My Experience
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is one of my favorite games and after I completed all the quests and got all the trophies I could possibly get on my first playthrough/playline, I eventually decided to play the game on hardcore mode to get the trophies associated with it and additional base game trophies I couldn't get on my first playthrough/playline.
Hardcore mode takes away your HUD, makes combat more dangerous for you and others, takes away your icon on the map, removes fast travel, makes store items more expensive and your sold items have less value, and various other changes. You also have to pick two negative perks that stay with you for the entirety of your playthrough but you can pick more if you want. I picked all the negative perks since one of the trophies required me to complete the game with all negative perks.
In my hardcore playthrough I also had to remain celibate for the Virgin trophy and remain illiterate for most of the game because I wanted to eventually get the DLCs which one trophy required I remain illiterate. Eventually I completed the entirety of the main quests, DLC quests, and all the side quests I could do in hardcore mode. It took about 120 hours in its entirety excluding all the time that was lost due to reloading saves.
I believe hardcore mode was a better experience than the standard game although having no fast travel was very annoying and having to go everywhere manually got old, but I did learn how to get around the whole map without having to look at it. You shouldn't play hardcore mode as your first playthrough but as a second playthrough or later, I believe it will provide a great experience.
Tips For Hardcore Mode
Hardcore mode may seem very challenging at first but if you played the game already, you'll adapt to the changes and challenges within hours. The removal of the HUD actually doesn't add any challenge since you can use the screen effects to determine your health and stamina. You can also view your health in your menu or the waiting screen. Of the negative perks, most either won't affect you much or will be easily adapted to, the tapeworm negative perk could actually be a good thing to have especially if you drink a lot of potions. The problematic negative perks are haemophilia, brittle bones, and especially numbskull. While the former two can be adapted to eventually, numbskull lowers your experience gain for the whole game making character stat progression much slower. For armor, you can just go without any leg armor to lower your noise level, you won't get hit in the legs unless you get shot there with an arrow or are battling on a steep hill. Despite stores giving you less money for selling items and making items more expensive, you'll eventually be easily killing and looting plenty of enemies' gear to sell and you'll end up making a lot of groschen regardless. Because you have to go everywhere manually, you will want to get a very good horse early on and get the perk that makes your horse go faster but carry less. Groups of enemies are much more dangerous in hardcore mode, especially if they're armored, no matter how confident you feel, you must always be careful with groups.
Written 2021-6-17 Published 2021-8-1