I have been playing Kingdom Come: Potion Delivery, er, Deliverance 2 (KCD2) pretty solidly since last weekend. In fact, Steam is showing 31 hours, so… basically like another full-time job. A job in which I almost exclusively spend time in a dimly-lit alchemical shack, destabilizing the Bohemian economy one potion at a time.

Nah, but seriously, my Alchemy is level 28 (of 30) and I’m not even out of the first Dragon Age: Inquisition-esque Hinterlands area. It’s a problem.

If you have never played the series, Kingdom Come: Deliverance is basically a medieval immersive sim. You control Henry, the peasant son of a village blacksmith, who is thrust into the middle of a war and political intrigue. In the first game, Henry had almost zero fighting capability, social graces, or ability to read. In this sequel, Henry has a more competent baseline, but circumstances in the tutorial area have reset Henry to almost-peasant. You can still read and are still associated with a lord, but the game proper leaves you practically naked in the middle of a village that isn’t too fond of your shenanigans.

Six years ago, I was not particularly enamored with the original game being so gleefully obtuse. Now? I’m kinda for it. Well, to a point. Combat is still largely nonsensical, presenting itself with four different attack zones and combo abilities (left-right-left, up-left-right, etc) nevertheless devolving into a one-click unbeatable counterstrike. I’ve heard that maybe the counterstrike can be counterstruck later on, in which case you presumably have to counterstrike that? We’ll see. I am also getting weary about how bandits are already starting to show up with half-plate gear while the story quests have me facing wolves. This probably has something to do with how many levels I’m gaining while putzing around.

In spite of that, I am enjoying myself thus far. One of the things I loved most about The Witcher 3 was how much certain backwater villages felt truly backwater, with the mud and muck everywhere. KCD2 truly takes those same emotions and dials them all the way up. The roads between villages meander over hills and streams, narrowing down to almost overgrown game trails. There were a couple of times I felt nervous riding a horse down a switchback path, despite intellectually knowing the game did not include a loose gravel and/or horse-breaking-its-leg mechanics. Puttering around in the small villages for a while and then rounding the bend, seeing a proper castle looming on the tallest hill in the distance? In these moments, I feel like a peasant. Or thereabouts.

We’ll have to see whether my time in KCD2 unravels as it did with the first game. It feels like Skyrim in that you have a lot of freedom to explore the map, talk to people, and do a lot of miscellaneous, unrelated things. Unlike Skyrim though, KCD2 (and the original) has a lot of very linear main quest plot between you and the credits. It’s very possible to explore yourself into full suits of the very best armor in the game, leaving you with several dozen hours of story quests to slog through with now-obsolete rewards. That’s how I got to 51 hours in the first game, feeling a bit done, and then finding out I was only halfway through the main quest.

For now though, I’m doing whatever I want. Speaking of which, I just unlocked proper poisons, which likely means I’ll be able to effortlessly defeat every enemy in the game if only I spend another couple of days in the alchemical shack. I could also… not do that. But it’s there in the game, so… ¯\(ツ)/¯.