You've got to envy folks in the middle ages. I mean, not the plague. Not the religious zealotry, either. And certainly not the subsistence farming. But give them some credit: they lived in a world of magic. You couldn't leave the milk out without some hobgoblin stalking in to curdle it. Every weird happenstance or downturn in fortune was attributable to Lucifer, spirits, gremlins, Baba Yaga, witches, demons, or some kind of sector-wide trade union composed of the whole lot of them.
It's these fragments of superstition that make for some of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's most fun and absurd parts, and they're front and centre in its first expansion, Brushes With Death. Pagan gods, basilisks, a mysterious painter whose best pal is a skull that tells him secrets—it's all here, baby, and that's just in the two hours I've played so far.
It kicks off like any other KCD2 sidequest, distinguishable as DLC only by its unique icon on the map: Henry's minding his own business around Trosky Castle when he finds a guy tied to a tree, surrounded by wolves, and talking to a human skull.
What proceeds from there feels like the KCD2 base game distilled to narcotic purity. Tree-skull-guy—who turns out to be a mysterious artist named Voyta—makes a brief introduction before sending poor, beleaguered Henry off to recover his stolen possessions from a pair of miscreants in the woods. Some lads hit him over the head with a stick and stole his gambling dice and brushes, you see.
Getting them back is like a showfloor demo for KCD2's imsim-y approach to player choice—do you wheedle and flatter your way into their good graces before beating them at dice and archery, winning Voyta's gear back fair and square? Do you browbeat and intimidate them? Stab them and be done with it? Or do what I did—just pickpocket the loot off the pair and call it a day?
That feeling of freebasing the main game endured throughout my time with the DLC, like Warhorse has seen people's feedback about what it does well and decided to double down on it, delivering its greatest hits at high intensity and in short succession.
There are the imsim-esque choices of that first mission; a comical aside where poor Henry has to bring a forgetful old woman back to her halcyon youth by picking her flowers, mending her best dress, and finally freestyling some romantic poetry on the spot; a lot of serious scientific discussion about how to obtain a basilisk egg (you've gotta leave a rooster egg with a toad midwife, it turns out); and a lot of great, befuddling, and eminently TikTok-able conversations between Henry and Voyta as our humble country lad tries to understand just what's going on with this peculiar paint-slinger, the skull he chats to for inspiration, and why he's haunted by a quest to murder a prior associate.
So it feels like a really high-quality sidequest, but make no mistake, it does feel like a sidequest. If you're hoping for Brushes With Death to bolt some entirely new and involved system onto KCD2's already-sprawling mess of involved systems, I haven't found one in my hours with it.
What you do get is a new shield customisation mechanic, which isn't going to upend your experience of the game but does let you muck with the heraldry and colours on all those shields rattling about in your saddlebags, unlocking new heraldic symbols as you progress through the DLC. I put a rocket-propelled cat on mine. It's pretty great.
So unless the DLC is set to pull a rug out from under me as I get further in, it's very much more of the best parts of KCD2 for people who want more KCD2. Fortunately, I'm one of those people. If you come into Brushes With Death looking for a game-changer, you won't get it. But if you want Warhorse firing on all cylinders with a fun side-story that recalls all the best parts of the main game? Welcome home. Jesus Christ be praised.
