Kingdom Come: Deliverance / YMMV

Alternative Character Interpretation:
- The Wenceslaus loyalists are loyal to him precisely due to him being an incompetent fool, rather than any other motivation. Under such a king, they are essentially given free reign over their fiefs and don't have to bother with anything much. For contrast, Sigismund is a heavy-handed and controlling pretender, under whom they can expect scrutinous taxation and to perform all their obligations.
- How much of a good parent is Radzig? The story frames him as a well-meaning but flawed individual constrained by his social class and a Reasonable Authority Figure towards his bastard son. However, as Istvan Toth points out, he never acknowledges Henry up until Toth himself reveals Henry's parentage to him, and it's only then that he tells Henry to call him father. Likewise, he has no compunction about sending Henry alone on extremely dangerous missions that could easily lead to his death.
Angst? What Angst?:
- Theresa lost her whole family, home and her dog during the Sack of Skalitz (not mentioning the Attempted Rape). All things considered, she handles it pretty well outside of moments when Henry specifically talks to her about the traumatic events.
- Henry is justifiably traumatized at the loss of his parents, but never once mentions Bianca after her death despite her being his girlfriend and showing an appropriate amount of angst when he finds her body in the burnt remains of Skalitz. He also doesn't seem bothered having to go back to the burnt out husk of his hometown in certain quests like Scavenger.
Broken Base:
- The monastery part of the main quest. People either loathe it for Unexpected Gameplay Change into a Stealth-Based Game or adore it for the exact same reason. The big division is in how each player has developed Henry's skills so far, as playing without at least half-decent thieving skills makes the quests there frustrating, to say the least, while having those skills makes the entire segment tailor-made to use them extensively.
- Conversely, the "you can be anyone" premise the game offers at the start, except by "anyone" it means a highly proficient Combat Pragmatist that just kills his way through any sort of obstacle. You can't talk or sneak your way through the majority of the main quests, and the eventual confrontation with Runt in the moment where the game drops any pretence of being anything else than a combat simulator. People who signed for the "open-ended RPG" are annoyed by this, after spending a few dozens of hours to even reach that point of the game. People who’re here for it argue that the selling point was combat system first and foremost.
Cheese Strategy:
- Staying in Skalitz for a few hours and killing the respawning cows and sheep with stolen weapons, particularly a sword and a bow. This allows to raise a whole bunch of stats and skills, partially (or completely) negate Early Game Hell and also gain a load of groschen from the endless supply of cow and sheep hides this will generate once you get the right Hunting perk. Should Henry grind his combat skills to at least 15, he can easily fight off the first Cuman going after him, and then use his looted gear to trivialise the rest of the prologue, killing every other Cuman on his way and ending up with all their gear in his backpack to be sold later.
- Before it was patched out, an even faster exploit was based on knocking out Kunesh, carrying him into his house, and then just spam attack with whatever weapons (or unarmed) to raise skills at crazy pace, since he obviously wasn't fighting back or running away - and at that stage of the game is also immortal. After patching, it is impossible to attack unconscious enemies without floating them on rivers to chest height, forcing the cow-and-sheep slaughter for much slower gains.
Cliché Storm: Ordinary commoner's son or so he thinks who's bored of his life and wants to leave his village and go on an adventure, and then his village gets destroyed, spearheading said adventure. Revenge story centered on deceased family members. Hero rises through the ranks and goes from regular peasant to soldier/knight. Hero actually turns out to secretly be of noble blood, complete with a Luke, I Am Your Father reveal.
Crazy Is Cool: The Charlatan you encounter at Sasau is one of the more... unbalanced characters, alternating between a Con Man and a Cloud Cuckoolander. The quests he gives you are full of silliness, provided mostly by his commentary. This character was so fun to be around the devs included him in two DLC's.
Complacent Gaming Syndrome: This is a swordfighting game. Which means that by the end of it, you will either be armed with a mace or a bow to deal with the fact everyone by that point is clad in a full-body plate armour, something that swords can't cut or stab through. On the flip-side, enemies can't exactly hurt you in similar armour, so it leads to very long and tedious swordfights, or a few bashes with a mace to be done with it.
