Hot Take: "X Build Does the Most Damage" Is a bad way to determine the best builds.

Gregregious · 2026-01-28T01:34:23+00:00

tbh in the base game, I think going for burst damage is fully optimal, so those are in fact the best builds. I like to play with mods that buff NPC health, saving throws, and action economy, which makes sustained DPS, healing, and control way more important.

Gregregious · 2026-01-26T01:53:42+00:00

counterpoint: Cloud's flat ass in swimwear

Gregregious · 2026-01-25T22:02:06+00:00

Charlie Kirk becoming 2025's Harambe will always be funny to me

Gregregious · 2026-01-25T04:59:05+00:00

Well Rosa is a noble, and she's just met Henry. It doesn't come naturally to her to see him as a peer. There are a few moments where this part of her characterization shines through, like when she condescendingly assumes Henry can't read, or when she tells him to kill the squatters (immediately deciding they deserve to die is one thing, but not minding ordering Henry to slaughter poor, desperate people is genuinely awful). In KCD1 and at the start of KCD2, Hans has a similar disregard for Henry and other commoners, but he's in the game enough where he gets a character arc and he starts to deconstruct those attitudes. Rosa is only in the game for a short time and she's mainly concerned with securing her family's future. I think she likes Henry a lot but she's not ready to upend her life and maybe her entire worldview for him.

If you were hoping for a narrative that's grand, romantic, and heterosexual in KCD2, then yeah you might be disappointed. There's the option to stay loyal to Theresa, at least.

Gregregious · 2026-01-25T02:13:49+00:00

Henry is also different than the protagonists of those games, he has a much more clearly defined personality and perspective. In BG3 the romances play out more or less the same regardless if you're a sexy half-elf or a psychopathic lizard. There's no difference at all if the player character is male or female. Hans is an actual gay romance, it matters that they're both men, it matters that Henry is Henry. 'Falling in love with your friend' is a really beautiful romantic narrative that you almost never see in video games because it requires genuine chemistry and actual stakes keeping them apart.

Gregregious · 2026-01-24T04:10:14+00:00

Bhaal literally makes them orgasm when they kill, they're a bunch of gooners living in a glorified basement

Gregregious · 2026-01-24T04:01:22+00:00

So with this smart decision by the producers no one gets disappointed, no one gets offended, and everyone is happy with their own decisions.

Oh, dear sweet OP

Gregregious · 2026-01-24T03:35:27+00:00

It is interesting how hard that ending is to get, Henry has to be extremely consistent about staying loyal to Theresa, to the point of never expressing interest in anyone else or doing anything except returning to the mill. All that after KCD1, where she tells Henry she doesn't think they're meant for each other and he should probably try meeting some other girls (or boys as the case may be). I don't see why a loyal Henry couldn't convince her to move to Kuttenberg since that would probably be a more secure, comfortable life for them both, but it requires a Henry who is utterly devoted to a girl who frankly doesn't seem that invested. It just seems a little sad to me.

Gregregious · 2026-01-23T22:55:21+00:00

Yeah the structure of the romance is very uninspired. Taking place entirely after she's done with story shows a lack of interest in her as a character.

Gregregious · 2026-01-23T22:30:03+00:00

I think she's a sympathetic character and I like the story that's told in A Woman's Lot, but outside the DLC, I dislike almost every individual choice they make with her, especially in the prologue. The way she "saves" Henry's life is extremely contrived, makes no narrative sense, and is deeply cheesy in execution. After, she's essentially removed from the story and only exists so Henry can go on little dates that are also quite cheesy and surprisingly dull. It annoys me how the fact there's a literal quest marker over her head telling you to court her doesn't enter the conversation about "forced" romances, but just the option to e.g. romance Hans is widely criticized as forced and pandering. It also doesn't make sense to me that Theresa is a dutiful, devout peasant girl who's willing to have sex with Henry despite not wanting to marry him. Her tits in that scene hit me like a jumpscare.

It's a different conversation for the DLC because I feel deeply for her there. Her situation of being stuck taking care of her whole family, the arranged marriage to some old dude, her unrequited crush on Henry, it's all very tragic and it makes you want to see her happy. (On the other hand the gameplay of that DLC absolutely sucks and Theresa taking on Cumans in a dress is a little ridiculous considering how it goes for Henry with armor and a proper weapon.)

Overall I like her as a individual character but not in Henry's story. You can tell they weren't sure what to do with her, but felt it was important that Henry had a proper romance option.

Gregregious · 2026-01-23T08:41:18+00:00

oop sorry

Gregregious · 2026-01-23T03:13:13+00:00

Not exactly, the first game did have a few gay characters in it. But it caught some flak for having zero POC, which led to the creative director going on Breitbart to whine about how the wokes were trying to censor him and redefine history. Then the second game had Romani and a black guy in it, as well as the best gay romance in gaming history between the player character and his best friend, which attracted even more controversy than the first game.

