Crusader Kings III is an amazing strategic rpg that has so much content. There is a crazy amount of stuff to do, you could start a religion, you could conquer the globe, or you could just grow your family until you have 425 generations.

Although there are some issues, whilst this was is an awesome game and one I would usually really enjoy (and I mean REALLY enjoy) Crusader kings just falls short, I can really only play it for an hour or two before I start to get bored. I think this has to do with a lack of an end goal. Other than this this though I would still recommend this to someone who wants to play a good strategic rpg.

Crusader Kings 2 was shat out into the world about 12 years ago. By the time its successor came out it'd developed a reputation as a game that was barebones without any DLC but was a gripping and indepth time-abyss if you had most/all of it.

Crusader Kings 3 decides to iterate on its predecessor by being a game that's barebones without any DLC, and still barebones even with all the extortionately overpriced DLC.

It is an inevitability in first-party Paradox titles that the player will eventually stumble into a period of empty space where all they're doing is advancing time at 5x speed until some events pop up and let you do something. Even Stellaris, the game that most often has you actively doing things, tends to fall into it at some point.

CK3 is sadly the worst for it, in part due to numerous under-the-hood changes that at first seem beneficial but in reality seem drab. Paradox's approach this time round involves dissuading players from attempting to colour the map as in past games and instead focus on a small corner of the world - whether it be a kingdom or an Empire, they don't want you playing with adult colouring books this time.

Instead the focus this time is on roleplay and/or kingdom management, with hefty penalties to expansion and harsh limits on how much you as an individual can control directly before needing to shove things onto your vassals. The game, including its tutorials, not-so-subtly nudge you into grabbing hold of a title and clinging to it. New and reworked mechanics like culture/religion/councils/language and more with DLCs all add to this; the focus of this game is in finding a place and staying there.

Unfortunately this focus results in a lot of waiting, as almost all of the mechanics up above boil down to clicking a button and waiting for a scheme to resolve. The much-praised Tours & Tournaments and Royal Court DLCs are much the same despite their praise, simply offering you more buttons before the wait begins rather than just one. It's all rather at odds with the intent to make you more actively partake in your realm's management, because in practice it's all very passive.
Further dulling matters is that many events often boil down to very static, very predictable stat checks. Oh, someone's trying to murder your son - who is 9th in line to the throne and has more defects than limbs? It's just a passive intrigue and scheme power check. Duelling? Martial and Prowess stats.
Much of these additional stats like Prowess were added to make the game less binary, but given how they scale it's relatively easy to stack the deck in your favour unless you gimp yourself...

But even then, this game's biggest problem is that it's easy. Metagaming is no longer required to stack ridiculous bonuses in your court, especially given the relative prominence of random lowborn courtiers with insane stat spreads. CK3 tries its damndest to have consequences for this, but what use is a hit to your legitimacy when you can pump out children that're functionally immune to rebellion, assassination, or the perils of inbreeding?
The DLCs just make this worse, as most of them are nearly consequence-free. Tours & Tournaments is a series of easy resource/stat boosts for relatively low risk, Royal Court is the same and both of them make socializing so much easier. Northern Lords supercharges a lot of the northern factions, and-

You know, CK2 had a bit of a problem with Eurocentrism, to the point where most non-European factions needed a paid DLC to be playable. Even then, it was almost always the titular Crusader King nations/cultures that got all of the updates and boosts.

CK3 seemingly averts this by having everyone on the map be playable, but it doesn't take a genius to notice that the non-European factions feel distinctly undercooked. Muslims can't even observe Ramadan. As expected from a CK title, Paradox sell the fixes back to you via Fate of Iberia and Legacy of Persia, but even these feel half-hearted and empty compared to equivalent CK2 packs. Go even further East and it's like wading into unfinished content.

I think what really broke this game for me is the lack of impact anything has. The first time a council member blackmails you with your own incest/kinslaying, it seems like a grand obstacle to be surmounted, but oftentimes it's a total non-issue. In my most recent game, everyone and their mum tried to expose me for pulling a Habsburg on my bloodline, but the end result was a few minor opinion penalties that were easily swept away by holding a Grand Wedding. It feels a lot like playing a mod for CK2 that's perpetually in beta; wowed by all the options available until they fire and you realize that you've functionally just skipped a stone across bathwater.

