Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Avoids The Biggest AAA Sequel Problem
Thanks to the release of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, which is living up to expectations after a seven-year wait, February is off to a good start. The sequel from Warhorse Studios continues the story of Henry of Skalitz, taking him to new locations in 15th-century Czechia with big cities, powerful new weapons, and dangerous enemies to defeat.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is much bigger than the original in every way, and looks much better. With most big-game sequels, that comes at the cost of needing more graphical processing power to run consistently. However, KCD2 bucks that trend, running well for most players thanks to impressive optimization.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Actually Runs Well
Steady Frame Rates And Minimal Glitches
The early performance reviews for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 have been very positive, especially with Upscaling which is completely optional. In PC Gamer's tests for the game, they could get KCD2 running at an average of 61fps on High settings at 1440p with a combination of a Ryzen 5 5600X CPU and the RTX 3060 Ti GPU, with even better performance at 1080p, and about 15fps more when running the game on the Medium settings preset.
This is impressive when considering the first game's performance at launch. That was seven years ago, and if someone had a 6GB GTX 1060 graphics card, they wouldn't be getting more than 51fps on Very High settings in 1080p. I played the first game at launch, and it also suffered from lots of bugs, glitches, and freezes that were hard to avoid until they were officially patched or someone created a mod as a workaround. Thankfully, no mods have been required for the game to run smoothly with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's release.
Recent PC Releases Have Been Intensive
Other Games Require Some Big Graphical Upgrades
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's smooth release on PC is a breath of fresh air after some recent AAA titles have had rocky starts when it comes to PC performance. The most recent release that upset players was Marvel's Spider-Man 2, which was instantly blasted for its poor performance and crashes. Before that, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth also struggled with performance and required fan-made performance mods to improve the frame rates.
Both of these examples here were originally released on PlayStation 5 and were developed exclusively for that console and its graphical capabilities. Their predecessors, Marvel's Spider-Man and Final Fantasy 7 Remake, were made to be played on PlayStation 4, a much less powerful console.
The developers seem to overlook this fact when porting the games to PC, and a lot of people don't have a PC that can perform like a PS5. The jump in performance in a console generation can be huge, but many people slowly upgrade their computers over time, and won't keep up with that level of progression.
It's also a continuation of the industry trend of bad PC ports. Developers are making these games and testing them with PlayStation 5's, maybe even PS5 pros, and spend far less time testing performance on PC before release. It appears that Warhorse is learning from this, and has made PC performance a real focus for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 from the word go.
KCD2’s Optimization Can Make A Big Difference
Which Preset Is Right For You & Why
If someone is still running their NVidia 1080 Ti from seven years ago, they can still get a good experience in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 thanks to its impressive optimization. There won't be any Ray Tracing or DLSS available, but as mentioned before, there are minimal upscaling options in the game anyway.
The jump in quality from low to medium settings is great, so it's best to avoid the lowest preset if possible. If going up to medium causes too much of a drop in FPS, try decreasing the quality of Shadows, as they normally have the biggest impact on performance, but also vegetation detail, as there are a lot of trees and bushes in KCD2.
DLSS, or Deep Learning Super Sampling, is a form of Upscaling that uses AI to improve image quality, frame rates, and performance in games.
If someone has a top-of-the-line PC, with the newest graphics cards from AMD or NVidia, they can use the Experimental Settings option to get unmatched visual detail and foliage density. That will come at the cost of FPS, but it could be evened out by dropping some settings back to High.
For those not using a traditional PC and instead opting for a ROG Ally or Steam Deck, the game will also run at 30fps with FSR Quality and on Medium graphics settings, which will still look great on the smaller screen. Warhorse has made it that Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 can be played smoothly and in great detail on any kind of PC.
Source: PC Gamer
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
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