Kingdom Come: Deliverance

[Art Blade]

yep, they're a good bunch of people. Since I posted that, I was playing continuously for around three hours straight until now, including a couple of long fights against bandits and Cumans, and I quit without having had any new crashes . 

[Art Blade]

Two more fascinating things

mining gallery (very long, and it's a maze, too)
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stampede a horse - it reared and ran away
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[PZ]

I love the mines, but dislike mazes.

FC5 has quite a few mines, and even a few dredges. One of my favorite shows is Gold Rush, and I live in a gold mining area in which I can explore old gold/silver mining areas.

[Art Blade]

those mine galleries in KCD are actually silver mines I ran around quite a bit down there but there's nothing worthwhile in there.

Just a word about the game's funding story: I came across some information that essentially the crowd-funding raised 1.5 million dollar and then they convinced companies to support them. The entire production value is likely around 35 million rather than 5, with a major part of that coming from bigger companies. I mean, the game publisher is Deep Silver, and the loading screen shows company names such as Alienware. So they convinced big companies. Still, if 35 million is true, then the over one million copies sold so far more than made up for the trouble, they're already well in the plus which again is needed for the sequel. The game's main story kind of stopped abruptly and the protagonist hasn't yet had his revenge. I'm very curious already

[LowPolyOWG]

Interesting.

[PZ]

Indeed - quite interesting 

[Art Blade]

just to clarify: I haven't finished the game yet. I'm still mostly doing side missions because they're quite entertaining and help me level up my skills.

[Art Blade]

There's something else I want to tell you, about my gameplay.

I admit that I've been cheating for a while now using something that's quite like god mode but not exactly like that. Essentially it prevents me from losing health, it keeps replenishing it to my maximum level quicker than it can be depleted. I could also say that it restores health if I take damage so I cannot run low or out of health, I'll always be on maximum health. But that's all. It doesn't prevent anything else and that's what makes it different from any god mode. I can still run low on or out of stamina and have to rest until it's coming back up. That affects fighting. I use up stamina when sprinting, swinging a weapon, getting hit and when keeping a bow drawn for too long.

The reason why I started to use that cheat is because the game cheated on me first, it is a counter-measure, if you will. What the game does, what I call cheating, is this: at night (without any fire or moonlight) it is so dark that I can't even see my feet when looking down. In a forest, trees keep moonlight from making it at least a tad brighter and if it's cloudy/raining, there isn't any moonlight. Now, if I travel at night, bandits may pop up and attack me. They can see perfectly well as if it was broad daylight. My horse can, too, by the way. I think everyone but me can, actually. Alright, there is stealth, I can sneak around on foot and approach a camp unnoticed, and I can stay almost invisible until I bump into someone.

Once I get spotted, for whatever reason, everyone around knows where I am and there are usually more than just one guy. It is rare to encounter only two. So mostly it's three or more, the highest amount of enemies I ever had a run-in with at night was eight (I knew the next day by counting the bodies) and they always manage to surround you. The game mechanics force you to focus on one enemy which allows everyone else to attack freely from all angles. Usually there is at least one archer who will walk a few steps back and then start to pepper you with arrows, then the guys behind and next to you will stab and slash at you and that will definitely be your end within a minute at best. All that while you can't see anything but your crosshair which is locked on to someone you don't see, either. That's just not fair, is it.

Because the cheat doesn't do anything but keeping me alive, I still have to fight like a champion, it will drain my stamina a lot and often, I can't swing a sword when my stamina is depleted and I have to take a short rest allowing my stamina to start filling up again. If I get hit during that stage, I lose a good amount of stamina again and so on. Also, all my gear will wear down and may break due to the hits I keep taking. All in all, it is a hell of a fight I have to put up, and I will have to kill everyone in order to get a proper rest and be able to loot, repair my stuff and all that. Such a fight may easily take like ten or twenty minutes real time, sometimes more. I might hit the pause button to rest my real self a bit, then go back into the battle. It might actually take up to an hour if I have to fight like eight guys at night. Sometimes I try to just stay alive (well, you know what I mean) until the morning comes so the first light finally allows me to see what I'm doing and that's when I can get away with all kinds of manoeuvres and finally win the fight.

You see, that cheat isn't exactly making it easier for me, it just prevents me from any sudden demise.

Some time ago I mentioned that my maintenance skill (repair skills) was quite low. I thought about it and considered those fights an excellent opportunity to train myself in repairing armour, shoes, weapons and clothes because I wasn't limited to my one sword and one pair of boots and so on: I had all the loot of the slain enemy to repair, too Which means, by now I have acquired the maximum skill of 20 and that came with quite a few very useful perks I was allowed to choose.