...Also I realized halfway into my conquest of Britannia as the Irish that the devs had forced a Legitimacy mechanic on me and that I couldn't meaningfully engage with it without forking out money for the recent Legends Of The Dead pack. Hurray!

The best way to experience this game is to read people's (probably made up) campaign stories on Reddit, for much of this game's remaining appeal is in doing stupid shit like banging the pope, and for once that's attainable without touching the game.

It's been four years and CK3 still feels as hollow and unfulfilling as it did when it came out.

Ultimately, Crusader Kings III is a downgrade over its predecessor even if it adds some appreciated individual improvements (cadet branches, dynamic cultures/religions, etc.). In my opinion, the game's fatal flaw is that it's simply too easy. Once you get over the initial hurdle of learning the mechanics, it becomes almost laughably easy to create lineages of godlike characters who live into their 80s, most of the time without even trying or "minmaxing." Similarly, wealth is far too easy to accrue and expansion is similarly easy, meaning that even a moderately skilled player can restore Roman borders within 2-4 generations. A common point made by fans of CK2 is that it took somewhere between 2-5 years of expansions/updates to become truly "great," but considering both the pace at which Paradox is releasing updates, as well as the fact that most of these updates so far have focused on "flavorful" additions, such as tournaments and relationships (which ultimately end up becoming little more than further sources of character boosts/money), I do not have high hopes for the future of this game. However, I will say that this game is much more accessible for newcomers, and can offer a few fun campaigns until you see its relatively shallow depth.

CK2 é literalmente meu jogo favorito de todos os tempos, então minhas expectativas estavam altas. Felizmente, a Paradox não me decepcionou. CK3 supera CK2? Não, mas não precisa fazer isso no momento. CK2 levou um longo tempo antes de virar o que é — foram 7 anos de patches e várias expansões. Mesmo hoje, sua versão "vanilla" (ou seja, sem nenhuma expansão) deixa a desejar. A missão de CK3, então, é criar uma base sólida para, com as expansões que virão, poder superar seu antecessor.

E que base sólida a Paradox criou! CK3 melhora várias das mecânicas do antecessor (e.g.: culturas e tecnologias que realmente importam, um sistema de favores que não se resume a "dê dinheiro em troca de um favor do personagem", religiões bem mais detalhadas e variadas), agiliza certas partes chatinhas sem cair no erro de tornar as coisas simples demais (quem diria, não ter que se preocupar com navios foi uma boa ideia) e traz uma série de novidades ótimas (fama, legados dinásticos, ramos cadetes...). É uma experiência mais focada, polida e fácil de entender, mas sem perder a essência do que faz Crusader Kings especial e melhorando em vários aspectos. Ouso dizer que é o melhor lançamento que a Paradox já fez.

I finished my first full campaign so I figured I'd just log this now. I will definitely continue to play this in the future though. It's a tough game to describe, but the reason I love it so much is because it revels in the many stories being told throughout your time as ruler. Even when things went horrifically wrong and went from king of a massive kingdom to a lowly count, I still wanted to keep playing and keep developing my legacy. It is very overwhelming at first and I am still very far from mastering this game, but I feel like I learn more every time I play and I cannot wait to play more.

Nunca achei que diria isso, mas a Paradox deu uma rasteira em todas as desenvolvedoras do mercado e isso graças a ‘simples’ ideia de dar ao jogador o que ele quer.

O tema principal de Crusader Kings 3 tem uma ligação contrária ao que estamos acostumados nos jogos do gênero, essa coisa de controlar uma dinastia e não um único país ou império é sensacional, pois ao desenvolver afeto pelos personagens o jogador se torna o objeto central de uma peça com tempo limite.

Intrigas, guerras, comércio e diplomacia parecem ser o único ciclo, porém as possibilidades, ordens e como você chega nelas não. Tudo parece ter sido feito para a diversão e o fato do jogo não ter um objetivo colabora ainda mais para a sensação de controle, mostrando que indiretamente sua imaginação é o seu limite.

Apesar do jogo ter se tornado popular pela quantidade de vídeos sobre reinados com relacionamentos duvidosos, CK3 apresenta muito mais do que isso, permitindo ao jogador recriar diversos momentos históricos ou de simplesmente curtir um sistema de vassalo ou duque sem se preocupar com a quantidade absurda de problemas e falta de conexão que a dominância gera.

