Crusader Kings III has crazy stuff happen. But it all happens offscreen, in a way. You click a button, then, typically, a few months later, you get a popup declaring some result, good or bad. The game is all menus. Menu-driven politics. Menu-driven warfare. Menu-driven daytime soap opera. Min/Max whatever you want, but the real fun shows up when you arrange entertaining scenarios. Like a socio-political Cupid. I married my lisping half-brother off to another woman with a lisp. They like each other 10 percent more because of their shared speech impediments. Or when I married off my other half-brother to Debbie, a gorgeous maniac that couldn't have any children. They just had their first child last week, though I'm not sure it's been a full nine months since they first met. Or when my Steward handed me a bad census of my population, so I denounced him, making him a known criminal, fired him from his job, tried to put my lisping sister-in-law in the seat, but the patriarchy sucks so she's not allowed into my Council, and all my other choices are knuckleheads, so I had to put Mr. Bad Census back in. It's a mess. But it's a fun mess. That stuff is way more fun than following my father-in-law into a war I should have nothing to do with. You think you're just marrying some king's hot daughter, but you're actually marrying into all your in-laws' drama, too.

 

I'm hoping review code shows up for Star Dynasties. Some ballsy indie studio decided to make "Crusader Kings in Space" since the Crusader Kings people obviously aren't going to do it. Players have been asking for decades. Hopefully Star Dynasties can give me a space opera like CK3, just somewhere in the stars instead.