Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

I've spent about 6 hours in this since getting the game last weekend. Man...it's good to be back in the KCD world. Back in 2021 I spent well over 200 hours on the original. The story so far is a continuation from the previous, but of course, being a new game, your skills are dropped down from where they should've been at the end of the previous game. That's a slight dig into the realism, but overlookable because it's fun to learn skills and level up even though you should already have those skills from the first game. You start off with beloved Mutt, faithful canine companion from the original, but during the intro you get separated. My last sight of him was swimming across the river about a hundred yards from where Sir Capon and I swam the same river to escape some bandits that had taken us by surprise. One of my current side quests is to find him.

The intro is very long. It actually took me a little over 3 hours to get to the introductory credits, and 5 hours to get to the point where the world opens up and you are allowed to roam freely. And that was not a bad thing. The storytelling is brilliant. I was sucked in immediately and enjoyed every moment as if I was presented with my favorite meal prepared by the finest chef. At this point, you can follow the main questline, pursue side quests, or just take in the world while exploring it. This, IMO, is the biggest brilliance of this series: the world is so believable and fascinating that I find myself not being able to help myself in exploring countrysides, villages, and woodlands while ignoring quests. And that's perfectly okay. IIRC, the first game had very few time-sensitive quests, and so far, same for KCD2. The realism is so perfectly handled. No tedium like many RPGs that are touted for realism have, but you can't help but feel like you're actually in 1400s Bohemia. Details like finding a random chopped stump in the middle of nowhere only to discover that there is a carpenter living a couple of hundred yards away. Or listening in on the very believable conversations that NPCs are having in the world as you explore it. Things like reputation that go down when you get into trouble, and go up as you show interest in peoples' lives and do good deeds. You are more free to walk through villagers' barns with a higher reputation, and they are more suspicious of you with a lower reputation. Improve your skills by reading books on specific topics. If you read with good light while seated comfortably (this is a perk you can choose to develop), you read and learn faster. I can go on and on, but you get the idea.

Have you ever been on a hike in nature and you start seeing things that capture your curiosity? A smooth stone among a bunch of rough ones; a beautifully-colored egg shell on the ground beneath an abandoned bird nest just above your reach; a deer or rabbit you didn't even know was there until you spooked them; a rock outcropping that turns out to be a cave, with evidence of humans being there before. This is what wandering the world of Kingdom Come Deliverance is like. And why it is so easy to get lost in time while completely ignoring any quests.

There are set save points in the game. You can also save anywhere you want, so long as you quit the game. Admittedly, there are a few places where there is a long time between save points with no option to quit and save, and so I ended up having to replay a couple of those when something came up IRL and I had to exit the game while in the middle of such a part.
edit: you can also drink Savior Schnapps to save without quitting. This is a brew that you can find, buy, or learn to brew yourself. Quite a clever way of bypassing the save-point issue IMO.

I'm the guy that *never* pays full price for a game. I wait for a steep discount, no matter how much I want the game. But based on my experience with the first KCD, I actually paid full price the day it became available on GOG.

clueless1 wrote on 2025-04-05, 14:23:

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II […]
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Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

I've spent about 6 hours in this since getting the game last weekend. Man...it's good to be back in the KCD world. Back in 2021 I spent well over 200 hours on the original. The story so far is a continuation from the previous, but of course, being a new game, your skills are dropped down from where they should've been at the end of the previous game. That's a slight dig into the realism, but overlookable because it's fun to learn skills and level up even though you should already have those skills from the first game. You start off with beloved Mutt, faithful canine companion from the original, but during the intro you get separated. My last sight of him was swimming across the river about a hundred yards from where Sir Capon and I swam the same river to escape some bandits that had taken us by surprise. One of my current side quests is to find him.