[PZ]

... The game mechanics force you to focus on one enemy which allows everyone else to attack freely from all angles...

You sure a couple of the FC2 developers aren't on the payroll? 

Seriously, what you did is a good w0#k around for the game that has a less than desirable characteristic.

[Art Blade]

hehe, you can see for yourself if you visit their hompage https://warhorsestudios.cz/index.php?page=aboutus&lang=en There you can find out that a couple of their team worked on kind of big games before, among which there are Mafia 1+2, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising as well as OFP: Resistance, and Forza Horizon.

edit: this link is making it even clearer: https://warhorsestudios.cz/index.php?page=games&lang=en

Anyway, the cheat I'm using allows for a lot of fun and a lot less sorrow while it doesn't overpower me. The additional save ability that comes with the cheat mod adds another layer of security regarding carefree gaming. Now it isn't that dangerous anymore but that's my choice. I would have played.. let me rephrase that: I did play differently when I just got the game. No cheating, no added save ability. Then came the first stupid bugs that had me stuck in a rock and stuck on a bridge, no way of getting out but reloading, and that save was perhaps an hour old. A lot had happened between that save and the moments I got stuck. So I started with a save game mod. The cheat mod did a better job at it and had more functionality, among other things the cheat that keeps me alive. At first I didn't use that at all, but I was curious and activated it to see how well it did. Actually, I didn't even notice it was there and forgot about it. And now comes the funny bit: all other cheats are temporary and won't get saved so I didn't think this one would but it actually did. I only found out because quite some time later,  some real time days later, I realised I should have died but hadn't. That's when I realised how well yet unobtrusively it worked. Of course I wanted to know whether or not it could be deactivated successfully and indeed, it can be deactivated. Well, I leave it on unless the game requires me to actually take damage (some games do, for instance in FC2 when you have to use your first syringe and bandage, you have to be injured or you can't continue the tutorial, but that's FC2 devs..) but so far, it wasn't necessary

[Art Blade]

come to think of the Far Cry franchise (and actually almost every recent game) and the difference between those and KCD, there is no such thing as a tutorial that forces your hand or makes you move. You need to use your brain, that's all. There are no people constantly yelling into your ear describing to you what you're doing and seeing. There is no one off screen telling you what to do. There are no XP numbers popping up and floating in your face telling you that you just earned some XP. There are no mechanics that allow you to mark targets and see them through walls. There are no arrows painted in bright colours on the roads showing you the way. There is no mini map overloaded with icons that depict every plant and dust grain in your vicinity. There is actually nothing but your health and stamina and a simple compass. The only markers are on the compass and they're not telling you anything but the approximate location of whatever it is the current quest which you yourself (and not the game by itself) activated requires you to go to, and you need to find and identify it on your own. All of that means, you won't see anything on your screen but the compass and those vitals. Well, next to that health bar there may be perk items that indicate which perks are currently active. Apart from that, you only get notifications when you levelled up or if a quest was updated but that's very limited. Generally speaking, you focus on the game world, on what you see and hear. That is what makes the game so immersive, no "funny" stuff on the screen distracting you all the time. I'd call this a properly mature game for mature gamers, no corridor nonsense and no silly boss fights and no drug-induced hallucinations, no pill-popping.. it's just so simple that it is probably too difficult for some people ("kids") and man, I LOVE that

[LowPolyOWG]

 

[fragger]

Art, I don't really think it's cheating if you're playing by yourself - and in this case, it's more like just leveling the playing field It sounds as though it's fully justified if bad guys can see you at night when you can't see them, as well as negating an exasperating default save function. I'd want to change that too.

As you know, I like to avoid cheating in games, but that's not because of any kind of silly "moral high ground" attitude or anything. I simply like to see if I can get through a game the way the devs intended, and I would never belittle anyone else's approach. If someone wants to play a whole game in God mode or whatever, I say go for it - whatever floats your boat is just fine with me And in the case of KCD, from what you've reported, I would do exactly the same as you have without feeling a jot of guilt about it. I think you're just making things fair for yourself.

Gaming is all about having fun, after all. To paraphrase an old song, "If it gets you through the game, it's alright" People who cheat or play dirty in MP games - now they are the ones who deserve a damn good thrashing.

[Art Blade]

keep your last sentence in mind when you read my post to the end And yes, it's OK for me to use that "help." I checked my stats, it keeps recording damage I take, but I deal 10x more damage than I take and last time (end of this post) I had to repair my armour, it was just a bit dented. It would have been broken if I had taken massive damage.

