If this all sounds complex, that’s only because it is. It’s absurdly complex. Not that I mind, but you have to keep track of an absurd number of vassals, all the claims on any titles you and they have, anyone who has claims on your titles, your children, your relatives and so many other factors. It’s not quite so difficult once you’ve gotten used to it, and some people might enjoy the complexity, but others might certainly find it daunting. Along with the complexity, there’s a good deal of the game which is based on luck: catching the plague, getting a bad trait, getting wounded in battle; all of these things can derail your plans, but, at the same time, you can’t do much to stop them. While it is pretty realistic (much of history has been defined by coincidences and dumb luck) it’s still annoying when your carefully crafted master plan for world conquest is derailed by a poorly timed bout of plague.
Of course, a game can have the most amazing gameplay, but, if the presentation isn’t up to snuff, the whole experience is dragged down. To that end, let’s look at the presentation of the game. The first thing a prospective new buyer might notice about the game is that it’s pretty bland looking, visually. I hope you like maps, because most of the game is spent staring at a map of Eurasia. While it’s a well-made map, it’s still not particularly visually stunning or exciting.
The other thing you’ll probably be looking at a lot are character portraits as you look up information on your various allies, rivals and vassals. Once again, these leave a lot to be desired in terms of visual appeal. Most of them look pretty samey, and it’s entirely possible that you’ll run into several people who look perfectly identical. Considering the sheer number of randomly-generated characters in this game, I can understand why, it’s still a little jarring, though. It is a little strange, though, that the designers saw fit to divide the world into “white people” and “Arabs,” because, unless you’ve bought the portrait DLC, every character fits into one of those two categories. This certainly contributes to the game’s feel of samey-ness, as every European leader ends up looking the same whether they are Greek, French, Russian or English, as does every non-European, even when it makes little sense.
Of course, visuals aren’t the only part of the presentation, there’s the music, as well. This fares… somewhat better. While the soundtrack is nice, none of the songs in the game really stand out at all. They complement it well, and are unobtrusive enough that they can play dozens of times without getting annoying. At the same time, though, none of them stand out at all, they’re really not the kind of music I would listen to outside of the game. That said, they’re really well put together and fit the setting of Medieval Christian Europe well. And only Medieval Christian Europe, because if you’re playing as a Muslim, pagan or Indian, these very Christian hymn-inspired songs tend to feel, while still unobtrusive, a tiny bit out of place. If you want to make your experience feel a bit more immersive and have songs that are more suited to playing as people of other regions or cultures, you’ll need to buy the DLC for that.
Which segues nicely into the next issue: price. While the game itself isn’t too expensive at $39.99 at the time of the writing, the problem is, a big chunk of the experience is locked away behind DLC. Remember when I said earlier that “You can play as pretty much anyone in the world and guide their family to glory from the Kings of Europe to the Raja of India?” Yeah, I lied to you. Sorry. I do that a lot. What I should have said is, you can play as pretty much anyone in the world assuming they’re Christian.
You see, if you want to play as a Muslim (who, coincidentally, were an important part of the Crusades), you’ll need the Sword of Islam DLC for $9.99, and you can only play as people from the Indian sub-continent with the Rajas of India DLC for $14.99. Do you think the lack of black people in Africa is a bit odd? Then you’ll want the African Portraits DLC for $1.99. There are separate portrait DLCs for nearly every culture, so, if you feel that you’d like Norse, Greeks, Spanish or Turks to have character portraits that more accurately reflect their culture’s dress and appearance (or, in some cases, skin color) you have to pay extra for that.
While it’s a big game with a lot of details, it feels really incomplete in some areas. And, while it’s cool that Paradox decided to fill in a lot lot of incomplete areas with DLC, the problem becomes that, if you want to get the “complete” Crusader Kings II experience, you need to play a lot of extra money. According to Steam, at the time of this writing, if you were to buy the game plus every piece of DLC, it would cost you $159.99. Now, you could always skip DLC you don’t think you’ll need (I’d recommend taking a pass on the Unit Pack DLCs; those things are pretty worthless), for example, if you aren’t planning on playing an Indian character, then there’s no reason to buy the Rajas of India DLC. And waiting for Steam Sales is a good way to get the DLC without having to pay too much. Even for the amount of content that the game plus the DLC provides, that’s a lot of money for just one game.
