After racking up a litany of misdeeds that would be far too long—and nauseating—to list here, I can report that Crusader Kings III still lets you play an absolute monster. You can be chivalrous and pious, too, but it’s not as fun to read about. Indeed, almost everything you can say about its predecessor is true here, but it doesn’t feel like a repeat.
Crusader Kings III starts where the last game left off. Not chronologically, of course, but in terms of its systems. Over the course of nearly a decade, Paradox has lavished its historical soap opera with DLC, and almost all of what it added is still present in this new base game. The difference is that it’s all been designed holistically instead of slotted in piecemeal.
Everything just feels like it fits together better. It still throws lots of crises and notifications and decade-spanning wars at you, but it’s a lot less jarring this time around because it seems like more consideration has been put into how all of these systems interact with each other. It’s also a hell of a lot better at explaining what the heck is going on.
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Special Report- Stacked Deck - Monster Train, a deckbuilding roguelike that firmly entrenched itself as the crown prince to the kingly Slay the Spire back in 2020, was the kind of smash success you might call Champagne Big.
Monster Train, a deckbuilding roguelike that firmly entrenched itself as the crown prince to the kingly Slay the Spire back in 2020, was the kind of smash success you might call Champagne Big. Four years later, its successor Inkbound’s launch from Early Access was looking more like Sandwich Big.I’m not just saying that because of the mountain of lamb and eggplants I ate while meeting with developer Shiny Shoe over lunch, to feel out what the aftermath of releasing a game looks like in 2024. I mean, have I thought about that sandwich every day since? Yes. But also, the indie team talked frankly about the struggle of luring Monster Train’s audience on board for its next game.
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