Kingdom Come Deliverance

When this game was announced I was so excited. It was described as Skyrim but without magic and that sounded too good to be true.

It was.

It's also described as a hardcore old-school RPG. But even in old-school RPGs you get to choose a class for your starting character and that starting character gets a few (3-5) skill points to dole out according to their class. So at least you're good at something when the game starts. Not the case in Kingdom Come. Henry knows absolutely nothing, it's a miracle that he can walk and talk. A blacksmith's son should at least know some rudimentary smithing, sword-swinging and letters, right? At the very least the smithing. But Henry knows zilch.

*rant start*

The story could be interesting enough, but when the cutscenes stop there are the missions where you have to do stuff. Like there should be in RPGs, except it's almost impossible to complete quests without any skills at all. Lockpicking and pickpocketing are sort of mini-games that are extremely frustrating. I failed at lockpicking so many times that I ran out of the few lockpicks I had, which meant I couldn't complete the quest, and surprise, surprise! I need to complete the quest to get access to the fence who sells more lockpicks. And I can't get better at lockpicking because I can't practice because I have no more lockpicks. Catch-22.

The sword-fighting mechanics are made to be realistic but they are mostly just frustrating and incredibly clunky. Same mechanics apply for fist-fighting. When almost every quest in the early game involves sword-fighting and/or fist-fighting every single quest becomes a chore.

I tried to explore the map instead. Find some quests that I could feasibly complete without too much frustration. But fast-travelling worked very much in the same way as Dragon Age Origins, meaning that if you tried you would get interrupted and attacked and almost always by at least four attackers. The game's targeting mechanism made it a hassle to fight more than one enemy at any given time, meaning that while Henry was preoccupied with one enemy, the other three hit on him until he died. So I got to travel everywhere by horse and the distances are soooooooooooooooo vast. It takes forever to go anywhere by horse. I think half my playtime is travelling by horse, and I haven't even explored a fourth of the map. Big maps are good, but it should feel like you can cover the distances without too much of nothing in-between the settlements/cities. There's so much nothing in Kingdom Come.

Archery was easier than sword-fighting but still a hassle because Henry sucks and can't aim. Literally. He can't aim so the player can't aim. I think I wasted 10 arrows per rabbit during the hunting quest with the noble arse whose name I can't remember. And then I had to rescue his ass. There were two enemies. TWO! And it took me about an hour to find a way past them. And it wasn't by fighting, because they were two, and Henry can only look at one person at a time. In the end I hid in the bushes close to their camp and waited until they went to sleep and then I choked them. Too bad that most quests in Kingdom Come can't seem to be completed by stealth.

The next quest was that I had to steal a key from the executioner. I decided to go with stealth because that worked so well for me last time. Except Henry is about as discreet of a pickpocketer as a raging bear so ofc the executioner woke up and literally chased me from his property with the dogs running after. The dogs stopped following after a while so I turned around and resolved to knock this dude out. Fist-fighting it is, because I had been a fool and tried to equip a sword that was too high level for poor little Henry (my bad, but it really isn't obvious). After two in-game night-day cycles (TWO) I gave up and continued running until the executioner stopped following me.

Asking the gaming community about tips and tricks about how to manage the game's crappy clunky controls was worthless. Because all anybody got from anyone was "git gud". Oh gee thanks! Why didn't I think of that!! -.-

I put 10 hours into this game and I got nowhere. When I quit I was still in the starting city. During those 10 hours I think I died more times than I ever have before in an RPG. Because Henry is a fragile little flower who dies if someone pinches him.

*rant over*