Crusader Kings II
If you care about the amount of gameplay you get for your money at all, this game probably rates higher than any other game. (Last I read, the average player had over 500 hours on this game.)
Crusader Kings II is a strategic game where you spend most of your time looking at a big map of Europe cut into little counties, but it is drastically different from a game like Medieval II: Total War. Whereas in those games, every nation had rigid boundaries and an entire nation was a distinct, unified entity, Crusader Kings II focuses upon the feudal system of governance, and especially its hereditary system of succession.
– Real player with 2025.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Medieval Multiplayer Games.
Crusader Kings II is one of the most deep, fascinating and replayable strategy games I have ever played. In brief, you play as a family in the middle ages, anywhere between Mali and Mongolia, or from Bengal to Britain. You try to secure advantageous alliances and strategic marriages, and build up a small realm, either as a vassal of a greater power or striking out independently. There is no real win condition, though I love taking people who lost out historically, and helping push them to greatness.
– Real player with 1862.2 hrs in game
Crusader Kings Complete
The Grandness of Paradox Grand Strategy titles is not a misnomer. Shame the grandeur tends to also come with a small helping of bugginess. Crusader Kings 1 is perhaps the poster child for that. The title was initially developed by an outside studio, with a similar style to Europa Universalis but in the Middle Ages with a focus on families instead of nation states. Unfortunately, the outside studio kind of screwed some things up. Even with all the fixes eventually given to the title, there are still random quirks that don’t work like they should.
– Real player with 389.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Medieval Singleplayer Games.
Crusader Kings in many ways is a biographer’s wet dream. It has mechanics of Europa Universalis 2, the warfare, the economics, the diplomacy but unlike that grand strategy epic, this grand strategy epic portrays you not as some nameless entity ruling your nation through the ages but as the head of a noble medieval family, your faith not tied into the success of the nation you rule but the rulers themselves.
You start the game by picking which family to control, you can start off as a great King yes but you can also choose to play as a powerful Duke or even an impoverished Count. You then set about forging alliances, mostly through marriage, produce offspring that can one day take over the mantle of leadership and assert your claim to various noble titles. As you grow in power and influence new challenges will arise. Conquer too quickly and others will see you as a warmonger, your vassals may grow too powerful and seek to claim your titles for themselves and should you have too many children they may differ over who should rule when you are dead.
– Real player with 259.8 hrs in game
Knights of Honor
Knights of Honor is a classic grand strategy game, quite different from any other in the genre. Everything happens in real time, including the battles that can be fought manually and the campaign map really feels alive as a lot of things are happening at the same time.
There are a few things to manage, like your town construction, your royal court, armies and diplomacy. These things are fairly simplistic (compared to the modern games) and are easy to learn, but very fun to play with once you understand them. While the manual battles can be fun and dynamic, they aren’t the strong part of Knights of Honor. The actions on the campaign map are definitely where the main entertainment comes from.
– Real player with 124.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Medieval War Games.
Before I start, I want to mention one thing: this negative review is not about the game itself. Knights of Honor is a great RTS game, and you should definetly play it. My problem stems from the fact that this game is a prime example of a developer being lazy and just dumping the original game, unpatched and unoptimized to Steam for a price that seems very steep, considering the performance quality of this game. To first start off, this game’s major fault is the fact that it cannot boot into its default resolution properly. No matter what you do, it will only show 3/4s of the image (in some cases, the game will also force your monitor resolution to 640x480) that can only be fixed via the HD patch. The main issue with the HD patch is that for some people, it will not work. I have had friends who purchased this game and were unable to get the patch running, leaving them with a game that was a waste of money and time. The game also still has a major issue that I’ve experienced even on an old XP machine as a kid with an original (now lost) disc copy; Random crashes. These seemingly have no real trigger, they will happen often after 1-2 hours of play, and while not annoying due to the ability to set frequent autosaving, preventing loss of progress, its insulting that this issue still persists years later, with the developers never addressing it or releasing a patch. Overall, I don’t recommend the game due to the aforementioned HD patch issue some people I know have had, otherwise if you’re lucky enough to get it working, it is possibly one of the most addicting strategies out there.
