I liked the game but you can't reload a saved game after each in-game day completes. A single misclick can ruin your entire playthrough because the combat system is clunky! You then have two choices: either quite immediately (combat only happens at night) forcing you to waste time repeating the day time part of the game... Or accept your character's death which in most cases will make you loose many hours of gameplay. My verdict is that the game isn't respectful of the user's time. I ended up finishing the game only by finding the hidden save game files and reloading them manually when needed. Someone made the argument that the save game mechanic is supposed to make the game more "realistic" but I think it just made every reload a frustrating waste of time.
As the tittle indicates, I found this game insanely addictive like few others. I must have spent 3 weeks playing it almost compulsivly and for me that's an ever rare experience after decades of being a gamer. I played this initially without the expansion (over a few days just to get a feel, when I didn't have time to play games). Altough I'll agree game+expansion is slightly overpriced, if you are seriously thinking of enjoying this the expansion will be worth your money given the enhanced experience you get. I rate this 4 starts, because as usual with Paradox so many rules/functionalities are either obscured or outright limit your experience. The game has a considerable learning curve, yet once you've mastered the rules the overall strategic considerations still feel limiting, after 100 years in-game it seems most strategic value is nearly exauhsted. And it takes too long to play.
