It's hard to get into and learn, but once you do you get hooked on this game like no tomorrow. My favorite parts are the more narrative-driven events and actions and the overall complexities of having to manage both foreign and domestic affairs/political meddling. There's a nice amount of customization if you're like me and want to create a whole new lineage instead of playing off some random guys in history.
The game can play very differently depending on who you are and how powerful you get. If you first start out as a count/duke, your gameplay revolves mainly around conquering new lands yourself and protecting you and your family from ambitious rivals looking to steal your titles-- not to mention other foreign rulers looking at your lands with a hungry eye. As you work your way up to king, your general gist is the same but this time you get an advisor spot and politics, I feel, are at their highest point with kingdoms. A lot of my Kingdom-title gameplay is bribing, murdering, cajoling, and what have you.
Empires are where the focus shifts. Once you get a good, sizable empire going with a few or more powerful Kingdoms, you don't have to do much conquering yourself anymore. If you allow external vassal wars only, your powerful king/queen vassals will wage war on foreigners by their own accords for their own kingdom, expanding your empire all the same.
Politics get easy by this point (If you have started from Count/Duke) because at this point you have a slew of prestige and vassal opinion bonuses from artifacts, Dynasty prestige, titular holdings, and whatever else. You start making enough money to win entire Crusades off of mercenaries. Succession cease to become a worry because your dynasty now holds 4 separate kingdom titles plus an Empire with 60 living members and plenty of heirs. If you choose Imperial Elective, too, you can literally pick and choose your heir. Rigging the elections are not hard once you have gold flowing out your ass and a lot of stacking effects-- and that's just western Europe Christendom playthrough: you can play as a Swede Viking that's way more focused on combat with ♥♥♥♥ all to politics, or a nomad that says '♥♥♥♥ politics' even harder. Maybe be a merchant prince and deal entirely with politics and money. There's a lot of opportunities for this game, and I have barely scratched starting outside of the British Isles / Ireland, and I'm almost at 600 hours with this game.
A few things are a bit silly, like empire-tier titles not being able to usurp kingdom/empire tier titles so you end up with a foreign kingdom that's 99% under your control but making you go over vassal limit because you can't give all the dukes/duchess' their de jure ruler, just making the whole thing a fustercluck, or the ungodly RNG system that comes whenever you want to do a duel.
Besides those and a relatively minor few other things, this game is fantastic and will steal hours from you. Looking forward to CK3.

It's hard to get into and learn, but once you do you get hooked on this game like no tomorrow. My favorite parts are the more narrative-driven events and actions and the overall complexities of having to manage both foreign and domestic affairs/political meddling. There's a nice amount of customization if you're like me and want to create a whole new lineage instead of playing off some random guys in history. The game can play very differently depending on who you are and how powerful you get. If you first start out as a count/duke, your gameplay revolves mainly around conquering new lands yourself and protecting you and your family from ambitious rivals looking to steal your titles-- not to mention other foreign rulers looking at your lands with a hungry eye. As you work your way up to king, your general gist is the same but this time you get an advisor spot and politics, I feel, are at their highest point with kingdoms. A lot of my Kingdom-title gameplay is bribing, murdering, cajoling, and what have you. Empires are where the focus shifts. Once you get a good, sizable empire going with a few or more powerful Kingdoms, you don't have to do much conquering yourself anymore. If you allow external vassal wars only, your powerful king/queen vassals will wage war on foreigners by their own accords for their own kingdom, expanding your empire all the same. Politics get easy by this point (If you have started from Count/Duke) because at this point you have a slew of prestige and vassal opinion bonuses from artifacts, Dynasty prestige, titular holdings, and whatever else. You start making enough money to win entire Crusades off of mercenaries. Succession cease to become a worry because your dynasty now holds 4 separate kingdom titles plus an Empire with 60 living members and plenty of heirs. If you choose Imperial Elective, too, you can literally pick and choose your heir. Rigging the elections are not hard once you have gold flowing out your ass and a lot of stacking effects-- and that's just western Europe Christendom playthrough: you can play as a Swede Viking that's way more focused on combat with fuck all to politics, or a nomad that says 'Fuck politics' even harder. Maybe be a merchant prince and deal entirely with politics and money. There's a lot of opportunities for this game, and I have barely scratched starting outside of the British Isles / Ireland, and I'm almost at 600 hours with this game. A few things are a bit silly, like empire-tier titles not being able to usurp kingdom/empire tier titles so you end up with a foreign kingdom that's 99% under your control but making you go over vassal limit because you can't give all the dukes/duchess' their de jure ruler, just making the whole thing a fustercluck, or the ungodly RNG system that comes whenever you want to do a duel. Besides those and a relatively minor few other things, this game is fantastic and will steal hours from you. Looking forward to CK3.