Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 preview – an early contender for 2025’s best RPG

I’ve played 20 hours of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. In those 20 hours, I’ve been thrown in the stocks, been stripped of my clothes, lost my dog, and been stabbed. Some would say that this doesn’t sound like a great time, but Warhorse’s almost-simulation of medieval life is one of the most engaging RPGs I’ve ever played.

Taking place almost directly after the original game, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is a pretty straightforward sequel. Every aspect of the game is improved, from the handling of its precise first-person swordplay to its menu interface, but everything feels like a refinement over what already came before. Even the game’s visuals, which are gorgeous, feel like the expected jump up.

In essence, this is a game perfectly catered for fans of the first game, but the game’s hilarious intro hours are also a fine prologue for anyone who didn’t play—or more likely finish—the first. Playing as Henry, you’re on a journey with your best bud/noble Hans Capon to deliver an important letter before everything goes bottoms-up. After this, you’re taught the game’s basic systems then told to head off and find your own path forward.

While Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 doesn’t have the fantastical fiction of The Elder Scrolls, playing it does remind me of the best parts of Morrowind. While you have a map, you can follow well-trodden roads and signage to get to your destination, crafting potions requires you to crush and boil herbs and follow recipes, and making weapons and armour requires you to actually craft them on a forge.

Warhorse Games’ recreation of 15^th century Europe feels so alive in its presentation largely due to the fact that almost every aspect of it is useful. NPCs follow roads and have their own houses, which you can trespass inside of and get nicked because of it; flowers grow in fields that can be used to craft potions; communal troughs need to be used to wash the stink off before people will chat with you. It makes the world engaging in a wholly unique way. Well, unique outside of its predecessor.

“Every immersive element in KCD2 reminds me of what I thought I was doing in RPGs 20 years ago, now with a photo-realistic coat of paint.”

Every immersive element in KCD2 reminds me of what I thought I was doing in RPGs 20 years ago, now with a photo-realistic coat of paint. In Morrowind, I wasn’t actually crushing up leaves with a mortar and pestle, but here I am. In Oblivion, I wasn’t hammering out a sword in a forge, but here I am. It’s a brilliant way of interacting with the world around you, although it definitely won’t be for everyone.

Alongside its immersive gameplay, the writing is what actually stands out the most as an improvement over the original. From the off, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is hilariously written with lovable and realistic characters. Even better, your version of Henry can be as nice or as much of a knob as you like and your responses end up changing what others think of you.

Multiple scenes in the RPG had me belly-laughing at wit-filled dialogue and hilarious scenes, and it’s here that the years of waiting for a sequel have truly paid off. While some voice acting can be rough, the main cast is all expertly delivered, even protagonist Henry’s confused-sounding Gloucester accent. Of course, you can always shift the game to the developer’s native Czech if the English acting doesn’t do it for you.

Set for release on February 4, 2025, we have a lot more Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 to play… a lot more. But from these early hours, it’s clear that this is a noticeable improvement over an already great game, and a contender for one of the best RPGs of the generation.