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"My home was destroyed, my parents and my sweetheart murdered. I fled like a coward and only survived by a miracle. And when I tried to do the right thing and at least bury my loved ones, I lost the last thing my father left me-the sword he forged for Sir Radzig. But I will never run again, ever! I'll find that bastard who led the raid on Skalitz and kill him. And I'll find that thieving rat who took my sword and run him through with it!"
Henry of Skalitz

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a first-person open world RPG set in medieval Europe. Described by its creators as "Dungeons & no Dragons" and "Braveheart: The Game", it was developed by Warhorse Studios, a Czech studio comprised of industry veterans, including developers of Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven and Mafia II. It was released on February 13, 2018.

The game is set in Bohemia, and follows our character Henry; son of The Blacksmith in Skalitz. This peaceful life however changes when the village is raided by an army of mercenaries, who massacre the inhabitants. Having survived the massacre, and vengeful as it resulted in his parents' deaths, Henry joins the service of Lord Radzig Kobyla as he works his way through the ladders of society.

The game uses a classless system, allowing players to specialize in whatever skill they desire. The gameplay places heavy focus on realism, with layers of clothing for armors and different levels of protections. Equipment, food, and clothing degrade over time, requiring players to keep in tabs with their inventory and repair what's necessary. The game's combat emphasizes physics interactions, with damage depending on the weapon type, speed, and weight of the blow. This, combined with the game's nonlinear structure and quests, give it an Immersive Sim-like quality.

On May 23, 2018, a road map for DLC releases was announced, both free and paid:

  • Treasures of the Past: Activates a series of minor treasure hunts that can net Henry a few unique sets of equipment and other goodies (free for backers and pre-orders, paid otherwise; February 13, 2018)
  • Hardcore Mode: A Harder Than Hard difficulty that cranks the realism up to eleven(free; June 26, 2018)
  • From the Ashes: Henry is appointed the bailiff of Pribyslavitz and is tasked with rebuilding the village (paid; July 5, 2018)
  • The Amorous Adventures of Bold Sir Hans Capon: Henry helps Capon with his love life (paid; October 16, 2018)
  • Tournaments: Adds the Rattay Tournament for Henry to compete in, along with an associated questline (free; October 16, 2018)
  • Band of Bastards: Henry is appointed to serve as escort to a band of mercenaries (paid; February 6, 2019)
  • A Woman's Lot: The female main character quest line (free for backers, paid otherwise; May 29, 2019 on PC and June 11, 2019 on console)

Minor DLC includes the game's OST and artbook as paid DLC and free high definition DLC packs for select voice over languages, general audio, and textures.

A sequel is also in the planning stages, with development starting after Warhorse is finished updating the game.

Behemoth Comics published a four issue Kingdom Come Deliverance Comic Book series written by Brett Murphy and drawn by Wilson Gandolpho about the events that lead up to the game.

Compare Darklands, a much older RPG based on European history (albeit German, rather than Czech).

You can visit its Kickstarter here and the official website here.

Unrelated to both DC Comics' Kingdom Come and Deliverance.


Kingdom Come: Deliverance provides examples of:

  • 20 Bear Asses: There are both the poaching quests, where specific amount of venison is needed and, more disturbingly, bandit ears collected for Captain Bernard, paid mere 25 groschen per bandit.
  • 24-Hour Armor: Nothing prevents Henry from wearing a full set of metal armor and padded clothes at all times. Sneaking in full plate armor may prove too much of a challenge, though.
    • Also played straight with most guards and soldiers. They never, ever, take their armor off.
  • Abhorrent Admirer: Johanka, one of the survivors of Skalitz, has to deal with the amorous Custodian of Sasau - who's also married.
  • Absurdly Low Level Cap: The player character's main level, as well as all stats and skills, cap at level 20. And they are not balanced against each other - some can be maxed out while still in Skalitz (even without any cheesy strategies), while others will require a tedious grind. Plenty of side quests, exploration, combat and 'extracurricular' activities will be needed to bring several stats and skills to the max, with Speech and Horsemanship being the biggest offenders. If you stick to the main questline and pay little attention to secondary tasks and Stat Grinding, it's perfectly possible to finish the game without even coming close to the level cap, but it will make the game incredibly difficult, especially in the combat department, as Henry will be severely under-leveled to face the late-game enemies.
    • Before it was patched out players could do an exploit similar to the infamous Final Fantasy II exploit. Since leveling up all your stats save for speech can be done by hitting characters, that's exactly what players did. A player could grab a plot-important character, knock them out, then repeatedly whack them with whatever weapon at hand. Since the NPC couldn't die, you could quickly max out Henry's stats simply by repeatedly bashing a person until satisfied.
    • Combat training allows you to improve every single combat-related stat in less than an hour of randomly flailing your weapons. All it takes is for the plot to progress enough for Captain Bernard to become Henry's trainer. As a result, any semblance of game balance is out the window. Similarly, it is perfectly possible to extend the initial training session with Miller Peshek beyond raising the skill to 2 and going all the way to 5, or even 10 if the patience is there, allowing one to avoid Early Game Hell for sneaking and thieving grind. This leaves but a few stats that take a long time to increase, and none of them are crucial.
  • Acceptable Breaks from Reality: While Kingdom Come: Deliverance focuses on providing a realistic late medieval experience, some concessions had to be made for gameplay reasons.
    • As long as the game recognizes a horse as "owned", whistling anywhere will prompt it to appear out of nowhere right behind Henry - very much the same as in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
    • Henry can change his whole equipment, plate/mail armor pieces included, in the blink of an eye and without any help. This was actually addressed by Warhorse in one of their development diaries, explaining that being unable to change certain pieces of gear without assistance from NPCs' would have been impractical from a gameplay perspective.
    • Murdering half of a town's population, then submitting to arrest will result in Henry getting a severe punishment... of a couple weeks in a local cell. This is averted for Theresa in A Woman's Lot should she commit a crime serious enough to warrant jail time. Surrender and she will be executed instead.
    • While you need to use your own herbs, the apothecary stations will never run out of basic supplies.
    • The Bane Potion is not only absolutely lethal, but also tasteless and odourless. No such Perfect Poison has ever existed, and some potions (like Nighthawk) have enhancing effects that go well beyond what herbal concoctions can do to human senses. But without spicying things up a bit, alchemy would have been a very boring feature.
    • The in-game hare, deer and boar are much slower and far less skittish than their real world counterparts. An arrow flying overheard or Henry making a lot of noise will at best be completely ignored and at worst cause them to quickly hop a few feet away before resuming their grazing, and they’re so slow during a sustained chase that it’s possible for a lightly-armoured player to run down and kill them with a melee weapon. Of course if they behaved like the real thing, sprinting away at the slightest disturbance, the hunting sidequests would be much harder to complete.
  • The Alcoholic:
    • Kunesh, the "official" town drunk of Skalitz, who owes Henry's father a debt. The fact that he will give many a confident new player the beating of their life with his bare, drunk fists speaks volumes about one of the defining characteristics of this game.
    • Henry can potentially become one himself if he drinks enough. There's even an achievement for getting addicted to alcohol.
  • All Swords Are the Same: Averted. There are several types of sword; Longsword, shortsword, sabre, and hunting sword. While they are governed by the sword skill, sabres have a certain agility requirement, while the rest are all predicated by strength. Additionally, each type of sword does different types of damage better than others; a longsword is more suited to stabbing than a sabre. Different unlockable combos can only used by particular types of swords, axes, and clubs.
  • All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Both main factions in the game (the local nobles supporting King Wenceslaus, and the Cuman-bandit mercenary army following Sigismund) attempt this several times over the course of the Main Quest. Sir Radzig's attack against Pribyslavitz and the joint assault on Vranik are only partial successes, while the antagonist Istvan Toth actually manages to seize Talmberg while the Wenceslaus faction is distracted at Vranik. The effort of conquering Talmberg back takes a good chunk of the second half of the game.
  • And the Adventure Continues: The final quest of the main story involves a lot of political back-and-forth that eventually ends with Henry and Hans heading out of the fief to deliver a message to some lords of uncertain or wavering loyalty.
  • Annoying Arrows: Handled realistically. Arrows are very dangerous for targets not wearing some good armor, and unarmored characters can indeed go down quickly when faced with opponents equipped with bows. Mail and plate armors however, if properly combined with underneath padding, provide excellent protection against ranged attacks, being only vulnerable to the strongest war bows. Of course all of this applies to the player as well, so early game bandits wielding bows can be a real threat while ranged enemies in the late game become a mere nuisance as long as Henry gets his hand on some good protective gear.
  • Anti-Armor: Hammers, maces and military picks are specially effective against heavily armored opponents. As part of the Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors combat system however, they put users at a disadvantage against sword-wielding opponents.
    • Some perks increase the amount of damage the player can inflict to the opponents' weapons and armor with non-countered strikes.
  • Anti-Frustration Features: Despite being one of the most realistic medieval role-playing games, there are some features that are purposefully unrealistic for the sake of better gameplay:
    • Whistling for your horse always makes it appear just right behind you, regardless of where you left it.
    • The contents of the chests in all the rooms you own/rent in any town are shared.
    • When you go to sleep you can set up exactly when you want to wake up.
    • Items from inventory can be instantly transferred into your horse's inventory, without the need to be anywhere near the horse.
    • You can change armor instantly as long as you're not in combat.
    • If you keep walking into an NPC blocking your way, they'll eventually go intangible until you pass through.
    • Henry spends two weeks recovering from the injuries he sustains at the end of the prologue. Any food items you have at that point won't spoil during that period.
  • Armor Is Useless: Averted. Armor is crucial to guaranteeing your survival in combat. This extends to enemies as well: unarmored bandits and highwaymen are almost trivial to handle in a fight, whereas a fully armored knight or mercenary can be almost impervious to damage, requiring you to use the correct weapons or techniques to handle them instead. Said all that, leg armour is mostly useless and a complete waste of weight limit: there is only one attack in the game that goes below the waist, which only the low-tier enemies use. Unless Henry is on horseback, it is quite literally impossible to get hit in the legs.
  • Army of Thieves and Whores: The army being gathered by the Big Bad, and lead by lieutenants like Runt or Erik, is this to a certain degree. They are recruiting Cumans, mercenaries, bandits, outlaws, brigands and misfits like Zbyshek in order to create a fighting force powerful enough to overthrow the Wenceslaus loyalists in the region. And due to the Civil War and general political turmoil in Bohemia, there is certainly no shortage of potential recruits. That's why the antagonists manage to remain smug and confident despite important setbacks - they have reserves.
  • Arrows on Fire: Used three times:
    • The first time this trope is used is in the attack on Skalitz. The Cuman army fires a volley into the town before attacking.
    • The second time this is used is in the battle at Vranik where your side burns the tents inside the fortified ruins to cause some chaos as you attack.
    • The third time this is used is when Istvan Toth's forces take Talmberg and shoot at the thatch roofs of nearby structures to force your side to retreat.
  • Artificial Brilliance: The enemy AI during melee combat is very responsive to your actions. However...
  • Artificial Stupidity: Their AI has absolutely no clue what to do if you whip out a bow, letting you turn them into pincushions. Enemy archers will often try to shoot you through their buddies as well, resulting in the fight getting easier rather than harder.
    • The AI also has trouble dealing with non-violent deaths. Should an alarm be raised after some NPC drops dead due to consuming poisoned food, the guards will gather around the corpse with their weapons drawn, frantically searching for a "killer" whom they simply cannot identify.
    • When playing Farkle, the AI opponent often continue to throw the dice even after they already scored enough points to win in that turn, often result in them getting busted and giving you another turn.
  • Artistic License – History: While the game is well-researched, there are some minor issues.
    • Much of the clothing, especially the nobles, is a mix between Early Medieval and 16th Century fashion. Codpieces are more widespread than they were historically, and pointed shoes are significantly less common. Crossbows also weren't implemented (though they are referenced), though they were common in Bohemia historically.
      • On the nobles' clothing, special mention goes to Sir Hanush's poofy sleeved doublet and Sir Radzig's metal-studded vest. Unlike Sir Divish (who normally wears a more sensible pourpoint jacket), they don't even bother to change out of those clothes when going into battle, instead just wearing cuirasses over them for some reason.
    • Some armor pieces more resemble modern reenactment armor than period-appropriate armor. This is most noticeable with eye pieces and visors, which are usually several times larger than they would have been historically. Although the development team may have went with this in order to not obscure the player's field of view too much while the visor was down during combat.
    • Some carts dotted around the various towns in the game sport solid wheels, especially annoying given that they might only be a few feet away from other carts which with accurate spoked wheels.
    • One Codex entry (titled Beverages) seems to perpetuate an old myth that arose in the Victorian period which claimed that medieval people had to constantly chug beer and ale to avoid getting sick by drinking filthy water. In reality, as mentioned in the Drinking Water Codex entry, clean water was readily available almost everywhere in medieval Europe, even in large cities, where there were complex systems of waste management to avoid the contamination of the drinking water. Medieval beer and ale didn't have a high enough alcohol content to have any real sanitizing properties, for that you'd need whiskey or vodka, which would just dehydrate you anyway. Modern historians of medieval food and drink do have something of an explanation for this: the idea comes from a combination of records from connoisseurs who could afford the good stuff waxing lyrical about it and the weakest commonly available beer/ale (small or table beer) being something of the medieval equivalent to a natural energy drink.
    • The Cumans speak Hungarian, even though at this point in history they were not yet completely assimilated, and spoke their own language.