- Scarmaker, a combo for swords, is not only very easy to execute (and thus hard to block or disrupt), it can be learned right from the start and then kill everyone on Henry's path as long as they aren't wearing face-covering helmets. All in mere three button presses. Notably, it can turn the boss fight with Runt into a complete anti-climax, as he's not wearing a helmet. And by the time Scarmaker will get obsolete, so will swords in general, due to the mentioned above issues with full-body armour.
- When entering the Rattay Tourney, everyone is given the same equipment, including an open faced helmet. Which means that stabs to the face are incredibly effective, making duels a lot easier if Henry just spams face stabs - and in case of longswords, the duel is over in a single Scarmaker. You get to pick weapon for one of the duels with each of the opponents, which makes all that more tempting.
Demonic Spiders: Dogs at enemy camps. If you don't have Mutt with you to attack them (which doesn't always work reliably), they will grab you, preventing you from doing anything but kicking them, while the human enemies are free to wail at you. Not only that, but their small size and fast movement makes it very difficult for you to hit them with a bow or a melee weapon.
Disappointing Last Level: Some had this reaction to the assault on Talmberg. After the long series of fetch quests during the initial siege, you finally storm the castle...which amounts to scaling the walls with ladders (which you did before in the Stealth-Based Mission) and fighting through the castle (which you did before in Pribyslavitz and Vranik). The fact that the bad guy is The Unfought, doesn't help.
Ending Fatigue: Of the "long conversations" type. After the final chase of the game Henry goes through; a conversation with his real father, the end credits, a dreamed conversation with the spirit of his foster father, a brief chat with a NPC that hadn't been relevant since the start of the game, a much longer multi-stage conversation mostly about the political situation, a ride all the way to the edge of the map - talking all the way - before a final quick cutscene. All in all this adds up to a good 40 minutes of game after the final confrontation.
Game-Breaker:
- Bows, hands-down. Enemies display Artificial Brilliance when dealing in melee combat, but against bows, not so much. Combine that with the ability to attack from a distance and no vision penalty for wearing a helmet, and you have the best weapons in the game. However, it's also a case of Difficult, but Awesome since the lack of a reticle or aim assist means that the bow's strength is entirely dependent on player practice - which ultimately adds a notch more of realism.^note
- If you take thieving lessons from miller Peshek, you will get a basic training session to get your skill to level 1. However, thanks to a script oversight, you can continuously repeat your attempts to steal, gaining badly needed experience without risking any consequences for being caught if you fail. This entirely eliminate the otherwise tedious and dangerous grind of Pickpocketing and Sneaking, in turn making certain quests and night infiltration of bandit camps very easy. Eventually it was patched out, so Peshek will only allow the lessons to a certain level and, more importantly, you have to go through the tedious loop of talking with him after each successful attempt, limiting (but not fully eliminating) the game-breaking potential.
- For very similar reasons, once Henry gains access to training from Captain Bernard, players can, in a safe and secure environment, max out their combat skills, or at least raise them high enough to get access to useful combos (like the above-mentioned Scarmaker, a One-Hit Kill for an early-to-mid game sword combo). While the combat system is based on the player's skill, it also takes into account the mechanical level of Henry's proficiency in given weapon class and his main stats. There is no limit to how far Captain Bernard will train Henry.
- The Headcracker gives you a chance for each head strike to instantly knock out the enemy, with armor not affecting the chance. Unconscious enemies can be easily executed with no resistance. With a bit of luck, one can bypass a lot of difficult fights. Notably, Headcracker activates even when using stab attacks, which are far easier to perform and even spam than doing overhead swings.
Game-Breaking Bug: Some quests suffer from this, most infamously the "A Bird in the Hand" sidequest where Henry is asked to find three escaped nightingales and set traps for them. The traps can be finicky (up to and including spawning at your mount when the bird gets captured), but the "Game Breaking" variant comes if you try to save after getting any bird trapped but before completing the quest - you simply won't be able to turn it in.
- Alchemy can sometimes break (the current theory is that it happens if Henry uses a stolen herb), leaving the player unable to craft potions for the rest of the save file.
- Xbox owners got hit with a particularly bad one by virtue of being a full patch behind the other versions - namely, cutscenes skipping automatically starting with the raid on Skalitz, and everyone missing their heads afterward.
- The 1.4.1 patch causes the game to crash upon entering Straw's house in Merhojed during the Pestilence quest. Normally not so bad, except it's required for a main quest. And if you use skills to bypass the steps, it'll crash when you try to interrogate the prisoner from the bandit raid. Luckily, this was fixed in 1.4.2.
