really dislike is when games have you play as an experienced soldier but somehow have no skills and don't really explain why. The way Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's story begins does justify why Henry isn't as skilled as he should be, and it ends up making sense along with how progression works.

I won't go too much more into the story to avoid spoilers, but it got me hooked. I am so curious how the rest of the story unfolds, but so far, I am loving it.

The visuals hold up just as much, too. Even on the lowest quality settings with upscaling, the forests and villages look incredible. All of the people look great as well, and I am enjoying the voice acting. I usually read faster than how people in games talk and skip through voice lines with subtitles on, but I found myself not doing that in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 because it was just great work across the board.

I was also quite impressed with the gameplay improvements made over the past game. The developers talked about making it more accessible, especially with combat, and I feel they did a great job. I like the blocking and riposte loop, which is quite easy to do but still takes some skill and good timing to do a perfect block and immediately attack. Combat is quite enjoyable, and I still had a blast even when it was hand-to-hand combat and some fights took a bit longer than I expected.

I am also digging the progression system. Almost anything you do in-game impacts your reputation and skills. As your skills go up, you will unlock more perks you can get (and get better at those specific skills in general) and you could get more perk points with your main level and some skills going up. There's a ton of individual skills to get perks for and it feels like I can really build Henry out to how I want him to be as a person.

The inventory system did confuse me at first, but I started to get the hang of it. It's easy to see which pieces of armor affect different parts of you, like whether you are conspicuous, how much noise you make, and how much armor the pieces give. There are a solid amount of slots, and some unlockable ones, to equip stuff in, so there will be some great ways to build Henry out further.

Even the mini-games, like creating your own potions with Alchemy, are fun to play around with. It isn't as engaging as combat is, but I like the immersiveness that the game pushes. I love it, and I am so excited to see how else I can live out my medieval fantasies.

I don't want to talk too much about the performance on the Steam Deck just yet since there's still so much more of the game to play, but so far, I will say the experience has been very positive. 30 FPS will definitely be possible, and I could see it working without any upscaler. It looks like 40 FPS may also be possible with upscaling. I don't want to say definitively whether it's playable on Deck or not, but my guess after my experience so far is that this will be a solid portable experience.

Overall, it's hard not to love Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 so far. The opening completely brought me into the game and made me want more, and the visuals are holding up swimmingly. The gameplay and progression are also great and immersive, and while some parts may be a bit slow so far, they never overstay their welcome, and there's always something great on the horizon. I can't wait to play more of the game, and I can easily see this being one of the best RPGs this year.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 can be pre-purchased for $59.99 ahead of its February 4th release date.

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