    • The sack of Skalitz was, at least according to history, a relatively peaceful matter as the entire population sans one old woman and a goat had been evacuated beforehand.
  • A Taste of Power: You can wield Sir Radzig Kobyla's sword when you initially return to Skalitz, and it has insanely high stats for a sword that only requires 1 Strength.
  • Attempted Rape: Three Cumans attempt to rape Theresa during the sacking of Skalitz, which Henry can avert by either distracting them long enough for her to get away or outright killing them. If he doesn't intervene, Theresa later reveals that she managed to free herself by stabbing one of them with a dagger before retreating inside. If Henry does save Theresa, it's later reflected with in the dialogues with various characters, but if he didn't and lies about it later on, it will auto fail a Speech check, even if Henry has it and Charisma maxed out.
  • Awesome, but Impractical:
    • Weapon combos, specially the most complex ones which include up to five different motions before the blow is struck. They're still somewhat useful in one-on-one fights and duels, and there is no denying how satisfying it can be to pull them off against a smug opponent. But getting the whole attack pattern right is just too much of a hassle when dealing with several enemies at once. In such cases, the Boring, but Practical master strikes are more useful due to combining offence and defence in a single motion. Somewhat Truth in Television, as fighting more than a single adversary at once can always be a challenge, and in such cases flashy and complicated techniques are out of the question.
    • Poaching can be relatively safe way to make some easy groshen, provided you don't get caught by a lord's game warden and don't try to sell the meat raw (cooking it removes the stolen tag). Boars in particular have a lot of meat on them that is highly valuable... and so heavy it is almost certain to encumber you. Add to that, because there is so much of it and it is so valuable, it is hard to actually sell all of it, since merchants only have so-much coin available at once, and the ones who take boar meat (butchers, innkeepers, grocers, general traders) have relatively little cash on hand and don't offer much that Henry needs to buy in quantity or expense to justify its value. Selling off an entire boar generally requires visiting multiple merchants since so few can absorb an entire one into their inventory.
  • Back Stab: Henry can deliver these, as long as he has a dagger in the inventory and has unlocked the Stealth Kill perk. There is also a perk called Et Tu, Brute?, that increases Henry's damage by a third if he attacks enemy's back.
  • Back Tracking: Since Henry can't swim, he's forced to use bridges and fords on the Sázava river. As there is only a tiny handful of those, you will spend a lot of extra time circling around the map. Further reinforced due to fast-travel being restricted to only a handful of spots (not even covering all major locations) and Henry will still meander around the map when ordered to reach any of those.
  • Badass Preacher: Theologian and church reformer Jan Hus is described as this by Father Godwin.
    • Godwin himself more than qualifies.
    • Henry can become this as well, even if temporarily, should he play his cards right during a certain quest.
  • Bag of Holding: The player's personal chest, which can be accessed from any location the game considers "home". At the beginning, only the chest inside of the Miller's house near Rattay and Henry's room at Talmberg are available. You can also rent a room at inns for a single night, and they always include a chest from where this personal storage can be entered - rent the room permanently, and you will be able to use the associated chest at any given time. Also, over the course of the Main Quest, Henry will be rewarded with additional "homes", with connected personal chests at his disposal.
  • Bar Brawl: Henry will be able (sometimes forced to) participate in a few of them over the course of the game.
  • Bathtub Bonding: Henry and Hans Capon in the "Next to Godliness" quest visit the Rattay bathhouse together, with Hans sneaking out of the castle and Henry meeting him there later. Hans invites Henry to join him in the tub, and this represents the point that the two of them really start to open up to each other as friends after their rocky earlier meetings. The rest of the evening is spent drinking, throwing dice, and Hans sending Henry off for some caper-like drunk errands that earn his admiration and trust.
  • Beef Gate: The player is not supposed to be visiting some parts of the map until advancing a bit in the main questline and adquiring some decent gear, but they're still completely open for exploration.
    • In the Prologue, Henry is warned the area surrounding Skalitz (after the town is plundered by Sigismund's army, of course) is a dangerous place due to all the deserters and brigands roaming around the field. Many a new player will learn the truth behind these words the hard way after wandering just a bit too much from the main road.
    • Pribyslavitz is crammed with skilled and well geared bandits and Cumans, including patrols in the surrounding area. Exploring around the place without leveling a bit the combat skills and obtaining some decent fighting equipment will usually mean a quick and brutal death sentence.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: At the beginning of the game, there is a farmer unloading hay from a wagon near where the player character lives. The pile on the ground never gets any bigger though, and he keeps at it as long as you are in the prologue, before the village is attacked. In the DLC "A Woman's Lot", you can interact with this farmer the day before the attack, and he laments that there doesn't seem to be an end of the hay and that he'd rather see it all burned up than have to unload it for the rest of his life.
    • Applies to Henry as well. He will express desire to see the world before he becomes a full time blacksmith. When his home is destroyed and his parents are killed, the choice is made for him.
  • Being Good Sucks: Playing as a generous, honourable, nice guy can potentially lead to a bunch of heartwarming moments and also obtaining some extra gifts. On the other hand, being too naïve will also punish Henry sometimes. As a rule of thumb, don't always believe what an NPC tells you, even if it sounds fairly convincing.
  • Big Damn Heroes: At the end of the prologue, when Henry is about to be killed, Theresa gets the attention of Runt and his gang. Then Robard of Talmberg arrives with knights and they save Henry's life.
  • Bilingual Bonus:
    • If you know Magyar, you may understand what the Cumans are saying. Especially interesting in a side-quest where the player has to find a translator to translate for a captured Cuman. The translator lies, but the Henry doesn't know it. A player who understands Hungarian, however...
    • Some of the attempts Henry makes at Latin can be quite funny. "Pater noster quee est in canis."
  • Bittersweet Ending: The organized Bandits are dealt with, the counterfeiters get their operation halted and you manage to retake Talmberg, rescue Sir Radzig and teach Hans Capon some humility. However the Big Bad manages to escape - with your father's sword - to his allies beyond the fief, the woods are still plagued by Cumans, the man who actually killed your parents is nowhere to be seen (and historically died before the sack of Skalitz) and the Greater-Scope Villain Sigismund is ultimately fated to triumph - which may mean ill tidings for your Wenceslas-supporting allies.
  • Black Comedy: The quest Money for Old Rope gives Henry an opportunity to sabotage the execution of three bandits on behalf of Herman, the local executioner who has been sidelined by Rattay authorities. Doing everything that was possible will result in all three executions being botched, with the new executioner becoming more and more comically frustrated (ending with him doing a facepalm while the last bandit looks around in disbelief after the rope he was to be hanged on breaks). After the quest is done, elated Hermann recapitulates the event while laughing cheerfully and treating all that happened as one big practical joke. Given his profession, this is a case of Deliberate Values Dissonance.
  • The Blacksmith: Henry is the son of one. The option to continue the tradition was intended as a feature, but was cut during development due to being harder to implement than the alchemy system. The closest the game proper gets is using repair kits to maintain your gear and grindstones to sharpen your bladed weapons.
  • Body Horror: Not too much in the game, but a few specific examples do qualify. Limpy Lubosh may have been a thief and a rascal, but no one deserves something like that.
  • Booze-Based Buff: So long as you don't go past the halfway point, being drunk grants you bonuses to Strength, Vitality, Speech, and Charisma. Perks can increase the Charisma and Speech bonuses, along with making archery easier while drunk (but harder while sober), and a lockpicking perk makes drunk lockpicking easier.
  • Boring, but Practical: Maces and hammers. The amount of available combos is quite lackluster if compared to the swords' (both short and long) flashy repertoire, but they are extremely effective when dealing with plate-armored opponents, whom after a while are the only real enemies worth worrying about.
    • The Master Strikes themselves, due to combining defense and offence in a single motion, and usually leaving opponents open for an additional strike in the inmediate aftermath. They require a bit of practice to master, but once the player begins to get the timing right, they become much more efficient than the Awesome, but Impractical combos (whose attack patterns can include up to four different motions). Also Truth in Television according to many historical European fencing treatises - the German tradition held the "hidden" or "master" strikes in a very high regard.
    • Having trouble against multiple opponents? Switch to the bow and retreat backwards. Even if your archery skill, nor your ability to shoot without a targeting reticule isn't up to much, it's not difficult to pepper enemies with arrows at point blank range.
    • During the Rattay Tourney DLC, Henry is pitted against three opponents consecutively. Weapons and armour are all the same to put everyone on equal footing, so everyone wears the same open faced helmet. Sure, you could use flashy combos or Difficult, but Awesome Master Strikes. Or you could just stab your opponent repeatedly in the face.
  • Bullying a Dragon: Some people will be rude, condescending or outright hostile to Henry throughout the game. The fact that he might be a killing machine fully decked in plate armor at that point doesn't bother them.
  • Breakable Weapons: Weapons, armor, clothes and certain tools (repair kits, lockpicks) degrade with use. Weapons and gear merely become less efficient (i.e. getting diverse maluses to the damage/protection they provide) while repair kits and lockpicks will eventually "break" completely and need to be replaced. Upon release, no matter how damaged a weapon or a piece of armor was, it could still be wielded/worn by Henry and used indefinitely. This was eventually changed via patches, so when an item falls beyond a certain durability threshold, it cannot be equipped again until repaired back to an usable condition.
  • But Liquor Is Quicker: Gets done to Henry at the climax of a drunken bender with Father Godwin in Uzhitz. The bar maid who was serving them the night before mounts Henry as he wakes from a drunken stupor in the stables as Godwin and his mistress can be hear coupling in the next stall over. Notably, the barmaid was naked before she left the stall with Godwin and his mistress...
  • But Thou Must!: The game generally leaves important decisions up to the player. However, there are some situations where Henry makes a decision himself, even if player might've wanted to decide otherwise.
    • You MUST escape from Talmberk and return to Skalitz, thereby disobeying your lord's orders, in order to progress in the story.
    • You cannot join the other side. There is a point in the main quest where Henry can cooperate with some bandits that are a part of the Runt's gang. One of them, Morcock, can even invite Henry to Pribyslavitz to join them. However, this cannot actually be done, as Henry will display a case of Cutscene Incompetence in talking with the bandit higher-up and is then ordered to be killed, leaving the player with no choice but to flee.
    • You cannot skip the stealth mission in the Siege of Talmberk, despite Divish saying only volunteers will go. Henry volunteers without player input.
  • Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: Played straight under normal conditions. Henry can completely change his outfit (plate armor included) in the blink of an eye. NPCs will enter a room at night, closing the door behind them, then instantly come out with their sleeping clothes on. Averted while in combat; as long as the game considers you're in fighting mode, no change of attire is allowed, which can force bandits and Cumans at camps to fight you without any armor on
  • Chekhov's Skill: Reading. Henry begins the game as illiterate and at some point is advised to visit the Scribe of Uzhitz should he want to learn to read. While it costs some money and requires a bit of time, it will pay off big time in the long run. More than once the game will require the player to personally obtain information from books, thus being able to read is absolutely imperative to resolve a certain amount of quests. There's even a trophy/achievement in the From the Ashes DLC for rebuilding Pribyslavitz while illiterate.
  • Choke Holds: Henry can perform a stealth KO by sneaking up on people and strangling them. It's played somewhat realistically, however, in that it takes a lot of time to apply, the victim makes a lot of noise, the choke can fail if your stats are low relative to the victim, and the KO only lasts for a minute.
  • Citadel City: Rattay is a historically accurate example. The town sits atop of a hill, the entrance that does not have an elevation has a ditch, the city is fully stone-walled, and the two entrances into it are both guarded by castles.
  • City Guards: Present in pretty much every noteworthy settlement. Each town has its own force, and keeps track of the player's dastardly deeds independently. This means the guard of Rattay will never try to apprehend Henry for crimes committed in Sasau, and vice versa. They can be also found sometimes on the roads, battling against bandits and Cuman raiders.
  • Civil War: The core issue which drives most of the plot. Actually a fratricide one, between the supporters of King Wenceslaus and the invading forces of his brother Sigismund, King of Hungary and Croatia.
  • Combat, Diplomacy, Stealth: All three play styles are represented in the Game System. While Henry can become proficient in all of them, it generally won't happen unless the player purposefully grinds. The game also offers player some traits that give bonus to skills related to the chosen playstyle while debuffing skills of unchosen playstyles. However, certain parts of the main quest can only be progressed via direct combat - and being really damn good at it, too.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Wise players will make Henry behave this way if he wants to survive this fairly realistic and unforgiving setting.
    • Considering that Helmets Are Hardly Heroic enjoys a permanent aversion here (see below), keep an eye out for enemies wearing little to no head protection. A well delivered strike at the precise moment will likely remove the need to strike again. Attentive players may finish relatively challenging fights (like against Runt) with a single blow.
    • If a band of brigands is proving to be specially painful to deal with, it is always an option to wait until dark, sneak into their camp and plunge a dagger into the leader's throat while he sleeps. His cronies will probably be alerted immediately and attack, but getting rid of the better armoured foe first - who may also be equipped with a quality mace, easily smashing through whatever armor Henry is wearing - will make things way easier. You can also poison their food and drink so you can fight them while they were in pain.
    • Likewise, even if you are not a stealthy character you can do a hit and run at night, doable even if you are in heavy armor. Jump at a lone bandit patrolling the camp and strike him down quickly before he can even draw his weapon then quickly disappear into the shadows as his buddies come to investigate, and while that happens do the same to another bandit at the other side of the camp, or kill any that are still asleep, preferably the better armed leader, this way you can thin the horde a bit before you deal with the rest of them.
