Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is an old-school technical success on PC

Unlike the majority of its peers, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 launched as a complete, polished game – one that’s old-school in the best possible way. That’s a welcome relief from the usual, and certainly worthy of praise despite a few lingering issues.

Perhaps one reason why KCD2 is in such a great state is down to its choice of engine. CryEngine made its name powering large, open-ended levels like those in the original Far Cry and Crysis, and it was tapped for the original Kingdom Come Deliverance game back in 2018. The new game uses a DirectX 12 version of the engine, but unlike most DX12 titles the game doesn’t suffer from the stutter, hitches or otherwise troublesome frame-times that we’ve come to expect from modern PC releases.

Rather than playing on a high-end PC, I spent most of my time with KCD2 using medium settings on a mainstream build, complete with a Ryzen 5 3600 CPU and RTX 4060 or RTX 4070 Super graphics card. Even with the older and/or mid-range components, frame-times remained solid when targeting 60fps. Most notably, the game doesn’t exhibit shader compilation stutter, so seeing new effects never triggered frame-time hitches over hours of play.

Based on what I know from interviews with Crytek, the necessary PSO caching can be accomplished during loading screens between chapters or asychronously in the backgroud, with delayed visibility of a shader if it’s ever needed but not ready. Regardless of the mechanism, the results speak for themselves, and it’s refreshing to see a game make such a solid first impression.