A simulation strategy game which any person who is interested in historical rulers would play for hours; Crusader Kings 3 is one of my favourite strategy games out at the moment.
Available on: PC, Xbox Series X/S, PS5
Living the life as a ruler is something many of us will never ever experience, but with Paradox Interactive’s Crusader Kings 3, you can get a real taste of how ruling a tribe, county or even a whole Kingdom would feel like.
You start the game by picking an original ruler from either 867 or 1066, with there also being an option for you to completely create a new ruler to replace a original one. So, if you want to see your family rule your very own country, here’s your chance. The customization options for a strategy game like this are very impressive, with you having the ability to edit your characters look and heritage, along with their house emblem, colour scheme and style. You can completely build a royal family from scratch.
The aim of the game is to build up your family and your own legacy, waging war on lands far and wide, whilst also dealing in political spats and personal ones. Choosing a real ruler is always interesting, as you can change the shape of history yourself and create a alternate timeline, an idea which I’m sure most people find interesting.
What would the world look like if the Roman Empire never crumbled? What if the outcome of the Crusades was different? These are situations which you can simulate in Crusader Kings 3 and that aspect alone instantly grasped my attention when looking at the game.
Gameplay
This games idea is all nice and dandy on paper, but if the gameplay standards weren’t up to scratch, then the idea would be wasted. Luckily, the gameplay doesn’t disappoint, with a clean layout of the world, relatively simple controls and a very nice design. Bare in mind, the controls are only simple once you’ve fully got a grasp of how to manoeuvre the what seems like a truckload of menus, but after that there’s no denying the simplicity of the controls.
The game has limited but neat animations, with armies marching across the lands during wars and a few small animations for when you are scanning across the world map. One area of criticism is that for wars, they could’ve added something a bit more interactive and visually enthralling as supposed to the progress bar style that they have opted for. Some sort of animation showing actual armies battling would’ve given each battle that extra sprinkle of epicness, although that isn’t a major criticism of mine.
The world map is not the whole world unfortunately, with parts of the world such as the Americas, South East Asia and Southern Africa missing out. This is a shame as, for example, playing as a Japan Shogunate or go on a expedition to the Americas would’ve been very cool.
In-depth Character’s
For both Player and AI characters, you get a wide range of elements and information about every single person in this game. Whether it’s the head of a family or a court Jester, you can find out everything about their personality. Crusader Kings 3 uses a traits and perks system that shows you clearly what each person is like. For example, if a character has the Vengeful trait, they are likely to seek revenge on you if you are unfair to them. These traits go from anything evil to anything kind, with many traits being simply just personality traits, such as ‘Shy’.
Whatever the trait may be, you can do certain actions to exploit their trait. This is handy for when you are plotting war or murder on a fellow king, or for the random event decisions that you will have to make, which is another great feature. One instance of this would be when attempting to romance a partner, you can decide which approach to go with based on the target’s traits.
The characters also have a attribute scheme where their skills are divided up into certain categories. The categories are Martial, Stewardship, Intrigue, Learning, Diplomacy and Prowess. All of these are pretty self-explanatory and each category has a value threshold which is as follows:
0-4 : Terrible
5-8 : Poor
9-12 : Average
13-16 : Good
17+ : Excellent
There are also other values which are assigned to each character based of your progress in game, such as Wealth (how much money you have), Dread (how feared you are), Health, Fertility, Stress, Domain, Piety, Renown and Prestige. These all waver depending on how your character progresses. If you lose many battles, your Prestige will go down and vice versa.
I am a fan of this format for the attributes as it’s not too rigid to where you cannot change develop your character, but also not too fluid in the sense that you will always have the base qualities of that character, making it a nice middle ground.
Crusader Kings 3 does a good job of being as in depth as possible when it comes to being a ruler, with many different areas which you must play close attention to in order to be successful and grow your legacy.
You must keep track of every area, otherwise you can seriously get yourself in a pickle and it can end your characters life as a King. The areas include Realm, Military, Council, Courtiers, Intrigue, Factions and Decisions.
Realm
The Realm section covers your authority and your standing across your lands, whether you are a King, Duke or just a Count. You can edit laws, build infrastructure and raise your Crown Authority in a bid to develop your lands.
This is a neat section as all the info that you would possibly need is displayed, from how much control over a certain part of land you have to how happy the people are in said lands. You can also view the tax schemes across your lands, along with the succession plans and your vassals (the people who rule lands on your behalf).
