Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is, put simply, a masterpiece and easily one of the best role-playing games (RPGs) of the last decade. It offers an incredible experience that, aside from its ambitious 2018 predecessor Kingdom Come: Deliverance, feels wholly unique and is quite unlike anything you might have played before.

It demonstrates a new level of immersion and interactivity achieved through detailed simulation and a considered commitment to realism. Its brilliance comes not from its engaging, though occasionally convoluted, story, nor its polished life-like visuals, but rather a web of complex, interwoven mechanics that blend seamlessly with one another to create ingenious moments of emergent play.

Tasks that would be nothing short of mundane in other games become memorable escapades that unfold in a grounded, yet often unpredictable, fashion. I’ll never forget my hour-long hunt for a simple spade, the time my pricey shoes got stolen by local ne’er-do-wells after a chaotic tavern brawl, when I haggled with a shady roadside merchant for the spear that stabbed Jesus, or the hundreds of other amusing moments that left me grinning from ear to ear.

Making history

Set in medieval Bohemia (part of modern day Czechia), Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 picks up the moment that the previous installment ended. You are Henry of Skaltiz, an everyday villager who we saw transformed into something of a hero after his home was destroyed and his parents murdered by a horde of foreign raiders under the command of the invading King Sigismund. Having worked your way up the social ladder, you’re now in charge of protecting your friend, the young nobleman Hans Capon, as he delivers an important message to a lord in the nearby region of Trosky.

This simple task quickly spirals out of control as a band of roving criminals attacks your party and slaughters everyone aside from you and Capon. You narrowly escape, but sustain heavy injuries that, in typical European RPG fashion, knock your overall character level right back down. You’re forced to build yourself back up, finding work nearby and eventually reuniting with Capon before an even grander narrative unfolds.

Right off the bat, the inconsistent quality of the voice acting is going to be apparent. The voice work for major characters like Henry and Capon is superb and conveys a believable partnership, but non-playable characters (NPCs) can be very hit or miss. Some sound quite emotionless, while others place strange emphasis on certain words and phrases. I even found a couple that I became convinced are alternating between lines voiced by different people, which is quite jarring to say the least.

That said, it’s easy to forgive a lot of this given just how much voice acting there is throughout. Dialogue is branching, with multiple options depending on your previous actions or character stats. The ability for even the most insignificant of NPCs to respond to your behavior is awe-inspiring, commenting on how well you’re dressed, what you’ve just done, or even whether you’ve managed to get a wash recently. This is not only immersive but also has some interesting gameplay ramifications.

Decked out in a heavy suit of armor your attempts at intimidation are more likely to succeed, while investing all of your cash into a fine set of clothes and a trip to the bathhouse makes it easier to pass yourself off as a noble and talk your way out of sticky situations.

Living and breathing

This is just the start, however, as there are countless careful touches that make the open world feel truly life-like. The many traders, which range from butchers to cobblers and armor makers, can be haggled with, with your overall appearance and local reputation affecting just how low they're willing to go. Town criers travel between rural communities, recounting tall tales of the world beyond Bohemia for anyone willing to stop and listen. There are plenty of activities to try with their own in-depth mechanics, be that blacksmithing new gear, crafting new potions to add to your arsenal, or pinching trinkets for some quick coin.

Time constantly progresses and most NPCs even follow a daily routine, waking up at a set time before going to their place of work for a few hours and then visiting a local tavern or returning home for the evening before bed. Part of the way through the story you’re transported from the huge open fields around Trosky to a second map that contains the burgeoning city of Kuttenberg. It’s filled with beautifully modeled buildings and wandering through its bustling streets watching everyone engaging in a realistic day-to-day life feels like being transported back in time in the very best of ways.

These kinds of systems are paired wonderfully with very open quest design. Sure, some quite linear sections in the main story force you to play a certain way, but most side quests have a range of solutions and can play out very differently depending on your actions.