    • If you manage to make horse archery work for yourself, then you can draw your enemies out of their camps and out into into more open areas and dance around them while picking them off at your leisure.
    • If you have the strength and stamina for it, repeatedly getting right up in the enemy's face with a cinch and pushing them back with kicks, knees, elbows, and shield bashes can limit an opponent's defense and get them pressed back against a wall or fence or other obstruction where they have no room to dodge, no space to deflect, and can be battered into submission.
  • Combos: One of the features of the combat system. They are delivered by correctly following an specific attack pattern, and many of them are named after real techniques of medieval and renaissance European martial arts systems - in example, the Zorn Ort or "Wrath Strike" finished with a thrust, from the German tradition. Captain Bernard will teach Henry one longsword combo during their training and sparring sessions, the rest are perks to be unlocked after leveling up each weapon skill. Unfortunately, by-and-large these will go unused, as stated above, due to their Awesome, but Impractical nature compared to the Master Strikes which are Boring, but Practical.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: The Wenceslaus loyalists tend to come out on top in any engagement with Sigismund's forces despite generally having smaller numbers. This extends to the story as well: they are generally outnumbered by their foes (as they have only about hundred between the Lords Radzig, Divish and Hanush), but the quality of their men and equipment far exceeds that of their enemies'.
  • Content Warning: The cover promises players will get the full Game of Thrones treatment not because of violence or language but because of rape.
  • Corrupt Church: The game purposefully goes out of its way to portray diverse members of the church in different degrees of light. Simon, the former priest of Rovna, is compassionate to the point of being naïve (and grieving due to an unfortunate event of the past). Godwin, the priest of Uzhitz, regardless of his "debauched" ways proves to be really kind-hearted and gets a pass from his fellow citizens due to living a humble life despite his noble upbringing. In the same time nobody respects the parish priest of Rattay, and both low-borns and nobles alike comment on him only ever being interested in his own, fat self. The monks of the Sasau Monastery are mostly decent people in spite of their aloof relationship with the outside world. The trope is played full straight with the Vicar (an intolerant zealot with Burn the Witch! tendencies) and the priest of Rattay (a cynical, unscrupulous hypocrite). Overall, most of the townsfolk Henry meets have a negative opinion of the clergy, considering them to be corrupt, greedy and power-hungry. Truth in Television to a good degree, as the 15th century was pretty much the prelude of the religious reformationsnote  and turmoil of the 16th, with a less-than-exemplary clergy and growing criticism against the ecclesiastical hierarchy. On top of it all, the game is set just a couple of years before the the Hussite Wars, where supporters of Jan Hus simply decided they had enough of greedy churchmen meddling into their lives and went to arms to defend the reformist teachings of Hus with force - while in game many characters declare admiration to Hus and his teachings.
  • Cowardly Mooks: When battling against several opponents, take down the leader and a few more of them, and you can expect the rest to turn on their heels and start running away at amazing pace - actually a wise choice, since you will have it difficult to chase all of them down. Some perks can exacerbate this by boosting Henry's "intimidating presence".
  • Crazy-Prepared: Healing items cannot be used during combat, and the save system is restrictive. So making sure your blade is always in good condition - and also coated in poison - is advised. Do not hesitate to employ an enhancing potion if you are not sure what may be waiting around that road turn. The Nighthawk potion is almost a must at night since Hollywood Darkness does not apply to this game, and resorting to torches means enemies will see you coming.
  • Critical Existence Failure: Averted. Taking damage of any kind reduces maximum stamina and makes combat much more difficult, specific injuries result in Subsystem Damage, and even a very minor injury can be fatal if Henry doesn't bandage himself before he bleeds out.
  • Critical Hit: In a rather realistic fashion, any powerful enough strike to an unarmored head can become this.
  • Cutscene Incompetence: Downplayed. Most cutscenes depict only dialogues, with the whole fighting left for the player to deal with. The few ones which include some action like the beginning of the duel against Runt in Pribyslavitz tend to depict Henry as fairly competent. There are a few exceptions however. After finding the bandit fortress in Vranik, Henry is surprised and caught off guard by Istvan Toth's appearance, thus allowing a mook to knock him out from behind.
  • Cycle of Hurting: Since maximum stamina is linked with health, taking a lot of damage during a fight results in lower maximum stamina, making it harder for Henry to mount an effective defense, since attacking and sprinting both use stamina.
  • Dangerous Deserter: Relatively well armed brigands tend to roam around the Skalitz area and sometimes stalk the roads all over the entire region. And they can be very dangerous indeed in the early game, when Henry is still poorly equipped and has yet to develop his combat skills.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Herman, the executioner in Rattay is, as was traditional for an executioner, a social pariah, seeing as he kills people for a living and has very few qualms about it. However, any interaction with him reveals that he is a very caring, polite and selfless individual, and takes offense at the very notion of using his skills in an illegal manner.
  • Day in the Life: The game starts with this; Henry wakes up on an ordinary morning, runs errands for his father and gets into some mischief of a village youth. A Woman's Lot goes even further, with the first part of the DLC being a completely ordinary, peaceful day in Theresa's life a day before Sigismund's forces destroy Skalitz.
  • Deadpan Snarker: One blacksmith character to Henry.
    Henry: What are you doing here?
    Blacksmith: Me? I thought I might prattle about, perhaps bake me a cake. Yes, a great big one here in the forge. Certainly I couldn't be, you know, smithing.
    • Quite a few other characters in the game have a bit of snark to them. For instance, the archer in Ledetchko.
      Henry: I noticed all the targets. Are you an archer, by chance?
      Archer: I noticed you're asking a lot of questions. Are you the Inquisition, by chance?
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: Mostly averted, as fights in this game tend to be relatively short and brutal, but may be - realistically - played straight when a sword-wielding Henry faces against plate-armored opponents. Some of those enemies can certainly take many hits before going down if the player has developed Henry towards a non combat-oriented build and/or wields a low-damage sword. Poisons can help mitigate this problem and make such builds viable. Emphasizing the "cuts" part of this trope, bleeding enemies saps their stamina, making it harder for them to defend against attacks or follow-through as aggressively on their own, so for well-armoured foes a combat may indeed be decided by a several non-fatal cuts that slow them down over the course of a fight before they slow down enough for a Finishing Move.
  • Defector from Decadence: Sir Jezhek, should the player let him live when he surrenders, and later advise Sir Radzig to accept him into his service.
    • Late in the game, Zbyshek. Downplayed since he's mostly motivated by personal, selfish reasons: he's the youngest, weakest and hence most vulnerable individual at Vranik, and feels that in such an environment he'll be getting the short end of the stick sooner or later. He also demands a monetary remuneration in exchange for his services - knowing well it's an offer Henry simply cannot refuse. The player can later honour the deal... or turn against Zbyshek and hand him the reward all traitors deserve.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: The game does not shy away from depicting a medieval society accurately:
    • Lord Divish believes that running a stable is a job for men, which is why he stops getting horses from a stable run by a woman. Virtually no one even challenges the idea that all women should Stay in the Kitchen; the closest is the approval that Lord Hanush and the Nightingale have for Theresa's rescue of Henry, albeit with some light teasing by the former for Henry owing his life to a woman.
    • Questioning one's rulers isn't tolerated at all in medieval Bohemia - even Henry doesn't question that a man insulting the king has gone too far and should be immediately punished.
    • Virtually everyone is Catholic, and the dialogue is filled with religious references down to the greetings they use - a particularly sharp contrast to the modern Czech Republic, which is one of the world's least religious countries! You do meet some undercover Waldensians in a quest though (after all, this game takes place before Martin Luther's reformation). Most named characters also have some sympathy for the burgeoning Hussite movement, and disapprove of men of the cloth living in luxury.
    • Medieval classism is in full effect: Though Henry is brash, impulsive, and quick to speak his mind to the lords in Rattay, he is repeatedly reminded that they are only indulging his talking back to them because his recently deceased father was a close friend with one of them. Trying to behave the same way to the Custodian of Sasau, who has no such scruples, will end with Henry being thrown in jail. Even the otherwise indulgent Lord Hanush sends Henry on a punishment assignment for insulting Lord Capon, even though he agrees with Henry's criticisms of him.
  • Developer's Foresight: Lots of them in the game.
    • Early on in the game, you have to run from the Cumans attacking Skalitz, and both the dialog as well as cutscenes heavily imply that Henry simply fled the town and barely survived the ordeal, never actually fighting any Cumans himself (Henry shows up in every cinematic wearing his default civilian garb, with no equipment looted off the enemy). Nonetheless, through cheats, or exploits, it is possible to kill every single Cuman you encounter, including the ones attempting to rape Theresa. If you actually kill them (instead of the game's chosen approach of simply distracting them to allow her to flee), Henry will comment on it when recalling his story to Lady Stephanie and she will reply with a unique comment of her own, different from her response if you had left Theresa to fend for herself, or simply distracted the soldiers.
    • During the Next to Godliness quest, Henry is asked by a noble to fetch some wine from an area that is restricted to commoners. Normally, many players would pick the lock, then go in and the dialogue would later reflect the trouble Henry has to get into to acquire the wine. Except, if the player simply take the key to the area from the noble and get the wine without trouble, Henry will bring up this fact and the noble will compliment Henry for being crafty. If the player is caught by guards in the area, there's an option to show the key as proof that Henry was sent by the noble. None of the above is mentioned or suggested anywhere by the quest.
    • The quest ...Is a Friend Indeed involves Henry trying to resolve a dispute between his two carpenter friends, Fritz and Matthew, and the foreman of the Mill they work at. There are three options to resolve the quest directly presented to the player. note  Both friends discourage Henry from trying to bring it up with the Miller, as they consider him too old and out of touch with what's happening to be of any help. Should the player actually try to bring it up with the Miller (which is not presented as an option at any point during the quest), they actually will unlock a fourth route presented by the Miller's daughter, which involves exposing that the foreman stole a scarf from the Miller's dead son, thereby driving the foreman in to leaving the mill out of shame.
    • An early quest which requires Henry to escape Talmburg castle has the Lady Stephanie suggesting Henry to steal some guard's armor. However, this approach has another problem: the guard at the gate does not recognize you as one of his fellow guards and immediately ask who you are and thus requiring a speech check (by pretending you are an envoy from a nearby town of the same lord) or a bribe. Conversely, if you win him over with an argument before getting the armor, he'll let you out once you obtain and equip it.
    • During the Robber Baron quest, you have to deal with the notorious bandit lord Wolfin of Kamberg. You can assault his camp with Captain Bernard and his scouting corps, or choose the much more difficult option of persuading them to leave. If you're feeling suicidal, you can also head to the camp yourself and try to kill Wolfin and his entourage of well-armored goons all by your lonesome. If you should through some miracle succeed, Captain Bernard will have unique dialogue when you return.
    • In the Waldensians quest, Sir Hanush tasks Henry with dealing with the vicar investigating heresy in Uzhitz - Hanush doesn't really care how the player resolves the problem, his main concern is for the vicar to be gone as soon as possible. As such, the quest will be marked as resolved as soon as you tell the vicar the results of your inquiries, leaving only the task of reporting back to Sir Hanush. However, should you choose then to murder the vicar, the final dialogue with Hanush will reflect it, leaving Henry with a scolding (whose severity will depend on a Speech check) and without a reward.
    • Henry shouldn't have a horse until after the main quest The Prey. If he does have one, he will ride with Hans after the boar in the later part of the quest (as opposed to running and searching for them on foot) and you will see him unhorsed and knocked out instead of being ambushed and tied up, after which you will immediately clash swords with the two encamped Cumans (having no chance to sneak up on them).
    • Also relating to this quest, the competition between Henry and Hans serves generally as a primer for trying to hit moving targets with a bow after the earlier target shooting competition demonstrated the basic mechanics. However, it's likely the player will quickly run out of arrows, leaving just one option: To chase them down like the endurance hunters of old. At this point, you'll find out that the developers gave the animals their own stamina, and they'll eventually tire out enough for you to get close and stab them. As wonky as it is, the sheer presence of bows means that this will almost never come into play, but that it's still there at all goes above and beyond.
    • City guards may randomly search people while entering the gates or just walking around the city, making it risky to walk around with stolen goods in your pocket, since this was often the case in other games. Further, the frequency and severity of these searches will increase depending on how much theft has been going on in the area, since the guards will be extra alert for people potentially carrying stolen goods.
    • If you get arrested in Skalitz, there's a custom game over cutscene where the siege occurs, and Henry dies in jail, unable to escape.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: Archery is this by design. There are no crosshairs and the sway of the arrows has to be adjusted for, making aiming difficult, but bows are some of the game's most powerful and effective weapons. This simulates the demanding path to using an actual warbow in the real world.
    • Taking shortcuts during the race quest can be this. Since races in Bohemia have no predetermined track, contestants are free to go whatever path they want to reach the destination. This means that while other racers are going around a forest or a mountain range on a road, you can cut straight through the rough terrain and get far ahead of other racers. With the forests in this game being rather realistic with branches that knock you off your horses and bushes that impair your movement, you will fail the race more often than you can succeed. However, once you manage to get a hang of the geography, it's possible for you to fall off your horse multiple times and still have enough time to beat other racers because taking shortcut is just that rewarding when done right.
    • The Stealth skill, a bit difficult to level up, but once you hit level 5 of it, you can walk almost silently (with proper gear of course) and allows you to silently Back Stab enemies.