– Real player with 115.8 hrs in game
Medieval II: Total War™ Kingdoms
WARNING: ABOUT THE GAME’S DISAPPEARANCE FROM YOUR LIBRARY
The game is not gone from your library, they simply merged it with Medieval II. To find it follow these steps:
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Install Medieval II
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Go to your steam game library
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Right click on Medieval II
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Below the “Play Game” option there should be 4 new options with the Kingdoms campaigns.
And now, after that prologue, LET THE REVIEW BEGIN!
Kingdoms is the expansion pack (yeah, not DLC, for 20 bucks you can buy actual, sturdy, nearly endless content) of Medieval II: Total War.
– Real player with 384.3 hrs in game
Don’t let my playtime fool you, i’ve played this game for over a decade ever since 2006 and probably sunk thousands of hours into this game on disc. This game features a combination of RTS (while in battles) and TBS (displayed on the campaign map), you move your armies around on a fully 3D map authentic to the terrain of Europe and Asia, Risk style.
There are many troop types from Horse Archers to Knights to Longbowmen even Elephants and Native American braves! this game is a perfect example of a well crafted Total War game. Yes it is old, even on max graphics a graphics snob might brush this game off right away but this game captures the atmosphere, lifestyle, turbulance and religious strife of the Middle Ages wonderfully.
– Real player with 237.0 hrs in game
Waiting For The Raven
Well, it’s still an early-access game, so don’t expect it to work all the way through -
but I thought it was an interesting approach, and it was nice to try something different.
Douglas Adams, alas, predicted this sorry state of affairs:
“In other words - and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation’s Galaxywide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.”
And if they were actually from another planet, you could overlook the developers poor grasp of human languages, as well.
– Real player with 59.9 hrs in game
The game still needs more polishing. The first spymater session is enough satisfying and the storytelling is quite reliable. There are a bunch of spark ideas during the first session gameplay including some right in time visual effect, some good cypher solving games and some well hidden bonus. The problems of first session could only be some buggy UI display and the strategy management part. I spent like 5 to 6 hours to totally break through the first session and to find out how naive the management part actually is. Beside the 10000 gold bonus and some other hidden bonus, I can just use some wine barrels, a 10 stealthy big boy and a 10 charming miss to burn all the houses to the ground without any real punishment. And the game is just like lying down there suffering from my giant gold dick-play. I mean, you guys did a lot of great work in designing the dialogues and storytelling and visual effects and different strategy dealing with different situations. But why the actual management part is so disappointing. The balance of some punishment events and the credit bonuses is totally a mess. That’s not cool at all.
– Real player with 7.5 hrs in game
Total War: MEDIEVAL II – Definitive Edition
This game is the best Total War game in existence. This is by far my favourite. Not only are the vanilla and expansion campaigns a lot of fun, but the almost infinite fantastic mods adds the replayability of this game a thousand fold.
Pros
- Campaign experience is awesome. Lots of depth. Plenty to do. Complex enough that its not difficult to learn, but not easy to master either. It’s so easy to get immersed into your kingdom and care about your subjucts. History is your oyster. You become what you want. You can be a benevolent king who’s people adore, or a bloodthirsty tyrant that rules with an iron fist, a bumbling general that doesn’t inspire his men at all, or the greatest commander alive who even peasants will fight to their death on his command.
– Real player with 1377.6 hrs in game
Despite it’s old age, it’s a masterpiece.
Medieval II: Total War is one of the best strategy games I’ve played. It’s both enjoyable in a strategical and personal sense.
Lets just straight get into why.
Gameplay
- The game manages to be detailed with their strategy, forcing you to actually flank and position your troops. It doesn’t just account to how large your force is or whose troops are more disciplined, though, those two are factors to consider as well. In multiplayer, you might even be able to factor in Psychological Warfare! It gets pretty in-depth. And I love that.