One such quest saw me tasked with assassinating a farmer and, while it’s definitely possible to run up to him and whack him with a sword in broad daylight, I opted to carefully study his movements. After working out the location of his house, I waited until about 11pm and crept through it silently knocking out all of its inhabitants before arriving at his bed. Hilariously, in all my planning I had forgotten to actually bring a knife for this crucial juncture, so ended up having to loudly beat him with a mace before running off under the cover of darkness.

Daily bread

You also have to watch Henry’s stats, making sure that you get enough sleep and keep your belly full. This might seem a tad annoying at first, but I found that it really encouraged deeper roleplaying than almost any other RPG I’ve experienced. I started planning my virtual days around stopping off at taverns for lunch or to rent a room for the night. Before embarking on long journeys to the starting location of the next story quest, I would routinely go out hunting and smoke my collected meats for longevity - an essential action unless you intend to die of severe food poisoning on the road.

Taking things slow also gives you time to properly recover in between bouts of combat, which is itself a highlight. There are loads of weapons to try, from the conventional one-handed and two-handed swords, axes, and picks, to ranged options like bows, crossbows, and some early, very impractical, firearms. Swords can be swung in five directions, selected by highlighting part of an on-screen star shape. Generally, your goal is to watch an opponent's positioning, swinging the sword in a direction that they have exposed.

It takes a lot of time to master, but visiting trainers will unlock advanced swordplay techniques like combos or ripostes to help hone your skills. I loved the Master strike, an unblockable move that you can trigger by attacking in the opposite direction of a foe just as they begin to swing. It’s tricky to pull off, potentially leaving your vulnerable, but incredibly powerful so presents the perfect balance of risk and reward.

The other weapon types are similarly well thought out and generally a little easier to manage, with fewer swinging directions to keep track of. Still, the most complex attacks are only accessible to those wielding a sword which gives you a good reason to invest the time in getting the hang of them.

This encapsulates the very essence of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. It is not an experience that can be rushed, and doing so would only hamper your enjoyment. Go in willing to truly immerse yourself in medieval life and you will be rewarded with an engaging story and one of the richest, most life-like worlds ever put in a video game.

Should I play Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility

Sadly, there is no dedicated accessibility menu in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.

On console you can edit the control scheme somewhat, inverting the vertical and horizon axis and altering look sensitivity.

Subtitles are present throughout the game by default and have a range of display options including text size and high-contrast color settings.

How I reviewed Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2

I played Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 for more than fifty hours on PlayStation 5 using the DualSense Wireless Controller and a pair of Astro A50 X headphones.

During that time, I completed the entire main story, reaching the end credits, and explored a lot of what its two maps had to offer through a handful of side quests.

That said, there is still a lot that I didn’t manage to see, so I’m looking forward to diving back in to finish more optional tasks and maybe even replay the story to see how choosing other options at key decision points would play out.

First reviewed January - February 2025

After more than fifty hours of Sid Meier's Civilization 7 and the complete annihilation of my sleep routine thanks to one too many light night sessions, I can confidently say that the latest entry in the legendary turn-based strategy franchise from genre masters Firaxis Games is as strategically rich and unapologetically moreish as ever.

I can’t deny that I went in rather sceptical too, as Civilization 7 is comfortably the most radical take on Civilization yet. Where previous installments have relied on just a handful of new mechanics to keep things feeling fresh, Civilization 7 makes several fundamental changes to the series’ core formula that are, by and large, masterfully handled. The decision to separate Leaders and Civs (the many playable historical groups), for example, is a bold one but opens the door to a whole new level of planning.

Employed aptly, swapping between Civs allows you to pivot your strategy on the fly, helping to prevent those painful, protracted losses that were once almost guaranteed to occur if you were unlucky enough to mess up early on. Competitors such as Humankind have experimented with a similar mix-and-match formula in the past but only demonstrated the potential pitfalls of such systems with uneven, poorly balanced matches.

