izigame.me

Once again lets summarize the last game taking place from 867 to around 1350. I played as House Dramé in the gold mines of Mali just for the sake of total and utter change. Once again I went through creating a lineage of amazonian beautiful geniuses with a touch of inbred here and there. And of course by around 1300 I was at the end of the tech tree.
The idea of this play-through was to see how Royal Court behaves from early to late game.
The *dislikes* first, shall we?
The 'artifacts'. God, I hate them. When you need them most you don't have any and once you don't need them anymore you possess hundreds and must dedicate a whole wing of your largest castle to store them. On top of that you must hire an archivist to tag, label and store them properly the search functions are so bloody poor. Because of that passing them on to dynastic offspring is tedious and utterly boring work. You cannot right-click an artifact and just pass it to somebody.
The various artifact icons are careless and cheap design work. Every item in an artifact class looks the same. Why, Paradox, why, so careless? Where is the court grandeur if every statue looks the same?
The 'Holding Court':
The events in Holding Court should be some sort of short stories, I guess. They're boring. They're tedious to read and after two dozens of hours you've seen them all hopefully to never see them again. Unfortunately, you grind through this every 5 years. In the late game when you're super powerful you don't even care too much anymore, just click it away, unless it's about somebody is asking for one of your core counties. What a pity this can't be turned off or delegated to one of the court jobs like master of horse, jester or executioner.
The 'Court': Nice try, Paradox. Will there be a CK4 soon?
The Cultures: I played House Dramé for the sake of total and utter change. Paradox, where is the change? Where is the different culture? Playing as House Wessex doesn't feel different from playing House Dramé. The fact that stuff is labelled differently and people look darker doesn't create a different immersion.
The balancing throughout the game: I understand this is very difficult to achieve. Royal Court did the opposite of making the game more difficult. In the early game you don't care too much about religion, culture or court. You're too small, got other worries. When you're starting to be a super power and the balance of power has definitely tipped massively to your own favor you will combine religion, culture and dynastic legacies to your advantage to make you even stronger. Guess what, the AI is too stupid to keep you in check.

And now the *likes*:
Cultures: finally you can make good use of your prestige that's spilling over your castles' battlements. This prestige sink is a very good idea. And no they're not too expensive. The opposite is true. They're too cheap.
Learning languages to reduce cultural penalty is a good idea too. Children can learn language. I like that.

There's not much I like about Royal Court and yet it extends the game and does make it more rich. There's no denying that. Nonetheless, I believe Paradox played this far below their capabilities. Guys, you have to do better than this. Really.