By Aidan O’brien

Copyright shacknews

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has, undoubtedly, been one of the best games of the year. I will happily maintain that Henry is one of the most likable video game protagonists I have ever encountered. He’s someone you can root for, someone you enjoy playing as, and it’s pretty easy to step into his shoes and see his medieval world as he does.

It is for this very reason that I have wanted more for Henry. I don’t want him just wandering the world and getting into fights and adventures; I want him to have a future. Like any proud Papa, I want my boy to have a trade. Enter The Legacy of the Forge DLC.

In The Legacy of the Forge, Henry comes across an old, burnt-out blacksmith in Kuttenberg. It feels oddly familiar to him, and a cutscene shows him as a child, with his father telling him how he used to work there when he was a young man. The familial connection to his lost parent drives Henry to talk to the lady who lives there, and he finds out that her husband, the smith, is long dead. She remembers his father, however, a well-liked and eager apprentice, and suggests that maybe Henry would like to take over the forge.

That’s all it takes, and suddenly Henry is on his way toward having his own home and business. The DLC can be accessed just after you arrive in Kuttenberg, and this is almost certainly the best time to jump into it. While the central conceit is that you will spend time doing up the living quarters, blacksmith business, and outbuildings, ultimately, you need gold and, even more than that, you will need to rank up your reputation as a blacksmith.

This drives you to interact with the game world in a new way, not just adventuring, but building up your wealth for a reason. Gold is easy for lategamers, who are likely hoarding all manner of riches from their adventures, but the only way to get the blacksmith reputation is to do randomized jobs that populate each day. It’s really up to you to decide if you want to focus on the blacksmith or push on with the main campaign adventures, but a good mix of both feels like a rewarding choice.

The great news here is that there are hidden depths to The Legacy of the Forge, and the more you explore and engage with the new content, the more you will find to do. The main focus, however, is certainly fixing up and building the blacksmith business and your home, and how that impacts the rest of the game.

There are all manner of useful items that you can build that can make your life much easier. Do you want to own a wardrobe that will automatically repair gear that you store in it? Then get some gold, grind some blacksmith reputation, and you can get one. There are dozens of little things like this to get your hands on as you play through the DLC.

What Legacy of the Forge means for you as a player is not just that you get a bunch of things to do, with all the quests, activities, things to make and build, and folks to talk to, but you also get a home. That might not sound like much, but it’s a place to sleep, to wash, to eat (from the constantly bubbling pot of stew), and it even has its own fast travel point. The impact of such riches cannot be overstated, as having a single base of operations really can change the feel of the rest of the game.

Even better, the place comes with a chest where you can store all your spare gear, and it will be sold automatically, generating some income for you. This doesn’t even have to be gear you make; it can be items you have, eh, liberated from a previous owner who no longer needs them.

Overall, you are looking at 15 to 20 hours of gameplay, according to the developers, but in my experience, that is underselling what is on offer here. The Legacy of the Forge ties in perfectly with the base game, adding a wonderfully immersive “slice of life” simulator to the experience.

I would go so far as to say that this DLC has changed my hopes for what might be coming in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 3, and I don’t know how I’ll feel if we don’t get similar systems in the base game; they feel so enjoyable and integral to the development of Henry after playing through them.

Best of all, what makes The Legacy of the Forge such a worthwhile DLC is that it really doesn’t matter where you are in the game. Whether you are a first-time player, on a new playthrough, or in your late-game hoarding stage, it will work very well, giving you more reason to return to Bohemia and spend more time with Henry.

This impressions piece is based on a version of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Legacy of the Forge that the publisher provided.