Crusader Kings 3 Xbox hands-on preview – grand strategy on the small screen
One of the most complex strategy games of all time is getting a console edition and it works far better than you would’ve expected.
As its name implies, the grand strategy genre does nothing by halves. Rather than giving you control of a person or military unit you’re usually place in charge of entire nations. The Civilization series and Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri are good examples, giving you free rein to explore, engage in diplomacy, conduct scientific research, and manage far more about your people’s destiny than just military might. Another uniting factor in the genre is that the overwhelming majority of releases are only for PC and rely on mouse and keyboard to work your way through their labyrinthine complexity.
Crusader Kings 3 is initially concerned with a far smaller corner of the globe than a whole country, casting you as a medieval nobleman with a small fiefdom of lands, and titles to match. Whether you start in what will one day be Great Britain, or anywhere else in the startlingly well researched version of the Dark Ages, your job is to manage a dynasty over hundreds of years.
Despite featuring a tighter geographical purview, the level of detail you need to manage, control, and turn to your advantage, is astounding. Along with making sure you have the right heirs and succession laws in place, you’ll also need to keep local vassals on-side and paying taxes, use underhanded schemes, bribery and chicanery to exert your influence, and in many cases send armies into battle to ensure your family’s survival and the extension of your lands.
Crusader Kings 3’s PC release was universally well received, but what happens when you attempt to distil its intense levels of intricacy and micromanagement down from PC to console?
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