Kingdom Reach: Deliverance 2 – A Glimpse into its PC Achievements and Shortcomings

Unlike the vast majority of its attendees, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 debuted as a complete, polished experience – one that harkens back to traditional gaming in the absolute best sense. This is a refreshing change from the usual, and certainly worthy of acclaim despite a few lingering issues.

Perhaps a key reason for KCD2’s impressive performance is its choice of engine. CryEngine established its reputation by powering expansive, open-world environments akin to those in the original Far Cry and Crysis, and it was utilized for the original Kingdom Come Deliverance in 2018. The latest installment employs a DirectX 12 version of the engine, but unlike many DX12 games, this title does not suffer from stuttering, hitches, or other frustrating frame-time issues that we have come to expect from mainstream PC releases.

Rather than playing on a high-end machine, I spent most of my time experiencing KCD2 on mid-tier settings using a standard configuration, equipped with a Ryzen 5 3600 CPU and either an RTX 4060 or RTX 4070 Super graphics card. Even with these older and/or mid-range components, frame times remained stable while aiming for 60fps. Notably, the game did not exhibit shader compilation issues, meaning that witnessing new effects did not lead to frame-time hitches even after hours of gameplay.

According to what I gathered from discussions with Crytek, the basic PSO caching might operate during loading screens between chapters or asynchronously in the background, with delayed visibility of a shader if it’s ever necessary but not immediately available. Regardless of the method, the results speak for themselves, and it’s rejuvenating to see a game deliver such a solid first impression.

After approximately eight hours of gameplay on the Ryzen 5 3600 setup, I encountered only two instances of frame-time spikes that exceeded the 60fps threshold, both occurring during the prologue – once while heading into the pond, and again while crossing the stream to Bozhena’s home. I’m uncertain what triggered them, but given their infrequency, they are quite forgivable.

As you may have anticipated, the game does not appear to suffer from open-world traversal issues that we often see even in relatively polished Unreal Engine titles, nor does it face frame-time problems in areas populated by numerous NPCs. Navigating through the game world in regions with variable density did not impact the frame-time graph (nor the frame-rate graph for that matter) on the Ryzen 5 3600. Even while traversing the NPC- and object-dense mid-game location of Kuttenberg, the 3600 maintained a remarkably steady frame-time graph with no issues and flawless smoothness. Admittedly, the game is not at its most demanding on medium settings, but it nonetheless performs real-time ray-traced global illumination, which is no small accomplishment.

Moreover, the intricate gameplay design – coupled with the multitude of expansive open-world quests, lifelike NPC routines and AI, and increased population densities – is not excessively CPU-intensive in a way that leads to unfavorable frame times. This is simply not typical in modern high-production value titles like Dragon’s Dogma 2 or Avowed, where even setting mid-range or the lowest graphics options still results in poor frame-time performance in urban environments. For instance, DD2 consistently experiences frame times exceeding 33ms, while NPCs can appear out of thin air right next to your character. Avowed has significantly less interactivity and NPC density, yet it still shows considerable frame-time spikes when traversing terrains, with performance dipping into the forties in towns. I’m genuinely impressed by how smoothly KCD2 operates in these scenarios, and it stands out as an exceptional example – even compared to its predecessor, exhibiting greater CPU-friendliness despite a more ambitious design. Bravo, Warhorse – audentes fortuna iuvat!

While running quite effectively, KCD2 also manages to introduce various visual elements that make it stand out. The core aesthetic of the game is greatly influenced by the capabilities of indirect lighting, specifically one of the more advanced modes of CryEngine’s sparse voxel octree global illumination (SVOGI). The 3D geometry is simplified into blocky voxels with increasing coarseness as distance increases, which are then cone traced in real-time to generate the game’s dynamic diffuse global illumination. Similar to games utilizing hardware ray tracing, this provides the title with a realistic color palette, albeit on a coarser scale.

This means you can observe realistic natural occlusion, so recessed areas within tall structures exhibit darkened interiors, while a courtyard illuminated by the sky but lacking direct sunlight casts soft, indirect shadows from its overhangs and features. SVOGI also emulates light bounce, with the most “experimental” environments within the game utilizing two authentic bounces before reverting to a light cache. For instance, an area under a thatched roof collects warm bounce light from the nearby light tan ground, whereas sunlight hitting a wall painted light purple transfers that hue onto a wall opposite.

