Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 – Legacy of the Forge DLC Review – Cozy Crafting

A major part of the success behind the Kingdom Come: Deliverance games, including the sequel from earlier this year, can be attributed to the fact that the games have taken a realistic approach to their open-world European medieval gameplay and settings. Along with intense swordplay and role-playing, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 focuses on providing a relatively realistic approach to its crafting systems. The latest DLC release, Legacy of the Forge, focuses largely on one of these systems: blacksmithing.

But this is far from a large-scale DLC. In fact, it is quite tiny when compared to the rest of the base game. However, rather than being a weakness, this actually serves as its major strength, since its narrow scope does quite a bit to give it a sense of focus. The premise behind the DLC is quite simple; while going about his day in Kuttenberg, protagonist Henry spots a dilapidated building that prompts some long-forgotten memories. These memories revolve around his father, Martin, and his life as a blacksmith. On learning more about the building, Henry decides to take it upon himself to try and fulfill his late father’s long-abandoned mission: to get it back to its former glory as a forge, and to use his skills at crafting to repair the Kuttenberg astronomical clock.

“Since you now have your very own forge, crafting obviously takes center stage here.”

However, it is worth noting that it isn’t the only skill of Henry’s that will be tested. Things start off with a surprisingly challenging opening quest that has you pore through a blacksmithing book and prove your mastery by forging an acceptable sword to become a member of the blacksmithing guild. Once you finally gain membership, the guild allows you to take on ownership of the long-abandoned building which, at this point, is too expensive to fix up for the guild. Henry must then join forces with the widow of the blacksmith under whom his own father apprenticed to get the forge running and the business going.

Even after you’ve successfully cleaned out the building and set up the forge, there is still a surprising amount of content to explore in Legacy of the Forge. The core story requires you to climb up the ranks of the blacksmithing guild, which in turn requires you to take on a variety of quests to get your fellow guild members to like you. Not everything in the story revolves around crafting ultimately.

Since you now have your very own forge, crafting obviously takes center stage here and you are going to spend most of your time running around Kuttenberg and its surrounding areas in search for materials as you craft different things to fulfill guild orders, as well as to sell to other people in order to make a tidy profit. Access to this forge makes crafting much simpler, and you can essentially start up the DLC’s quests as soon as you get to Kuttenberg and have around 400 Groschen.

“Since you get a whole building to set up your new forge business in, there’s also a fair bit of customisation available in the DLC.”

Legacy of the Forge also makes a lot of sense to get started as early as possible, since the new crafting recipes you get from the DLC tend to be quite lucrative, and it ends up being a decent story to continue alongside your other pursuits throughout Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. As for the story’s length, it’s rather small-scale in nature, with the end goal being to team up with Martin’s old friends to ultimately fix up the long-dormant clock. Progressing through the ranks of the blacksmithing guild is largely about building relationships with its members while also taking on special guild commissions that put your smithing skills to the test. In practice, the guild functions more as a progression system, while the main story of the DLC centers on your efforts to repair the great clock.

That said, the story itself never grows much more complex than this. What keeps it engaging are the new characters, who are all thoughtfully written with distinct quirks and personalities. A particular highlight is meeting Martin’s old friends, as these encounters provide deeper insight into who he was as a person and why he was so determined to restore the astronomical clock.

Since you get a whole building to set up your new forge business in, there’s also a fair bit of customisation available in the DLC. As you gain higher ranks in the guild, you also start unlocking new options for decorating your workshop. These decorations range from simple ones, like nicer-looking walls or a more lavish bed to rest in, to more complex options, like swapping out entire pieces of furniture, fixing up the outer walls and even ultimately repairing the collapsed roof of the building. Along with this, players more interested in combat will also be happy to know that the DLC brings with it a new set of powerful weapons that players can craft as soon as they can get their hands on the blueprints.

These weapons can also be sold for a decent amount of Grochen if you’re more interested in lining your pockets than chasing the slight numerical upgrades they provide over your existing gear. One of the DLC’s biggest shortcomings is the lack of genuinely interesting new equipment to craft. Most of the new weapon recipes amount to little more than incremental stat boosts compared to what you might already own. On the flip side, this also means Legacy of the Forge never feels essential or mandatory to pick up. To its credit, the DLC does at least flesh out some of the weaker weapon categories by adding more variety to blunt weapons and polearms, which helps broaden your options in those areas.

“A major downside of Legacy of the Forge is that, being essentially a standalone story, it doesn’t meaningfully involve characters from the base game.”

A major downside of Legacy of the Forge is that, being essentially a standalone story, it doesn’t meaningfully involve characters from the base game. At no point will the characters from the DLC acknowledge the presence of Theresa, Capon or Catherine, for example, despite the Devil’s Den being quite close to Kuttenberg. This narrower scope might end up making the DLC feel a bit superficial to some, but I would argue that it expands on one of the more enjoyable side activities with additional quests and narrative content

All that said, Legacy of the Forge can also feel tedious to players that don’t really care about the crafting systems in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and are more interested in the excellent combat and intense storytelling. Since crafting in the game largely involves running around to various vendors to get your hands on as many materials as you can before you get to work on making dozens of swords, axes and hammers, it may start feeling like a chore. However, if you do care about how crafting is handled in the game, you’re sure to enjoy Legacy of the Forge as well.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 – Legacy of the Forge might not be a grand new adventure in the life of Henry. It is, however, a great way to spend time between more intense bouts of combat or long quest chains. You get your own house to chill in, and you get to make quite a bit of extra cash by simply partaking in the DLC’s storyline and making use of the titular forge to craft things. This, along with the low-stakes story, goes a long way in making the world of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 feel more alive than many expansions could manage.

This game was reviewed on PC.