Crusader Kings III: Tours & Tournaments Review Summary

Immersive travel and tours: The new travel system and grand tours allow rulers to physically traverse their realms, impacting vassals, collecting taxes, and engaging in diplomatic missions. This adds a crucial layer of immersion and strategic decision-making, making the kingdom feel more tangible.

Enriched peacetime gameplay: The DLC significantly enriches peacetime gameplay by providing numerous new activities, events, and interactions. This addresses the previous lack of content during truces or periods without warfare, making the game more engaging and varied throughout its duration.

Best DLC, core expansion: The DLC is widely considered the best expansion for Crusader Kings III, significantly enhancing the core gameplay and setting a new standard for future content. It adds substantial depth and replayability, particularly in role-playing and peacetime activities.

Strong emergent storytelling: The expansion greatly enhances the game's ability to generate emergent, character-driven stories. Player choices during activities and travel lead to meaningful consequences, fostering deeper emotional connections and unique narrative experiences.

Strategic grand weddings: Grand Weddings are a valuable addition, serving as a strategic tool for securing powerful alliances, gaining legitimacy, and even manipulating or eliminating rival dynasties. They offer a non-military solution to various in-game challenges.

DLC Overpriced for Content: The DLC is widely considered to be severely overpriced for the amount and quality of content it provides. Many players feel that the content offered should either be part of the base game or priced significantly lower, especially given the perceived lack of depth and replayability.

Disappointing Tournament Mechanics: Tournaments are frequently cited as a major disappointment. Players find them to be passive, lacking in player agency, overly reliant on RNG, and often plagued by bugs. The lengthy, unskippable transition screens and text-heavy presentation further diminish their appeal.

Persistent Bugs and Glitches: Players report numerous persistent bugs, particularly with Grand Weddings and Tournaments, some of which have gone unaddressed for over a year. These bugs often disrupt gameplay, force restarts, or make certain features unusable, leading to significant frustration.

Repetitive and Tedious Events: The new event systems, including travel and activities, are criticized for being repetitive, tedious, and leading to excessive pop-up spam. This often detracts from strategic gameplay and makes engaging with the new features feel like a chore rather than an enhancement.

Paradox's Development Practices Criticized: There is a strong sentiment that Paradox is prioritizing the release of new, often incomplete or overpriced DLCs over fixing existing issues in their games. Players feel that the company is not investing enough in quality assurance and is engaging in 'money-grabbing' practices.

New Grand Activities: The DLC introduces three main grand activities: tournaments, weddings, and realm tours. Grand weddings offer expanded benefits and problem-solving opportunities, while grand tours help manage vassals and collect taxes.

Building & Military Revamp: The DLC and free patch include significant changes to the building system, reducing initial construction slots and revamping how buildings work. The men-at-arms system has also been updated, allowing for garrisoning and specialized buffs in specific regions.

Expanded Existing Activities: Existing activities like hunting have been expanded, allowing players to target specific animals for trophies. These activities can also be used for character interactions, such as increasing intimacy or facilitating assassinations.

Enhanced Role-Playing Focus: The game emphasizes role-playing and individual character lives, with players leading armies and having family members serve as knights. This reinforces the focus on personal and lineage development.

Game crashes after DLC: Players are experiencing frequent game crashes, particularly after installing the new DLC or loading old save files with major updates. This issue significantly disrupts gameplay and needs urgent attention.

Graphic settings reduce lag: Adjusting graphic settings has reportedly reduced minor lag issues, especially concerning unit movements. This suggests that optimization improvements or clearer guidance on settings could enhance performance for some users.

Essential DLC, buy on sale: Many players consider this DLC to be essential for the full game experience, especially for those who enjoy the RPG elements. However, there's a strong consensus that it should be purchased on sale or as part of a bundle due to its perceived value at full price.

Unskippable tournament animations: A specific point of frustration for some players is the unskippable animated tournament screens. They suggest that a mod is needed to bypass these animations.

Negative rating unjustified: One review expresses surprise and disagreement with the overall negative reception of the expansion, suggesting that the criticism is unwarranted. This might indicate a review-bombing trend.

External content recommendation: One reviewer recommends external content creators for information on Paradox games. While potentially helpful, this is not direct feedback on the game or DLC itself.

DLC offers long-term activities: The DLC offers long-term activities and a new accolade system, appealing to players who enjoy managing royal entertainment. While some find the price high, the core concept is seen as a good foundation with potential for future mods.

No AZERTY keyboard option: The game lacks an option for AZERTY keyboard layouts, which is a significant accessibility issue for players using this common European keyboard standard.

Missing coronation feature: Despite having detailed mechanics for weddings, tournaments, and tours, the game surprisingly lacks a coronation feature, which seems like a thematic omission.

Offline play for mod stability: Some players choose to play offline to prevent frequent game updates from breaking their installed mods, highlighting a conflict between updates and mod compatibility.

Achievements outside Ironman mode: Achievements can now be earned without needing to play in Ironman mode, which is a positive change for players who prefer more flexible gameplay without strict save limitations.