Beyond the urban areas, SVOGI merges with highly realistic and minimal post-processing, reminiscent of the iconic Crysis, creating some breathtaking landscapes. The density, variety, and lighter shades of the game’s vegetation work remarkably well with its indirect lighting method. I genuinely assert that these are arguably the most stunning Central European forests and rolling hills I have ever encountered in gaming. The colors, along with the natural encroaching darkness from denser underbrush, are incredibly captivating to me. It is also enhanced by various artistic details here, such as the way streams and brooks meander through the environment, or how the developers allow dusk and nightfall to become deeply shadowed. Have you ever walked along the edge of a forest at twilight and felt a shiver at how impenetrably dark it seems? This game captures that exceptionally well.

Overall, the combination of flora and lighting gives the game an impeccable ambiance in its more rural settings that must be experienced firsthand. I found myself aimlessly wandering and indulging in incidental virtual exploration – admiring the landscape and noting how light interacts on a larger scale.

While Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 can appear magnificent and perform well, some visual aspects do not scale as effectively as they do in other games – and there are a few lingering CryEngine quirks that Warhorse has left behind that detract from graphical fidelity. Similar to Crysis 3 back in 2013, the physics and animations of vegetation run at a lower frame rate than the rest of the environment – for instance, at 60fps, they operate at 30fps – but exhibit awkward animation pacing, causing them to update at inconsistent intervals. I would prefer an ultra high-resolution setting for vegetation to synchronize their movement with the game’s frame rate. The same applies to water interactions, a feature that has been part of the engine since Crysis 2 in 2011, which results in sometimes choppy visuals at 30fps and would benefit from an ultra high-resolution setting as well.

The most glaring 30fps limitation, however, lies in the cutscenes. I can only speculate why Warhorse opted for this, but I believe it is to maintain consistency with the few pre-rendered cutscenes used to mask loading times. I do not believe this is a great choice, as the pre-rendered cutscenes can exhibit bursts of inconsistent frame rates – and the same is true for the 30fps engine-rendered cutscenes at times. There are mods available to unlock the in-engine cutscenes, which run smoothly even on lower-end hardware, so I hope this feature is officially implemented in the future.

The game also features some unusual aspects when your desktop and in-game resolutions do not match, leading to frame-rate caps becoming ineffective. For example, if the desktop is set to 1080p but the game maxes out at 4K, then a 60fps frame rate cap will instead run at 30fps.

Regarding graphical quality itself, KCD2 does not scale as effectively in some areas, particularly reflections and lighting accuracy. For reflections, the game appears to utilize cubemaps and screen-space reflections (SSR), as SVOGI only applies to diffuse lighting. As a result, materials such as metal or water often look out of place, either appearing too bright compared to the surrounding darkness or poorly shaded, while rougher surfaces nearby appear more natural. Due to reliance on cubemaps for specularity, the game can sometimes look overly diffuse, with reflections missing on surfaces where they ought to appear. The lack of scaling in reflections is particularly noticeable around bodies of water, where SSR disocclusion artifacts can be quite apparent.

Given this limitation, implementing an optional RT reflection feature would be astonishingly beneficial, and CryEngine does support this at times, as we saw with the Crysis remasters – though this is no guarantee that integrating a similar system into KCD2 would be straightforward.

Another drawback of the visuals comes from SVOGI’s lack of precision – while it effectively manages occlusions on a grand scale and rolling hills, it isn’t fine-grained enough for smaller, thinner objects. For instance, it is somewhat common to see light leaking through the walls of a barn or stable, or to notice that smaller dynamic objects do not blend well with the lighting of the rest of the environment. There is only so much that can be done on a technical level given the size of the voxels being traced, but it’s enjoyable to imagine how KCD2 might look with a more finely detailed per-pixel GI solution or even ray tracing.

The game also lacks HDR support. This could be a significant enhancement given the game’s visual strengths, so I hope it is something the team considers in the future.

It’s more of a minor complaint, but the game’s graphical settings are named somewhat oddly for my taste. Ultra feels more like the default setting, with choices below ultra often exhibiting clear visual shortcomings. For instance, medium shadow quality yields rough results when interacting with NPCs during the day, giving off a distinctly last-gen appearance. The same can be said for volumetric quality, where a medium setting creates blotchy aliasing among the leaves of trees and seems merely experimental at best.