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The Crusader Kings series could be accurately said to be well-beloved by its fans, part of its lovable nature comes from its ability to put you in situations you had never thought you'd be in, and to say things you had never thought you would say. For example, in my playthrough, of Crusader Kings 3, I uttered the sentence "My daugher cheated on her brother with me." There is also the time I had intimate relations with the pope, and I didn't even buy him dinner.
But let's get to the meat and potatoes of this review, shall we? Crusader Kings 3 has a way of writing an entire story that desperately needs to be made into a film. I found myself admiring the world that I had a part in creating, I also found myself screaming like a mad man when my soldiers entered into battle, like a football fan might cheer on his team from the comfort of his own couch to somehow encourage them to get a touchdown. Warfare was just so challenging, so fun and so rewarding. At the same time, I was surprised to see how many scenarios could be potentially crafted, just from the religion mechanics which adds to the replayability factor, although it's in this same category that there's an elephant in the room to address.

Stories

CK3 (Crusader Kings 3) by its nature, doesn't have a predetermined story or plot. However, that isn't to say that it lacks any story at all, CK3 quite literally makes stories as you play. There are wars happening all around you, family dynasties rising and falling, there's intrigue and diplomacy. In my particular playthrough, I found myself forming an empire in Africa, with numerous kings as my vassals. On multiple occasions I found myself examining the various kingdoms of my realm, digging through the title's history, like an archaeologist at a dig site. I couldn't have possibly observed every single kingdom in my playthrough, and so I was piecing together the pieces of the puzzle, trying to find out which child inherited which kingdom from which parent, and from which war they lost the throne to their challenger. I witnessed a foreign kingdom, the kingdom of Ireland be formed under Irish rule, then taken over by the Norse, then liberated, and then once again conquered, that time by the French.
If you are a lover of history, as I am, this game would be an absolute blast for you.

Warfare

Decimating enemy armies rarely feels this great. I saved many a great holy war from defeat, and I've my fair share of turning points in wars. It's almost like witnessing your own version of Gettysburg, the battle where you just know, THIS is the deciding battle, the enemy will never be able to recover from it.
The best battles to witness, in my opinion, are the ones that you barely win by the skin of your teeth. You start cheering your soldiers on, you start cursing the enemy, you start swearing vengeance upon them and their entire family should they succeed. And when the battle ends in your favor, you start praising the god of whichever religion you might be playing as.

Replayability

What caught my eye most of all during my playthrough, were the religion mechanics. I loved the way they were done. Though I don't believe they are entirely unique, as there was a DLC in Crusader Kings 2 that allowed you to reform your religion and pick various beliefs that benefit you in some way.
However, this being my first time exposed to modular religions, it was amazing. I created a nudist warrior cult, where women would command the armies, out of an African pagan religion. Now over the course of my game, I noticed too, that the religion mechanics need to be tweaked in various ways. For one, you can create a thereotically infinite number of Holy Orders to fight for your religion, however, while it was said that they were fighting in our great holy wars called upon by our head of faith, I never saw them fighting for the holy land. The Holy Orders would also rent out your castles and cities to be used as headquarters, however they would never build in them or improve them in any war, though that didn't seem to have an effect on how many holy warriors you could hire, I do wonder if it didn't have any impact at all. Certainly if they upgraded their baronies, they could've at least gotten more money to buy more baronies, which does affect their overall numbers.
Furthermore, fighting and winning great holy wars in and of itself, I feel like needs to be reworked. When you win a great holy war, your religion loses fervor, which seems to be a representation of how much your believers are willing to fight, or crusade for the holy land. However, when your fervor is low, heresies start popping up. So what ended up happening, is after we win a great holy war, people would start converting to our old religion. Which doesn't make sense to me, it feels like if anything, the fact that we won our great holy war should be indication of our religion being the one true religion.
Although, on the matter of replayability as a whole, one things need to be addressed. Typically, in Paradox games, different nations have different bonuses to give them an edge in a particular area. For instance, in Europa Universalis 4, the English get a bunch of bonuses to their navy, which reflects their history, Britannia rules the waves, afterall. There are exceptions like Victoria 2, and Stellaris, though Stellaris is an entirely fictional universe. However, one might reasonably assume that CK3 would have these historical bonuses for different cultures.
It does seem as though that is the plan for this game. The Northern Lords DLC gives the Norse two whole dynasty legacy trees to complete that are unique to them. In effect, making their gameplay unique in some way. However, with the game being so new, you don't have that for every culture. Now, various cultures may have a different set of challenges. The Catholics in Europe are probably going to be more developed than kingdoms in Africa or Tibet for example. And there are minor differences in cultures, for instance, the North African cultures get their own unique cultural fascination, the Germans also have their own, as well as the Indians.
However, these cultural fascinations don't add up to a lot of diversity in their gameplay. Now with religion being so modular, I believe you could have multiple playthroughs that are unique in their own way. For instance, you may choose to have a warmongering religion, as I did, or you could pick beliefs that would make your gameplay more peaceful, and choose to build your empire taller rather than wider. But if you are expecting to be able to have a truly unique gameplay experience as, say, the French that reflects something about their history, and then play as the Persians and have something totally different, you may want to wait a few years and see what's changed then, before making the decision to buy the game.

Conclusion

CK3 was my absolute favorite Paradox game to play, and for that I am going to give it a 10/10. It is what I want Paradox to achieve with all their series. I love the direction they're going in, I love the point from which they started. There were times when I had been playing CK3 non-stop the entire week, to get this review out, and I felt burnt out, but then the game roped me back in with a challenging war and I found myself rekindling the love I have for Paradox games. Overall a 10/10.