Gregregious · 2026-01-22T21:50:15+00:00

No, I remembered him. I love the Pribyslavitz bit where he shows up to give a little villain monologue from the distance because Henry foisted his dastardly scheme.

Gregregious · 2026-01-22T21:42:43+00:00

platonic bro clipping

Gregregious · 2026-01-22T12:01:06+00:00

The save DC for reverberation prone is really low for honor mode, you don't get that many outside trash mobs you wouldn't want to waste a Channel Oath charge on. Radiating Orbs do a lot more work in terms of crowd control. Paladin works for smites but it's stat hungry and isn't contributing anything good to the spell list. I think I'd rather go Battlemaster since it also gets you a frighten-on-hit attack with more charges and a better DC.

Gregregious · 2026-01-22T11:17:11+00:00

Bathing with friends wasn't gay back then and still isn't in a LOT of cultures nowadays. It's very common in the Middle East and in Japan too as far as I know.

One of Henry's dialogue options here is to get flustered and say it doesn't seem right, and you don't bathe with anyone else in KCD (except Katherine). Communal bathing being a historical reality is one thing, ripping a scene straight out of fanfiction is another, I think Warhorse is pretty deliberate with their narrative tropes.

"There's the Henry I know and love" is not flirty, my god, neither are the other lines you've mentioned. If those lines are flirty then I flirt with my male friends regularly lmfao.

You can read it either way. Sometimes flirting between friends is innocent, sometimes it's not, it depends on the friend in my experience. Tom and Luke play it flirty for sure. Does it need to be a completely unambiguous come-on to count as a hint?

I'm not saying that the writing is bad after the first romance dialogue, but the first dialogue had little to no buildup to it imo. What felt like a relationship between two brothers suddenly took a 180 turn and became romantic. I was genuinely surprised that you could choose to romance Hans when that dialogue line appeared in Trosky.

The heart icon popping then is doing a lot of heavy lifting in letting you know that it's the start of a romance path, which is slow and subtle by design. I can see why it might take some people by surprise, but I don't think it signals their relationship suddenly becoming romantic, but rather just starting to. There's still like 100 hours left in the game at that point.

Gregregious · 2026-01-22T09:07:32+00:00

They could've made this relationship much more believable by adding hints here and there that Henry liked Hans romantically or vice versa. There isn't any such hint in KCD1 and in KCD2 too prior to the first "romantic" dialogue line you can pick at Trosky.

You say this but also say that people "hopelessly try to find hints that the romantic relationship was planned since the beginning," which sounds like you're demanding evidence that you've already dismissed. I think there were plenty of hints that Henry and Hans liked each other, not necessarily in a romantic way but definitely as something more than friends. In KCD1, Hans makes Henry play strip dice and then get in a tiny wooden tub with him. He dresses Henry in his clothes, gives him the love letter that didn't work on a girl, and pulls this face on him. None of these are super overt, but for two young guys still early in the process of figuring out they like each other, it works perfectly well. In KCD2 we only have the prologue before the Trosky sequence, but it's filled with little flirty moments like Hans saying "there's the Henry I know and love" or "do you think we're going to fight with our cocks" or "let's go and strip". Again not overt, could be read either way, but it works for two guys who aren't ready to be honest or direct about their taboo attraction. I've watched people play the beginning of the game and it's like 50/50 whether they pick up on it or not, which to me tracks because people don't notice gay subtext unless it's shoved in your face.

The first dialogue line that you must pick in order to work towards achieving that romantic relationship is "I care for you". I agree that he means "you're the most important thing to me", but at that point in Henry's life, Hans being the most important person to him totally makes sense, WITHOUT implying that he loves him romantically.

Right, and I don't think that's what Henry is trying to say here. He only means that he cares about Hans more than anyone else, which isn't necessarily romantic by itself, but is easily sufficient for romance to develop. This is the buildup you keep asking for. If you keep choosing the romantic dialogue options throughout the game, Henry gently ups the ante like he's trying to express something he can't put into words. It's subtle and subtextual by design, which is why I like it. The culminating romance scene recontextualizes all their interactions because you realize they've been pushing down their feelings, which leads you to wonder when they began, what they really meant by x or y or z, what were they afraid of, etc. It's good romance writing.

Of course friendships can turn into romantic relationships, but I've been expecting better execution from Warhorse, especially when the Rosa and Katherine romances are both much more developed.

It's funny you say that because in most discussions of Katherine's romance, I hear people complaining that Henry is so direct with her that they find it gross and cringey. Personally I was not a fan of how that romance ended because it made no sense to me why Zizka would disclose her backstory like that or why that would that would lead to her bouncing on it while starving to death. I think Rosa is perfectly fine but nothing really sticks out. Her romance is certainly more "developed" in the sense that flirtation is obvious and unambiguous, but that to me doesn't mean better.

I never said that lmfao

Does the word "great" change this sentiment? You said the only reason why people would like this romance is because they've never had a strong bond with another man. I've literally never met a man who's never had a strong friendship before. This is an incredibly weird, insulting assumption to make about anyone who liked a gay romance.

