Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 was my 2025 game of the year and one of my favorite RPGs ever, but having spent more than a year as a beat reporter covering community developments, I'd be naive to think I'm among the game's most diehard fans. My first and only playthrough took me more than 200 hours, and I still haven't seen and done everything. Meanwhile, it's not hard to find RPG fans claiming they've spent more than 1,000 hours in the game with multiple playthroughs.
Take Ray Chase, the voice behind Final Fantasy 15 protagonist Noctis and countless other video game, anime, and TV roles. Speaking to PC Gamer, Chase uncloaked himself as a loud-and-proud RPG sicko dipping his toes into Deltarune Chapter 5 and straight-up deep-sea diving in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.
"I'm currently playing Deltarune Chapter 5, but not [for] super long. The other one that I have is Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2," says Chase. "It's the eternal game. I'm doing all of the things. It'll be a few hundred hours. But it's the perfect encapsulation of what a roleplaying game should be."
Using the word "eternal" to describe an RPG like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 really resonates with me as something of a generalist with interests in a wide variety of genres. As I juggle the latest blockbuster releases and longtime horror favorites with a nightly dependence on cozy games and, lately, a whole lot of retro stuff, I can easily see a world where I'm still dipping into Kingdom Come for another decade, perhaps with guidance from Chase's brilliant idea for a "smell run."
"I played one [campaign] all the way through. The [most recent] one I've made, I'm doing a smell build where your character smells and looks so good and fancy that it actually works as armour," he says. "And so I wear perfumes and walk into battle with my fancy boy outfit. And my enemies are too stunned.
"I'm always laundering my clothes. It's the best. I just fucking love that game."
Unfortunately, I feel the need to vibe shift slightly here to note Kingdom Come studio Warhorse's at-times questionable relationship with AI, with a former employee earlier this year alleging he was fired and replaced by AI. Studio founder Daniel Vávra has also expressed some controversially bullish takes on AI in game development while admitting it "may mean the demise of humanity."
That little wrinkle aside, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is a generational RPG, and one can only hope Warhorse's upcoming Lord of the Rings RPG and the next Kingdom Come game build on that foundation without the stink of generative AI.
