I almost rage-quit the game there (because I had been avoiding combat up to that point). The good news is that you can get through a whole lot of the game without bothering with fighting, except for the Baptism of Fire quest I will mention below, which requires you to duel one-on-one with a very difficult enemy. The combat is incredibly inventive, albeit puzzling and difficult at first. The first couple of weeks of playing this game were giddy times, because everything was a brand new learning experience.

I personally hope a lot more games take the kind of chances that we see in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. If you’re the kind of person who likes to “vote with your dollars,” here is your chance. The results are debatable, but the point is I haven’t seen a “big budget” game take so many chances in a long time. They ventured way out on a creative limb. The developers took tremendous risks with their gameplay choices.

Something different, something unique, something new. KCD is exactly the antidote that we say we want. We consumers complain constantly about boring, cookie-cutter games, and rightfully so. The overland map in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. For that I will give them endless praise and kudos. But I don’t regret buying it at launch for one main reason: I am glad to have supported a game which took some very big chances, and had a clear creative vision that they must surely have known wouldn’t resonate with a mainstream audience. You may have heard that this game has some problems. It has numerous problems, but it was at least compelling enough for me to persevere to the end, which is more than I can say for a lot of other full-price games I’ve purchased. In brief, my review concurs with most of the other reviews I’ve seen: The good parts are fantastic, while the bad parts are horrible. Like most “open world” games, there are still many more side quests I could do, and there are a lot of random encounters in the world, but I’m never interested in that stuff once I finish the main story.

I say “finished,” but what I mean is that I reached the The End screen, the point at which the developers believe your characters' story has ended. Spectacular scenery and lighting is common. An interior in Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

I’ve been holding off on writing about Kingdom Come: Deliverance until I was done, but finally, after 86.7 hours according to the save game file, and 108 hours according to ManicTime, between February 20 and this past weekend, April 8, I finished the game. Kingdom Come: Deliverance Completed 9 April, 2018

Kingdom come deliverance map comparison