Next we’ll focus on my biggest beef. The keyboard layout. Is there a keyboard layout? Beats me. I found most of the keys that work by just pecking each key to see what happened. As I mentioned earlier, the F2 key will show you the current kingdom scores. But the big one, the one that drove me freaking bonkers was the pause key. You see, Crusader Kings is not a turn based game, everything is happening in real time. So when a window pops up to tell you that a child is ready for their education, you might want to pause and carefully review your options. There are two ways to pause the game. First, you can click on the calendar date at the very top of the screen. This will most often result in the screen scrolling up where you probably didn’t want it. The other way is to press the Pause/Break key. While this seems like a natural choice since it actually says “Pause” on it, in truth is usually a tiny key in a remote corner of the keyboard and rarely used in practice. What is even more puzzling is that the space key, the one traditionally used for pausing a game, actually does nothing. To compound the matter there doesn’t seem to be a facility to remap the keys.

Lastly, the management of the kingdom is tough. I honestly can say I have a better suggestion that the way it is being done now, but there are so many facets to this game, so many provinces to look after, so many enemies to keep track of, that it can just be tough to keep it all straight and even more difficult to track progress. Again, I don’t have a better suggestion, but I’ve got to think there is a better way to do things.

Ultimately Crusader Kings is a very deep, very rich game intended for those who truly appreciate historical accuracy in strategy games. The strategy is deep, rich and fulfilling, without the need for action or adrenaline.