With fists like these, who needs a sword?
One time in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, I decided to put its unarmed combat to the test against an armored bandit. I sheathed my sword, started throwing punches, and immediately discovered that I’d made a terrible mistake. For reasons that don’t need explaining, fists deal almost zero damage to full plate armor. I got cut to size, reloaded a save, and never bothered throwing punches again outside the fighting ring.
All that to say, I’m stunned to learn that it’s not only possible to play the entirety of KCD2 without killing a single soul, but somebody’s already done it. Reddit user hamfinity shared his story of beating the RPG as “medieval Batman,” completing darn near every quest while knocking out precisely 535 people.
This playthrough was actually the sequel to their pacifist playthrough of KCD1, which they reckon was much harder.
“Becoming medieval Batman was one of my most fun gaming experiences from playing the first Kingdom Come Deliverance,” hamfinity wrote. “It was a joy to be able to continue the adventure in the second game even if there isn’t an achievement for it. This time, the unarmed combat was a lot more useful and complex despite the low damage.”
Low damage indeed. I couldn’t manage to KO a single bully on the road, so how did hamfinity hone his boxing prowess?
“Stamina management is critical. Taking hits reduces stamina and that converts to armor-piercing health damage when your stamina is at 0,” they wrote. “That also applies to enemies in case your fists are not doing any damage normally (and was basically how I beat the first game with unarmed by kicking people in the nuts until they succumbed).”
Well that explains a lot. The tutorials don’t really cover this in depth, but as long as you’re blocking, stamina acts as a shield against taking damage. Since the same applies to enemies, it can take a lot of pounding to wear down their invisible stamina meter and start landing meaningful hits.
That’s where unarmed combos—learned by finding melee experts in the world and paying them loads of groschen—come into play. They’re the “bread and butter” of a pacifist playthrough, and hamfinity describes one late-game combo in particular as an “absolute game changer.” They didn’t want to spoil which one that is, but commenters figure they’re referring to the shoulder throw, an advanced move that disarms enemies.
But even armed with the best unarmed tools, hamfinity still ran into a few instances where they had to “bend the rules a bit” because “the developers really wanted killings”. Without getting into spoilers, there were a couple of instances where hostile NPCs couldn’t be knocked out for whatever reason, so hamfinity had to call up Henry’s dog, Mutt, to “gnaw their balls off.” I guess Mutt kills aren’t technically Henry kills.
Allies are a big help, too. As long as Henry doesn’t land the killing blow, he’s never blamed for a kill. That helped hamfinity get through several main quests that are essentially huge battles where enemies have to die. But what if someone has to die and Henry is the only one around?
“Unconscious bodies take fall damage and it’s not Henry’s fault because gravity hasn’t been discovered yet in 1403.” Ah, yep, makes sense to me. It wasn’t Henry who killed them, but the fall.
I can’t say hamfinity’s efforts make me want to attempt the pacifist run (it sounds fun up until the forced combat quests), but Medieval Batman has opened my eyes to how useful unarmed combat can be. I gotta learn that disarm move the next time I’m outnumbered by bandits.
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