Do You Need to Play the First Game to Understand Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2?

As Kingdom Come: Deliverance begins, a civil war is brewing. King Charles IV dies, leaving his son, Wenceslaus IV in charge, only he proves to be a seriously disinterested ‘ruler’. Some of the Kingdom of Bohemia’s nobles aren’t happy with this, and so they join forces with his half-brother Sigismund, who is King of Croatia and Hungary. Sigismund kidnaps Wenceslaus IV, to force him to renounce the throne, and that’s the world you step into as Henry.

Henry is an apprentice to his father, a blacksmith, and everything’s going well until his village, Skalitz, is wiped out by Sigismund’s forces. Henry escapes but his parents and most of the village’s inhabitants are slaughtered. The last memento Henry has of his parents is a sword his father made for local lord Sir Radzig Kobyla.

Related: All Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Voice Actors

We later discover that Henry is Sir Radzig’s illegitimate son, but the sword is stolen and ends up in the hands of villain Sir Istvan Toth. Toth means to conquer Bohemia with an army of mercenaries but Henry, with Lord Radzig, eventually foils him, over the course of various adventures and negotiations. Toth’s army is crushed but Toth himself escapes.

That’s essentially where the game ends, with Henry having grown as person and, as Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 begins, he’s more chilled but he’s never got his revenge. And, despite his victory over Toth, Toth is still out there somewhere and the civil war remains unresolved. He heads off with Hans, son of Sir Hanush of Leipa, another noble, to deliver a letter, which is where the second game picks up.

So the answer to do you need to have to played the original to understand Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is no, you don’t, and you won’t lose much if you haven’t.