I like this game, but I don't recommend it for an 'average' player.

Pros:
1. Maps. The maps are very beautiful, atmospheric, and very large. There is lots of Bloom. The zoom range is very dramatic, and there is lots of space for maneuver. So much that you will usually have to make use of 2x and 4x time during the maneuver phase of the battles.
2. RPG aspects and DLC. There are magical items and other skills for you to upgrade your units, and the DLC has legendary and supernatural units. I don't mind this, it adds a bit of spice to the game, but some of the historical wargame enthusiast reviewers don't like this aspect as much.

Cons:
1. Campaign is not great. You basically just unlock a series of maps, eventually seizing Bagdad as Richard Lionheart, and then reverse the process as Saladin. There are some decisions to make along the way, but they still don't add up to what I would call a 'dynamic' campaign.
2. DLC units do not appear in multiplayer. If not for the multiplayer, the game would be a throwaway once you complete the campaigns. Unfortunately the DLC units are annoyingly absent from the custom and multiplayer battle roster - a pity.
3. BUGS. There is a runtime error that has been widely reported, and supposedly this will not be fixed for Win7 64-bit systems. I played through the whole crusader campaign only to not be able to complete the last battle. Very disappointing indeed.
4. Can't save battles. The battles, being on very large maps, also take a long time (over 30 minutes of real time). They can't be saved mid-battle. That is all.

I cannot recommend this to a casual player, but if you really like historical RTS and want a different perspective and style than the Total War series, then you might find this title interesting.

Game requires you to uninstall your current version of Physx and download their old version to run. It won't install the old version while you have a new one. A game should never make you downgrade software to play it.

Got this at 70% off. I just finished the crusader campaign in this game (8 hours or so.) I didn't really expect to like this game as much as I have. It's kind of a RTS with no real base mechanics. Sort of like X-Com would be if the battles were fought RTS style with squads rather than tactical RPG.
Anyways, this company also makes King Arthur which I've played a little bit of. King Arthur seems a bit slower to start, but looks to have more variety.

Oh, actually, this game is very similar to Dawn of War 2, another great game. Wait for it to go on sale and get it.

This game is dead. On legal win 10, campaign is not starting and it's always throwing back to you on desktop. Why steam is still selling this game in steam store?. It's a shame.

My first review gave this game a positive, but since then all it does is crash with a runtime error.
Uninstalling then reinstalling has made no difference.
It seems the devs can't be bothered to fix it for 64 bit systems either, using the excuse that they can't duplicate the error. But apparently, it crashes for many people with a 64 bit PC, so I find that excuse very hard to believe. It's probably more like they won't spend any more time and money going through all the code on this old title just to make it work on some modern machines.

My recommendation would be to download the demo first (on their own site, Gamershell, or Fileplanet, etc.) to see if it even works on you computer. IF it does, then it's actually not a bad game if you like the real time battles from Total War, with some RPG elements of its own.

Unplayable.

I really like this game's mix of total war style battle and RPG but the constant crashes ruin it. I've played it before and had frequent crashes at the end of battles. This time it crashed 2/3 times on the 1st mission and 6/6 times on the 2nd mission. So I'm done. My advice is not to waste your money. Real shame because this seems like a common issue and it could have been a great game if Paradox had fixed it.

Crashes at the end of a mission, couldn't complete even the first one.

Unplayable. Crashes before you can even start the first battle. Shameful that is is still being sold.

If you can get this game to play on your system, it's the best medieval war game out there that I have played. My only issue is the amount of times the game crashes because it was built for windows xp and windows 10 doesn't seem to be able to handle it. If anyone has played this game and can recommend a similar game built for windows 10, I will appreciate it.

game crashed in the first 20 minutes.
I couldn't even start the first battle. :/