– Real player with 586.4 hrs in game
Grand Ages: Medieval
JUST A WARNING BEFOREHAND THAT THIS IS A LONG INDEPTH REVIEW ABOUT THE GAME SO IF YOU ARE LAZY TO READ IT JUST SKIP TO THE BOTTOM OF THE REVIEW.
Now before you skip this game over for some negative reviews talking about the difficulty of this game or it being set up for some overpriced expansions, just hear me out. This game has a lot of potential and while I agree it maybe kinda pricey compare to some of the older games with a very similar genre this game still have its own merit to make it stand out from the rest. Now let me list down some of the things that you should know before purchasing this game;
– Real player with 86.5 hrs in game
Update: now this is unacceptable! https://ibb.co/nfRF2TJ
I complained about Kalypso on forum of another game, and they censored me!
NEVER buy a game from Kalypso! Don’t support censorship! This is serious!
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Many people say it’s broken or that it’s a recess simulation. The game is just hard to learn.
It is basically an RTS, but the strategy resides in the trade system. War does exist, but it happens only a few hours after the match starts, and it’s very expensive.
War requires little strategy and no tatics. You just send your army on the enemy and let them fight, while you go back to manage your empire’s trade economy. If you want a game aimed on war, just don’t buy this, it has less of that than Civilization.
– Real player with 55.9 hrs in game
Knights of Honor II: Sovereign
Become the King and wrestle over control of Europe in this fresh take on medieval real-time grand strategy.
Sovereign includes all the depth players desire while being the gate-way game to the grand strategy genre, presenting the world as a
living, breathing miniature, alive and ripe for the taking. Choose your royal court carefully and determine the destiny of your people,
be it riches, conquest, intrigue, trade, or defeat! Raise armies to defend your lands or take war to the enemy - even jump into
battle directly in action-packed RTS combat. The path is open: become the true Sovereign of your people.
Features
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Accessible Grand Strategy - All the depth of religion, diplomacy, city development, and more, with none of the confusion
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Real-Time Gameplay - Medieval Europe comes alive, no turns needed
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Royal Court - Appoint Marshalls, Clerics, Merchants, Diplomats, and Spies to exert your will across the land
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RTS Battles - Lead your armies directly in riveting RTS engagements
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Robust Multiplayer - Join with multiple friends to take on the challenges of medieval Europe
Crusader Kings III
This game is an amazing sandbox with plenty of depth, but it lacks difficulty. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had such a good run with my first character that I don’t even want to play my second one. Unlike CK2 where you would spend so many hours to create an empire; CK3 feels like a speedrunning game some of the time, and doesn’t always live up to its predecessor. Most of the time I can create an empire with my first Ruler. I 100% find it harder to roleplay in this game compared to CK2. This can be decently fixed with the massive modding community for CK3. If you are looking for a more roleplay-sensitive experience I would recommend mods like Succession Expanded, Minor Titles, MND Balance, Medieval Arts, CoA Designer, Sinews of War, Additional start dates, and cultures, Ethnicities & Portraits Expanded, and Community Flavor Pack. Other than the difficulty. I love playing this game, I already have 545 hours in it.
– Real player with 580.9 hrs in game
I have no idea where to start this review 🙂
Did I like it oh yes, yes i did. Will I continue to play it after 210 hrs , yes, yes I will. After 210 hrs I have finally managed to playtrough a campaign twice.
All right with that said this is the only game from Paradox i have really played. Even if i have played a little bit of european universalis 4.
I really like all the options this game gives. In which nations to play as. In how you want to play it. Do you want to try to conquer alot of stuff. Or do you simply want to build your nations. Do you want to get more land by wars or do you want to try to get it more peacefully.
– Real player with 296.4 hrs in game
Eormor: Shattered Lands
Instant Action!
Nice strategic thinking!
Play and continue whenever you want!
– Real player with 82.8 hrs in game
Fun, good gameplay. The AI is ruthless
– Real player with 24.2 hrs in game