PSA: There’s actually a subtle enemy health bar in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2

Wait… was that there this whole time?!

While Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 bombards you with a wealth of information during its tutorial, a few features still fly under the radar. A perfect example is the enemy’s health bar — a seemingly basic mechanic you’d expect to be front and center, yet it’s actually cleverly concealed.

I didn’t even know that such a thing existed until Reddit user AdministrativeGain77 pointed it out. You’ll see it just beside Henry’s health, displayed as a purple bar during combat (the same place you see your horse’s stamina). In all my 25+ hours, I thought it was my armor health or something to do with stamina. But now that I’ve seen it in action in my own playthrough, I can’t believe it took me so long to put two to two together.

Not seeing the enemy’s health bar initially made combat much more challenging than it already is. Sometimes, these enemies just feel downright invincible, so at least now we can see the light at the end of the tunnel with this purple bar. Curiously enough, this isn’t the first time the series used this feature, as it was a part of the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance story. The first entry used a similar approach of changing a horse’s stamina into the health bar during a fight. However, this mechanic was a little more apparent than its sequel, as it did have an explainer in the tutorial.

This explainer was left out of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2’s tutorial, possibly because veteran players may have already known about it. Yet, some Redditors in AdministrativeGain77’s post have even stated that they forgot about it.

Although the developers could’ve made the enemy health bar more obvious, I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. If there’s one thing Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 teaches you, it’s that this world isn’t going to hand you everything on a silver platter — it’s designed for discovery. Sure, it can be frustrating at first as you stumble through the unknown, but there’s a certain thrill in finally cracking the code. And knowing this game is packed with hidden gems like this makes me excited to see what else is waiting to be uncovered.