These problems are thankfully nowhere to be found in Civilization 7, though, while it is one of the best PC games, that’s not to say that it's perfect and there aren’t a few areas with room for improvement.

Urban planner

Civilization has always been the archetypal 4X (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate) strategy game, heavily employing all the elements of the genre’s namesake. You play as a historical leader in a procedurally generated hexagon-tiled map, exploring your surroundings before founding cities and beginning to expand your empire.

Placing buildings within cities provides useful yields, namely Science (which is tied to how fast you can work your way through a technology tree to unlock increasingly modern units or amenities), Culture for acquiring Civics (advancements in ideology with their own unique bonuses), and Production (simply how quickly you can build things). This is on top of more material resources, like Food (for increasing the population and number of tiles that your cities occupy), gold (which allows you to instantly buy buildings or units), and Influence (points you can spend interacting with other leaders).

Learning how to properly exploit the environment is key, as tiles have unique qualities that make them best suited to a certain yield. Paired with a plethora of adjacency bonuses and the new ability to overbuild (replace early buildings with superior versions when they become available), managing your cities is a tricky but thoroughly engaging challenge in and of itself.

It was something that I always found a tad overwhelming in Civilization 6, but one small tweak makes city management in Civilization 7 that much easier to keep on top of. Now, new settlements are automatically founded as small towns, which are far more limited than full-blown cities and thus don’t require anywhere near the same level of micro-management. You can upgrade towns to cities for a fee, but I was content focusing all my attention on maximizing the output of just a couple of major cities for the majority of my games.

Spending time developing your metropolises is especially rewarding this time around, as Civilization 7 is by far the best looking strategy game I’ve ever played. Each miniature tile is incredibly detailed, allowing you to zoom in and see your chosen buildings as they’re constructed. Whether it’s the animated farm animals, bridges over the flowing rivers, or the wide variety of period-appropriate architectural styles that line the tightly-knit streets, everything looks like a beautiful museum diorama come to life.

Make your mark

Of course, Civilization 7 is about far more than just managing where your subjects live and each match sees players working towards a range of victory types - with the first to fulfill any one’s conditions crowned the overall winner. The simplest is Domination, where you build up armies and exterminate every other player by capturing all of their territories. Generals, a new unit type that can band together nearby troops for easy transport, are a fantastic addition and eliminate the frustration that was moving large armies in previous games.

Other victory types are now tied to four new legacy paths (Military, Culture, Science, and Economic), which provide a constant set of objectives to pursue. Matches in Civilization 7 are themselves split into three distinct chunks that roughly reflect a key historical period (Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern) and the legacy paths have their own unique goals for each. The Military path, for example, focuses on capturing settlements in Antiquity, dominating the new world in Exploration, and, eventually, successful development of the atomic bomb in Modern.

Culture, meanwhile, is all about constructing one-of-a-kind World Wonders, founding an influential religion, and finally, a mad rush to dig up historical artifacts from all around the map. They all feel very distinct and successfully completing the objectives of the two initial ages provides useful bonuses for the next like some free population or enhanced versions of buildings. As a result, each age unfolds almost like its own small-scale game of Civilization, with players racing to complete these mini-goals. It lends matches a fantastic sense of pace, finally addressing the tendency for things to drag after the first hundred or so turns.

Still, I did notice that following a legacy path does start to become quite repetitive in time. Each legacy path always has the same goals, so realistically you’re going to end up performing the same actions a lot. By the end of my 50 hours, I felt like I had completely mastered all stages of both the Military and Economic legacy paths and was hesitant to start fresh games pursuing them. After 100 hours, I can imagine really needing some new ways to win - something that I hope will be introduced in the expected barrage of post-launch downloadable content.

