Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has turned me into a Bohemian Batman who murders bandits in their sleep, and it's all because of some dead sheep

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has forced my hand. After weeks spent playing Henry as a good boy (mostly), I've finally arrived at the city of Kuttenberg and lush surrounding countryside only to be met with a hefty spike in difficulty. Roaming bands of peasant-bandits have become a rarer sight, largely replaced by well-armed deserters who actually know which end of their hammer to swing with. Many of these roadside menaces can even use my beloved Master Strike against me, meaning my standard approach to breezing through combat has been forced to the wayside in favor of something stealthier – and far, far darker.

Where Ghost of Tsushima guilt-tripped you for embracing (so-called) dishonorable tactics, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 makes no such judgement. Anything that keeps Henry alive is fair play – and not only that, but being stealthy is designed to feed right back into the game's overarching ethos of feeling authentic. Which is all to say: I've done some very bad things.

Horrid Henry

Before coming to Kuttenberg, my experience with stealth in the game was limited. I'd woefully bungled a lute heist that turned Henry into an outcast, and later on in the game's main story, managed to sneak out of a castle (mostly) undetected. But I'd never approached a combat situation with the sole intention of keeping things quiet until the alternative – strolling up for a chivalrous head-to-head – became too hard to pull off.

While stopping at one of the many inns dotting Kuttenberg's countryside, a chatty bartender warned that a band of deserters had taken up in a nearby barn. Worse, they'd already killed a local boy for not handing over his sheep in tribute. Having survived Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's gruelling first hours, I was confident the bandits would pose no trouble – and when I found the poor shepherd's boy surrounded by a flock of butchered sheep, the thought of hacking them to pieces became outright enticing.

Unfortunately, dispensing justice proved a harder undertaking in reality. I found the deserters by midday, ignored their warnings to back away, and hacked through their first sentry before the rest could so much as put their goulash down. That's as far as I got, as within minutes, I was surrounded and killed by a small army in gleaming armor and better weapons than I'd seen so far.

Subsequent attempts to wipe them out went just as poorly. I tried taking crossbow potshots from the bushes to no avail – turns out I can't aim – and trying to stealthily kill as many guards as possible before being spotted. At one point, I even walked up to their camp with a lit handcannon and obliterated one lackey before drawing my sword. It didn't work, and these attempts went on for longer than I'd care to admit.

I'm only detailing these embarrassing failures to stress how hard I tried for a fair fight before exasperated inspiration struck. Respawning in an all-too familiar meadow below the farm, I slinked off to a nearby stream out of view and waited. Day changed to night, bringing with it a fierce thunderstorm that made seeing anything a nightmare. Perfect.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's enemy camps work a little differently to outposts you'd find in other RPGs. If you visit one in the dead of night, the vast majority of foes actually sleep – unlike the likes of Fallout or Far Cry, where a handful will seem like they're snoozing but actually lie ready to start shooting at a moment's notice. Characters will strip out of their battle gear and lock it away through the night, and in most cases, there are only a handful of guards posted to keep watch for trouble.

Enter, trouble. Because of the rain, almost everybody is asleep in the barn. One sentry leans against the doorframe, while another soaked sod sulks by a campfire outside. I sneak in through an open window frame, tip-toeing past several occupied sleeping bags, and slit the throat of the deserter keeping watch (badly). It's not silent, but presumably because of the apocalyptic storm raging outside, his pals don't notice. They sleep on even as I creep toward them, and nobody so much as rolls over when I kill the first sleeping deserter with a dagger to the chest. I murder each deserter in turn, methodically going between bundles of blankets before doing the same to everyone asleep upstairs.

With only the guard at the campfire left alive, I'm in two minds as to whether I should wrap things up with stealth or finally get the honorable duel I've been craving. As tempting as it is to let the shepherd-murderer uselessly cry for help, there's no point in half measures. I sidle up to the log he's sat on and – you guessed it – slit his throat.

With the shepherd and his sheep successfully avenged and a brutal fight successfully avoided, a dark chapter in Henry's adventure comes to an end. But… not really, because it taught me that sneaking around in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 can be just as satisfying as its flashiest swordfights. Since then, I've cleared a number of camps at night (though few have gone as smoothly as the first), and generally feel more comfortable popping over to the dark side when foes have the numbers advantage.

Sure, killing someone while they're snoring is easier than clashing with them head-on, but it should. The key difference between this and gaming a generic detection meter is that there's an extra layer of believability in what you're doing. It's one of few areas where realism makes a game easier, and I'll take immersion over more exacting tip-toeing any day of the week. RPG developers, take notes – and sheep-killers, sleep with one eye open.

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