Não achei bugs ou problema de otimização, então o único ponto negativo que poderia ser considerado são o custo de suas expansões, mas quem já conhece a Paradox sabe que isso é basicamente a marca deles (mesmo com esse valor abusivo eu ainda sinto que vale a pena).

Inicialmente, Crusader Kings 3 não parecia um jogo muito interessante, sua dificuldade me fez repensar bastante se o investimento seria agradável, porém após três semanas de vício acho que consigo dizer que ele entrou no meu livro de “melhores jogos que você faz o que quer”, seguindo Project Zomboid e Rimworld.

Nesses meus 6 meses jogando isso, 1 mês foi só aprendendo a jogar, desenvolvi insônia, virei um procrastinador, quase fodi a minha mão, fiquei com bolha nos dedos, meu notebook quase explodiu, meu mouse quase quebrou, virei noites, atrapalhou vários planos q eu tive, perdi horas em saves ruins, perdi bons saves de horas, tive rages absurdos (quando terminei o Iberian Struggle com Portugal começando por um duque e fiz o "Avenge the Battle of Tours" num save com quase 300 anos e logo depois perdi o império numa guerra interna quando tentei revocar um título q tinha 81% de chance de dar certo), comecei a evitar jogar com homens pq não aguentava mais fazer filho o tempo todo e levar chifre ferrando a dinastia, comecei a estudar speedruns do jogo e tryhardar muito só pra criar o império do mar do norte rápido (deu certo, eu criei em 60 anos, teria sido mais rápido se o Bjorn não tivesse passado dos 70), fiquei viciado em estudar sobre feudalismo, império Bizantino e a reconquista da Ibéria, tudo valeu a pena

Chuds will tell you Paradox went "woke." Casual fans will tell you this is the only Paradox game they're interested in. Hardcore fans, minus the chuds, (which are quite vocal) skew positive, with a not insignificant amount calling this the greatest thing Paradox has ever released.

I'm in the latter camp. I have over 1,000 hours in both Europa Universalis IV and Hearts of Iron IV respectively, and another half thousand minimum spread across their other games. The appeal to Paradox is that nobody else is really making games like them, and for good reason. These are massive games attempting to cover vast periods of complicated world history, all while giving the player a wealth of options for guiding a country through these eras. People often compare Paradox to Civilization, but really, that series is an abstraction only one tier above Risk. Paradox games are another simulationist beast entirely. Some have tried, most have failed, and only one has succeeded.

Crusader Kings III is the first grand strategy roleplaying game (I don't count CK2 because the base game is a demo that only lets you play as Christians with 1/5th the content of a DLC buyer, but that might count if you manage to get the full game). You can do just about anything in this game. On YouTube you'll likely see a bunch of streamers doing "incest" runs to see just how tainted their bloodline can get, but this is streamer bait. The most fun you'll have is scaring the absolute shit out of the Ethiopian lords under your magical albino dynasty by executing anyone remotely brave or strong enough to contest your rule. Or carving out a Hellenic paradise in the middle of the Mediterranean and slaughtering any Abrahamic who dares to invade by dumping all of your savings into fortifications and the fact that they have nowhere to run when they land. Or deciding you're going to single-handedly reverse the effects of the Northern Crusades through effective application of schizophrenic warlords.

All of this while being either a historical figure or custom character (let's be honest, the game is a lot more fun with the latter) that grows, learns, loves, and will likely die before they can witness the extent of their empire. Really, there are so many viable ways to build a character and play CK3. Even when you play as a lord with only a tiny sliver of land in the Balkans, there's always some sort of scheme or plot you can plan to claw your way up. Or maybe you're content with living modestly, and you just tend to your domain and serve your overlord loyally while assassinating that other micro-lord from across the way that insulted you at a wedding.

The craziest thing is that most of my experience is from the first month of release. Paradox, a company well-known for releasing unfinished games and putting the actual content in later updates and DLC's, actually made one of the most intriguing, indepth, and unique games in any genre remotely close to it ON RELEASE. You do not realize how unprecedented this is until you have almost 3,000 hours in their games.