The intro is very long. It actually took me a little over 3 hours to get to the introductory credits, and 5 hours to get to the point where the world opens up and you are allowed to roam freely. And that was not a bad thing. The storytelling is brilliant. I was sucked in immediately and enjoyed every moment as if I was presented with my favorite meal prepared by the finest chef. At this point, you can follow the main questline, pursue side quests, or just take in the world while exploring it. This, IMO, is the biggest brilliance of this series: the world is so believable and fascinating that I find myself not being able to help myself in exploring countrysides, villages, and woodlands while ignoring quests. And that's perfectly okay. IIRC, the first game had very few time-sensitive quests, and so far, same for KCD2. The realism is so perfectly handled. No tedium like many RPGs that are touted for realism have, but you can't help but feel like you're actually in 1400s Bohemia. Details like finding a random chopped stump in the middle of nowhere only to discover that there is a carpenter living a couple of hundred yards away. Or listening in on the very believable conversations that NPCs are having in the world as you explore it. Things like reputation that go down when you get into trouble, and go up as you show interest in peoples' lives and do good deeds. You are more free to walk through villagers' barns with a higher reputation, and they are more suspicious of you with a lower reputation. Improve your skills by reading books on specific topics. If you read with good light while seated comfortably (this is a perk you can choose to develop), you read and learn faster. I can go on and on, but you get the idea.

Have you ever been on a hike in nature and you start seeing things that capture your curiosity? A smooth stone among a bunch of rough ones; a beautifully-colored egg shell on the ground beneath an abandoned bird nest just above your reach; a deer or rabbit you didn't even know was there until you spooked them; a rock outcropping that turns out to be a cave, with evidence of humans being there before. This is what wandering the world of Kingdom Come Deliverance is like. And why it is so easy to get lost in time while completely ignoring any quests.

There are set save points in the game. You can also save anywhere you want, so long as you quit the game. Admittedly, there are a few places where there is a long time between save points with no option to quit and save, and so I ended up having to replay a couple of those when something came up IRL and I had to exit the game while in the middle of such a part.
edit: you can also drink Savior Schnapps to save without quitting. This is a brew that you can find, buy, or learn to brew yourself. Quite a clever way of bypassing the save-point issue IMO.

I'm the guy that *never* pays full price for a game. I wait for a steep discount, no matter how much I want the game. But based on my experience with the first KCD, I actually paid full price the day it became available on GOG.

Good to see you are still finding some time for gaming. This summer I will finally have some more time for that. We'll chat on Discord and maybe we can get something going online. Last online game I played was decades ago which was D&D Online. Loved that when it came out. It limited your party to six and it was mostly instanced dungeons, which I prefer.

liqmat wrote on 2025-04-05, 18:28:

Good to see you are still finding some time for gaming. This summer I will finally have some more time for that. We'll chat on Discord and maybe we can get something going online. Last online game I played was decades ago which was D&D Online. Loved that when it came out. It limited your party to six and it was mostly instanced dungeons, which I prefer.

Sounds good, man.

Time...it's weird, the past couple of games have been hard to find time to play. Control, then Pool of Radiance. I realize now that I just wasn't into them enough. Doom 2016 has been fun, and now KCD2. So much fun, that I end up finding more time to play. Instead of browsing the web for 15 minutes before work, I play one of these games. Everyone's different, and I feel bad that I didn't get more into PoR, but it just wasn't doing it for me.

See ya on Discord, dude.

clueless1 wrote on 2025-04-05, 14:23:

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

I was waiting for this to come out on GOG too, but now that it's available the mood just hasn't taken me yet to buy and play it. I should probably just buy it full price now anyway to support the devs.

I loved the first one but never finished it I must admit. The world is fantastic but I think the main reason I haven't managed to reboot my playthrough is the thought of having to re-learn the combat. Learning how to fight and then winning a battle was very satisfying I recall, but it caused me to rage quit many times too.

I do like the idea of tactical combat in theory so I'm glad they haven't ditched it - hopefully they've refined it a bit though.

Started playing Doom 64 for the first time. I'm using the GOG release and running it under Windows 10. First impressions aren't so great. While the engine runs at 60 FPS, during actual gameplay it feels like you're moving at 20 FPS, which is probably what the original N64 version ran at. And yes, I do have that interpolation setting turned on, but it still feels weirdly sluggish. Also, there is no option to turn off head bob, which is unacceptable for a modern port.

There are far fewer enemies on screen here, even compared to vanilla Doom 1. The new enemy models look ok, but it feels like they use fewer frames of animation than the ones in the first two games, making their movement seem choppy and jerky sometimes. Same goes for the new weapon models. In particular, the shotgun looks kinda weird, and its pitiful animation and sound effect remind me of how it worked in Quake 1. Probably another limitation of the original N64 release.