  • Dirty Coward: Emphasis on "Dirty", as Zbyshek not only ran off to join a group of bandits within a day of the town being pillaged, but he was only able to do so by pushing Theresa out the door to serve as a distraction for the Cuman soldiers, buying himself time to flee. Worse still, he shows absolutely zero remorse for any of it. And that group of bandits he joins? They are working with Sigismund's army and thus Zbyshek is indirectly working for the same people who destroy his town.
  • Disc-One Nuke:
    • You can knock out some of the guards in Skalitz during the prologue and they'll have some expensive high level gear. Sure you cannot use them or barely even walk while carrying them but you can stash them in your house' chest since you will come back to it just before fighting Runt. Not to mention that after the prologue ends all stolen tags in your items will disappear. Also, it is possible to kill some of the Cumans during the attack on Skalitz and loot their gear. Notably you can sneak attack stun one of the Cumans holding Theresa and and quickly loot his gear before getting on the horse and keep retrying if you fail because this happens right after an autosave.
    • Grinding the herbalism skill at the beginning of the game by collecting every plant in sight can grant Henry several perks. Collecting 100 nettles will grant Henry a permanent boost to his vitality, the herbs can be sold for a solid amount of cash, the Flower Power perk gives a Charisma boost when 30 herbs are in Henry's inventory, and the Leg Day perk allows Henry to grind his Strength stat just by collecting herbs.
    • Scarmaker is this for weapon combos. Unlike pretty much all of them, it is very simple to perform (bottom left attack-stab-stab; stabbing is done by pressing button rather than aligning the attack from proper direction) and can be done as mindless Button Mashing. All while hitting enemies directly in their faces for massive damage. It only starts to lose power once full helmets show up, but remains a viable, if cheap trick to instantly get through defenses of your enemies.
    • Before most of it was patched, it was Difficult, but Awesome, and requires a ton of patience, but this method allows you to gain tons of cash, maxed out values for several stats & skills, and some of the best equipment in the game (including the Infinity +1 Sword) before you even get your first horsenote . Even after patching out the most glaring elements, what's still left out of the "Skalitz Looter" technique allows you to completely obliterate the Early Game Hell.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: As befitting the time period, the punishments given sometimes don't fit the crime. If Henry tries to tell off the Custodian in Sasau, he'll get locked in jail for the night because nobody talks to the Custodian that way.
  • Doomed Hometown: Henry starts out as an apprentice to his blacksmith father in the mining town of Skalitz. Later the same day Skalitz is attacked and sacked by an army of Cumans in the service of Sigismund, Henry's parents are both killed in the bloodbath, and Henry only narrowly gets away with his life. Henry's desire to avenge his parents is his primary motivation for the rest of the game. Most importantly, the game can't progress without the sacking, so no matter what you will do, it will happen anyway.
  • The Dreaded: Henry will eventually become this if he bothers to kill enough Cumans, unlocking a free perk (aptly named Cumanslayer) as a result - it makes Cumans more prone to fleeing should Henry start turning the tables against them in a fight.
  • Dressing as the Enemy: Possible to do, but be wary as often city guards or Cumans can still notice you somehow. Also, the townspeople will talk about you behind your back if you come into town dressed as a Cuman.
  • Drunken Montage: With the Priest of Uzhitz, no less!
  • Dude, Where's My Respect?: Averted and played straight at the same time. On one hand, Henry's heroic deeds (and social climbing) will make other characters give him due respect, better prices in exchange of their services, etc. On the other hand, no matter what an impressive and dreaded fighter he becomes or how far he rises in the social ladder, NPCs will keep offering him the same menial tasks, and poorly armed cutthroats will still try to mug him on the roads.
  • Early Game Hell: Probably one of the game's most defining aspects. Henry starts out with absolutely no skills, skill books and alchemical recipes can't be read, trainers are expensive for a comparatively small benefit, and improving skills directly is very difficult. He can't hold a bow correctly or stop shaking long enough to hit the air surrounding the broad side of a barn, lockpicking is the game's Scrappy Mechanic, pickpocketing is risky and largely luck-based, almost everyone encountered in the early game is a more capable fighter than Henry even before you meet trained soldiers, there's no healing during combat, and the save system is limited enough for a fall off a rock to cost hours of progress. It really says something that fighting a destitute town drunk is too much for most players to handle early on.
  • Easter Egg: Multiple, including:
    • The 1.4 Easter update added the chance for looting actual Easter eggs from chicken coops and a new weapon (a pomlázka, or Easter whip) that can be found in Sasau.
    • Southwest of Sasau, along the southern bank of the river, is a grave. If you dig it up, you find a skeleton wearing a cape, riding a broom and holding a snitch.
    • If you have the From the Ashes DLC, once you have rebuilt the town, if you look up into the large tree in the center of town you will spot a red drone.
    • In the "A Woman's Lot" DLC, when you are playing as Theresa and searching the mine, if you go beyond a certain point you will see a bright flash. If you continue forward you will discover a Polaroid camera with a photo of Theresa hanging out of it.
    • Beyond the south edge of the map (you cannot see it from the players POV; you have to no-clip to view it) is a crashed UFO and a crop circle.
    • There are a couple of orange traffic cones in the map, that you either have to get to by no-clipping or by passing out drunk and randomly waking up there.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Pious' Bandit gang are robbers and thieves, but they are not murderers. They even refused to kill anyone during Neuhof Massacre, both people and horses.
  • The Executioner: Hermann is the executioner of Rattay. Due to his profession, he lives outside the town, but is modestly well-off. Henry can get a sidequest from him such as sabotaging an execution from a rival executioner.
  • The Faceless: Sigismund, king of Hungary, Croatia, brother of Wenceslas IV. is seen only once, from behind, in a helmet so all we can see of him is a little part of his signature haircut.
  • Faceless Goons: Unless you manage to look like a Knight in Shining Armor by wearing some good looking armor pieces, wearing a face covering headwear will reduce your charisma.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: The infamous Playing with the Devil quest can only have a bad ending. Henry can't talk the women out of their little "witchcraft", he can't intervene in any way (and trying to do so will trigger the worst ending) and he can't prevent the resulting deaths, only make the pile of dead bodies (slightly) smaller. This also makes the least awful conclusion of the quest simply boring, as it requires from players to sit tight for 5 minutes doing nothing, unable to even hear the dialogue, and still get chewed out by Getrude for their trouble in the end. Oh, and getting an achievement for this quests requires to get the worst ending.
  • Farmer's Daughter: The miller's niece, Theresa is the Medieval version. She is very sweet and innocent, but she's wiser in the ways of love than Henry is, and can be fiercely courageous.
  • Fake Difficulty: The entirety of the combat system. It is built on two pillars: not explaining how the system works, both in general and especially in detail and not explaining it is built on pretty steep skill checks rather than player input. Even if players figure out on their own how to properly react toward enemies, the game will still negate their input due to performing an under-the-hood skill check and still fail their attack/parry (or won't even recognise the input for the parry). Sufficient to say, this led to the Warhorse forum being flooded by frustrated complaints, as the game does nothing to tell players what they are doing wrong or why their input is apparently "ignored". And each enemy tier requires specific skill and stat level to even try attacking them. This further leads to somewhat hilarious situations where low-tier bandits can perform high level counter-attacks on Henry, but then suddenly lose that ability should he reach a measly level 4 in Warfare, even if the player doesn't even try to fight them aggressively - all just because the related skill checks will automatically block their attempts at master strikes.
  • Fake Longevity: The vast majority of quests go as follow: after accepting them, you have to reach Remote Point A and talk with someone. Then get sent back either to the original quest-giver or to Remote Point B, to talk with a related character. Then get back to the quest-giver to give a report. Then return to Remote Point B to finish the quest. If the quest is particularly padded out, it might also involve Remote Point C and/or finding the right spot in a general area (even if those points are fixed, and thus, on replay, it is possible to reach the right place instantly). Oh, and there is a very limited fast-travel system, so getting to places tends to take loads of time of manually riding there, while reaching locations at night (and nights are really dark in the game) means the NPCs will simply send Henry away, angry over being woken up. Finding Ginger in the "Ginger in a Pickle" main quest is possibly the most egregious example, as that quest is an elaborate ghost chase that further enforces the roaming by not spawning Ginger in his hideout until at least part of the search is done - you have to get through the tedious talk with different charcoal burner camps or at the very least bump into the brigands looking for Ginger. Otherwise, his hut will be empty, so no shortcuts there.
  • Fast-Forward Mechanic: As usual in this kind of RPG, it's possible to "wait" at any given time, or alternatively sleep in a bed, large enough bench or similar place.
  • Fetch Quest: For an open-world RPG, the game has a relatively small amount of these, mostly revolving around poaching (a leatherworker asking for pelts, an innkeeper asking for meat, etc.) and bandit-slaying.
  • Finish Him!: You have an option to finish off dying enemies, with a third person view.
  • Finishing Stomp: One of the two ways to Mercy Kill enemies, with a crunchy sound in case you doubted it's lethality.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: Henry and Hans Capon utterly loathe each other when they first meet, regularly butting heads until the former rescues the latter from Cumans during their hunting trip. They are far more amiable to each other after that, becoming drinking buddies and brothers-in-arms.
  • Flipping the Bird: In the side quest called "In God's Hands", you talk to Johanka, who is taking care of the survivors of the Skalitz massacre in the Sasau monastery, and she asks your help in healing the multiple injured people there. One of the wounded is suffering from insomnia; you can go to the alchemy bench and make him a sleeping potion. This can be repeated twice more on successive days, but the second time Henry (your player character) berates him for not saving any for later, and the third time says "you're welcome" and gives him a two fisted middle digit salute.
  • Flynning: As a useful gameplay mechanic, no less. If Henry telegraphs his attacks with long slashes and keeping same posture for a long while, this will cause the enemy to counter them from a just as predictable angle. That can be used to do a perfect block and follow it with impossible-to-block riposte. Ironically, while the game does have a feint mechanic, this is the only real "feint" that works against the AI.
  • Foreshadowing: The game constantly reminds you to retrieve your father's sword. That has two meanings when you realize it later in the game - not only is it his father's sword - the blacksmith who raised him, it's also his biological father's sword, Sir Radzig's.
    • Related to the above, there are a few hints about Henry's parentage that come up early in the game. The first is how indulgent Sir Radzig is with Henry, even as he's being chewed out for leaving Talmberg. Henry is referred sarcastically as a noble several times. For example, in the beginning, his mother mentioned to her husband that he is "sleeping like a lord". Another is a possible Speech skill you can get, 'Highborn', which may simply be a gameplay thing but is otherwise an odd ability for a commoner to have.
    • One of the loading screens depict a fairly well-equipped Henry passing by a large group of soldiers with a castle in the background. It's Talmberg. Guess where the siege at the climax of the story takes place?
  • Foreign Cuss Word: The Cumans are very foul mouthed.
  • Friendly Fireproof: Averted. Once an arrow is shot, virtually every living thing in its path is fair game. The player can exploit it by moving cleverly when facing groups of enemies, but should also be careful in the rare instances where archers happen to be on their side as well.
  • Gameplay Ally Immortality: Averted with most NPCs. Many quests will end in failure if the associated NPCs are killed before completion. Played straight however with plot-relevant characters, whom you're not even allowed to attack - you can successfully make counters to their own attacks, but they will not sustain any damage.
    • Vanyek, the mercenary that teaches Henry basic swordplay in the prologue, is one of these unkillable characters. This means that, during the escape from Vranik, the player should be extremely wary of crossing paths with him. He will attack you, and even chase you outside the palisade should you manage to jump over with him in tow.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: In A Woman's Lot, Theresa can outright kill Henry's mother before the attack on Skalitz since she lacks the immortality that other important characters have. This, of course, goes against what happened at the beginning of the main game.
  • Gargle Blaster: The 1.4 patch added one in the form of a perk respec potion called Lethean Water, which has a 101% alcohol content. Drinking it instantly knocks you on your ass blind stinking drunk and the hangover is strong enough that you "forget" all the perks you chose.
  • Gasshole: Henry, when he's liquored up, doesn't even attempt to hold it in, and stumbles around burping and farting. No wonder his charisma goes down in that state.
  • The Good King: Charles IV is still fondly remembered by both nobles and commoners alike as a righteous ruler who brought peace and prosperity to Bohemia.
  • Good Old Fisticuffs: The Unarmed skill. Unlike other fighting styles, it does not include any kind of perk. Hand-to-hand combat is mostly intended for bar brawls and one-on-one "boxing" matches in certain moments of the game. While it's possible to overwhelm and pummel armed opponents with Henry's bare fists, such a tactic is unlikely to succeed against a decently armored enemy. So make sure you bring a proper weapon to serious fights.
  • Good Morning, Crono: the game begins as Henry is awakened by his mother, late for his daily chores.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: Sigismund is the one responsible for plunging Bohemia into a state of civil war and for destroying Henry's hometown of Skalitz. However, he has no direct role outside of the prologue. Instead he serves as an overlying influence on the resident Big Bad, the treacherous Hungarian noble Istvan Toth, who's responsible for all of the problems in the region.
