More than fair. The combat seems to click with a narrow slice of players and leave everyone else cold. Unusually for an RPG like this, I notice that a lot of popular mods just outright remove combat mechanics rather than refining or adding to them.
That all said, I'm about six hours further in than when I published this piece, and I can confirm that the experience does improve with a more advanced character. From a design perspective, there's definitely something to learn about balancing progression.
Guess who beat the whole game [twice] with the unmodded save system? That's right, this guy. You know what they say, if you ain't brewin, you ain't doin... it right.
To be honest, I crapped out of my first playthrough before I ever got much alchemy going. But the thought of making my own saves and thus rebalancing the game myself through its own gameplay mechanics is too intriguing to ignore. I’ll take it more seriously this time around and see what happens.
I have to say, I'm the complete opposite when it comes to KCD's save system - so much so that I hardly ever used savior schnapps when I played it. Not only did the threat of losing hours of progress give more weight to my choices, it also had me mentally dividing the game into days. Just as I might in real life, I'd plan out what I would do each day taking into account active quests, need fulfillment, and the absolute necessity of getting back to a bed in the evening. Really took the immersion to the next level in my opinion.
I was also undertrained for Runt and took a ton of tries to beat him. Eventually I realized I had poison in my inventory and that turned out to be enough of an edge to get through it. That fight is a pretty bad experience especially since the game mostly shines when you avoid combat.
I'm with you on the combat system, though. I see what they were going for, but in practice it just becomes waiting for the AI to attack so you can perfect parry. You can't really outplay the AI with weapon positioning and pulling off a combo is impossible against any enemy where landing one would matter. Hopefully they've made some improvements in KCD2, but I don't intend to play that one until all the DLC is out.
I can totally see that sort of day-by-day approach working brilliantly for an experienced (or at least very patient) player. For my money, though, the immersion breaks down if I have to reload and repeat a long stretch of gameplay that I’ve already done. Like, if I have a great day with a lot of progress and then get brought down in the evening by bandits because of a couple poorly timed inputs, I get frustrated and discouraged. I guess that some combination of practice and mindset would overcome that, so it’s good to hear from someone for whom this all works so well — makes me hopeful that I might wrangle the same positive experience out of the unmodded system in a future playthrough one day.
I agree! Doing the same thing over again is pretty immersion-breaking so except for stuff like the Runt fight and certain timed quests where it's unavoidable, I try to come up with something completely different to do if I get set back. That way it's more like those old Choose Your Own Adventure books. In the day Henry started by doing some errands for Lady Stephanie he gets ambushed and killed in the woods, but things play out differently if he decides to go to the market and, on the way there, takes a quest to investigate heretics. Then on a future day I'd go back to Lady Stephanie's quest and it doesn't feel so repetitive.
I cannot bring myself to play this game. I don’t think I’ll like the combat systems enough.
More than fair. The combat seems to click with a narrow slice of players and leave everyone else cold. Unusually for an RPG like this, I notice that a lot of popular mods just outright remove combat mechanics rather than refining or adding to them.
That all said, I'm about six hours further in than when I published this piece, and I can confirm that the experience does improve with a more advanced character. From a design perspective, there's definitely something to learn about balancing progression.
Guess who beat the whole game [twice] with the unmodded save system? That's right, this guy. You know what they say, if you ain't brewin, you ain't doin... it right.
🙏
To be honest, I crapped out of my first playthrough before I ever got much alchemy going. But the thought of making my own saves and thus rebalancing the game myself through its own gameplay mechanics is too intriguing to ignore. I’ll take it more seriously this time around and see what happens.
I have to say, I'm the complete opposite when it comes to KCD's save system - so much so that I hardly ever used savior schnapps when I played it. Not only did the threat of losing hours of progress give more weight to my choices, it also had me mentally dividing the game into days. Just as I might in real life, I'd plan out what I would do each day taking into account active quests, need fulfillment, and the absolute necessity of getting back to a bed in the evening. Really took the immersion to the next level in my opinion.
I was also undertrained for Runt and took a ton of tries to beat him. Eventually I realized I had poison in my inventory and that turned out to be enough of an edge to get through it. That fight is a pretty bad experience especially since the game mostly shines when you avoid combat.
I'm with you on the combat system, though. I see what they were going for, but in practice it just becomes waiting for the AI to attack so you can perfect parry. You can't really outplay the AI with weapon positioning and pulling off a combo is impossible against any enemy where landing one would matter. Hopefully they've made some improvements in KCD2, but I don't intend to play that one until all the DLC is out.
I can totally see that sort of day-by-day approach working brilliantly for an experienced (or at least very patient) player. For my money, though, the immersion breaks down if I have to reload and repeat a long stretch of gameplay that I’ve already done. Like, if I have a great day with a lot of progress and then get brought down in the evening by bandits because of a couple poorly timed inputs, I get frustrated and discouraged. I guess that some combination of practice and mindset would overcome that, so it’s good to hear from someone for whom this all works so well — makes me hopeful that I might wrangle the same positive experience out of the unmodded system in a future playthrough one day.
Thanks so much reading!
I agree! Doing the same thing over again is pretty immersion-breaking so except for stuff like the Runt fight and certain timed quests where it's unavoidable, I try to come up with something completely different to do if I get set back. That way it's more like those old Choose Your Own Adventure books. In the day Henry started by doing some errands for Lady Stephanie he gets ambushed and killed in the woods, but things play out differently if he decides to go to the market and, on the way there, takes a quest to investigate heretics. Then on a future day I'd go back to Lady Stephanie's quest and it doesn't feel so repetitive.