Summary
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 will have more newcomer-friendly combat, making it accessible to a wider audience.
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 reduces the number of attack zones in combat to four, rewards aggressive playstyles, and adds new weapons.
- The sequel aims to maintain realism while enhancing combat mechanics for a more inclusive experience.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is not necessarily a difficult game, but it isn't the most accessible game either. This ultimately stems from its reliance on realism as opposed to modern gameplay gimmicks and crowd-pleasing features, to the point that Kingdom Come: Deliverance's intentional inaccessibility is simultaneously one of its best characteristics and the main thing that keeps many players from enjoying it. While Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 will likely do its best to maintain that reputation, it is committed to at least improving the first game's combat, which plays a major role in its fairly steep learning curve.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance's combat can be tricky to master, as it primarily revolves around well-timed parries, perfectly placed strikes, and a preemptive response to the opponent's next move. Its slow pace calls for a degree of deliberation that many other games shy away from in favor of more forgiving mechanics, which is enough to drive any casual player away for good. Thankfully, however, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is refining the first game's combat to make it more newcomer-friendly, in addition to rewarding diverse playstyles for an overall more universal experience.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Should Use One Storytelling Strategy From the First Game
Kingdom Come: Deliverance allowed players to tell their own version of the story from an experiential standpoint, and the sequel should as well.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Brings the First Game's Combat to the Whetstone
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's Combat Is More Newcomer-Friendly Than the First Game's
The biggest improvement coming to Kingdom Come: Deliverance's combat in the sequel is that newcomers to the franchise should find it to be a much more welcoming experience. As it has been confirmed that Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 can be enjoyed without any knowledge of the first game, its newcomer-friendly combat effectively makes the sequel even more of a standalone experience, especially since its predecessor is already a bit of an uphill battle even for the most seasoned RPG veterans.
In Kingdom Come: Deliverance, players are presented with a combat rose that features five different directions or "zones" of attack. Selecting one of these zones and then attacking causes players to strike their opponent from that direction. The key, however, is in outsmarting the enemy by tricking them into thinking the strike is coming from one direction and then changing it at the last minute. Getting this timing down in Kingdom Come: Deliverance's combat is a challenge, but the sequel will be refining the first game's combat by reducing the combat rose's zones of attack from five to four.
This ultimately streamlines the combat system to allow for a more intuitive experience overall.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's Combat Is More Rewarding of Diverse Playstyles
Another way Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 improves the first game's combat is by making aggressive play more rewarding. Kingdom Come: Deliverance's combat takes a lot of patience, as each move must be calculated and precise to be effective. If players simply button-mash their way through an encounter, they'll find themselves bleeding out on the ground after running their stamina dry. While the full extent hasn't been specified, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 will reward aggressive play, which makes sense considering Henry, the protagonist, has grown from the first game.
Finally, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 will let players use non-sword weapons more effectively — namely those that, in real life, require less precision and finesse. This should include weapons like maces and axes, which are generally associated with more aggressive playstyles, but polearms and spears may benefit from these improvements as well. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 will also add two new weapons — crossbows and guns — to Henry's arsenal.
While newcomers may still find Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 to be a tough nut to crack, it is more likely to draw in a bigger audience than the first game did, simply due to its refined combat experience. At the very least, veterans can check a few things off their wish lists in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, as they were requested in the first game.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 89 /100 Critics Rec: 95%
- Released
- February 4, 2025
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ / Use of Alcohol, Blood and Gore, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity
- Developer(s)
- Warhorse Studios
- Publisher(s)
- Deep Silver
WHERE TO PLAY
- Engine
- CryEngine
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC
- Genre(s)
- RPG, Action-Adventure, Open-World
