Crusader Kings Complete

I've already played it before. I missed it in my GOG library. Greedy guys from Paradox Interactive announced CK3 today to be released in 2020. SAY NO MORE. I bought once more Crusader Kings 1. This is my way of saying how much I despise Paradox's DLC -and developement- policy. Let's go back to good old gaming. Deus vult.

When it works. Still quite buggy, but quite fun when it runs properly.

I like this game. I don't even notice and it keeps me busy for hours. The Europa Universalis III: Collection Upgrade dlc is a must buy when it's on sale, the new map alone is worth it, and contrary to what others have written about it, I think the units are nice too. But it is true that it is expensive at full price. (Without DLC, the game could only be started with some configuration, and it crash to the desktop at the end of each tutorial, but with DLC this was solved.)

This is easily the most frustrating game I have reviewed so far. What shall I focus on? The poor outdated interface, the frequent crashes? The endless spam of messages about kids growing up, lovers breaking up, personalities developing, education etc while nothing much happens? Or the sense of achievement that you get when you finally carve out a kingdom from a simple backward county? The stories that develop out of the game, with treacherous sons, unfaithful wives and murder galore to rival Game of Thrones with ease? You start the game with some land and a family of aristocrats trying to protect and develop that land. Doing badly and your family has no land titles left? Then it is game over. You are succesful and manage to grab some more counties from the families that are less fortunate? Great, give them to your sons, brothers, and cousins. Spread the seed, make sure your bloodline is successful, make sure everyone in the family is married (sometimes this game seems like a glorified dating app, I swear) and there are plenty of children to take over once the current generations dies off. And, believe it or not, this is pretty much it. All in all, this game is a poor cousin to its illustrious succesor (if you can stomach Paradox's pricing strategy and pay 200 EUR for the full game of CK2) and seems well out of date. So, do I recommend it? Well, probably not, as this is definitely not a game for everyone and the chances are you will get either frustrated or bored even if you are a fan of RTSes. So, do I say that you should not buy it? No to that also, how could I say that if I have already sank 500+ hours of my time in it? It seems that this game is as frustrating to review as it is to play. But despite that, I am still doing it :)

The game that started it all. Deus Vult.