Music seems mostly relegated to ambient noise, similar to the PlayStation version. I get that some people like this, but for me, Doom needs a heavy metal soundtrack to feel right. Doesn't help that the level design hasn't been particularly great so far, though I'm still very early into the game. Hopefully, things will improve later on. I do like the colored lighting though, so that's a plus.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-04-06, 05:17:

Started playing Doom 64 for the first time. I'm using the GOG release and running it under Windows 10. First impressions aren't so great. While the engine runs at 60 FPS, during actual gameplay it feels like you're moving at 20 FPS, which is probably what the original N64 version ran at. And yes, I do have that interpolation setting turned on, but it still feels weirdly sluggish. Also, there is no option to turn off head bob, which is unacceptable for a modern port.

There are far fewer enemies on screen here, even compared to vanilla Doom 1. The new enemy models look ok, but it feels like they use fewer frames of animation than the ones in the first two games, making their movement seem choppy and jerky sometimes. Same goes for weapon animations. In particular, the shotgun looks kinda weird, and its pitiful animation and sound effect remind me of how it worked in Quake 1. Probably another limitation of the original N64 release.

Music seems mostly relegated to ambient noise, similar to the PlayStation version. I get that some people like this, but for me, Doom needs a heavy metal soundtrack to feel right. Doesn't help that the level design hasn't been particularly great so far, though I'm still very early into the game. Hopefully, things will improve later on. I do like the colored lighting though, so that's a plus.

Doom 64 is a love hate relationship for me. I hate the fact that I've grown to love the game, specifically for it's differences. 😜

Odd that it feels sluggish to you. I have it on Steam and it feels nice and smooth. I agree on the "music", it's definitely very much just background noise, more like it's used as environmental ambiance that a BGM.

On a side note, I picked up the two Darkside Detective games, and I'm only a couple cases into the first game, but I really like it! Old-school, funny, and fun. 😀

StriderTR wrote on 2025-04-06, 05:37:

Odd that it feels sluggish to you. I have it on Steam and it feels nice and smooth.

I don't think it's related to performance, as the remaster isn't very demanding in terms of hardware.

It's difficult to explain, but after playing a lot of Doom 1&2 during the recent years, movement in Doom 64 feels much slower. And to be clear, I'm not using GZDoom or some other 60 FPS port for the first two games. I either play Doom 1&2 on real DOS era hardware, or by using the Crispy Doom port, so they are capped at the default 35 FPS in both cases. And yet, Doom 64 feels very sluggish compared to that.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-04-06, 05:46:

StriderTR wrote on 2025-04-06, 05:37:

Odd that it feels sluggish to you. I have it on Steam and it feels nice and smooth.

I don't think it's related to performance, as the remaster isn't very demanding in terms of hardware.

It's difficult to explain, but after playing a lot of Doom 1&2 during the recent years, movement in Doom 64 feels much slower. And to be clear, I'm not using GZDoom or some other 60 FPS port for the first two games. I either play Doom 1&2 on real DOS era hardware, or by using the Crispy Doom port, so they are capped at the default 35 FPS in both cases. And yet, Doom 64 feels very sluggish compared to that.

I think I get what you're saying. The game just feels slow and cumbersome compared to "regular" Doom?

It's definitely a different gameplay experience that's for sure. I misunderstood and my tired 1:00AM brain thought it was a performance issue. 😜

I played through the first ten levels of Doom 64. I'm still not sold on the map design, as many levels feel too convoluted for a Doom game. This is especially true for maps which feature a lot of time limited switch hunting and puzzle solving. Heck, in some cases, I ended up finding secret areas just by trying to figure out how to reach the exit. Also, the ambient "music" in one of these levels sounded like someone was breaking a bunch of ceramic dishes, and then scraping the pieces against each other. I actually turned it off until I finished that map.

