Crusader Kings 3 Review on PC
Paradox is perhaps best-known for its grand strategy games, and at first sight, Crusader Kings 3 may seem to fit into that definition as well. Yet, those who know the series, are aware that it’s cut from a different cloth.
In Crusader Kings 3 you don’t play a nation, a kingdom, an empire, or anything impersonal like that. You play the rulers themselves, shaping them and their dynasty in whatever way you want.
As a result, while this game certainly has strong strategy elements, I would argue that its primary genre is RPG in its purest form.
As a matter of fact, it’s more a role-playing game than most games that are actually advertised as RPGs, because it offers more freedom in shaping up your characters and in behaving however you please instead of following a pre-determined route or story.
In Crusader Kings 3 you start your own personal story as a ruler of any rank between count and emperor (and their regional equivalents for non-European rulers), and then you can do pretty much whatever you want. The map is your canvas to paint in any way you please.
You can grow to conquer the world or stay in your small corner of land to frolic with your family-sized court, or anything in-between.
Speaking of the map, this time around it’s bigger and more complex than ever, and you can play whoever you want out of the box, regardless of religion and ethnicity, from North Africa in the south-west to the steppes of Asia in the north-east.
You can be a countryside count, a European king, the Holy Roman Emperor, a Viking raider, a powerful Caliph, a Maharaja in India, or a marauding Khan, and those are just a few examples. On top of that, cultural differences really matter, so each of those options (and many more) will lead to radically different stories and gameplay.
The size and scope of the map is just one example of this game’s frankly enormous content offering.
One of the usual issues with Paradox’s games is that they usually receive so many DLCs and expansions over the years that when you move to a new one in a series, you typically feel like you’re taking a step back, with many features missing of greatly diminished.
Yet, this time around the development team managed to break free of that curse. While Crusader Kings 3 doesn’t come with everything added to Crusader Kings 2 over eight years, it inherited enough of it to feel like a real sequel and not like a return to the Bronze Age.
On top of that, there are many new elements that enrich the package, achieving plenty of evolution especially in the RPG elements mentioned above.
The Lifestyle system is a full-fledged array of skill trees that you can use to customize your rulers in a much more granular way.
The same goes for the Legacies mechanic, which lets you customize your dynasty passing down acquired traits through the generations.
I guess this may not be seen as an absolute positive, as some may miss the unpredictability of Crusader Kings 2. The additional RPG elements grant you more control, which means that your characters and heirs will progress in a more predictable way, but personally I really enjoy the balance between careful planning and random wackiness achieved by this new game.
This time around, Paradox also put in a serious effort to make the game more accessible thanks to a very clever system of tooltips that explain basically every concept you need to know. That being said, don’t expect a super-streamlined introduction to this rags-to-riches simulator. It’s definitely more accessible than its predecessors, but there are so many things to do that newcomers may still feel overwhelmed.
You have to take care of military expansion and defense, keep a look on your growing family, groom your heirs to be the best (or the worst, because that might be fun) they can be upon your death, deal with religious matters, public order, urban and rural development, bickering vassals, massive invasions, health concerns, politics, intrigue, romance, sex, friendship, hatred, revenge, and so many more things that I’m probably forgetting quite a few.
While this may indeed be a bit overwhelming to those accosting this rather unique series for the first time, it’s also extremely rewarding due to the freedom it grants to roleplay your ruler however you see fit in a storm of emergent situations that is impossible to comprehensively describe.
When your complex plots come to fruition or you play the political game flawlessly to finally get a claim on land you really want, it’s extremely satisfying.