Kingdom Come: Deliverance is eight years old now. When it first came out on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, it was initially considered quite a niche game, thanks to its focus on simulating medieval life more than an emphasis on providing a fast-paced RPG experience. At the time, many questioned intentional design decisions, like its complex melee combat system and a harsh save system built around Sleep & Save, the Save and Quit option, or using Saviour Schnapps. Despite all of this, however, it ended up being quite successful, and eventually got a sequel that improved on it in just about every way.
Celebrating the eighth anniversary of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the developer has finally released a current-gen upgrade for its console versions. This means that PS5 and Xbox Series X/S players can finally stop relying on backwards compatibility and can instead experience the grand adventure while still making use of their powerful consoles’ capabilities.
Now, let’s get this out of the way before we get into reexamining the medieval RPG in the modern context. This current-gen upgrade is largely oriented towards visual fidelity and performance improvements. In its own announcements, the developer says the upgrade uses PC Ultra Quality as the baseline, alongside added/improved features previously only available on PC. Even just starting up the game for the first time it’s immediately obvious this is a step up from the original console releases, helped by higher-resolution textures/models (toggleable in settings) and other PC-grade features making their way over. In fact, I’d go as far as to note that, while we don’t quite get massive leaps in visual fidelity in new console generations that we used to see in the 1990s and 2000s, Kingdom Come: Deliverance on PS5 shows that there is still plenty of difference.
“The best thing that I can say about these improvements is that they are almost entirely invisible.”
This difference becomes even more evident when you actually play the game. When it first came out, it was quite clear that Kingdom Come: Deliverance is best experienced on a capable PC. The PS4 release of the title targeted a playable frame rate of 30 FPS, but unfortunately, the console would often chug along, with graphically intense moments often involving dips down to 20 FPS. Along with this, the base PS4 couldn’t even run the game at 1080p, being limited to 900p instead. The PS5 version, on the other hand, feels far superior. On PS5, the game targets up to 60 FPS while outputting a 4K image via FSR upscaling—with the internal render resolution boosted to 2560×1440 and supported by dynamic resolution in heavier scenes. Even intense moments couldn’t really do much to bring the frame rate down.
The developer had noted many improvements made to the game and the heavily modified version of CryEngine it runs on to achieve this, including dynamic resolution and optimized asset streaming. The best thing that I can say about these improvements is that they are almost entirely invisible. I never really felt like my resolution was being dropped to favor performance, and personally, as long as I’m getting smooth frame rates, I wouldn’t really have cared even if it was noticeable. When it comes to the visuals and performance, the PS5 release of Kingdom Come: Deliverance feels like a triumph, aside from one minor issue.
Despite all the optimization work, loading still feels more noticeable than you’d expect from many PS5-native games, even if it’s dramatically improved over last gen. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is far from the horrendous loading times we used to see on previous-gen HDD-based consoles, and the PS5’s SSD is still quite obviously speeding things up to a notable extent. However, when compared to other modern titles, like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 for instance, the load times are definitely on the slightly longer side. This, however, is a nitpick at best, since it still loads up incredibly quickly compared to the PS4 release, and in my testing I was typically looking at single-digit seconds at the start of a session—fast, but not always ‘blink-and-you-miss-it’ fast.
“Kingdom Come: Deliverance basically leaves you to your own devices.”
The story of Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a long and epic one. Protagonist Henry is a simple commoner. The son of a blacksmith in the Bohemian town of Skalitz, he lives out his life helping his parents with work. However, one day in the year 1403, life as he knows it is changed. An army raids Skalitz—a brutal invasion tied to the conflict consuming Bohemia, and Henry’s life is shattered overnight. Fueled by his desire for revenge, Henry joins Lord Radzig Kobyla and slowly starts unraveling the conspiracy behind this attack.
Generally speaking, the story is quite compelling. While it might be difficult to get your head around all of the characters that are introduced, especially since you can spend a long time between seeing them again, the narrative as a whole plays out in an interesting way that will keep you guessing throughout your run with the game.
After this initial setup, Kingdom Come: Deliverance basically leaves you to your own devices. It is entirely up to you whether or not you might want to take on the main story quests, take up any of the several side quests, or even just roam around and explore the world, making a living off hunting and foraging. The systems powering the open-world RPG are entirely classless, with progression revolving entirely around the things you might do in the world. Get into a lot of fights with a sword, and you’ll find your mastery with the weapon slowly rising. Even non-combat skills can be developed in similar ways, and in fact, Henry doesn’t even have the ability to read when you first start out. This character development system plays a major role in making Kingdom Come: Deliverance such a compelling game.
“[Combat] is a complex system that feels quite rewarding once you actually figure it out and start winning fights at a more common pace.”
Another major aspect of Kingdom Come: Deliverance is its melee combat system. Rather than featuring simple hack-and-slash gameplay, getting into a fight here is a more deliberate affair. Various stats of your weapon, like the length of your blade and its weight, play a vital role in how much damage you can do. Along with this, you also have to pick which angles you want to attack from, and how you should block incoming attacks. It is a complex system that feels quite rewarding once you actually figure it out and start winning fights at a more common pace. Ranged combat is more straightforward… but bows and crossbows don’t always help much against armored enemies.
Let’s not forget that the PS5 release of Kingdom Come: Deliverance also features plenty of content beyond the base game thanks to the inclusion of seven post-launch expansions that were released between 2018 and 2019. These DLCs range from minor—like a Hardcore Mode difficulty—to middling—like a series of treasure hunts—to more interesting stories, like The Amorous Adventures of Bold Sir Hans Capon, or A Woman’s Lot.
Despite the generally-excellent quality of the game itself, the console versions of Kingdom Come: Deliverance have previously been difficult to recommend thanks to the severe performance issues. Thankfully, the current-gen upgrade has erased all these issues. It also helps that, eight years on, Kingdom Come: Deliverance remains a phenomenal open-world RPG that challenges players with its deep progression systems, non-linear questing, and simulationist approach to the world.
This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.
