And here's the trailer; https://youtu.be/t4SI06Gl9gA?s...

This is going to be a LONG thread, probably a bit chaotic and messy. Of course also with spoilers and me complaining about little details. You've been warned.

I heard first about this game when it started as a kickstarter that promised a world with dungeons but no dragons. Which made me instantly want it and I was glad to see there were a LOT of people who were clearly desperate for a good medieval game without fantasy stuff.

They did, unfortunately, put some potions in the game that aren't very realistic, of course to make the game more fun, but I tried to avoid using them as much as possible.

The game is set in 15th century Bohemia during the Hussite wars and we get to play Henry, a blacksmith's son, a handsome young fellow who only has drinking, fighting & women on his mind. He's a cad, so I like him even though I perhaps shouldn't ;)

Then his town is attacked & massacred by Cumans and our hero barely escapes after seeing his parents murdered. So our story begins, through many different adventures and quests our simple boy becomes a strong man, a knight even, as unlikely as that may have been back then.

One of the things you get to do quite often is solve crimes & difficult situations, which is a lot of fun and also made me think about Cadfael a lot, someone please bring back that tv show!!

Henry is a rogue. But handsome & charming, so he generally gets away with it, but it does mean that his view of the world is one-sided, we don't really get an interesting perspective of women, unless they end up in bed with Henry. Luckily a DLC changed that, more on this later.

Henry is very well voiced/acted by the wonderful Tom McKay, quite the dreamboat. Other voice actors are pretty good as well, Brian Blessed is of course fantastic, but some are a bit iffy, that everyone speaks English is one thing, but that some have an American accent is weird.

But let's get straight to the main actor in this game: the medieval world. A lot of work and love has gone into creating the world we get to explore. It's been years since I first played this game but it is still such a delight to simply ride my horse through fields and villages.

And the castles... oh my, it truly made me smile with delight when I explored them.

The woods are also wonderful to explore, to ride through, to go hunting in but... and here's the first raised eyebrow, there's a lot of it. Our game is set in an area with several villages and a lot of industry.

Every house has a fire burning every day, there are several charcoal burner camps, mines & other industry, this all would have used up a lot of wood, there wouldn't be many forests left.

There are also a lot of people living here, they all need food, for this land would be needed for growing crops & livestock, another reason why this world probably would have had more fields & fewer woods than it has in the game.

And if there were woods, the domesticated but also wild animals that roamed there would have eaten much of them bare I reckon. These were all serious problems people in much of Medieval Europe were dealing with.

What a lot of people disliked about the game was something I loved; it is difficult. You're a nobody who doesn't know anything, can't do much, loses every fight, can't convince anyone of anything & when you pick a lock the town comes running to see what is causing that racket.

Mastering medieval weapons takes for EVER and when you eventually win your first fight it truly feels like you've achieved something.

But even at the end of the game when I was a very good fighter wearing a strong suit of amour and wielding a very good sword, a gang of angry peasants with pitchforks could still kill me if they wanted to. That to me is realistic.

I don't know much about Czech history, the politics of the time or specific details of life in that region, so my review is a bit more general medieval based, which means I could be wrong as some things were perhaps different there than they were in other parts of Europe.

The game received a lot of criticism when it came out, some valid, some not so much. It was very glitchy but I think that's all mostly solved now. There were some issues, but nothing that broke the game or really bothered me.

There was drama about there not being much diversity and unfortunately one of the main developers said some stupid things. The wiki page describes all this quite well but it left a dark shadow over the game. But a LOT of people worked on it who don't all share those opinions.

Anyway, the game is a masterpiece, especially because of the world created for it. If you're into medieval history, you HAVE to go explore it, just walk around a town, go see a castle, you'll love it.

I wish the team behind the game made a multiplayer version, no not of the whole game, just the world. Imagine if we could meet at an inn there, have a drink, play dice, then go horse riding, fight some bandits, party at a castle, etc. Please make it happen!

While playing it (again) I took over 1200 screenshots, the rest of the thread is me sharing some of these and randomly ranting about what is on them. I hope it all makes sense.

So where to start... with hygiene, you know me. Well bathing plays a big role in this game, your character (and everybody else) gets dirty and this results in you being treated differently. A mucky boy gets send away and won't get kisses either.

Most towns/villages have bathing facilities, from little outside tubs to lovely cosy places. I would have liked a fancy nicer looking one in the city, but at least they were there.

Unfortunately they all offer hanky panky as an extra service. Bath houses were not all brothels, mostly they were places entire families visited, a village meeting place, prostitutes were not even allowed near.

Yes there were of course bath houses were naughty things happened and there were brothels that were also bath houses. But I would have liked to see more regular common bath houses where you just had a bath with your neighbours.

Also why are the men in the tubs not naked? There's nudity in the game but when men jump in the tub, they keep their undies on. Not that I'm a perv or anything.

The buildings are fantastic, truly awesome, you can enter almost all of them, they make sense, look good, feel authentic, it's just amazing. And some of them are based on real buildings you can still visit today!