Good Bad Bugs:
- The way melee combat used to work in earlier patches. If you prevented the game from "locking in" on an enemy by backpedaling with shift and looking down, you could've avoided locking into an enemy. If you then performed a slash while looking down, but looked up as the swing was in motion, that slash would have hit the enemy, and there was nothing the enemy could do to block/parry/counter the hit. As long as you prevented the lock-on mechanic from triggering, you could more or less win fights you were meant to lose, against opponents you were not supposed to beat, making the combat almost trivial.
- Save Scumming before the Talmberg horse race and reloading can cause Sir Divish to complain that the other riders never turned up, despite being there, giving Henry the win by default.
- Having the right set of perks^note and clothes allows to easily drop the enemy's aggro, without reloading their previous routes. Instead, they just stand idle in the place, not returning to previous routine. This allows you to either bypass them entirely or easily kill them with an arrow in the face or dagger in the neck. This can completely trivialise certain quests and tasks. The only limit is that it only works in forests.
- Whenever guards in Skalitz are knocked out and looted, they auto-regenerate their weapons upon waking up. Knocking them out again allows you to loot them once more, ad infinitum.
Heartwarming in Hindsight: Sir Radzig's refusal of Henry's plea to be allowed to return to Skalitz to bury his parents becomes this after he's revealed as Henry's biological father. He's not being an uncaring jackass, he's trying to keep his son safe.
It's Hard, So It Sucks!: Melee combat is, quite frankly, painfully hard to learn, feeling more at home in a fighting game than an RPG due to the massive amount of complexity it has. Against single opponents, it's tough. Against multiple opponents, it's downright maddening. Until you've learned how it works, your options against armoured foes amount to using exploits, switching to a bow, or running. Brawling can be ridiculously hard, though it's mostly a gimmick.
Low-Tier Letdown: Sabers are infamous for the fact that they can only be obtained from Cumans and have poorer stats compared to other types of shortswords. To give a comparison, the shortsword Shard which the player can acquire at the very start of the game requires only 3 Agility in order to have 43 slash damage and 35 stab damage, while the Hungarian Saber has the same slash damage and less stab damage at 32... while requiring an Agility stat of nine. Of course, the design idea is that whatever gear Henry could acquire in the prologue would be unusable to him, as without extensive cheating and cheesing it's impossible to leave Skalitz with stats needed to use anything else than Sir Radzig's sword... but the sabres remain inadequate for the rest of the game.
Memetic Mutation:
- The game's Reddit page has spawned quite a few memes, such as "Henry's come to see us! Jesus Christ be praised!"
  - "Charles IV, King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor, had a long and successful reign..." ^Explanation
  - "...But Wenceslas did not take after his father. He neglected affairs of state for more frivolous pursuits."
- Also, the infamous halberds that are breaking some people's games by glitching into the floor, causing tremendous stutter and causing the game to crash.
- Henry's various quips whenever his sleep/hunger levels are below 50% have gained some infamy, due to their uncanny habit of occurring at the least appropriate times. Example:
(Henry stabs a bandit in his sleep)
Henry: I feel quite hungry.
Narm: Some of the more exaggerated gestures come across as silly, despite the seriousness of the conversations that may be going on when they're done.
Obvious Beta: The initial release of the game included quite a number of bugs and visual glitches. The performance of the PC version also received criticism, as depending on each computer's build and components it could range from "somewhat acceptable" to "utterly horrifying". The game developers inmediately set out to correct these issues, releasing several patches within the month which dealt with the most severe annoyances. After patch 1.4 the majority of problems had been fixed and the game was stable and mostly enjoyable, although a few irritating quirks still remained.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
- In the release state of the game, there was no option to save the game other than either drinking a save potion, going to bed or progressing a main quest to an automatic save point. A month after the premiere (and having a mod for unlimited saves released day after it), the game received a "Save & Quit" option, following an overbearing player-base demand.
- Similarly, in the initial build of the game, during the night, all NPCs were simply asleep and there was no way to interact with them - not even when it came to the main quest and urgent messages. Instead, they would simply tell Henry to sod off and come back in the morning, meaning the game went on a halt between 10 PM and 6-8 AM. Eventually, this was patched in such a way that any NPC that's involved in an ongoing quest can be talked with after being awakened, which allows to progress or finish their quest.