Tag team

It's not like every match unfolds in entirely the same predictable pattern, however, as the ability to switch your current Civ at the start of each age does add a lot of changeability. This is an absolute highlight and has been implemented impressively well. Each age has its own roster of historical Civs with their own unique buffs, buildings, and units and your choice of leader affects which ones you can pick after your initial selection in Antiquity. Those playing as renowned abolitionist Harriet Tubman, for example, will always be able to access America in the Modern age, which is a clever way to encourage more historically accurate pairings.

You can unlock more Civs by fulfilling certain criteria in each age, too. I played a game where I ended up building a lot of fortifications to protect myself against an aggressive neighbor in Antiquity, which unlocked the option to choose the Normans in the Exploration Age who partly specialize in defense. This is, in a word, brilliant, as it allows you to entirely shift your strategy if something isn’t working out.

If you go into a game intending to pursue an Economic victory and pick one of the corresponding first Civs only to end up wanting to pivot to Culture, you can simply unlock and switch to a more Culture-oriented Civ when you get the chance. It’s easier to pursue multiple victories this way too and means that you can often turn things around if you're not succeeding.

It definitely helps that there is an expansive selection of leaders available at launch, with returning military staples including Napoleon and Augustus joined by unconventional new picks like scheming author Machiavelli and traveled chronicler Ibn Battuta, as well as just over 30 Civs. To top it all off, both leaders and Civs have some really quite unique powers, like Battuta’s Trade Maps Diplomatic Endeavour that lets you spend Influence to see another leader’s explored land or America’s strong resource-grabbing prospector unit.

Code red

Towards the end of the first two ages, you also have to deal with a crisis, which can range from the appearance of hordes of invading barbarians to deadly plagues that wipe out entire armies in just a few turns.

You combat these by enacting mandatory Crisis Policies, which generally provide some relief in one area while massively hampering your progress in another. Working out exactly which of the policies you’re offered will affect you the least is a welcome puzzle and the looming threat of a crisis ups the ante at a time when you would otherwise be winding down.

In spite of all these bombastic new additions, the one major area where Civilization 7 truly falls short is in its diplomacy system - which is baffling as, in my book, it was almost perfect in Civilization 6. Your interactions with other leaders feel unnecessarily limited, mainly focused on forming simple alliances and open border agreements. You can no longer directly trade gold, which means no bargaining for another leader’s cities or leveraging piles of money to bribe greedy leaders into initiating losing wars with others. It’s a real shame, as those systems opened the door to some seriously amusing scenarios and even helped spice up offline matches against AI.

Otherwise, I have very few reservations about recommending Civilization 7. If you’re a lover of strategy games, you will undoubtedly have a fantastic experience. As an evolution of the series, it’s an admirable success, and, like its predecessor, I’m confident my few complaints will at least be remedied through both free and paid content updates in the months and years to come.

Should I play Sid Meier's Civilization 7?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility

There are a solid number of accessibility options in Sid Meier's Civilization 7 which can be found in a devoted accessibility menu. Keyboard and mouse controls can be remapped on PC, and there is also full support for custom controller layouts.

On top of this, you are able to increase or decrease the font scale, enable colorblind filters, turn on dialogue subtitles, and enable in-game menu or chat narration. There are a range of difficult options to choose from when playing with AI and a comprehensive tutorial system.

How I reviewed Sid Meier's Civilization 7

I played Sid Meier's Civilization 7 for almost 60 hours on PC, experimenting with a wide range of leader and Civ combinations. I managed to succeed at each possible victory type, learning their mechanics and following the various legacy paths.

Key specs of my PC build include an Nvidia RTX 3060 GPU, i5-11400F CPU, and 16GB of DDR4 RAM. In terms of peripherals, I relied on an Asus ROG Harpe Ace Aim Lab Edition mouse and an Endgame Gear KB65HE keyboard, plus a Lenovo Q24i-10 Monitor and a SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 gaming headset for audio.

Throughout my time with the game, I compared my experience to that of not only Civilization games but also a wide range of other 4X strategy titles including Humankind, Ara: History Untold, Endless Legend, and more.

First reviewed January/February 2025