  • The Great Repair: The core focus of the From the Ashes DLC. Following the raid on the bandit stronghold at Pribyslavitz, Sir Divish makes plans to rebuild and restore the hamlet after it's fallen into disrepair. He sets this task onto Henry along with appointing him the new Bailiff to oversee the reconstructions as well as to handle any disputes that crop up from the growing population. Henry's main tasks are creating enough structures to house a small but feasible population, finding ways for the hamlet to produce enough income to sustain itself, and restoring the dilapidated church as a community focal point. In exchange, Divish promises him a personal income for the renewed village's first five years of existence. However, if Henry (and the player) fails to succeed in these tasks, the villagers desert the would-be hamlet and Divish revokes his title.
  • Guide Dang It!: The Queen of Sheba sword quest. One of the sword pieces is in the hand of Pickman, who will only hand it to you as a reward for a completely different quest, the Aquarius quest. The game never even hints at this. What is more, you not only have to give him a job as a water bearer during the Aquarius quest but basically blackmail him - a penniless refugee from your hometown - into giving you a reward as well. If you complete the Aquarius quest without doing this, Pickman's piece of the sword winds up in the possession of the Rattay blacksmith, but no dialogue from Pickman or the smith will tell you as much.
  • Harder Than Hard: The Hardcore difficulty mode added in update 1.6 cranks up the realism. Your HUD is greatly reduced, there are no autosaves, fast travel is disabled, monetary rewards and money gained from selling items are reduced, equipment repair is more expensive, healing takes longer, combat is rebalanced and harder, the economy is rebalanced, survival is harder, you actually have to navigate due to the player map marker and cardinal directions on the compass being removed. You're forced to take at least two of the nine added negative perks at the start of the game, you can't remove them, and some of your other perks have been rebalanced for Hardcore mode.
  • Hate Sink: Kunesh. Introduced as a disagreeable drunkard whose wife left him, and who owes Henry's father money and won't (and can't) pay. Later tries to give Henry the location to another fellow refugee's fortune to dodge his debt. Even if you pity him and give him a job in Pribyslavitz, he's still an ungrateful bastard. On the plus side, he's a total Butt-Monkey: you can beat him up as often as you like—in Skalitz, Rattay or Pribyslavitz, right in front of the guards if you like!—and you won't get in trouble; no one comes to his aid.
  • Heavily Armored Mook: When dealing with groups of bandits and Cumans, the leaders will usually have better gear than their lackies. Bandit leaders from the third batch of bandit/Cuman camp quests (the ones you take from the Sasau custodian) are specially well equipped, sometimes with hammers which can easily smash through the best armor Henry may be wearing at the moment.
  • Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Mostly averted. The helmet, along with the appropriate padded and mail coifs, is just as vital a part of your armor as everything else, and most characters in the game will wear some form of head protection accordingly when going in to battle. On the other hand, most cutscenes will depict Henry without any sort of headgear, as to ensure his face and expressions can clearly be seen. Although taking the Claustrophobia negative perk in Hardcore mode limits you to helmets without a visor, as visored helms will cause your attacks to weaken due to a claustrophobia-induced panic attack.
  • Heroic Bastard: Henry himself. While he only learns in the final act to be an illegitimate son of Sir Radzig, he's still the Knight in Shining Armor throughout the game and a force of good for the entire area, always there to help the people in need. Even his various reactions towards events around him are built on being a good-hearted chap and growing up from his adolescent antics.
  • Historical In-Joke: Henry and Godwin can have a conversation about Jan Hus and his preaching in Prague with Godwin making his admiration for Hus very clear.
    Godwin: Mark my words. People will rise up and the Church will be shaken in it's foundation explaination
    Henry: Unless they burn him at the stake first. explanation
  • Hollywood Darkness: Averted. It's pretty dark at night in the outside, and completely pitch black in most caves and mines. Dynamic range comes into play here too, carrying a torch at night can make everything nearby easier to see, but the light will wash out details further away. Likewise, an open field at night is easier to see by the star and moonlight and the silhouette of the horizon, while the underbrush of a forest is almost completely blacked out due to the canopy and long shadows.
  • Hopeless Boss Fight: All over the place during the prologue. Almost every single Cuman soldier during the prologue quest "Run!" may as well be a Boss in Mook Clothing, as they can all kill you in a couple of hits, can take over a dozen hits or more themselves, and will parry/block/dodge/counter 90% of all your feeble attacks. Although they can be killed with exploits/cheats, the dialog and cutscenes heavily imply that Henry is meant to simply flee from them (Although if you do beat them, he will mention how he only barely survived by the skin of his teeth trying to save at least one person). A straighter example is Runt during the quest "Homecoming". He WILL beat you in one to three hits, and the story requires him to beat you, so winning against him is more or less impossible. It's just that kind of game.
  • Hordes from the East: Cumans — a nomadic group from the Eurasian steppes that eventually settled in various lands east of Bohemia — are one of many enemies that the players can fight against.
  • Hot-Blooded: Henry, specially at the beginning of the game. He improves a bit through the events of the main questline.
    • As much as he likes to scold Henry for it, Hans Capon also has his moments.
    • The villagers of Merhojed after the bandit attack that left several of them injured, and one dead. They want blood, more precisely the prisoner's blood.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Averted at first, downplayed as the player levels up and unlocks certain perks. At the beginning of the game, Henry is not even capable of carrying an entire suit of armor without becoming overencumbered - which renders him unable to sprint and also slows him down in combat. Later, some perks (like Mule) increase his weight limit, while others (specially from the Defence list) make equipped armor weight less for encumbrance purposes. In the end, it's possible to be running around carrying several weapons and a couple sets of armors. The same applies to the horses: the best ones are able to carry their own weight in gold, so to speak.
  • Hypocritical Humor: The Zany Scheme in Uzhitz has Father Godwin requesting that Henry give the sermon condemning the sins and excesses of the church in his stead, as Godwin is too hungover to do it himself.
  • I Gave My Word:
    • The main drive for the game is Henry promising his father that he will deliver the sword they've just made to Sir Radzig. Since that ended up being Martin's Last Request, Henry is guilty-ridden when he loses the sword at the end of the prologue. Various characters point out that it's just a sword, but change their tune when Henry explains why this is so important to him.
    • Discussed at the end of the game. Sir Hanush speaks for the rest of the loyalists in negotiating with Toth, saying that they will let him and his remaining men (and lover) leave the fiefdom unmolested if he surrenders Sir Radzig and Lady Stephanie. Henry and Hans want to jump him immediately when he shows himself but are stopped, with Sir Hanush saying that a knight and lord's honor must mean something and that it would be a whole lot messier and more difficult if a noble's oaths mean nothing. Sir Radzig concurs with this.
    • Perhaps more surprisingly Istvan Toth subscribes to the same code: He promises to release Stephanie immediately, and Radzig once they're at the edge of the county. He does both, despite the fact he could've kept Radzig as hostage after he fled Talmberk.
    • After the escape from Vranik, Henry can stick to his word and make sure Zbyshek is duly rewarded for his services. It's also possible to backpedal and reward him as traitors deserve, though.
  • I Surrender, Suckers: Averted in the case of the AI. Once an NPC kneels down, he's surrendered for good, and won't fight any longer - at most, he will run away as fast as his legs allow. Can be played straight by Henry however - it's always possible to surrender to an enemy, then choose the option to continue fighting in the following dialogue.
  • Iconic Item: Henry's father's sword. Its recovery is one of the player's long-term goals and motivations throughout the whole story. It's also prominently featured in the game's box artwork.
  • If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: The quest Needle in a Haystack, part of the main questline. In order to prove his willingness to do "anything", the bandits task Henry with infiltrating the Sasau monastery and murdering one of the novices, a former bandit himself.
  • Illegal Religion: Waldensians. While during the events of the game the movement has not been declared heretical yet (such a thing happened a few years later, in the Fourth Lateran Council), persecution from church authorities has already begun. The quest Waldensians centers around assisting a Vicar to track down a Waldensian community in the Uzhitz area.
  • Impossible Item Drop: Averted. The game is quite similar to the Gothic series in this regard: looting dead or incapacitated [NPCs] will only yield the clothes they were wearing and reasonable amounts of items they were carrying. If killed or knocked out in combat, they will also drop their weapons to the ground, which then can be picked up by the player.
  • Improbable Antidote: Averted. The common, humble Antidote will cure any kind of poison effect. It can even asepticize cooking pots poisoned with a Bane Potion.
  • Inadequate Inheritor: The King of Bohemia, Wenceslaus IV, is a naive and unambitious monarch who cares more about drinking and revelry than running his kingdom effectively, and is seen as a disappointment coming off the reign of his father, Emperor Charles IV. His ineptitude leads the lords of the land to complain to his half-brother (and the king of Hungary), Sigismund the Red Fox. This ultimately leads to Sigismund kidnapping his half-brother and invading Bohemia.
    • The people of Rattay dread the day Hans Capon is declared an adult as he is seen as totally inadequate when compared to his father, or to his guardian, Sir Hanush.
    • It also applies to Sigismund who tried to take the crown for himself, bringing the order to Bohemia. As discussed near the end of the game, his heavy-handed approach only antagonized the nobility and cities, adding upheaval and destruction to political instability and almost single-handedly plunged the country into Hussite Wars. In the end, he ruined Hungary and Bohemia financially while severely weakening the position of Czech king selling significant part of royal domain to finance multiple wars. It can be said that rash Sigismund and passive Wenceslaus were mirror images, both equally distant from the their father, Charles IV.
  • Inappropriate Hunger: Suffer the hunger debuff, and Henry will periodically complain about his hunger, regardless of context, such as when finishing off people or going through the corpse-strewn Skalitz.
  • Informed Attribute:
    • The bandit Timmy is said to be a great hulking brute of a man, with characters referring to him as "a colossus" and "The Ox". When you finally meet him, he's quite scrawny and even shorter than Henry.
    • Applies to Henry himself due to What Could Have Been. Several characters believe that Henry can work the forge due to being a blacksmith's son, but he doesn't have the option to do so in-game and in fact points out on a few occasions that he wasn't even a proper apprentice.
      • You still don't see any smithing done, but Henry's background does weigh in when he's the bailiff of Pribyslavitz. In one judgement interlude, there is issue with Baker Sylvester's portions and the surveyor brings up the idea of buying new scales, but balks because precise equipment like that is pricey. Henry has the option of telling them that he could make a set because he and his father have done so enough times in Skalitz.
  • Infinity -1 Sword: The Queen of Sheba's sword. It's the second-best longsword in terms of damage but has absolutely crap durability (the worst in the game). Oddly enough, it's actually harder to get than the first and third best longswords (St. George's sword and the Magdeburg sword, respectively), being available only through a somewhat annoying quest, while these two can be found in treasure sites or by pick-pocketing certain people.
  • Interface Screw: The screen starts going blurry if Henry is excessively tired or drunk. In a very unconventional instance, if you have a helmet with a face guard equipped, then you'll be looking through the visor's slots during combat, instead of the face guard being "invisible" while in the first person view like in The Elder Scrolls series.
  • Interface Spoiler: The achievement 'Bastard' (not hidden in any way) is described as 'Find out who your real father is', disclosing a secret the game protagonists learns only near the end of the game.
  • Intimate Healing: The bath house wenches are the only thing in the game able to completely restore Henry's nourishment, energy and health meters in a single go. He even gets a temporary charisma boost afterwards.
    The Bathmaids will make a new man of you!
  • Invulnerable Civilians: Averted. Almost any NPC can die, and bandits and other outlaws will eagerly attack unarmed civilians when given the chance. Played straight in a few specific cases though. As much as many players would like to, it's not possible to murder the Custodian of Sasau.
    • Before the patches fixed it, sometimes bandits could spawn inside walled settlements like Rattay, going immediately on murderous sprees. That's why certain NPCs, mostly quest givers or story-related characters, while being killable will respawn after a few days - likely to prevent certain quests from becoming unresolvable. However some secondary quests will be automatically failed if Henry himself is the one doing the murder.
  • It Gets Easier: Having to experience the sack of Skalitz firsthand and then see the direct aftermath leaves Henry shaken and uneasy with even bringing up the subject with people for the next few in-game weeks. Witnessing the results of the assault on the stud farm in Neuhof makes him mildly disturbed by the carnage. After getting through Runt's gang in Pribyslavitz, Henry doesn't do as much as a blink over personally slaying a whole bunch of people. Eventually, by late game, when Matthew and Fritz propose using the "scary Cuman" ruse for one of their cons, Henry is so completely desanitised (not to mention having slain a few dozen Cumans personally), he has to point out they are simply overdoing their act.
  • Joke Weapon: The pomlázka added in the Easter update, which does 1 damage across all three damage types.
  • Just Like Robin Hood: The character of Hanekin Hare. Although the in-game codex says he was based on the real-life Vilem Zajíc of Valdek, his voice, mannerisms, swagger and attire (stereotypical green "Errol Flynn"-style Robin Hood outfit) tell a different tale. A former nobleman and Master Huntsman, he was wrongly accused of a murder, and now poaches and fights in Talmberg Forest with a band of men, in an attempt to clear his name. He doesn't steal from anyone (other than the poaching), but he is a local hero among the peasants and a vexation on the nobility.
  • Justified Tutorial: The game provides you the option to acquire basic proficiency in all available skills via early quests. A bit of a special case, as most (if not all) of the tutorials are actually optional, and can be skipped if the player wishes so: Henry can actually refuse to be trained in certain skills, even if it may end up biting back in his ass later.