In terms of weapons, I found the screen shaking effect while firing the chaingun mildly irksome. Also, reloading the super shotgun barely provides any visual feedback, so you have to rely on the "click" sound which is also very subdued. This feels like a step back from Doom 2, making it slightly harder to find a good rhythm with the weapon. Additionally, I noticed that firing the rocket launcher seems to push you back a bit. This usually isn't a problem, unless you're standing on a raised platform, in which case it can make you fall. I'm kinda neutral on this change, but it does limit the rocket launcher use to a degree. Lastly, the constant buzzing of the plasma rifle is a bit iffy, but that's a very minor annoyance, and I have found the BFG now anyway.

Combat has gotten a bit better with the introduction of the stronger opponents. However, during the first eight levels I was still mainly fighting in cramped corridors against 5-6 enemies at most, with some rare exceptions. Thankfully, this seems to be changing now, and I really enjoyed the "Even Simpler" map. It's a nice reimagining of "Dead Simple" from Doom 2, and I found it very satisfying to play through. The next level had a bit more free roaming as well, so hopefully this trend will continue. I like the flow of the game much better when there are more open spaces.

P.S.

I found out why my movement was so sluggish. By default, the run key was mapped to "Space" instead of "Shift". After fixing that, the movement felt a lot better. However, it looks like Doom 64 runs at 30 FPS internally (not 20 as I originally thought) while Doom 1&2 run at 35 FPS, which seems to affect the game speed as well.

Finished Doom 64. Gotta say, my opinion of this game has improved significantly as I played through the remaining levels, though some of my previous misgiving still stand. I can now see why some people call this "the true Doom 3", especially since it's canon to the Doom 2016/Eternal/Dark Ages timeline, unlike the actual Doom 3.

Combat got a lot better during the later levels, which were filled with stronger enemies and usually had more open spaces. However, the design quality varied quite a bit between different maps, and there were certainly some duds in there. One of the better levels was the one where you fight the first Cyberdemon. There were a lot of fun combat encounters on that map, though I did notice that the game seemingly caps out at around a dozen or so enemies on the screen, and only spawns in new ones once you dispose of some of the existing ones. Possibly a limitation of the original N64 version.

I found two out of the three secret levels (missed the first one), so my Unmaker wasn't fully upgraded, but it was still enough to rip and tear through the final boss with ease. I also like how those demon keys actually help you during the last battle, as they can seal the demon spawning chambers, making it much easier to get to the boss. Overall, Doom 64 is decent game, which is brought down a notch by the occasionally poor level design and its consistently terrible "music", excluding the intro/outro theme which is fine. Still worth getting if you need more classic Doom gameplay.

dr_st wrote on 2025-03-12, 16:03:

revolstar wrote on 2025-03-12, 10:34:

I fired up Bioshock on my WinXP rig the other day. I've never played it before and was instantly hooked.

I will be interested in hearing your opinion when you finish the game. 😀

Finished it today, phew! I must say I enjoyed it thoroughly and kind of predicted the big twist 😉 Although I probably played it wrong! I mean, I have this tendency to beat games without using some of the core mechanics, e.g. I beat Dungeon Keeper without building the workshop and placing any traps, and now I've beaten Bioshock almost without using any of the plasmids during combat 😜 I also didn't enjoy the gun play in this game all that much, but then again I kind of suck when it comes to shooters.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-04-11, 17:35:

and its consistently terrible "music"

You take that back or put them up, sir!

Heh, dark ambient is not for everyone. I've personally loved the PS1 Doom soundtracks from the same composer ever since I got my Ps1 and Final Doom as my first game for it. They have this completely different vibe to them, slower and more oppressive horror ambience compared to the balls to the wall mayhem the PC version has. That said my preferred way to play Doom is of course the PC version with a source port and Andrew Hulshult's remixed soundtracks, they slap hard and complement the ultra violence mass murder excellently.

Honestly the only reason why I've occasionally been curious to try Doom 64 is the soundtrack, but every time I've checked some gameplay out from YouTube i've noped out. The level design hasn't seemed great to me, which you also mentioned, but also I get this weird uncanny valley effect from it. It's Doom... but it isn't. Like it came from a paraller universe or something and I don't know should I shake its hand, run away or burn it with fire.

Sombrero wrote on 2025-04-12, 05:46:

You take that back or put them up, sir!

