Kingdom Come Deliverance

Introduction

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is Warhorse Studios' open-world first-person RPG, published with Deep Silver and released on 13 February 2018 at NZ$50.95. Set in 15th-century Bohemia during a real civil war, it follows blacksmith's son Henry avenging his parents' murder through a deliberately grounded, magic-free RPG built on lockpicking, alchemy, herbalism and a demanding stamina-and-timing combat system. Nearly eight years and 13 pieces of DLC later, it sits at 84% positive ("Very Positive") across 82,482 English-language Steam reviews. This review read the 100 most-helpful negative reviews of 13,170 total, plus a sample of the 100 most recent English reviews, and cross-checked the current standing of its sequel, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, already covered by this outlet.

A world even its critics love

The single most consistent pattern in the negative sample is how often it opens with praise. "The storytelling is amazing. If you are interested in medieval style RPGs with immersive quests and stories then this is 100% the game for you," reads one thumbs-down review, 122 hours in. Another, after 212 hours across multiple return visits: "I loved this game. The concept, the setting, the themes, etc were fresh and new." A 2025 reviewer, writing specifically to prepare for Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, called it "one of the best historically accurate worlds I've encountered in gaming," despite scoring it negatively overall. This isn't a small pattern — it runs through the majority of the negative sample this review read, and it's the clearest signal that what fails players here is systems and stability, not the world or the writing.

Combat built for one, forced against many

The most consistent technical complaint, present in every year this review sampled including 2025 and 2026, is specific: the combat system is widely praised for duels but reviewers say it falls apart in group fights the main story repeatedly requires. "The more you play, the more you notice this system was never made to fight more than 1 NPC at the same time... you can swing your sword but it doesn't w[ork]," reads one 2025 review with 59 hours logged. A 2026 review goes further: "Any enemy that isn't a threadbare, half-dead bandit will 'master strike' you to death if you try to attack them normally... you learn to stop attacking, and just wait for enemies to attack you, because there's no point to doing anything else." A third, 71 hours in: "fighting more than one enemy at a time is a cancerous and extremely unfun experience." This is not a launch-only complaint fading with patches — it appears with almost identical wording from reviewers years apart, describing the same specific mechanical problem.

Bugs that outlive their own patches

Persistent bugs are the second major recurring theme, and this review found a striking, specific example of how long some have lasted: a bug tied to completing the "From the Ashes" DLC before a particular main quest, which blocks story progress. One reviewer flagged it in 2025 with 252 hours logged: "there is a major bug have not solved even after 6 years: If you accept the DLC mission From the Ashes and completed it, you will not be able to complete one of the main quest." A second, independent reviewer describes the same category of problem the same year: "right at the end, i have a game ending glitch, because i completed a DLC from 2019 before the main story." Two reviewers, unconnected, describing the same class of bug involving the same DLC, years after its release — a stronger signal than either complaint alone.

Two fresh controversies in 2026

Two newer complaints appear only in this review's 2026 sample and read as live, current issues rather than long-running ones. First: multiple reviewers report a retroactive change to the game's EULA that requires creating a new third-party account to keep playing, with no way to decline and continue under the original terms. "Halfway through my game they decided to implement a sketchy EULA, and require the creation of a 3rd party account to play their single player game," reads one, who says they uninstalled rather than accept it. Another describes being unable to resume an existing save without agreeing: "there is no option to decline, you must hit accept or close the game via other means." This review reports what these players describe rather than characterising what the account requirement actually does, since a review corpus cannot audit that on its own.

Second, and more serious: multiple reviewers allege Warhorse replaced a human translator with AI-generated localisation in 2026. "I prefer my localization made by man, not ai," reads one 210-vote review. A longer review argues the same point at length, saying "Warhorse recently decided to fire their translator and replace his job with an AI." This review could not independently verify that a translator was let go or that AI now handles localisation — it is reporting a claim repeated by multiple reviewers, not a confirmed fact, and found no official statement addressing it in the game's own Steam news feed.

The save system that defined its launch

The single largest launch-week complaint, still recognisable in memory of the game years later, was the original "Saviour Schnapps" save system: an item players had to craft or buy to save outside of sleeping, with no free quicksave. "75 coins for a potion that lets you save the game... lost about 20 minutes of gameplay in one restart due to the lack of a simple quicksave," read one of the most-upvoted reviews from launch week. A small number of reviewers still raise it in 2026 — "Give me my F5 quicksave and let me play a single player game the way I want" — but it appears far less often in the recent sample than in 2018, suggesting most current players have either adjusted to it or benefited from changes made since launch.

Set against its own sequel

Because this library already covers Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, the two figures are directly comparable, checked the same day: the original sits at 84% positive lifetime against the sequel's 93%. That gap lines up with what this review's negative sample argues — group combat and bugs are named specifically and repeatedly as the original's weak points, exactly the kind of systems a sequel gets the chance to rebuild.

Verdict

Kingdom Come: Deliverance remains a genuinely ambitious, historically grounded RPG whose world and storytelling this review's own negative sample keeps praising even while giving the game a thumbs-down. What holds it back from a higher score is specific and repeated: a combat system reviewers across nearly eight years say was built for duels and gets forced into group fights it can't handle, bugs that include the same DLC-quest-order problem reported independently years apart, and two live 2026 controversies — a retroactive EULA and account requirement, and an unverified but repeated allegation about AI replacing human localisation. Its own sequel scoring notably higher on the same measure is the clearest evidence that Warhorse addressed at least some of this the second time around. Worth playing for the history and the story, patched and ideally on sale — go in aware of exactly what reviewers say breaks.