Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2’s tutorial is a saga on its own

A game’s tutorial section is a valuable resource, but it can sometimes feel a little bit awkward. Before you launch into the depths of a big, open-world adventure, developers like to run you through a funnel that teaches you all the main mechanics so you’re properly equipped to venture out into their immaculately crafted campaign. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is no exception to this rule, but it has a particularly beefy tutorial before the player can set out into the kingdom of Bohemia as beleaguered protagonist Henry. 

Warhorse Studios has a lot to teach you before letting you off your leash to explore. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 takes place just a few days after the end of the first game, which means we also need to brush up on the murder of protagonist Henry’s parents, which was depicted during his hero’s journey in the first game, and the decisions he made in the aftermath. There’s a gamut of challenges to complete as you learn the game: dueling with your lord and friend Hans Capon, stealthing through the river reeds to spy on girls, playing a few rounds of a dice game named Farkle, negotiating through a tense situation with opposing troops, picking your preferred style of conversation, making potions, and more.

Many of these tutorials also come with big walls of text. Warhorse has built some elaborate systems, but it’s tough to elegantly introduce them to players. The tutorial will occasionally grind to a halt so I can read through a couple of screens of text explaining the finer details of Farkle or the icons indicating my level and success at stealth. 

This long and grueling tutorial sequence was made more apparent by the fact that I was playing Obsidian’s Avowed concurrently with the opening hours of Kingdom Come 2. The two games have a lot of differences, the most obvious of which is that one is fantasy, the other historical. But I was able to breeze through Avowed’s tutorial sequence in about 45 minutes, learning how to loot, fight, and converse in the Living Lands. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2’s tutorial, by contrast, took me just under three hours.

While the tutorial is long and a little clunky, it’s evidently not deterring players from diving into the medieval RPG. The game has sold over two million copies so far, and Steam achievement data shows that 87.5% of players have earned the achievement This Won’t End Well, which signifies the start of the open world portion of the game. Once a player gets past the tutorial, the game also really opens up to offer some great role-playing and emergent narratives. 

The biggest lesson that the tutorial taught me was that in order to get the most out of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, I had to lock in. This is not a game that you can play with something going on the second monitor, because you’ll get lost in the weeds of the world’s finer details. Once you get past the opening and the training wheels come off, you’re in for a real treat of an RPG.