Let’s move on, though, and talk about the new DLC specifically for a bit, since that’s the reason I’m doing this review. Charlemagne pushes the game’s start date all the way back to the year 769 CE. The Kingdom of the Franks has been divided into two halves: West Francia (which is, strangely, in the North) which is ruled by Charlemagne or, as he was known to his contemporaries and is called in-game: Karl; and East Francia (which is really more South than East) ruled by Karl’s brother, Carloman.
As indicated by the title, the main feature of this DLC is the opportunity to recreate the conquests of Charlemagne and reunite Western Europe. Although, like most of the reset of the game, there’s nothing actually requiring you to do so, and you can play any ruler who happens to be alive during that start date. You can play in India and ignore Charlemagne’s conquests completely, you can play as a Muslim or a Germanic pagan and attempt to thwart him, the game even has an achievement if you manage to unite Western Europe as Carloman instead.
Of course, the primary focus is on Charlemagne, who’s gameplay is fairly different from most of the game. While most of the prior DLC has been focused on expanding mechanics for different cultures or religions, Charlemagne has a heavy character focus, which gives it a fairly different feel than most of the rest of the game. Charlemagne (Karl) has several unique scripted events that are meant to recreate the events that led to his conquest of Western Europe, such as killing off his brother (netting you his half of the Kingdom) or giving him a claim on Saxony in a way that is normally impossible in the game.
Likewise, several very gifted warriors will just show up at your court, greatly improving the proficiencies of your armies. It feels very story heavy, with each event being accompanied by a text box providing some historical context to the event. You do have to know a bit of history if you want to get all the events, though; for example, you’ll need to marry (and subsequently divorce via scripted event) one of the daughters of King Desiderius if you want to get a claim on Lombardy (Italy), which I found annoying because I missed that event the first time around since I didn’t know what I had to do to trigger it.
While its story focus was Charlemagne, the DLC does include other additions, as well. Aside from the earlier start date, the main changes are the additions of Viceroyalities, an overhaul of the tribe system and the ability to create custom Kingdoms and Empires. Viceroyalties are interesting because they subvert the usual feudal vassal-liege relationship. Where normally, if you’re a King or Emperor and decide to grant a lower title to a vassal, it remains in their family when the owner dies and transfers to their heir. With viceroyalities, the title returns to the liege on the death of the owner. In theory, it’s a valid option for powerful rulers to maintain more control over their realms, unfortunately, in practice, it’s pretty much useless for rulers. Only one realm starts with the law in place that allows for viceroyalities (the Eastern Roman Empire). Anyone else who wants to try and implement them will need to wait until very late in the game before they have the right technology levels. Even then, it can only be applied to titles granted after the law was put into place, meaning that it’s very hard to implement them on any large scale.
Whereas the Eastern Roman Empire gets a massive upgrade with viceroyalities, the game’s pagans get royally screwed with the tribal system overhaul. Characters that hold “tribal” titles are stripped of a whole lot of basic abilities now. Save for the Mongols, they were always challenging to play as, even in the vanilla game, but now they’re outright detrimental. They can’t build holdings, like cities or castles, in their provinces anymore, meaning their income and army size are pitifully limited; although they do get some unique abilities to make up for this. The intent is that tribes can adopt feudalism or become a merchant republic. This is made needlessly difficult, though, for some tribal groups, especially those near the edges of the map.
The final major change in the Charlemagne DLC is the newly-added ability to create custom Kingdoms and Empires. In the original game, if you wanted to create or usurp a new title you would have to control enough land within that title’s “de jure” lands. Meaning that, if you wanted to, say, become the King of England, you would have to control at least 80% of what we today know as England before you could declare yourself King. The same for Empires or Duchies. While this method was a bit deterministic, which could get annoying at times, it worked well enough unless you happened to own a good deal of land that was split up between several de jure Kingdoms or Empires. In that case, even if you were just as powerful as a King or an Emperor, you still couldn’t claim to be one, which really limits your opportunities for growth. But with the Charlemagne DLC, now, if you own enough titles you can create your own Kingdoms or Empires, which helps a lot in making the game feel more dynamic, and less like you’re being boxed in to a really deterministic version of history.
All things considered, Crusader Kings II is a really fun game and the Charlemagne DLC adds a lot of great features to it. It adds enough that, I’d say that the new DLC is worth the money. While the game can get really complex at times, and the presentation is a little bland, it doesn’t detract too much from the game as a whole. Plus, the absurd amount of detail in the game means that you can potentially get hundreds upon hundreds of hours out of this game. It’s definitely worth your time to check out.
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Review Copy Supplied by Author
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