To save you a click: Crusader Kings 2
Also, note that CK2, like many Paradox games, has a lot of DLC, and if you get that, you’re going to be paying a pretty penny.
I haven’t played CK2 yet, but if its DLC is like Stellaris or Cities: Skylines, it’s arguably usually worth it. Very expensive when you add it all up and not all DLC is worth it (e.g., the race packs of Stellaris aren’t really that interesting), but for how much play time you’ll get out of the game, it’s pretty great. I regularly think about how often I want to go back to Stellaris lol. Part of the reason I haven’t tried CK2 yet is because I’m pretty confident that I’ll love it and be sucked in for weeks.
I mean, I’m not saying that the game is bad or not worth the money, but the announcement just says, unqualified, “free”, and I just want to make it clear that there are some strings that come with that to people who may not be familiar with the way Paradox sells their games.
Also free on https://www.gog.com/en/game/crusader_kings_ii if you want a DRM free version.
Nice, thanks for that
Nice one, cheers
Thank you!
Huh? Didn’t they make CK2 free years ago? The article says it’s just the base game too, so I’m really confused.
Indeed it’s only the base game, just like when it went free the last time.
But it went free to play in 2019 and never really stopped as far as I’m aware o.o
Wasn’t CK2 free already?
Yeah, I thought the base game was made free years ago now…
Whoa!! $4.99 a month for the expansions, or $253.75 to own them… Are they worth it?
Some of them are. IMO the best are Way of Life, Holy Fury, Conclave, and Old Gods. If you want to play some who isn’t a Christian King, such as a Christian merchant or pagan/hindu/muslim king, you’ll need to get the expansion for that. Respectively, those are The Republic, The Old Gods or Holy Fury (either will unlock Pagans), Rajas of India, and Sword of Islam. That being said, if you like playing a Christian, Sons of Abraham is worth picking up. Finally, if you’re the type of person who really likes optimizing these sort of games, then you’ll probably want Legacy of Rome, which adds retinues, customizable standing armies that let a skilled player solve the combat system to punch way above their weight
Nah just buy the base game and pirate the DLC lol
I think you would have to really like it to justify the cost of that. Saying that, people spend more on FIFA players or whatever so maybe it’s a steal?
Some are, some aren’t. Sunset invasion is only really good if you want an alt history scenario with Aztecs invading Europe while other expansions add other religions and types of governments to play.
Worth pointing out that for all paradox grand strategy games the dlcs are shared during a multiplayer session. So if you play MP only the host needs to own them.
It has been free for years now…
Yes it has. This isn’t new. The value is in the DLC.
I never could get into Crusader Kings or Europa Universalis. I generally love grand strategy and play a ton of things like Civilization but for some reason Paradox’s maze of menus and mechanics never seems to click for me.
I would recommend checking out EU4 again. It’s an amazing game if you like history.
CK series is much more of a family simulator than country simulator, so that takes a bit of getting used to
ck isn’t so much grand strategy to me as it is a game of thrones simulator. The game is WAY less fun if you try to play it optimally. Trying to generate a mad syphilitic king who married his horse and is trying to become the leader of a black magic cult is WAY more interesting.
Yeah, most of my time I’ve been trying to spawn the child of Satan. (Monks & Mystics expansion)
If you ever want to try getting back into EU4, Red Hawk’s videos may help it click: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRedHawk/videos
Cheers, I’ll remember that for next time.
I’m the same. On paper, Stellaris sounds like a game that could be my all time #1. It has everything I love in games, but my lord … the learning curve. I have tried it three times now and I could just never get over it. It’s like it’s not even a curve lol, it’s a flat straight up vertical wall.
For me part of that is that they massively rejigger the game mechanics all the time. Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as they’re trying to improve game rules, but if you learn to play the game as it works one way and then there are some major changes in how things work, it means that you have to do a mental reset (especially if you don’t start a new game realizing that things are now working differently, so you don’t realize that you need to reset). And it’s a game where you need to understand how things work and plan ahead using that understanding, so not knowing what you don’t know is kind of a liability.
EDIT: That being said, of all the Paradox games that I own, Stellaris has definitely been the one that I’ve gotten the most enjoyment out of.
honestly i think having been in on the ground floor makes things easier. its way easier to learn the changes to mechanics you already understand than it is to learn mechanics that were designed to be, in almost all cases for Stellaris, more complicated than the original, already complicated mechanics.
This was my problem trying to get into it after MegaCorp. Suddenly production went from a familiar mechanic like in Endless Legend or Civ to a convoluted mess with all the branching resources. One day I’ll get back into it…
I tried to get into CK2 because I also love grand strategy and I could not be bothered to learn it.
Then I tried CK3 and for whatever reason, I found that one a lot not approachable and I have hundreds of hours in it now.
Paradox put a lot of effort into making Ck3 more accessible, and I think largely succeeded. of course its still a massively complicated game, but strategy fans are generally willing to put up with that. its being obtuse and impenetrable and confusing that’s the problem
There is so much DLC, IMO some of it absolutely needed (Way of Life, Reapers Due, Conclave) and some not needed at all (Sunset Invasion) CK2 is an incredible fun game with the right mindset and one i have played for hundred of hours.