It is very important to keep an eye on the Realm section when playing, as you can mess up your authority with one wrong decision, which I love as that is exactly how I imagine it’d be back in and around the 800-1400’s.
Military
An area which sometimes lacks in other strategy games like CK3, the Military aspect is in fact quite good here. With many factors determining who wins a battle, such as the terrain, the quality of soldier, the type of soldiers and much, much more, you really get the feeling that the battles are not just a ‘who has the biggest army’ situation.
The options for how you command your army are also plentiful, with the ability to split your army to cover multiple areas at once for example. You can easily move your army or armies around by right clicking on the place you want to go and attack.
There is more to the Military aspect than just battles obviously, with the whole aspect of actually getting soldiers being vital. You have many avenues for how you construct your army, with Champions, certain men-at-arms regiments and even mercenaries at your disposal, all equipped with region specific skills and weapons.
For example, if you’re ruling a forest laying country, your soldiers will likely be using things like bows and will be more agile as supposed to if you were a ruler of a flat country, which would use more grand scale wall of men marching across fields with sword and shield.
Council
If you know anything about kings and queens, you will know about how important your council is to having a successful reign. It is no different in Crusader Kings 3, with your councillors essentially doing jobs for you, there is no question that this is an area where if you pick the wrong people, it can easily lead to your downfall.
Selecting your council is based off not only the attributes and skills of your councillors, but also their opinion of you and their personality traits. For example, if you have a scheming councillor who is ambitious and ruthless, you might want to watch your back at any murder attempts. This dynamic is very cool as again, it is a close simulation to what we know happened to kings and queens in real life.
Courtiers
Your Courtiers consist of your Council and your guests, along with anyone else of semi-importance, such as a Jester, a Physician and your family.
Having a happy court means things are going well within your inner circle and the chance of a revolt or a murder scheme is unlikely. However, organizing your court can be your downfall, as if you recklessly invite a stranger to court, they could be a enemy spy or even worse, a assassin.
Intrigue
Talking of murder schemes, you can organize them yourself in this game, another extremely cool feature that immerses you into the life of an medieval king or queen If you want to take out a rival leader or blackmail someone after discovering their secrets, Intrigue is the place to look at. These murdering schemes take a good 12 months on average, with the success rate varying depending on how close you are to the target, how skilled your agents are and if you make the right choices to keep the scheme under wraps.
Intrigue isn’t just murdering though, with Befriending people also coming under this umbrella, along with blackmail. Blackmail can be a double-edged sword, with your secrets getting exposed whilst you expose someone else’s, it can all get a bit sticky. My advice would be to not have many secrets so you cannot be exposed, but it is quite interesting being in all the drama.
Factions
Factions are simply just groups of people who are angry at you for your rule. Whether it be taxes being too high, or lack of development in lands, it’s easy to annoy people in this game.
An easy way to avoid this uprising of angry people is to rule as a fair leader, however if you’re the type who wants to play as a tyrannical conqueror, this may be an area that concerns you. Fighting wars takes up enough time for you to worry about Factions, so this can be a real problem if you do not control these factions by either destroying them head on or being passive and giving them what they want. Ultimately, the choice is yours.
Decisions
This section is self-explanatory. Here you make the biggest decisions for your rule, such as creating a new Kingdom, deciding to go on a pilgrimage, consecrating your bloodline or even founding a new religion. All these decisions need lots of money, piety and renown based off which decision you are making, so bare that in mind that you cannot simply create a religion or kingdom out of thin air.
You also have smaller options such as going on a hunt or hosting a feast which are nifty little events that can increase your standing with other leaders and help you build friendships that may hopefully lead to alliances, which are very helpful in wartime.
Conclusion
RATING: 8.6/10
To conclude, Crusader Kings 3 is a sensational historically accurate strategy and simulation RPG. It is the type of game that once you figure out what you are doing, you can play for hours on end, battle and marrying your way into being a strong leader, either changing the events of the past by playing as a original king or queen, or by creating your very own character to take history by the scruff of its neck and grow your kingdom to it’s fullest.
I highly recommend this game to anyone who has a slight interest in medieval kings and queens, or simply people who play strategy games like Civilization or Hearts of Iron, as Crusader Kings 3 is definitely up there in terms of strategy simulation RPG’s that are available at the moment.
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