Heh, dark ambient is not for everyone. I've personally loved the PS1 Doom soundtracks from the same composer ever since I got my Ps1 and Final Doom as my first game for it.

I only briefly tried Doom's PS1 release, and that was back on my actual PlayStation hooked up to a CRT TV. Can't say I enjoyed those ambient tracks either, but at least they didn't actively irritate me, unlike the Doom 64 "music" on certain levels.

I wasn't joking about those broken pottery sounds, and then you have the muffled chanting, indeterminate grunting, high pitched scraping and distorted baby crying. If anything, I would describe Doom 64's ambience as "unsettling", which was probably the composer's intent. But it just didn't vibe with me.

The level design hasn't seemed great to me, which you also mentioned, but also I get this weird uncanny valley effect from it. It's Doom... but it isn't. Like it came from a paraller universe or something and I don't know should I shake its hand, run away or burn it with fire.

Yeah, that's how I initially felt about Doom 64, particularly during the early levels, which aren't that great. The map design does get better later on (but it also regresses at times) and the combat eventually becomes much more enjoyable. At its core, it still plays like classic Doom, so there's fun to be had for sure. Also, frying hordes of demons with the (upgraded) Unmaker feels oddly satisfying.

revolstar wrote on 2025-04-11, 20:00:

Finished it today, phew! I must say I enjoyed it thoroughly and kind of predicted the big twist 😉 Although I probably played it wrong! I mean, I have this tendency to beat games without using some of the core mechanics, e.g. I beat Dungeon Keeper without building the workshop and placing any traps, and now I've beaten Bioshock almost without using any of the plasmids during combat 😜 I also didn't enjoy the gun play in this game all that much, but then again I kind of suck when it comes to shooters.

Thank you for sharing! Yes, the big twist was predictable at some point, as I recall. The thing with games that have so many mechanics is that it's often difficult to find good use to all of them or to play it exactly as the developers intended. But then again it gives more freedom to choose one's preferred style and maybe offers some replay value...

Did you get the optimal or less-than-optimal ending? 😉

dr_st wrote on 2025-04-12, 10:12:

revolstar wrote on 2025-04-11, 20:00:

Finished it today, phew! I must say I enjoyed it thoroughly and kind of predicted the big twist 😉 Although I probably played it wrong! I mean, I have this tendency to beat games without using some of the core mechanics, e.g. I beat Dungeon Keeper without building the workshop and placing any traps, and now I've beaten Bioshock almost without using any of the plasmids during combat 😜 I also didn't enjoy the gun play in this game all that much, but then again I kind of suck when it comes to shooters.

Thank you for sharing! Yes, the big twist was predictable at some point, as I recall. The thing with games that have so many mechanics is that it's often difficult to find good use to all of them or to play it exactly as the developers intended. But then again it gives more freedom to choose one's preferred style and maybe offers some replay value...

Did you get the optimal or less-than-optimal ending? 😉

I'd gone the easier-but-violent route and got the bad ending 😉 Mainly cuz I didn't know Little Sisters would eventually reward me with extra ADAM if I spared them, whoops.

Kingdom Come Deliverance II

It's amazing how much time can be made for gaming when one is motivated enough. The last couple of games I tried to play I struggled to find/make time, and ultimately DNF. KCD2 has been easy to get in and out of, even if I only have 15 minutes to spare. The world is like my favorite pair of jeans and is always a pleasure to get into. Whereas my gaming time was 3-4 hours per week for the last couple of games, I've been managing 7-10 hrs a week since I started KDC2 on March 30th.

I've heard that it's not good to play like I've been playing. Which is, I was spending most of my time exploring the world and taking on side quests, while ignoring the main story line. Well, yesterday I happened to be passing through a village where the main quest was waiting for me, so I decided to stop and engage in it. In the process, I'm learning a mechanic that is new to the KCD series: blacksmithing. In the original, you could repair weapons yourself at a smith, but not create them from scratch. So this is kind of cool, and it's worth the experience I'm going through, but I'm not sure I like it enough to take it to the next level and intentionally create my own weapons. We'll see, the game is still young. So they handle this similar to how they handle Alchemy. In Alchemy you find or buy recipes. In Smithing, you find or buy Sketches that teach you how to build specific weapons or armor. Kind of like primitive CAD drawings. I do like that concept and might be motivated enough to build from scratch if the Sketch is interesting enough!