    • The most iconic example? Captain Bernard's combat training. You can do just the very basic, mandatory part, and leave after the duel against Hans Capon. Or you can spend an entire real time hour learning everything he's willing to teach - including proper parries, combos and master strikes - and enjoying sparring sessions with all available weapons. It's perfectly possible for Henry (and the player as well) to become a pretty proficient combatant from Bernard's lessons alone, also leveling up basic skills as Strength or Agility which will help towards meeting the requirements for mid-tier weapons. Or you can just not bother with it, and spend the rest of the early game being mauled by any pack of bandits willing to gang up on you.
  • Karl Marx Hates Your Guts: Prices are pretty much the same everywhere. They can fluctuate as a result of Henry's reputation with each settlement (and within that settlement, with each social group) but still making money from a "buy low, sell high" strategy is virtually impossible - even taking full advantage of haggling perks.
  • Karma Houdini: Thanks to his links with the nobility and also due to all the instability Bohemia is going through at the date of the game, Henry can end up getting away with anything. Stay away from a settlement for long enough, and they will end up forgetting any crimes you may have committed. Certain unlockable perks can make things even easier.
    • The system has its limits, though. Very serious crimes, like a killing spree right in the middle of town, will be punished with long (in game terms) prison sentences. Henry will need to stay away for a very long time in order for such things to be forgotten.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: In the DLC quest "A Woman's Lot", there's a woman named Jane you can meet before the town of Skalitz is attacked. If you talk to her, she has nothing but scorn to heap on the beggar outside the North gate (who ironically came to this town from another town burned out by Sigismund's men, because it was "quiet and peaceful"), who she says ought to get a decent job. When you meet her later in the game in Rattay, she is a refugee from Skalitz now named "Beggar Jane", who will get into an argument with a shopkeeper about her right to beg in front of his shop.
  • Last Chance Hit Point: The Last Gasp perk.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Several times in the game, it gets really meta.
    • Near the beginning, when you're supposed to get up and go see your Father, one of your speech choices for what took you so long is, "I just wanted to have a look around." When you choose this option, Henry says, "Somehow I had the feeling I was seeing everything for the first time." Which is really creepy if it's the first time you've ever played the game.
    • During one of the quests, a priest asks you to erect an "atonement cross", something which is ubiquitous in the game but unheard of in modern times. Your character says, "A what?" to which the priest replies, "You act like you just fell from the stars!"
    • In one of the DLC quests, after the end of the quest Henry remarks, "sometimes I get the feeling I'm the only one around here who's capable of getting things done." (No NPCs are sent out on any quests, after all.)
    • In another DLC quest, Henry engages in a philosophical discussion with a tailor about the nature of free will. At one point in the discussion Henry is asked if he had the free will to come to the bar by himself or was it fated that he should go there, and he has the option to say "Someone else controls everything!"
  • Level Scaling: Averted. Everything in the game will retain its stats, abilities and gear from the beginning to the end. One of the causes for the Early Game Hell the game has become somewhat notorious for, and also for the nearly unstoppable, plate armored behemoth Henry can become in the mid-late game if you bother with acquiring quality equipment and honing his combat skills.
  • The Lightfooted: Most Agility perks are geared towards turning the player character into this. One of the main perks, Juggler, also qualifies.
  • Like Father, Like Son: Henry grows to be like his father Sir Radzig in many ways, one of which may be also fathering a bastard son. In real life, Divish and Stephanie had children, one of them taking over as Lord of Talmberg after his father's death. In this alternate timeline, Stephanie has failed to bear Divish children... but after the "At Your Service, My Lady" quest it is implied Henry sleeps with her... possibly giving her a son?
  • Living Prop: Henry's mother, since she doesn't even have a name.
  • Loads and Loads of Loading:
    • The game attempts to avert this by design - only a very few places are built outside of the main game world, thus requiring a loading screen when accessing them. However, upon release, due to poor optimization, it actually became infamous due to this trope: entering dialogue with any NPC usually required waiting through a loading screen of around three or four seconds, thus visiting towns and interacting with the inhabitants potentially became a truly exasperating experience. Luckily, these problems were mostly addressed by patch 1.3.
  • Lockpicking Minigame: Lockpicking in the game revolves around finding the correct spot to place the lockpick and then rotating the lock while tracing the spot's changing location. While this is relatively easier with a keyboard and mouse (hold down 'D' and using the mouse to trace the hotspot), it's difficult enough with a controller (use the right analog stick to find/trace the hotspot, rotate the lock with the left analog stick) that the interface was updated a bit in the 1.3 update to make it easier. Warhorse finally implemented an "Original/Simplified" option toggle in the 1.9 update, with the "Simplified" option having the controller emulate the KB+M lockpick controls (L1/LB to rotate the lock, right analog stick to find/trace the hotspot).
  • The Loins Sleep Tonight: One of the items sold by the Charlatan in Sasau is Powdered Unicorn Horn, used to treat "impaired manliness".
    • In the DLC quest "The Madonna of Sasau", if you search the body of the brigand who was beating up Adela, you will find he has some of this on him. Might explain why he was beating her instead of sleeping with her.
  • Losing Horns: Playing the game of farkel, you may notice that every time a player busts, a series of notes from a trumpet plays that sounds an awful lot like laughing.
  • Mercy Kill: Named as such by the game itself. Henry has the option to deliver it to downed, mortally wounded enemies - they will die in a matter of a few seconds if left alone. What animation is used depends on what weapon Henry has equipped. If he's unarmed, he'll just stomp the other guy's head in.
  • Mirror Character: Sir Hans Capon and King Wenceslaus IV are uninterested in the burden of ruling and would rather seek the pleasures of wine, women and the hunt. This actually concerns Hans post-Character Development as he had always been under the impression that he ultimately answered to a wise and noble king. As he and Henry set off for Lichtenstein at the end of the game, he shows more interested in proving himself and seeing more of the world.
  • Morale Mechanic: Enemies are subject to a morale system, and will either surrender (kneeling to the ground) after sustaining enough damage, or flee (real fast) if enough of their cronies have already bitten the dust. A handful of unlockable perks have further effects on these morale mechanics, making Henry look more intimidating and so on.
  • Mook Chivalry: Averted. NPCs will eagerly gang up on outnumbered enemies when given the chance. Fighting alone against groups of well-armed opponents can be quite a challenge no matter how well geared Henry is at the moment of how strong and agile he's become.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: Much of the appeal of the game comes from how it finds engagement in the most mundane aspects of medieval life.
  • Mushroom Samba: A quest received in Uzhitz has Henry following a trio of survivors from Skellitz who had bought a special ointment from a reclusive herbalist in the hopes that they'd see visions of their loved ones after applying it. Should Henry be spotted after they've applied it, they mistake him for Lucifer come to grant them their wish, only to smear the ointment on him as well. Hilarity Ensues. Then a whole lot of people die while having a very bad trip.
  • Mutually Exclusive Power Ups: Several perks, unlockable after reaching certain stat or skill levels, are mutually exclusive from each other. In example, the main perks Burgher (minor bonuses when in or around towns or villages) and Savage (same bonuses, but when on wild areas) cannot be combined together, and picking one of them automatically writes the other off.
  • NPC Boom Village: Downloadable Content 'From the Ashes' allows you to rebuilt Pribyslavitz from abandoned bandit camp into prosperous village. Game allows you also invite many named characters to work here.
  • Neck Snap: One of the animations for finishing off an unconscious/dying enemy with your bare hands.
  • Never Learned to Read: Being the son of a blacksmith, Henry's lack of reading ability is showcased with opening a book; the letters look jumbled beyond recognition, making the actual task of reading for players impossible. Even once a helpful scribe helps him learn, at low reading levels the letters of certain words make it seem almost as though he has dyslexia.
    • Most people outside of the nobility and clergy are illiterate. This is punctuated when the bailiff of Uzhitz threatens to report Father Godwin to the bishop for his mischief, to which the priest retorts he'll be the one to write the letter anyway as he's the only one capable of doing so in the whole town.
    • Sir Hanush is mentioned to be illiterate, which is a bit more surprising given his class. He, rather defensively, claims that that is what you hire scribes for.
  • Nintendo Hard: This game does not pull punches, especially in the initial stages. The complicated combat system means that, unlike other games of the genre, Henry will not be able to simply hack his way through entire armies at once. Even when properly levelled and equipped, an unlucky strike can lead to disaster. Armour is a must, assuming Henry is even physically strong enough to wear a set - and he has to get his hands on one first, which is either prohibitively expensive or too weak to really bother. Food and sleep are required in adequate measures or else Henry's stats will be debuffed.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Behaving like a morally unblemished hero can reap certain rewards, but sometimes Henry may get the short end of the stick as well. A few sidequests will make you lose money - and feel a bit like a fool - if you complete them in an honourable way.
  • No Cutscene Inventory Inertia: Mostly averted. Cutscenes are usually rendered in real time so Henry will appear wearing exactly what the player has equipped at that point. Sometimes the helmet will not be visible so Henry's motion-captured facial features can be shown. That said, there are a couple of exceptions here and there, like after escaping Vranik. Even if the player has gone through the trouble of getting all his gear back, or just obtained some looting knocked-out guards, the cutscenes depicting the immediate aftermath of the escape will depict Henry still battered and wearing basic clothes. Cut to the next scene at Rattay however, and Henry will appear with his full gear on. The most obvious one is just before Payback, Henry is always wearing the same armor there and still has Pebbles as his horse.
  • Noiseless Walker: With a decently leveled Stealth skill and an appropriate choice of gear, it's possible to crouch around enemies without them noticing. The Slim Fit perk helps to reduce the noise produced by equipped clothes and armor.
  • Non-Combat EXP: The game employs a leveling system clearly inspired in some installments of the The Elder Scrolls franchise (Oblivion and Skyrim, to be precise). Skills improve by making use of them, and as Henry's skills level up, so does his level. While combat-related skills obviously rise by fighting against enemies, actually defeating or killing said enemies does not provide experience points, and the same skills can be upgraded by repeated "friendly" sparring with Captain Bernard.
  • Non-Nude Bathing: During the quest Next to Godliness, Hans Capon and Henry have a relaxing evening in a tub inside the Rattay bathhouse. They bathe in their underwear... which in this game consists of a shirt and ankle-long pants.
  • Nonstandard Game Over: If you are hauled to jail during the hometown tutorial, you will die in jail when the Cumans invade and burn the keep down.
    • If you kill inquisitor Jaroslav from the "Madonna of Sasau" questline, you'll get an instant game over saying you were found out, Radzig disowned you, you were executed and Johanka was convicted for heresy anyway and died from her wounds.
    • When playing as Theresa in A Woman's Lot, getting arrested for any capital offense is instantly punished by death.
  • Not So Stoic: Hermann, the Executioner of Rataje. A sidequest involving a certain sorrowful widow will show that, despite the rough facade befitting of a true social pariah, he is a pretty upstanding, sensitive and considerate individual. A later sidequest will also prove Hermann is not beyond petty sabotage when it comes down to defending his territory as executioner. That said, he will still react with disgust should Henry suggest more "drastic" measures.
  • Old Soldier: Quite a few in this game. Experience counts when it comes down to sword combat.
    • Sir Ulrich is more than capable of single-handedly taking down a caravan guarded by several armed mercenaries.
    • Captain Robard arrives just in time to drive the bandits out and save Henry's life at the conclusion of the Prologue. Later, he commands the Talmberg soldiers in the assault against Pribyslavitz.
    • Captain Bernhard is the no-nonsense captain of the guard of Rattay. He will be tasked with teaching Henry the basics of combat, and more. Make sure you have a good provision of bandages before daring to ask him a combat practice with real weapons...
  • Only in It for the Money: Some of the mercenary bandits encountered in the game will openly admit to work this way. A few of them will actually explain they mostly make a living out of armed conflicts among nobles, fighting for the highest bidder.
  • Only Six Faces: The game reuses many faces for NPC's. The important characters have unique faces though.
  • Off with His Head!: The traditional punishment for nobles who commit serious crimes. Such was the case with Kubin "the Buck", Baron of Milotitz, murderer and thief. Consequently, it's the fate reserved for one of the prisoners in the quest Money for Old Rope. As part of Hermann's Sabotage to Discredit plot, Henry can dull the sword of the executioner of Kuttenberg - so instead of an instant death by a swift and clean decapitation, the people of Rattay will be "delighted" with a really messy and gory spectacle.
  • Orphan's Ordeal: The entire plot is revenge-driven as Henry grieves over his parents' death.
  • Out of the Frying Pan: There's a beggar outside the north gate of Skalitz in the DLC "A Woman's Lot". If you talk to him, he'll tell you how he used to have a family, land, and lots of farm animals, but then an army came and burned his village to the ground, leaving him with nothing. So he fled far away, to this peaceful town, to be away from all the horrors of war. He tells you all of this on the day before Sigismund's horde burns Skalitz to the ground.
  • Pacifist Run: Henry is only obligated to kill Runt. If he doesn't kill anyone else, there's an achievement for this.
  • Perfect Poison: The Bane Potion. The in-game description bluntly states that "the slightest amount brings instant death". It's also implied to be odourless and tasteless, as NPCs will never notice anything strange with their food or wine. Any character without Gameplay Ally Immortality who consumes food from a cooking pot poisoned with Bane Potion will drop dead in less than a minute after finishing the meal.
  • Plot Armor: Several main characters are unkillable. At least until it's their time to die. These are most often characters who are vital to the main storyline. If you do somehow manage to kill them, they will either shake it off or respawn later. That is, until they're no longer needed in the story. (There's at least one character in the game where if you attempt to kill him, you'll get a Non-Standard Game Over. Others are simply immune to attacks.)
