Kingdom Come: Deliverance is by far one of my favourite games to have been released last year. I love its story telling, its interesting characters and challenging combat. In short it had me hooked for hours and hours and I was really excited to get my hands on the Band of Bastards DLC. Before you carry on reading there are spoilers ahead.
Band of Bastards is centered around a band of mercenaries lead by Kuno of Rychwald as they patrol the roads of Radzig’s estates. Kuno owes Radzig a favour for saving his life many years ago and this part of their relationship is used to test Kuno’s loyalty near the end of the DLC. Henry is sent as a guide and also to keep this group of ruffians in check as they patrol Radzig’s lands.
You can check out the Band of Bastards trailer below:
These guys are no angels as you’ll learn immediately upon meeting them and also through some of the morale choices you’ll have to make. They are more interested in making coin, boozing and womanising than they are upholding their honour and protecting the innocent. The banter between the characters as you go out on patrol with them is quite amusing albeit somewhat crude as you might expect.
As the story progresses you learn that the attacks on Radzig’s lands are being made by an old noble family who believe they were wronged in the past and have come to seek revenge. They are marauding around Radzig’s lands and it’s your job to stop them.
Band of Bastards is heavily focused on combat so if you haven’t played for a while I recommend that you brush up on your sword skills before you head out. Combat ranges from a mass fight in a village to a 1v1 duel (at least in my play through and with the choices I made) against the Lord of the enemy faction, which was quite a drawn out affair as I’d ignored my own advice and hadn’t brushed up on my sword skills. Oh and on one play through I killed the Lord rather than letting him go only to have his retinue, about 10 soldiers, absolutely kick my arse as a result.
The main questline has only three missions or patrols and as a result can be completed within a couple of hours. It took me nowhere near the five hours as advertised on the Steam store page and that’s with reloading to see what results different decisions would make. There is also a side quest line called the Ring of Bacchus but this appeared to be bugged or I was missing something as the second part of the quest didn’t trigger for me. It’s also possible to fail this questline if you haven’t completed it before the final showdown in the main questline.
Overall I found Band of Bastards really enjoyable but was surprised at how short it was and would understand if people felt that £6.99 was a bit steep for only a few hours of game. If like me, however, you love everything that Kingdom Come: Deliverance has to offer then I would 100% recommend you pick it up on Steam.
