It makes it a more personal experience, and it is better for it. Grand strategy titles like Europa Universalis focus on the building of empires, whereas this is more about building a legacy for your family. By cycling through the menus and identifying things to tinker with and alter, and by making decisions when presented with pop-up choices, you steer your dynasty through history and, hopefully, to glory. You try to influence events as best you can, but these events transpire in a way that makes you feel part of them, instead of in control of them. It's a game that happens to you, rather than the other way around. The game ends in 1452, though it's not a win or lose situation, you judge your own success, comparing your accumulated prestige and piety with that of other successful dynasties. Starting at any point between 10, you are tasked with leading your family through history. The basic premise is that you take control of a historical character and start the process of building a dynasty to stand the test of time. Yet bafflement was soon replaced with intrigue.Ĭrusader Kings II is a real-time strategy game (or a dynasty simulator, if you'd prefer) and it is vast, both in terms of scale and ambition. A barrage of menus, options and decisions laced with significance quickly turned enthusiasm into bafflement. My first attempts at entering into Crusader Kings II's world of intrigue, deception, diplomacy and war were marred by panic. This particular story wasn't the first time that I'd marched into the annals of history, but it was the first time I'd done so armed with a working knowledge of the mechanics needed to survive in the medieval playground presented here by Paradox Interactive.

I knew that this wasn't going to be an easy start. Within minutes of starting my first game, six or seven of my vassals have declared war against me. In fact, my wife isn't the only one who despises me, it seems that everybody around here does. If she doesn't buck her ideas up soon I'm going to have to kill her.

I gave her Aquitaine and she calmed down a bit, but I still think she's mad at me for some reason, and I've no idea why.

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