14 DAY TRIAL // Since Rajas of India for Crusader Kings II was launched, I have played as a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Jain, a Jewish Kazar and a Bohemian ruler, which is already a more varied experience that I can get from about 90 percent of all other titles currently on the market.
I have also enjoyed each of the choices I have made, even if they offered a set of mechanics that sometimes did not appeal to the way I tend to play the grand strategy title.
More important is the fact that as I played both the Khazars and the various Indian religions that I wanted to know more about the era and the situations they were dealing with, to the point of almost abandoning the game in order to focus on Wikipedia entirely.
This is one of the most interesting elements of Crusader Kings II as a video game, the fact that it creates mechanics that so closely simulate historical realities that a player often wonders why certain events happened in the real world.
The team at the Paradox Development Studios that is working on the title is clearly very passionate about the subject and I would like to believe that most of the player base shares those interests.
The great thing about Crusader Kings II is that even if one does not have the time or the inclination to hit Internet resources or actual books to learn more about history, the game does a great job of talking about historical realities even as the player changes them via the game mechanics.
The community strives to create thoroughly non-historical results, like getting a Viking kingdom to dominate India or ruling Eastern Europe as a Jewish Khazar.
This is not a sign that the game mechanics are broken or that gamers show disrespect for the actual outcomes that defined our own past and made us what we are.
It’s a way of learning about what happened that does not focus on dates, on knowing the names of wars or rulers, but on simply understanding how and why events took place, and how a simple insult between brothers can lead to years of warfare and misery.
I don’t know exactly what other elements Paradox plans to add to Crusader Kings II in the future, but I am sure that the game will always teach me something more about history, as long as I give it my time and energy.