Crusader Kings III is a grand strategy game with RPG elements that will release 1st September.
RockPaperShotgun gave its impression of how the game plays.
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RockPaperShotgun gave its impression of how the game plays.
Twinfinite interviewed Paradox about the game and focused on how they plan to followup on Crusader Kings II.
As it stands, CK3 is one of the few RPGs I've played that genuinely compelled me to try thinking like my character would, rather than just pushing for optimal outcomes. And it swiftly achieved what CK2 only managed at its best, in making me feel more invested in my pretend family of medieval gits, than I did in the nation they were ruling. And on top of all that, CK3 simply does a much better job of explaining itself than most of Paradox's historical titles do. I think it'll succeed in bringing previously reticent newcomers into the subgenre, but not by sacrificing complexity or depth. It is, quite straightforwardly, a well-designed game.
Before we get going, I should warn you: this post will not explain CK3's features in exhaustive detail, or conduct a meticulous compare-and-contrast with CK2. For a start, it would take all day, and for seconds, we've already done loads of that, as have Paradox themselves. Instead, I want to give you a straightforward impression of what it's like to play, that doesn't rely on you already knowing CK2 back to front. Because if you've always been interested by so-called Grand Strategy games, but found them too inscrutable to really get into, Crusader Kings 3 could well be your Rosetta Stone.
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Thanks Farflame!Giuseppe: Crusader Kings 2 has eight years of updates and expansions under its belt. How did you approach balancing between realistically finishing the game and including many of those features out of the box so that the new game doesn't feel like two steps ahead and three back?
Max Weltz: As you say, CK2 is a game that has a long tail of content and updates post-launch, both paid and free, with tons of features that have been added. We really wanted to make sure that you get as much of that as possible when CK3 comes live.
We know that not all the features that we have put in CK2 during its lifetime were as good as we wanted them to be, so it's not all the features that have ever been in CK2 DLC that make it at launch in CK3. we have been very clear on that since the reveal of the game.
We really try to bring all the good stuff and iterate and improve on that, of course. Some of the things we think could have been done better in CK2, we kind of mostly pinned them for later content and later updates, that's the approach we had.
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