Crusader Kings 3: Royal Court DLC Review
As I sit perched atop my throne and welcome another throng of unwashed petitioners to track mud across my brand-new Persian carpet, surely bringing with them all manner of trivial frustrations to waste my time, one thought sits at the front of my mind: where has this been all my life? Royal Court is the first major expansion for Crusader Kings 3, and between a full 3D throne room that puts you in the world, to the return of the inventory system from Crusader Kings 2, to wonderfully customizable cultures, everything feels like it was meant to be here all along.
While the base game of Crusader Kings 3 was already a masterpiece, it's remarkable how incomplete it would feel to go back to it after playing Royal Court. Some recent expansions to Paradox's older games, like Europa Universalis IV, have seemed like the devs are just looking for stuff to do at this point. But not Royal Court, which is full of new features which add more personal involvement and an empowering level of control over how your society functions. It’s a bit painful that you can’t access most of it when playing as a duke or a tribal ruler, which had previously been two of my favorite types of characters and seem like a perfect fit for the kind of intimate, less expansion-focused playstyle having your own court allows. But the intrigue and excitement of the court itself are too good to pass up.
Paradox games have been jokingly called "map-staring games" because of the amount of time you spend gazing at your empire from miles in the sky, so this zoomed-in view of a single room is a big departure: leaders that rank as kings and above of feudal and clan societies now preside over a full 3D court that takes one of four distinct styles, depending on what region
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