

The only way to save outside those moments is to carry an alcoholic drink called “Saviour Schnapps,” represented as a floppy disk inside a flask. Kingdom Come autosaves from time to time, usually after major quest updates. The save system is chief among my complaints. The Hussite Wars, the Protestant preaching of Jan Hus, the Papal Schism of 1378-all these events are common topics of discussion in Henry’s Bohemia, because he’s living through them. Kingdom Come is drawing on real history though. Well, maybe not Skalitz and maybe not Henry’s exact story. Being rather more interested in drinking and gambling than ruling, he was considered a poor king, which prompted his brother Sigismund to invade to “restore order.” Sigismund’s motives weren’t quite so pure of course, and his troops cut a swathe through Bohemia, including through the town of Skalitz, a silver mining town and home to our poor protagonist Henry. After the glorious reign of Charles IV, his son Wenceslaus IV inherited the crown of Bohemia. IDG / Hayden DingmanĪ time when people said “arse” and meant it. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is essentially an Elder Scrolls-style RPG made “realistic.” Abandoning the fantasy lands of most sword-and-board stories, Kingdom Come instead builds a tale around Bohemia, the region of modern-day Czech Republic and, as of the 1400s, the Kingdom within the Holy Roman Empire. You could say that was a low point for Henry. I also drank myself senseless with a priest, then delivered a sermon barefoot the next morning. Since then, my biggest responsibility is solving the murder of some no-name peasants and their horses in a backwater village with only four or five homes. I spent a whole day carrying some spoiled noble’s equipment out to the woods so we could hunt rabbits. Here, I’m over 20 hours in and I’m basically a glorified intern-in-armor.

There, you’re usually the chosen one, destined to save the world. I bring it up because it’s indicative how different Kingdom Come: Deliverance ($60 on Steam) feels from other RPGs.

Not even a proper longsword, mind you, but something called a “hunting sword.” Still, I strapped it to my side with all the pride befitting a peasant who ever-so-slightly increased his social status in class-centric Medieval Europe. Here I was, Henry the blacksmith’s son, one of the few survivors of the attack that burned my home village of Skalitz to the ground, a man with little money and even fewer prospects, assistant to a C-tier lord in the Holy Roman Empire-and I could finally afford my first sword. It was a triumphant moment when I finally bought a sword in Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
