Crusader Kings II

A game with a lot of depth - warfare, court intrigue, family tree building, diplomacy and more. At 1000+ hours you may still feel like a newbie (but it never gets old). Recommended to people enjoying grand strategies or roleplaying strategy games. Free game is entertaining on its own, but if you want more (and arguably better experience), beware of Paradox's DLC strategy - the costs may seem like an endless pit. The main disappointment is the lack of multiplayer in GOG version (note: only host needs buying DLCs) - in which case I'd have to recommend grabbing the copy elsewhere.

Amazing game, but without the DLC's it feels barren and unfinished.

I have almost all of the DLCs on steam for this game. Sadly, all of those DLCs somehow damaged the game experience by updating game for everyone including those that does not have DLCs when those DLCs came out with clear intent for gamers to buy update of the game, that is paywalled behind DLC. With every new DLC my enjoyment for game decreased. Generally to experience vanilla game, you should have an option to play older versions, where even for a GOG site it might be too much to cater. So, even if this is free, I must warn that it will be more like shareware version as investment into those DLCs will be required to even have access to content that was once part of the base game. It is quite a toxic approach from Paradox and that have made me to abandon whole genres of games, as they have taken over all of them. I would not give this game a zero star - this game truly deserves one star - it is one of the few games, that have Grand Map of world or part of it.

What? Is this game finished now? Has it come out of pre-release already? Oh, wait. It's the demo version. Could you imagine paying money for a demo? Well, they used to ask money for it. Not kidding. Be warned. This is not a game. This thing is simply there to feed your imagination what a game could be like. If you think you'd get a game for buying all the DLC then - nope. If you want to actually play the game then you have to go through thousands of mods to find the one that has fixed the things that annoy you the most. And even they haven't fixed everyhting yet. Do you want to become modder yourself, maybe? Actually, you know what. It's not even a PC demo game. It's a mobile game demo that runs on PC. It having all sort of buttons and interfaces that doesn't do anything besides taking you to the cash shop to buy things you are missing out of. So be warned, seriously. If you hate your wallet and feel like whaling on some game then maybe you should look at some actual mobile games that can be installed on an actual mobile.

An absolute classic of the strategy genre, and in my view the single best game Paradox ever released, and a strong contender for the best game ever made overall. An ultra in-depth, character-driven game suited to both pure strategy play or to roleplaying, which can be either complete madness or as close to a history simulator as gaming's ever likely to produce. Expect it to make you into a monster in-game and to encourage you to cultivate obscure historical interests in real life! The two big downsides are that the learning curve is near vertical - once climbed the game is unforgiving but not hard - and the vast amounts of paid DLC. The first problem is just something to be overcome, play a few games as an Irish county until your errors come from mistakes and oversights rather than lack of understanding. The second problem isn't exactly ideal but this game was actively updated for several years, can legitimately give thousands of hours of gameplay and many of the mechanics from the DLC were implemented into the basegame. If this level of DLC is ever justified (and ymmv) this is the time it is.