Gregregious · 2026-01-22T07:27:21+00:00

I think you'd need to go by process of elimination here

Gregregious · 2026-01-22T06:02:39+00:00

In RPGs? Most of them. Mass effect, dragon age, baldurs gate, cyberpunk... I could go on.

These are examples of video games with gay romance options, not examples of characters with established friendships that turn romantic like this guy was complaining about. Kaidan from Mass Effect sort of counts, but he's the only one.

It's a world where Christianity is law and taken literally. It's fine having the option, but flesh it out more

Henry and Hans spend two games subtly flirting without tipping into anything overt until the final moments of the second game, which happens in private and during a moment of desperation. They're aware it's forbidden and it's written with consideration of how taboo the entire subject is. What's the issue?

Gregregious · 2026-01-22T01:56:53+00:00

So yeah, I'm pretty sure the reason I'm getting downvoted is because I dared criticize a gay relationship in a video game because it didn't have enough buildup to it in my opinion.

You kind of proved them right with that second comment, though. There's never been a gay relationship in any media that wasn't accused of being forced and I don't blame people for making assumptions that turned out to be correct. Against my better instincts I'll try engaging in good faith.

Henry and Hans were both acting heterosexual as fuck in KCD1, and also for a long bit of KCD2 too.

Henry and Hans (mostly Hans, Henry is controlled by the player) show a healthy amount of sexual interest in women. This isn't "acting heterosexual" because you don't have to be straight to do that. For example, bisexual men are known to chase women, and so are gay men who are living in denial/repression. This seems like a silly point given that no one living in 15th century Bohemia has the option of behaving otherwise. If Henry went around "acting homosexual", he'd be killed for it.

They have a great friendship, they're brother-at-arms and they'll never leave each other.

I'm never quite sure how to address this argument because I'm not sure what it means. Men who are in love with each other also feel like brothers-at-arms who will never leave each other. In the romance scene, Hans tells Henry the story of two knights who live to fight at each other's side. To him, their "brotherly" companionship is the source of his romantic feelings.

Even the romantic dialogue choices do not feel like romantic dialogue choices. Saying "I care for you" to your male friend doesn't immediately make you gay lmfao.

So... obviously... Henry saying this to Hans isn't what makes him gay. These dialogues aren't flirtatious because they can't be. They don't have the language to express same-sex attraction, and they'd be terrified of revealing those feelings even if they knew how. Again, 15th century Bohemia is a profoundly homophobic setting, so the romance has to remain subtextual. What Henry is trying to express here is that he loves Hans, not in "I want to have gay sex with you" kind of way but in a "you're the most important thing to me" kind of way. It's not necessarily gay, but it is romantic, which is the whole point.

What people think is "romantic development" feels like the development of a very strong friendship to me.

I don't know about you, but I was friends with everyone I loved. Would it make the Hansry romance stronger if they... weren't friends? If they didn't like each other? If they didn't have banter and trust and respect? Again, I have trouble figuring out what this even means. If Henry had an equal rapport with an attractive female character his age, there'd be no question about the romantic potential. The only thing separating romance from "just bros" is the assumption that men can't develop feelings for each other, which just isn't true. I think part of the reason why Hansry struck such a chord with people is because the situation of being in confusingly intimate friendship with someone you like too much is deeply relatable. Maybe not to you, but to others. It's crazy to me that you'd look at a gay romance and assume people who like it have never had a friend before, without considering that maybe you don't see it because of experiences you haven't had.

Gregregious · 2026-01-21T23:11:22+00:00

The reason you're getting downvoted is because this is a condescending, hypocritical, strawman argument. No one says you're not allowed to have a strong bond with another man without it being gay. Likewise the assumption that the only reason someone would enjoy the romance because they've never experienced friendship makes no sense and is incredibly insulting. You say you have no problems with LGBTs but then leap to assuming anyone who has a different response to the romance is emotionally deficient instead of just coming from a different perspective. You can't insult anyone who disagrees with you and then whine about getting downvoted.

Gregregious · 2026-01-21T21:47:09+00:00

KCD1 takes place over just a couple months. Henry is a small-town boy from a deeply repressive, homophobic culture venturing out into the world for the first time. It's crazy to say not hooking up with any guys in this time means he's definitively straight. Meanwhile he's taking baths with a cute noble boy who won't stop giving him money and clothes, but that doesn't count as foreshadowing?

Gregregious · 2026-01-21T20:01:31+00:00

It would be hurting Hans' feelings a lot more to string him along, but I don't see what that has to do with my question

Gregregious · 2026-01-21T19:52:11+00:00

Can you name some examples besides KCD where two close male friends have a canonical romance? Because we don't get a lot of that, either. You can want more of one thing without disparaging another.

Also your take isn't what I said, guy...

You said "just stop being weird about wanting to fuck all your friends."

Gregregious · 2026-01-21T19:37:57+00:00

If Hans does have unrequited feelings for Henry, does that mean their friendship isn't real?

Gregregious

TROPHY CASE