  • Poisoned Weapons: Melee weapons and arrows can be coated in poison in a pretty traditional RPG way.
  • Politically Correct History: Averted. Daniel Vávra (the game's lead designer) was criticized by a few people when he revealed that the game would have no black characters because there is zero historical evidence for black people being present in medieval rural Bohemia; the historians he consulted with reportedly laughed when he asked them if there were any. Which isn't to say there aren't non-Europeans who were historically present at the time; you'll be coming across plenty of Cumans, a nomadic people originally from the Eurasian steppes who settled in Hungary and form the core of King Sigismund's invading army. The final DLC, A Woman's Lot, plays with this further. Theresa can fight if the player so chooses, but she doesn't have access to many of the perks Henry does once he levels up, and cannot wear armour, which makes direct combat, particularly against armoured opponents, a riskier venture.
  • Potion-Brewing Mechanic: The game has alchemy as a crucial (and complex) minigame, which produces potions—pretty much the only type of "magic" in an otherwise magic-less setting.
  • Pre-Mortem One-Liner: If you choose not to spare a surrendering Bandit or Cuman.
    Henry: You will pay for Skalitz You Bastard!!
  • The Queen's Latin: With the exception of Cumans and Germans, every character in this game set in the kingdom of Bohemia (roughly modern day Czech Republic) sounds more like they're from England. Lampshaded and mocked by Kilian Experience as he discusses the "historical accuracy" of the game. The game did eventually get Czech voice acting, though, although modern Czech used would be at best barely comprehensible to medieval Bohemians.
    Kilian: I think the only thing the story gets correct is that they all spoke British-English.
  • Random Encounters: Plenty. Curiously for this kind of game, they will happen regardless of fast-travel use. In certain points in the map Henry may encounter beggars, shady individuals, traveling merchants, wandering knights/mercenaries seeking duels, poachers, cutthroats, brigands, murder scenarios... even actual confrontations between guards and bandits, or guards and Cumans... or even Cumans and bandits! In the latter case, it usually ends up becoming a Mêlée à Trois if the player wishes to get involved.
  • Rape, Pillage, and Burn: All three are present in the opening scene, and Henry can help to avert the first by successfully distracting the Cumans long enough to allow Theresa to flee.
  • Reality Is Unrealistic: In-Universe. When two of Henry's friends and an innkeeper come up with a Zany Scheme that involves dressing up as Cumans, they plan to use salvaged or stolen Cuman armor for the task. Only, once Henry acquires said Cuman armor, the others decide that it doesn't look Cuman enough and Henry has to get additional items to dress up the armor to look menacing and to conform to the accounts of several people they consult. Henry finds this frustrating as none of these "witnesses" have ever even seen a Cuman while he has fought them multiple times.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: The three main followers of King Wenceslaus depicted in the game (Radzig, Hanush and Divish) are reasonable, conscious rulers who try to treat their subjects fairly and are willing to lend an ear to good advice.
  • Regenerating Health: Averted, at least until the Revenant perk is unlocked. This perk makes Henry's health regenerate "gradually", which means quite slowly. Certainly not a regenerative superpower, and don't expect it to save the player's backside in tight life-or-death situations.
  • Romance Sidequest: Two of them; Courtship, which consists of several dates between Henry and Theresa, and At Your Service, My Lady in which Henry does a bunch of tasks for Lady Stephanie and has a brief fling with her as a result.
  • Sabotage to Discredit: If Henry befriends Executioner Hermann, he may later be tasked with an elaborate sabotage scheme aimed to discredit a rival executioner in front of the whole town. The quest requires the player to learn about the crimes committed by three prisoners to be executed, to investigate the traditional punishment for such crimes and then to sabotage the tools that will be employed to carry out the executions.
  • Save-Game Limits: Games are auto-saved at key points in the main quest, upon sleeping in a bed, or using a Saviour Schnapps. The Save & Quit option permits one exit save.
  • Scenery Porn: The game's graphics shine at their brightest when traversing across the countryside, with pretty good-looking fields and dense forests, specially if the HD textures are enabled.
  • Schmuck Bait: During the Playing with the Devil quest, the distance you are supposed to keep allows Henry to hear the voices, but not the actual lines of the three women he's following to their "sabat". Getting closer to hear what they are saying will instantly change the course of the quest and get Henry tangled in a hopeless mess and one bad trip.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Convenient timing saves Henry big time when Zbyshek, of all people, pulls this one in Vranik. He does it mostly out of fear for his own life (playing with the bad boys can be dangerous when you're the youngest and weakest of the bunch) and also wants to get some coin out of it, hoping to disappear and quietly begin anew somewhere else.
  • Sequel Hook: A lot of plot threads are left hanging by the time the game ends, setting things up for the final act.
  • Sex Starts, Story Stops: The quite infamous conclusion of the very early side-quest, At Your Service, My Lady, where Henry ends up in bed with Lady Stephanie. It comes off as gratuitous, not being hinted at that and Lady Stephanie simply dragging Henry into her bed. It is also further contrasted with just about any other sex encounter, not to mention romancing Theresa.
  • Shop Fodder: Plenty of items in the game have no other purpose than being sold to a merchant in exchange of cash. Some of them, like decorated chalices or jewelry, are pretty valuable.
  • Shout-Out
    • A few Easter Eggs to The Witcher series can be found.
      • One of the Alchemist skill perks that can be taken is outright called "Witcher", is represented by a wolf's head, and it lets you imbibe more potions.
      • Henry can actually get a horse named Roach as a mount. When asking about her, the stablemaster selling her will say he got her off an "odd Polish fellow" who'd "settled down with his wife and was afraid she'd want him to stuff her", referencing Geralt, Yennefer, her (in)famous stuffed unicorn and the ending in the Blood and Wine DLC where the both of them retire to a vineyard Geralt gets. Another horse that can be gotten is Ciri's horse, Kelpie.
      • Halfway up the side of a cliff near the town of Ledetchko, there's a huge roc's nest, containing the body of a horse and a chicken. The horse corpse has the only metal horse armor in the game. The nest can be spotted from the roadside across the river, if you have sharp eyes, and there's an audible clue in the general area of an occasional cawing like a large raven or bird of prey.
      • During the intro of the Night Raid quest, there's a chance for a white-haired NPC to appear with two swords crossed across his back, in a clear allusion to Geralt of Rivia.
    • All the horses are shout-outs to mounts from various religions, myths, legends and pop-culture.
    • In one of the graves you can dig up, one grave has corpse with a decapitated horse's head at his feet. Which is obviously a reference to The Godfather.
    • The trophy/achievement for beating the game on Hardcore Mode is named Hardcore Henry.
    • In the Madonna Of Sasau quest in the A Woman's Lot DLC, Henry can ask a guard about Inquisitor Jaroslav. The guard will launch into the same speech (more or less) used by Kryten when asked about the Inquisitor.
    • There's a grave south of Sasau which contains a skeleton with a broomstick and a Golden Snitch.
  • Shot in the Ass: Hans gets shot in the ass during the night raid on Talmberg. From which he recovers the next day.
  • Shown Their Work: Other than just being a fun game, Kingdom Come can also teach you a thing or two about medieval society:
    • The game contains extensive codex that describes various phenomena of the medieval era in detail.
    • The game reproduces the complex socio-political ecosystem of 15th-century Bohemia, with attention given to contemporary clothing and even fighting styles.
    • Reportedly, the game's developers spent over a thousand man-hours painstakingly recreating a real-life medieval monastery based on historical accounts of what it would have been like.
    • While we cannot confirm how historically accurate the castles actually are, it's been noted (such as in this Shadiversity video) that the make of the castle/keep/city (of Rattay, at least) is perhaps the most historically authentic found in fiction thus far. It's not without its flaws, such as with its postern, but it easily surpasses most other examples in video gaming.
      • Given that Talmberk, Pirkštejn and Skalice castles are essentially 3D models of the reconstructions made by academic historians and archaeologists (notably Tomáš Tomíček and Jiří Peták) with the stone elements of the second one being well-preserved to this day, they are bound to be.
    • All of the Codex entries relate the true-to-life story of the characters, places, and events listed, even if it contradicts the fictional account in-game.
  • Sinister Minister: Downplayed; while Father Godwin of Uzhitz isn't exactly what most people today would consider "evil", he is most certainly a non pious heavy drinker and womanizer who doesn't care much about the teachings of Catholic Church. Godwin is still a very noble man who advocates peaceful solutions to every quest involving him, however.
    • Many of the people you meet are of this opinion about much of the clergy, as they consider a great many of them to be corrupt and only interested in amassing wealth and power rather than properly taking care of people's spiritual affairs. The people of Uzhitz can be convinced that Father Godwin is an exception given that he lives in the same conditions and engages in many of the same activities they do. Keep in mind that this sort of the attitude toward the Church was widespread in Bohemia during that time period, and within 15 yeas, would eventually spark the Hussite Wars.
    • The Vicar you meet in a quest in Uzhitz is an even worse example. If the townsfolk (and Godwin) is to be believed, they are infamous for burning people on stakes, whether they are suspected witches or heretics. These are the guys who later on become the infamous Inquisition.
    • Father Francis, the village priest of Skalitz, is not capital-E Evil, but he is venal, cowardly, and much more concerned with his status and privileges as a member of the clergy than with the spiritual welfare of his parishioners.
    • Oddly enough, it's Averted with the Prior and the senior Monks of the monastery who, despite a somewhat aloof and obstructively bureaucratic relationship with the outside world - not to mention their own internal political sparring behind the scenes, are for the most part decent and pious people. Indeed, most of the ill-will the player is likely to develop towards them sources from the strict and constraining routine they force upon the player which, in fairness, they do under the presumption that the player is sincere in trying to join the monastery.
  • Some Dexterity Required: Melee combat is not a simple case of pressing a single button to perform a strike. Angle of attack, type of attack, position of an opponent's weapon, and movement during attack are all factors when performing an attack. This makes combat more difficult than in other games of this type. A novice player will not be mowing down hordes of enemies from the get go, as fighting multiple opponents can prove quite challenging.
  • Space Compression: The game takes place in a section of the Kingdom of Bohemia circa 1403, highly accurate in historical and geographical detail save for the fact that locations have been comparatively jammed together to keep the player from getting bored by travel.
  • Stat Grinding: If you want to level your abilities, you have to make use of them - or find a trainer you can pay to give you a level in it.
    • A nice way to train both the Stealth skill and the Strength attribute is to stalk random travelers in the roads and silently choke them from behind.
  • Storming the Castle: Several battles involve this.
  • Stupid Crooks: Many bandits you encounter in the game are quite well armored. However, at times you encounter unarmored bandits armed with just a machete or woodcutter axe who try to rob you, even if you are in heavy armor and fresh blood still dripping from your weapon.
  • Subsystem Damage: As the combat system allows the targeting of different body parts, specific injuries result. An injured arm will make combat more difficult, and an injured leg will impair movement.
  • Succession Crisis: The old king died, and the new king is kidnapped by his brother, before said brother takes over the country.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The game takes almost sadistic pleasure from subverting variety of video game cliches, and it can lead to more than few, mostly unpleasant, surprises. So while such subversions are one of the core elements of the game, they often come out of the blue for players.
    • No matter how strong and well-armored an opponent is if he happens to not wear a helmet, if you manage to hit him in the head with a mace, out he goes. This is true even for boss fights.
    • Henry isn't a knight or a professional soldier, but the son of a blacksmith and thus has next to no combat experience. Until he's given actual training in swordfighting by a trained soldier, he essentially just swings his sword about like a baseball bat. As such, getting in to a fight with the Cumans in the opening scene is almost always suicide, and Henry's attempt to fight Runt one-on-one results in him being quickly and effortlessly beaten to submission.
    • At Talmberg, Henry is repeatedly warned that going back to Skalitz in his current state is pretty much suicide, as the area is crammed by bandits, scavengers and all other kinds of unfriendly folk. The small-time looters he encounters in the main road are not too much of a concern, but stray just a bit too much in the surrounding area and you may end up encountering much better geared and skilled brigands, perfectly able - and willing - to butcher Henry in seconds. And this is even before meeting Runt.
    • Want to get proficient with a bow? Well make sure Henry wears vambraces or another form of arm protection until he's leveled up sufficiently, because otherwise he'll take damage with every shot from the string slapping against his arm; a fairly common injury among newcomers to archery.
    • Just having great gear, no matter how obtained, doesn't mean squat, if Henry is too weak to wield or even carry it around, not to mention lacking proper training to make good use of his otherwise excellent weapon.
    • Unlike most other games, reading skill books takes time. Often you may not finish a book in one sitting. It is always good idea to read books if you need to wait. Of course, you need to learn how to read first.
    • Blindly follow the quest markers to investigate Ginger's disappearance without bothering to report in after finding that he's missing? Captain Bernard will give you an absolute reaming for dereliction of duty, almost puts you in the pillory, and threatens to have you hanged for desertion if you do it again. Keep in mind that at this point Henry is working for the Rattay guard and thus the dressing down is very much deserved.
    • Nights are dark, torches and lanterns don't provide much light and it's very easily to simply get lost in a forest as a result. On top of that, all the normal people are asleep, so you they will angrily tell you to get lost if you wake them up to finish a quest or ask them for clues - and some even will attack you, as you definitely shouldn't be in their home at such hour.
  • Sword of Plot Advancement: Sir Radzig Kobyla's sword, the one Henry's father made for his biological father, which becomes a MacGuffin shortly after the siege of Skalitz.