Scrappy Mechanic: The save system. Unlike most other games, you can't save anytime you want. Instead, you have to rely on the auto-save or, if you want to save manually, go to sleep or drink Saviour Schnapps. The problem is that the Saviour Schnapps are very expensive to buy, require appropriate levels in reading and alchemy to even make, not to mention that since it's booze, it will make your character drunk. On top of that, the game really pressures you into saving a lot, since it's bound to crash at some point or another, especially in earlier versions. This has led to an unlimited saves mod being made less than a day after the game's release. It got to the point where the devs addressed them, adding a "Save & Quit" option that doesn't use Savior Schnapps in the 1.3.0 patch a month after game release.
- Similarly, the lockpicking and pickpocketing systems have been criticized by players as being far too finicky. The latter is arguably worse since there's a chance that your victim will instantly detect you when you attempt to pickpocket them in the initial 2 seconds.
- The fast travel system is restricted to only a handful of locations, not even covering all of the major ones, while horseback riding has variety of issues (including slowing down when following roads) that makes it unwieldy to get to certain places in speed. Another popular mod simply added all villages as fast-travel destinations.
- The Unskippable Cutscenes displayed whenever Henry picks an herb. One of the most popular mods for the game simply removes them from happening, as having to watch Henry squat for a flower for the millionth time in a 5 seconds cutscene gets old really fast. This is further contrasted with the fact that both stealing and picking up objects have their related animations, rather than a static cutscene interrupting the game.
- Melee combat. While it does an excellent job of adding realism to the game by showing that Henry is decidedly not an experienced fighter, it does add an unfair amount of Early Game Hell by being awkward and unwieldy. What the game also doesn't tell you is that Henry's stats come into play as well, making enemies tougher when his skill level is low.
  - Fistfighting specifically can be frustrating as there aren't many opportunities to train it besides a few scripted events or training with Captain Bernard, which mixed with the lackluster mechanics and no skills associated with it compared to the swordplay can make it a slog unless the player stunlocks their enemy with the kneeing animation. To make matters worse, whoever Henry is fighting can damage his armor with no issue.
Special Effect Failure: The game does a valiant job of handling hundreds of possible armor combinations the player can put on Henry, but the sheer volume of wearable items means some clipping will appear sooner or later.
Spiritual Successor: The game is in many ways a more mundane and modernized take on 1992's Darklands.
That One Achievement: King Charming, which requires you to be popular in every town and village. This is very tedious due to both the number of places that qualify and the amount of time it takes.
That One Boss: Runt, by virtue of encountering him fairly early into the game (provided Henry didn't do sidequests to level up), who hits like a truck and will counter most of Henry's moves, leading a lot of players to use the exploit under Good Bad Bugs to get past him.
- Adding to this is the fact that player must face Runt directly after the fight outside, with no chance to prepare or even patch themselves up. Meaning if player is on half health and bleeding, they will have to fight Runt in that state.
- The best way to kill him quickly is by plucking 3-4 arrows into his head right as the fight starts. He goes from That One Boss to Anticlimax Boss. And should player spend just few minutes training with melee weapons, Runt goes down in single hit, since he is not wearing helmet and one of the easiest combo attacks aims directly for the face.
That One Level: Needle in A Haystack is this for players that didn't focus on or develop their thief skills. Working with the Neuhof bandits, Henry is tasked with infiltrating a monastery in order to track a straggler down, kill him and bring proof to the bandits that the target is dead. What follows is allegedly the most annoying quest in the whole game according to fans. First of all, it's a No-Gear Level, so you can't bring your stuff inside to kill the target, not even your Savior Schnapps. Second, since you're a novice, you're at the bottom of the monk hierarchy, meaning that you live under the authority of the hated Circators, monks who are supposed to keep order in the monastery and punish monks who break the rules. However, since you are being tasked with killing someone in the monastery, you WILL have to break many rules with your time in there, especially if you choose to do the sidequests that the monastery offers, which involves a lot of lockpicking and pickpocketing, sneaking in and out of the monastery constantly, missing out on your schedule (and getting punished for that), getting lost and much more.

YMMV / Kingdom Come: Deliverance

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