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.
