Recent reviews by joe

I love the CK3 base game and I've played it for hundreds of hours since its release. Whilst I was very excited about this DLC, sadly I think it's both extremely underwhelming and massively overpriced in its current state.

Where the (very affordable) Northern Lords flavour pack brought a tonne of new features, events, lore, and world-building, which each felt impactful within the game, the Royal Court feels completely like an add-on that doesn't really add much that's substantial to the gameplay experience.

Within the Royal Court interface (which you can only access by leaving the campaign map, which doesn't help with making it feel integrated), you simply see a bunch of people standing around, alongside some artefacts that you can choose to display. And it feels thoroughly disappointing to see your court like this. At least before you could use your imagination to envisage the conniving, affairs, and intrigue of your loyal and disloyal subjects and courtiers. I feel like the imagination does a much better job at portraying this than Paradox has done for £25; it feels static and uncompelling.

If you have money to burn, there'll be things about this you'll still enjoy. But if you're looking for a CK3 expansion, either get the Northern Lords pack (for 1/5 of the price of this DLC) or wait until this is either improved or comes on sale. It's really not worth the £25 that it's currently retailing at.

probs my favourite indie game u know