Kingdoms and Ends: a Review of Crusader Kings II
The time for chicken sandwiches and salads has passed. In its place, an era of righteous Catholics, pagan Mohammedans, and angry peasants is cresting, like some cresting thickness that crests thickly and interminably, thickly cresting until the end of time. No more chicken sandwiches. No more chicken salads. Just peasants and religious zealotry until God himself comes and wipes out the Mohammedans.
As such, we can do this the easy way or the hard way: I can sum up Crusader Kings II in a mere 5 word phrase and let you continue your chicken sandwich-salad-eating sesquipedalianism, letting you live in oblivious bliss only to be inevitably shaken from it so violently that you poop your proverbial (and literal) pants, or I can dive deep, clutching your mind uncomfortably close to my philosophical bosom, driving this horse for all its worth and perhaps, by the grace of the Almighty, save your heathen soul. Or we can do both (my bosom is as flexible as it is philosophical).
Option 1: Crusader Kings II is what it sounds like.
Option 2: Crusader Kings II is a game of ends. The most absolute of these ends is also the most timeless: high score. Here, stripped of its taint, it is presented once again as a real and honest indication of your performance. Performance is itself is the begotten child of mechanics, which in turn are but results generated by the finality of decisions. These decision are made by you, my dear End, who are undoubtedly some form of end by virtue of the lives you have lived (or wish to have lived), some of which were certainly the designs of your parents (who are also ends themselves). And so life, too, is a game of ends.
In Crusader Kings II, high score is measured in longevity and successful genetic transmission, performance is measured in territorial, marital, and religious acquisition, mechanics are a network of interrelated consequences, and decisions are simply what you may fancy when presented with a list of options. And yet this simple set of dominoes manages to encompass and recreate so much more.
The fact that this game of ends is played out within the context of the Crusades is quite nearly moot. While many of the specific ends you can choose to pursue are indeed bound by this setting, the innumerable permutations and their various consequences, each a unique end, are not.
So even if you always choose to begin as Count Hoël of Nantes, you may only ever end as him once, and even if you do, you will likely not be the same Hoël every single time. In one sitting you may usurp the King of Denmark, wage subsequent war against the King of France, marry the Emir of Macedon’s widower, lose Nantes to peasant rebels, and end up adhering to some form of Bogomilism simply because your intent was to father a very attractive, very powerful, French-Arabian daughter.
And yet in another sitting you may begin as Count Hoël of Nantes, contract cholera in the course of a military campaign to conquer France, die and leave your kingdom to your 11-year-old heir whose regent is incompetent but highly religious, be conquered by the French and summarily captured and executed by who else but the King of France, only to see that your decision to make succession by Primogeniture allowed your titles (and control) to be transferred to the owner of the last Free County in England, wherein you find an advantageous position with which to seize the Papacy by becoming the Antipope and waging a successful Holy War against him. And this probably happened because you really don’t like French people and decided to tear them apart from the inside.
You are not restricted to a path, a country, a religion, a philosophy, or even a wife. And despite the dearth of flashy animations or spectacular combat theatrics, Crusader Kings II still demands your attention, because it replicates not any particular sensation, but every possible sensation, such that the compulsion titillated is not that of the joy of discovery, but of the much greater joy of infinite undiscovery.
This lack of restriction and the abundance of the unknown is what refreshes me every time I enter into the world of Crusader Kings II. It does not give me an end, but rather asks me for one. It petitions my great wisdom, my cunning, and my imagination for a goal to be realized and allows me, without arbitrary restriction, to realize it. So in spite of the inescapable cage-nature of all games, it feels free, cage-less, open and pliable to my will and understanding. It accomplishes this by creating a cage so large that its corners are invisible.
Push as you might in a single, determined direction and you may eventually crash into a wall, but to then move from this wall to another is impossible. The only way to thence gain a complete picture (or even a fleeting glimpse) of the scale of the cage that is Crusader Kings II would be to play it, again and again, purposefully pursuing specific ends, recording those experiences in detail, and then spending the rest of your natural life piecing together a complex political, military, religious, and genealogical jigsaw puzzle.
The Crusades then are simply a wooly veneer; a supple, flesh-like covering stretched over the cold steel skeleton of this cage of mechanics. Not everyone likes wool, and indeed its peculiar coarseness (and one’s personal tastes) is the only real barrier to entry into its capacious innards. Its bland, platitudinous texts; its esoteric, 12th and 13th century English lawspeak; its reliance upon the player to be the driver; these are all elements that prevent an easy appreciation of this game. But truthfully, in this reviewer’s humble opinion, the only problem with Crusader Kings II is you.
The only thing truly preventing you from enjoying this game is you. Otherwise, it is flawless. If you choose to be consumed by this cage, you will find no shortage of dreams to actualize, goals to meet, women to marry, people to kill, countries to conquer, religions to convert to, or murderous bastard sons to excommunicate. And in each one of these specific ends you will find that not a single one of your ambitions, great or small, real or imaginary, cannot be sated. It will place you on every conceivable side of every conceivable scenario, and will never fail to be fair for the sake of its own ends. It is quite nearly a perfect quintessence: when you play it, it tells you the rules and then steps out of the way.
Can I recommend it? No…I can only tell you what it is. Crusader Kings II is a game of ends, an infinite collection of ends, held within an impossibly large cage, waiting for you to jump in and discover one for yourself. And if you choose to, then perhaps you too will find that life, too, is a game of ends.
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