  • Sympathetic Adulterer: Zig-Zagged. The game tries to do this with Lady Stephanie, who is married to a much older man via Arranged Marriage and, to make things worse, her husband spent years in captivity, further driving them apart due to simply never really having time to learn and know each other. However, she takes full advantage of Henry (and he would be in deep shit if the affair would ever come up) and is quick to simply drag him into her own bed - something that's very poorly hinted at, and when the act itself happens in the game, it's a pretty jarring conclusion of an unrelated Fetch Quest. This is further made weirder by the fact that in every other situation, Lady Stephanie is portrayed as simply lonely, while doing absolutely nothing to get close with Sir Divish, who, as various interactions with him show, clearly loves and cares for his wife, but lacks the proper way of showing it. The end result is a character that, at the same time, comes off as trapped in a loveless marriage (and that's clearly portrayed as sympathetic) and a cheating Trophy Wife that's just looking for a young stud to fuck with right next to her husband's chamber.
  • Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: The game has a complex system of certain weapons being more effective against certain armor. For instance, swords are good against all armor except plate armor, while hammers work against plate armor but put the character at a disadvantage against opponents with swords.
  • Take Your Time: Sometimes averted, sometimes played straight. If the player does not manage to complete certain errands in due time, then some NPCs are assured to kick the bucket - and Henry will be consequently blamed and/or scolded for it, potentially missing potential rewards. Other times however, no matter how long the player stays away from dealing with a quest, everything will be patiently waiting for his direct intervention to happen. As a general rule of thumb, whenever an NPC puts extra emphasis on being on a hurry, it's because the game actually treats the situation as such.
    • One of the most egregious Aversions, perhaps the most egregious Aversion in contemporary gaming, is between the main quests Awakening and The Prey. Henry, freshly recovered after the events of the prologue, reintroduces himself to Sir Radzig, gets a brief combat lesson, joins the city watch and brawls with Hans Capon in the space of less than a day. Despite the game explicitly telling you to join Sir Hans on a hunt the next morning there's nothing stopping you from blowing him off indefinitely. In fact it is actually a good idea to put off hunting for a few dozen rounds of combat training as the next few main quests throw you into combat a few times and, more annoyingly, disable the combat trainer until the quests are complete.
    • At the very start of the game, even though you can't skip time before talking to your father because the game says there's no time to waste, you can roam around Skalitz, picking hundreds of herbs to train your Herbalism skill (and strength with the Leg Day perk), carefully knocking people out to boost your Stealth skill, haggling over vegetables, sprinting around beating up livestock to boost your overall stats in general, and picking locks if you get picks from Franz. This enables you to get a nice headstart in many skills (and items to sell later) even before the first mission.
  • Tap on the Head:
    • The "Headcracker" perk adds a chance to knock out an opponent with a blunt blow to the head. This can be anything from Henry's fist to the pommel of a longsword, potentially ending fights with even heavily armored opponents in seconds if it triggers, leaving them down for the better part of a minute. You don't even need to do any damage for the perk to trigger.
    • Downplayed with fists, as while they're not able to kill on their own, you'll generally have to deliver at least a dozen punches for a KO, it only knocks the enemy out for a minute or two, and the victim will be badly injured afterwards. The lack of permanent injury is played completely straight, however, to the point that you can KO somebody several times without any issue.
  • Team Switzerland: Despite the ongoing war, Sasau maintains its neutrality and sends no men to support either side.
  • Thieves' Guild: The millers. They're involved in all kind of shady dealings, are the only merchants in the game willing to buy stolen items at full price note  and will offer Henry diverse unscrupulous - but profitable - tasks. They're also trainers for the Stealth, Pickpocketing and/or Lockpicking skills.
  • Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Necronomicon itself makes an appearance as a needed item for a secondary quest.
  • Torches and Pitchforks: Invoked by the few instances in the game where the common townsfolk attempts to stand up to invading soldiers and raiding bandits.
    • In the sack of Skalitz during the Prologue, some individuals bravely attempt to fight the attackers. Deutsch is mentioned in later dialogue to have attempted to protect his wife and son with a pitchfork from the fully armored Cumans - it went as well as one would expect. Averted in the case of Henry's adoptive father, since he uses a sword and is rather proficient with it.
    • While Henry and Sir Radzig's men assault the bandit bulwark of Pribyslavitz, a group of bandits perform a raid on Merhojed and the townspeople mount an improvised defence which surprisingly succeeds at driving the bandits out, killing several and capturing one of them.
  • Trauma Inn: Downplayed, sleeping will heal your wounds (including crippling injuries), but not immediately. You will need hours of sleep to allow your HP to regenerate. Sleeping is still required even if you are not injured anyway, as you will get stat penalties (and heavy eyes if you haven't slept for long) in particular to your stamina. Bleeding still requires special treatment however, or you will die from blood loss.
  • Treasure Map: Lots of them. Having them is not mandatory for obtaining the treasures themselves (not even in the case of the "ancient" ones, which contain highly valuable equipment), but will certainly help as many of the treasures are well hidden in quite remote and obscure places.
  • Tutorial Failure: The game deliberately doesn't explain how its combat system works and, more importantly, how crucial skill and stat levels are. The entire combat mechanics operate on Morrowind-like dice-roll resolution, doing a skill check to see if the hit bypassed enemy parry and then another check if it landed, while your own parries are also skill-dependent.note  And the skill impact is non-linear, so the difference between levels 1 and 8 is as big as between 8 and 11. This leads to endless players' frustration and complains about the difficulty level, and even Stat Grinding with Captain Bernard can be tedious due to the fact he will constantly block and counter Henry due to disparity between his and Henry's skills and stats, negating the experience gain, thus further locking players with low skills and stats. In reality, the game openly expects from players to A) figure out everything on their own in an already pretty complex combat system and B) max out their stats and skills by sheer grit, rather than stopping the training at any level below 20.
  • Understatement: In the text box explaining archery in the early prototypes of the game.
    Equip your bow with '1'. Use Left Mouse Button to shoot. Killing people not yet supported. And also not very nice!
  • Unexplained Recovery: Certain NPCs will respawn a while after being killed. According to Word of God (patch 1.4 notes) it was done to prevent secondary quests from becoming unresolvable due to NPCs dying because of bugs and unintended glitches.
  • Unwanted Assistance: When Henry is helping Johanka take care of the wounded Skalitz refugees in the Sasau monastery, he learns that the Custodian, count Sebastian vom Berg, is trying to woo her, despite being a married man... except Johanka herself doesn't mind at all and will react weirdly whenever Henry tries to "protect" her. All while the Custodian is a genuinely slimy and slippery bastard.
  • The Upper Crass: Sir Hanush is loud, foul-mouthed, illiterate, distrustful of clergy, but also quite egalitarian when it comes to dealing with lowborn people and still highly-competent in his actual duties and obligations.
  • The Usual Adversaries: Cumans and bandits are running wild throughout the whole region. The first ones form the bulk of Sigismund's invading forces, and the second ones are the resulting fallout of any politic and economic crisis. The antagonists taking advantage of the chaos and unstability to build an entire bandit-mercenary army also help make matters worse. Henry will spend the entire game killing scores of Cumans and bandits, sometimes even holding back and witnessing them killing each other in random encounters.
  • Vestigial Empire: Downplayed. Pretty much every politically-conscious individual, from nobles to peasants, acknowledges the Holy Roman Empire has certainly seen better days, and is in a weakened state from constant infighting and turmoil (these are the Late Middle Ages after all).
  • Videogame Caring Potential: The game offers plenty of chances to be extremely nice and generous towards beggars, pilgrims, struggling outcasts and people in need. Doing so will usually improve Henry's reputation with the different settlements.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: It is perfectly possible to play Henry as an unrepentant murderous psychopath. Enter homes at night and silently stab/choke the sleeping denizens to steal their goods, or just for fun. Make wandering merchants smile by paying them an extra groschen, then backstab them after the deal is sealed to get your money back. Make promises in order to get what you want from people, then backpedal and betray them at the first chance. Drop a Bane potion into that cooking pot when nobody is looking, come back later to loot the corpses. Almost all characters in the game can be killed - although some may respawn - and the possibilities are almost endless.
    • After you get into a relationship with Theresa, nothing's stopping you from spending some quality time with the women at the bathhouses. While she can get suspicious of you if you do, all you have to do to avoid her accusing you is to wait until the Alpha Male buff wears off.
  • Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Even if you are a very good thief who can slip in and out a house undetected, too much theft in a town will make everyone nervous and angry. Merchants become more annoyed at any haggling attempts and guards will search people more often.
    • If you're caught committing crimes repeatedly in or around a certain town, your reputation with said settlement will plummet to the point many of its denizens will refuse to have anything to do with you. This including providing their usual services, like vendor functions or reparations... until you personally compensate them in monetary terms. This can prove extremely taxing in the early stages of the game, when Henry's purse is far from overflowing with groschen.
    • When you play as Theresa in The Woman's Lot DLC, committing a crime and surrendering to the guards just has her being dragged to her father to be scolded and it's mentioned that he has them in his pockets. The worst that happens is a reputation drop and a negative perk. Surrender after committing a serious crime like murder, however, and it won't be enough to save her from being executed.
    • You have the option of enjoying the services of women at various bath houses. If you're in a relationship with Theresa at that point, she'll be suspicious when you talk to her with the Alpha Male buff still active. Admitting to cheating on her, trying to use the Strength speech check, or failing/exhausting the one-time use Speech and Charisma checks will result in her becoming furious and refusing to speak to you. This means that you will not be able to use her to repair your clothing for free. While you can apologize to her the next day, the speech checks for that are also one-time use. Use all two or three of them upnote , then she will not forgive you at all.
  • Videogame Stealing: Averted. The pickpocketing minigame only allows the player to steal reasonable items from other characters' inventories. Robbing people naked à la Skyrim is not possible.
  • Villain Forgot to Level Grind: All the enemies you face, including the plot-important ones, are on a strict power progression. If the main quest is followed directly, Henry will be more-or-less on similar power level. However, doing even a handful of side-quests, not to mention directly training your skills, allows Henry to completely exceed his opponents, without the plot changing in the slightest. It is best visible in the fight with Runt. Should Henry get to that point directly via following the main quest, it's a challenging Boss Battle. Should he show up after questing and training, and Runt will go down in two hits.
  • Villainous Breakdown: During a Money for Old Rope quest, Herault, a bandit said to be an emotionless murderer is visibly the most nervous one and when the executioner grabs him to begin torture, he starts to incessantly beg for his life.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Henry and Hans, especially later into the game. Even after they work out their differences, they still constantly rib and snark at each other. That said, they become each other's best ally, which is highlighted in their talk when they rush to Skalitz to retrieve Sir Radzig after which Hans leads the chase for Toth immediately after (as Sir Hanush had promised to let them go only until the edge of the fiefdom).
  • Vodka Drunkenski: Applied to slavs in general, as drinking (which is a skill) is encouraged due to alcohol being common, immune to spoiling, and giving you a decent amount of buffs and nutrition. There's even a perk called True Slav, which makes you get drunk faster and have an easier time with hangovers.
  • Vomit Discretion Shot: Besides Father Godwin's, Henry will also duck out of frame to puke shortly after he kills Runt.
  • Vomit Indiscretion Shot: A rather impressive one in Uzhitz, as Father Godwin vomits from the top of the belltower. It's shortly followed by a Mood Whiplash Vomit Discretion Shot.
  • The War Sequence: Certain segments of the game have you marching in formation with other soldiers against enemy armies.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: The brawl with the drunkard Kunesh will immediately warn new players that in this game you cannot win a fight by just button mashing.
  • The Wandering You: While there is a fast travel system present, the game still requires you to discover fast travel points manually and you can only fast travel to big settlements. You will spend a lot of time wandering the land, having random encounters and discovering quests and locations.
  • War Is Hell: The sack of Skalitz during the Prologue provides a rather graphic portrayal of what war means to the common folk. Several times later in the game, Henry states the memories of what he witnessed will haunt him for the rest of his life, and that what happened in Skalitz is certainly not "a tale of adventure" for him to "share over a tankard of ale".
  • We Have Reserves: The men under Sigismund are rather unconcerned with losing who knows how many men in their campaign and manage to stay smug despite their setbacks. Somewhat justified in that the levies of Skalitz, Talmberg and Rattay altogether number near a hundred soldiers for Wenceslaus' loyalists (not counting the men they leave behind to secure their territories) while Sigismund's faction easily has that many men in Vranik alone with more coming in from outside the fief.
  • Wide-Open Sandbox: Level 5. The game puts emphasis on the Main Quest, which also forces Henry to do a bit of wilderness exploration and travel between the main settlements, but from the very moment the prologue is over, the player is perfectly able to roam around as they wish. Be careful with those outlaws, though. Some following of the main quest for at least the first few hours of gameplay is advisable though, as that equips the player with skills, techniques, and even a horse that will make the rest of the sandbox play much easier, not that the game tells the player that.
  • What the Hell, Player?: Behave like a selfish, careless prick and you will be receiving rations of these from incensed NPCs quite often.
  • With Friends Like These...: Matthew and Fritz start out as mere troublemakers in Skalitz who drag Henry into acts of vandalism and such. Should Henry help them get back on their feet, settle their debts and seek honest employment opportunities, they decide that they're too good for such things and go immediately into theft, muggings and outright banditry and try to pull Henry into it. Their efforts ultimately culminate in a robbery attempt on the Talmberg quarry that could see them hanging from the gallows in short order.

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