Having taken the time to acquaint myself with a preview build of Crusader Kings II, I can say one thing with a great deal of confidence: If you liked the original game in 2004, or if you liked this year's Sengoku, you should give Crusader Kings II a try when it comes out in February.

These three games, all from developer Paradox Interactive, are cut from the same cloth, and they're all as addictive as crack to a certain type of gamer. On the most basic level, they're all pausable real-time strategy games—meaning that while the action isn't turn-based, you can stop time whenever you want, so you never have to click frantically to get everything done in time. But more deeply, they all eschew the obsessive focus on warfare and city building that most other strategy games have. If anything, these games intentionally downplay these aspects: Battles are typically won by the bigger army, with little chance that good tactics will change the tide. And improving a holding is just a matter of choosing options from a menu, trying to strike the right balance between tax revenue, army size, and having easily defensible territory. Instead, these games focus on interpersonal relationships within your dynasty, as well as international diplomacy.

So, how does Crusader Kings II set itself apart from its predecessors? It doesn't—and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Instead, it combines the two; it covers the same geography and time period of the original Crusader Kings (Europe and the Middle East in the medieval era) but looks and plays in a way that's eerily similar to Sengoku, which was set in Japan's Warring States period.

Which is to say that Crusader Kings II is insanely detailed, insanely complicated, insanely rewarding to the right type of player—and insanely boring to everyone else. If you like your strategy games to have a lot of action, this is not the game for you. For every opportunity you'll have to attack your foes, you'll spend lots of time managing the finer points of royal life. You'll arrange marriages. You'll appoint members to your council. You'll make deals with other rulers. You'll maintain a relationship with the Pope. You'll hatch plots—including murder plots, if you want to get rid of a character quietly. You'll imprison or banish characters if you don't mind making a scene. You'll foil plots against you. You'll do your best to help all your subordinates achieve their ambitions. If you're brave, you might even try to change the laws of succession—the rules that govern how titles and property are divided up amongst a character's children. And plan on spending a lot of time navigating through various menus and keeping an eye on your vital statistics, because you do all of this by clicking buttons on an interface.

As a framework for these relationships, CKII draws on real history to an astounding degree. At the beginning of the game, you will choose a starting date (presets range from 1066 to 1337), and then choose from hundreds of rulers to inhabit. Each territory has a unique cast of characters and a unique strategic position—much of which is modeled accurately on historical fact, and all of which includes ridiculous amount of detail. You can play as any king, duke, count, or emperor you choose, and you inhabit an heir when your character dies. If you can keep heirs alive and avoid losing all your land until 1452—no easy goal—the game ends, and you can compare your empire and dynasty to your real-life counterpart. So, you can not only learn about history, but change it as well. The goal is to amass as much "Prestige" as possible for your dynasty.

All of this gives Crusader Kings II an incredible amount of replay value. You might start with a powerful, well-situated territory, and then move on to a more difficult task after completing a game. Or, you might try to master the game with a single ruler, or turn up the difficulty. You can also play multiplayer with up to 32 players, though I wasn't able to test this feature on the preview build, and games last long enough that you'll probably need to schedule times to play.

I've already mentioned that combat is downplayed here, with the bigger armies usually winning without too much effort or strategy, but the developers did implement a rather complex new system that determines how exactly it unfolds. When you group your units into an army, they're automatically divided into a left flank, center, and right flank. Each of these three groups is commanded by a non-player character you choose. When an army meets an enemy, the respective flanks face off, and a three-stage battle ensues. Again, this doesn't require you to do a whole lot, but it does help that battles unfold in a realistic yet predictable way.

Though Crusader Kings II is still months from release, I was already impressed by how well the developers guide the players through the motions. There is a loooooong tutorial that not only teachers players the basics, but also gives newcomers a taste of the intensely diplomacy-based gameplay they're in for. If you skip the tutorial, you'll be delighted to find that each menu you open comes with a detailed guide to using it (you can turn these off entirely, or just disable the ones you've already read). You also receive a steady—indeed, overwhelming—stream of messages prodding you to carry out various tasks before it's too late. When you make an important decision, such as arranging a marriage, the game will tell you directly which stats will improve and decline. At first, this information overload just makes the game seem that much more complicated, but if you stick to it—and check message boards for other Paradox games when you're confused—everything will start to seem almost manageable.

Lastly, from what I saw, the presentation is terrific. The epic music suits the period, keeps you entertained through the game's more tedious moments, and never gets repetitive or grating. And the graphics, while they're not top-of-the-line, do an excellent job of depicting medieval European topography.

Crusader Kings II will not win new fans over to Paradox Interactive's unique brand of strategy—but then again, it's not meant to. It's meant to recreate the magic of Crusader Kings in a sequel that incorporates the graphics and gameplay updates of Sengoku.

By Robert VerBruggen
CCC Contributing Writer