Tobold's Blog
Thursday, September 17, 2020
 
Crusader Kings 3 - Last Impressions

After a week of playing Crusader Kings III frequently, I am basically through with the game. My initial fear, that the game would be far too complicated for me, fortunately turned out to be less of a problem. And the debug / cheat mode helped me to understand some of the hidden mechanics of the game. Now I am pretty comfortable with being able to play any ruler competently. But after having played through hundreds of years in the game, it turns out that the surface complexity is hiding a fundamentally somewhat boring gameplay. Most events are funny when you first encounter them, but get old quickly when you see them repeatedly.

One major flaw my friends and me discovered was that the alliance system is needlessly restrictive. You can't just ask anyone to be your ally, which is a bummer when you try to play a cooperative multiplayer game. Even in singleplayer mode the alliances are annoying, like when I am the king of a domain, one of my dukes (family or not) is involved in a war, and I can't come to his aid, because the game doesn't allow me to become his ally or join the war (unless the war is against a peasant revolt).

On the the other side of that coin is the system of claims and alliances you get from guests to your court, or by marriage. That looks very interesting at first, and turns out to be a complete disappointment. There are so many counties on the map, with so many rulers and claimants, that you never get the claims or alliances which would actually be useful to you. Unless you want to rule a realm that has counties all over the map, the system ends up being more of a distraction than help.

While Crusader Kings III has not victory condition, the game somewhat pushes you towards an expansionist strategy, because the alternative is *very* boring. But then your expansion is constantly hampered by various rules in the complicated warfare system, where you first need a Casus Belli to attack, and then you can't win more than the object of that Casus Belli, usually a single county. Then the game imposes a 5-year truce on you, so you can't just walk over your enemies. With the army movement system being rather annoying, and battles not very interesting, I can't really recommend CK3 as an alternative to a Total War game, if warfare is your prime interest.

I can still recommend playing CK3 for a bit if you get it for free on Xbox Game Pass for PC. As I said, the random events are funny the first time they happen, especially if you can share a laugh with your friends about them in multiplayer. But in the end the game felt repetitive to me much earlier than I would have thought. I'm happy I didn't buy it.

- posted by Tobold @ 2:55 PM Permanent Link
Comments:
Tobold I know you have had shaky experiences with Total War games in the past but if you are looking for a new strategy game to play the last couple entries in the series have been really solid.

Three Kingdoms I believe is on sale right now and has the best diplomacy system the series has ever had. It's gotten a fair amount of free DLC and paid DLC so the game is in a really good spot.

Total War Troy was free at launch if you downloaded it from the epic store. It's also a really solid title with battles that work much differently then typical TW games as Calvary is pretty much not a thing except for certain mythical units. If you didnt get it when it was free though it's full price now unfortunately.
# posted by Blogger Bigeye : 18/9/20 00:28
 
I got TW Troy on that weird "first day free" offer in the Epic store. But I think I'll switch genre first, and play something completely different first.
# posted by Blogger Tobold : 18/9/20 06:48
 
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