Let's build castles in the sand!
.... no, fuck that. Let's build a kingdom.
Crusader Kings II is a sandbox where every piece of sand represents a person. Each person has goals of their own. They have various stats, traits and, if they are lucky, they belong to a prominent family or even a great dynasty. In Crusader Kings II you play as one of these people, and when that person dies you keep playing as their heir. This goes on for about 600 years until the game ends, rather unceremoniously, with a screen that shows your score. The game doesn't give you a list of goals, but there's a world to conquer goddammit.
There's succession laws to pass.
Vassals to placate and lieges to betray.
Your eldest son is a dwarf and he's depressed.
... Fuck.
How do one become top Crusader and/or King, get the high score and become crowned as Billy Mitchell the Lion Heart when the map of Europe fades into a kill screen? Well, I'll give you some examples of how CKII works: Fighting a battle for the sake of an ally will always give you more prestige (prestige is both a resource and something that gets added to your total score) than a regular battle. Breaking a truce at an opportune moment might give you easy access to a juicy chunk of land, but it will also potentially hurt your prestige and it will definitively have a negative impact on how you are perceived by other Christian rulers. Sometimes yo ass need to be kingly.
The generic portraits of other people will come alive through their actions and how their various stats and traits affect these actions. By the way, your vassals are not static entities that sit inside their little castles. No, depending on the law in your land they might fight with each other. And they might also expand your empire on their own by seizing new land outside the kingdom. Through this you get new land without spending any of your resources, but this might lead to one of your vassals becoming too strong. How will you deal with this? Do you shower him with new titles and gifts in order to keep him happy? Or do you fabricate a claim on his seat of power and then strike? Do you try to kill him so his very unambitious imbecile son can take over? What if the son can't control the duchy? What if those people inside the newly conquered lands rebel? What if their old lord then comes to aid them?
Basically... there's a lot of shit that's going on. And that to me is the charm of Crusader Kings II. It's daunting at first, but you will slowly ease into it and suddenly realize you've lost yet another 100 or so hours of your pointless, increasingly worthless life. This is what a grand PC strategy game should be.
5/5. My cheque is in the mail.