Unfortunately, I have not found Mutt yet. The side quest for finding him has become quite long and I may need to build my stats up a bit before I can complete it. So that is more motivation to continue the main questline.

The game runs quite well on modest hardware. I have a strong gaming CPU (i5-12600KF) but my GPU (RTX2080) is 6.5 yrs old. Still, at 1080p, with almost every setting maxed out, with DLSS Quality enabled, I'm averaging about 90fps. It takes advantage of all the VRAM you've got. The game is constantly using 7.5GB of my 8GB.

Contributing to the the ambiance is an amazing soundtrack and beautiful sound effects. Walking by a nest? You'll hear birds tweeting. Rain starts coming down hard while you're indoors? You hear it hitting the roof above you. You'll even see lightning in the distance along with rumbling thunder a second or two later.

Back to gaming.

clueless1 wrote on 2025-04-13, 10:55:

You'll even see lightning in the distance along with rumbling thunder a second or two later.

This is the kind of detail I can appreciate.

In many games, you see a distant lightning strike and hear the thunder at the same time, but that's not how it works in reality, since light travels much faster than sound. This is a very minor issue, but it's something that I always found a bit irksome. Good to hear that KCD2 got it right.

I think I've once again petered out from Dragon Age: Origins. I'd guess I got somewhere around 40% in this time, opposed to noping out almost immediately on all of my previous attempts in the past. I could make a long list of things I'm not too fond of about it, but the TL;DR version is while the combat can genuinely be really fun everything else around it tends to make me groan out of boredom. I just don't care about the characters or the world and the side quest are largely extremely simple MMO style boring busy work.

It's funny, practically every party based RPG like this I've ever played (besides Planescape: Torment) has made me wish they had less combat and more dialog and other quest related stuff to balance out the endless trash mob quelling, but here I find myself wishing exactly the opposite. The combat mechanics are quite fun, or at least they can be. I think it takes far too long before you have enough talents/spells to make the most of it. But when you do get there I find it great, my favorite is to freeze a bunch of enemies with cone of cold and use an automatic critical hit talent with everyone = four instant kills as the frozen enemies shatter on critical hit.

But I just find everything else in the game rather dull. I think they got the foundation pretty solid, but it just drowns the player in sheer averaginess of its writing and side content. Eh, still better than the crapfest DA2 turned out to be.

Well, I finally beat Doom Eternal: Ancient Gods. Both of them. I think I...hated it? The level design got even more simplistic, with fairly straightforward "arena with 2-5 waves of enemies, jumping puzzles, arena with 2-5 waves of enemies". Except it's even more obnoxious than usual with the spirit enemy, as well as the sheer bulk of bullet spongy boss tier monsters it's constantly throwing at you. At a certain point when I was juggled in a corner by the endless waves of enemies during the boss fight at the end of Ancient Gods 1, with the boss invincible until I killed the supercharged spirits he summoned, I just turned the difficulty down to the lowest setting to get the game over with. I'm told people enjoyed this level of difficulty, but I just found it tedious.

Also, I don't want to spoil the ending, but it sucked. I also hated the lore. I disliked the lore from the base game, but the DLC I actually hated. It's actually so bad it makes me like Doom 2016 less.

Good riddance to that. Looking forward to moving on to something else and crossing that off my Steam Library where it'd been sitting for 5 years. More certain than ever it's probably best I pass on Doom: The Dark Ages.

Namrok wrote on 2025-04-15, 02:40:

I also hated the lore. I disliked the lore from the base game, but the DLC I actually hated. It's actually so bad it makes me like Doom 2016 less.

While I haven't played Doom Eternal yet, I have been spoiled on (some of) the lore via YouTube videos by certain reviewers, which made me look up the rest as well.

Without going into details, I liked how it officially confirmed that the Doom Slayer is in fact the same Doomguy from Doom 1&2 and Doom 64. This was already hinted in Doom 2016, but it was made very clear in Eternal and its DLCs. From what I gather, it even canonizes parts of the old Doom comic from the 90s (huge guts, rip and tear etc).