Crusader Kings II

This is a great game, utter chaos. I will say it will require some of the DLC these days. I would recommend avoiding Sunset Invasion and maybe Conclave. The skins packs and musics packs are not required to but add a lot of flavor. Don't expect to learn this game in 1 hour. After all it's a paradox game and learning it takes several hundreds hours. But those hours will be lots of fun and chaotic.

I am new to the Crusader Kings (CK) series, so I wasn't sure what to expect. However, after playing it for several hours, I am glad that GoG had the base game for free.I am not bothered by the DLC model, since the base game is free. However, the base game does not offer enough to make me want to pay for more. In a nutshell, CK2 is a mix of the game series Total War, Civilization, and the Sims in a medieval setting. However, it does not do justice to any of these genres and just doesn't work as a coherent product. At its core, it's a household management game with a grand strategic map slathered on top of it and a lot of other systems buried beneath. There is warfare, but it's very abstract and cumbersome to wage. There is a city-management and economic system, but they are quite basic and only feel complex because there are so many menus to navigate in order to do simple things (oddly, I could not find a way to adjust the tax rate). I assume that diplomacy and stealth systems operate in the game, but like everything else, they are buried under layers of menus, tabs, and mini-spreadsheets. Almost everything that happens in the game suddenly appears in a pop-up window, and occasionally you are required to click a Yes or No answer. Often those are the limits of the player's interaction with the game. Maybe some of the DLC fixes a lot of these issues? I don't know. Anyhow, if you have any interest in the historical setting or the idea behind the game, go ahead and give it a try--after all, it's free! However, expect boredom, repetition, a steep learning curve, and minimal payoff.

This is a conquest game in which ownership is determined not by military victory but arcane medieval inheritance laws. You can gain land only to have the inheritance rules give it all away again when your king dies, leaving your country the size it was before your successful wars. Sometimes you'll find yourself being invaded by a country you didn't know you were at war with, and you may think you're attacking country X and then find you're actually at war with country Y. Hostile armies can just pop up out of the ground and you don't even know where they came from or who is attacking you. You play as a country's king and every character has a numerical affection rating for you, but a character who likes you is no more or less likely to betray you than a character that hates you. You can try to give noble titles and gifts to NPCs to make them like you, but they have zero gratitude and will turn around and attack you anyway, yes, even if they supposedly like you. I failed to participate in one crusade but got big rewards for it anyway, then was instrumental in the success of the next crusade and received absolutely nothing by way of rewards. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Playing Crusader Kings 2 is very much like watching a movie in a foreign language, without subtitles: things just happen, you'll never understand why, and you're powerless to affect the outcome. Add to these flaws the usual problems with Paradox games. The user interface is godawful and important functions are buried in odd places, there is no manual, and the tutorial doesn't tell you anything useful. Last but not least, the base game only gives you access to a fraction of the game's content and you'd have to pay for DLCs to play as the majority of the game's factions. I struggled with CK2 for a week but finally gave up because there was no way to predict the results of my actions and events might as well have been completely random for all the sense they made.

"Base game" for free now? If you can even call it that. Of course they can do that easily because they want to lure you in. You are not getting a sattisfying game experience, not even a basic one that you can extend to. No. To get a complete full game experience you need to get the DLC's that complete the game. And they are not cheap. THAT's where they make the money. 254€ in total to get a full experience. Even on discount, like currently -60% off this amounts to still 102€. What a price for a game. This is not a AAA overhyped game title that you were waiting for to try out on day one. I'd say: wait for a big big big (huge) discount - 20 to 30€ might be more like it - or get it through "other" means if you must. Frankly, there is other games out there. you can very well do without this one. Your money might be spend better

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.