KCD is a game that doesn't hold your hand in the worst way possible.
I want to preface with something first. I am no stranger to difficult games, as a matter of fact, I like them. I have a collective 2000 hours across games like Dark Souls and Monster Hunter. So I genuinely love being presented with challenging combat and complex mechanics. I find it to be highly engaging and satisficing to be presented with a challenge and overcoming it. Learning is a major part of this, and with the games I talked about before, they don't hold your hand, but they point you in the right direction. KCD doesn't do this. I've noticed two ways they go about this: a) they info dump you with too much information at once, or b) they tell you ♥♥♥♥ all. And it's not like the information given to you is cryptic, it's honestly rather simple (to a certain extent) but due to the sheer amount of info, I just can't process it. And other times someone will say "Go do this thing." and I'm sat here like "Huh?" because that'll be it, just "do this thing" and I have no idea what they want, sometimes I'll stumble into it, and if I don't, then everyone gets mad at me. I just feel like information just isn't presented well.
I have no qualms with the story, I understand it to be more of a "character study". That probably isn't the right way to put it, but the story isn't some grand adventure, it's a very humble story about a young man battling trauma and trying to avenge his parents, which I'm all for, so like I said, no qualms with the story thus far. (I also understand that I'm barely 10 hours in, but that's what I've gathered so far)
I also like the general mechanics. Making sure I'm eating regularly, but not too much. Always having to get some sleep, and the quality depending on the bed. Cleaning myself, repairing gear, staying on good terms with people, the list goes on. These are all mechanics I like cause it feels like I'm living in this world, not just playing a game.
Exploration has been my favorite part so far. I love just wandering through the woods, foraging herbs and mushrooms, hunting animals, and just taking in the beauty of the game. It is genuinely so fun and it's where I get the most enjoyment, so bravo.
And now the part where people are gonna say that I have a skill issue and that I should ♥♥♥♥ off and play somethin else. I strongly dislike the combat. It is so tedious and overly complex in my opinion, and holy crap it feels so inconsistent. Now I understand that I'm very early on and combat is just gonna feel that way for a while, but I don't think it should. When it came to things like Dark Souls, Monster Hunter, and even The Witcher recently, I feel ready to engage with the world after the tutorial sections, but not with KCD. I assume Skalitz is the tutorial island of this game, and I learned next to nothing there, so when I was thrust into the open world, I felt so lost and honestly incompetent, as embarrassing as that is, it's true. This game makes me feel like a moron, because I hate blaming a game for something that's my fault, with something like Dark Souls or Monster Hunter, where there if I'm dying it's cause I suck, but in KCD it just feels unfair. For example, everything I do feels so sluggish and clunky and I think that's mostly from the combat animations, it feels like I'm smacking people with the speed of a turtle, whereas my opponent is acting like he's Dante, hitting the most sicknasty combos you've ever seen. But my biggest problem of the all is the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ camera. Oh. My. God. I cannot put into words how frustrating I find the camera during combat. So I've been playing this game on mouse and keyboard (idk if this is a controller game, but i dont own one so yikes ig) but trying to aim attacks pisses me off so much, it just starts freaking out and shaking everywhere when I try to aim my sword. It is so nauseating and my eyes just glaze over until I die. And listen, I get that this is meant to be a "hyper realistic combat system" but it just does not click with me.
So with all that being said, I do NOT think this game is bad, I do NOT think the combat is bad, I simply believe it is taught very poorly and isn't communicated well. That being said I'm gonna quit this game for like a month or two and then probably try to pick it up again, I've done that with all the difficult games I've played, and It usually clicks by then, but until that point, I'm leaving a negative review because this is the first difficult game to just really grind my gears that way. If I do get to that point, I know I'll drop hundreds of hours into this game and love every second of it, and this review will turn into a positive one.
TLDR; game doesn't give you information is a digestible way, and combat feels very unfair