****

After a couple of hours of gaming, it is now time to report. Not that I have to but there were so many things worth mentioning that I might lose interest in posting about them if I didn't do it now while they're still somewhat fresh in my memory. I don't know if you experience the same: something cool happened but you were so busy and captivated that you didn't even think of stopping only for the sake of writing a post. So you keep playing. And then you're tired, go to bed and the next day you aren't excited enough anymore to write about it. And then the story is lost. Anyway, here are some of today's highlights.

You may remember my lengthy post about how a side mission panned out differently only because I was late, some guy had killed the only witness and knew I didn't have anything to prove his guilt. That I reloaded it to get it right. The reason why I was late was that the mission (House of God) had brought me to a monastery where the accident had happend which I was supposed to investigate. By chance, there was a young lady, Johanka, working in the infirmary of the monastery who was from the same village as Henry (me) and by talking to her, I triggered another side mission. Because the other mission could be halted (or so I thought) I was instead busy helping Johanka treating the wounded and there were quite a few things to do. The last part of her mission would have required me to travel quite a distance to find a priest who knew how to cure poisoning. Because the investigation of the monastery's church construction accident was just where I was, I decided it was more efficient to stay and to continue that mission now. And that's why I was late. After I had reloaded a savegame to restart the investigation mission, I stayed away from Johanka. I successfully completed the investigation mission. And then the game crashed constantly thanks to a bug from patch 1.4.1 and when they had released a fix with 1.4.2, they strongly recommended to reload a save prior to 1.4 which meant, I bloody had to play both missions again. Hence my comment "prolonged gaming." Today I arrived at the monastery with none of those missions active and I thought it best to do Johanka's mission first and finish it. When I came to the point I had to travel to find that priest for the antidote, I was in uncharted waters.

You already know how cool the investigation mission (House of God) was written, that the story changed when I was late. And that despite the fact that it was "only" a side mission. I'm telling you about Johanka's mission now because I want to show you how just some other random side mission isn't shallow, either. Helping her taking care of the wounded opens up different dialogue options IF you have acquired medical skills, there are three levels of healing you can reach but there are a lot of prerequisites before getting that far. While I was playing, I had just reached (my choice, by the way, you don't even have to acquire those medical skills) level two, and meanwhile I have all of them. So if you don't have any, you need to find and ask other people to help you. Because I had some, I myself was actually able to help, like fix a broken leg. Because I am level 20 in alchemy, I was also able to brew a sleep potion and my knowledge (skill as part of alchemy) in herbalism allowed me to find the right herbs for a cure of another patient. I reckon I only needed to find that priest because I wasn't yet level three in medicine. So off I went. That priest had vanished and I had to find out where he was. After some asking around, I found out that he had a relationship with his housemaid, she got pregnant and died, and he felt guilty and ashamed so he left everything behind and disappeared somewhere into the forest. A guy in a burnt-down village, who lived there on his own, knew him and asked me to convince the priest to return to the village so people would return, too. He suggested to ask for him on a nearby farm where the parents of the girl were still living. They told me that someone, likely the priest, used to leave flowers at a wayside cross in the forest, a specific type of flowers. Finding a spot in the vicinity where those flowers grow might lead to the preast's whereabouts. While I was busy searching a patch of forest around the wayside cross, I heard faint voices. Two shady guys were having some kind of argument. Apparently they had captured the priest there. I punched them senseless and freed the priest. Now he was thankful, he gave me a recipe for the poisoned patient, and I was able to convince him to return to the village.

How about that for a part of a side mission. It's not like those stupid "go to X, collect Y, and kill Z" all over again as in most games these days. Here, side missions are proper stories, and they're deep, may have different outcomes and all that. Excellent

Now that I came back with the recipe, I had to brew the potion and cure the poisoned guy, finally that mission ended successfully. Johanka still could be talked to (a prompt telling me that) so I talked to her, expecting something like a simple reply and perhaps another thank you. Instead, she started to tell me about weird stuff going on at the construction site of the church. She told me several details that sounded very familiar and them moment I thought she might somehow trigger House of God, she actually triggered that mission. The first times I played it, Sir Divish, half across the map, was the quest giver. Now I had to deal with the overseer of the monastery instead. How about that. The rest of the mission was essentially the same, only the reward was smaller. I really didn't feel like going back to before I talked to Johanka to find out whether or not Sir Divish would give me the quest if I went to him, but I did travel to him during the quest just to find out whether or not he had anything to do with it now but he didn't. Interesting.

You see, this game is DEEP.

And because you read until here, at least I hope you did, just a very short and funny bit for desert, pics only. Just read the subtitles to understand the fun part in it -- that includes the guy's name in the dialogue choice bottom right. Best click on the first pic and then use the mousewheel to "scroll down," it's easier to follow the short story like that and you Seymore. Er, see more.

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[LowPolyOWG]

That's great to hear How does this game compare to Fallout 4, for you?