Developer: Paradox Development Studio
Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Platform: PC, MAC
Crusader Kings II: Sons of Abraham – Review
I’ll start of by conveniently linking to our Crusader Kings II review, along with its previous expansions. Consider it laziness on my part, but the base-review will tell you all you need to know about how Crusader Kings II looks and sounds and how it plays.
This way I can start talking about what’s new in the game’s fifth expansion; Sons of Abraham.
The name kind off spoils it, but Sons of Abraham is all about religion. That doesn’t mean just worshipping an invisible deity either. Sure, there is some of that, but the focus lies mainly on the deceit, heresies and the accompanying persecutions.
The biggest change by far, is the way your medieval economy works. Your kings and lords are left struggling to fund their luxurious lives a lot more often than before. It reflects the way treasuries often ran dry during the real Middle Ages, forcing rulers to seek out all kinds of means to raise money.
Sons of Abraham focusses on all the different ways acquire funds from raising taxes, to borrowing money from various religious groups.
The crux here is that this opens up different paths to take. For instance: you can have Jewish lenders send some cash your way, only to expel them from your fiefdom in order to default on your debts.
Again, this reflects the way some countries handle these types of situations during our own Middle Ages.
Aside from these money-driven novelties, Sons of Abraham also offers a hands-on with several historic religious struggles. Aside from your lords, you’re also managing bishops and the associating religious strife. Yes, you can chose to follow the path towards modern Christianity if you want, and the same goes for the Islam and Judaism, but you can also chose to lead a heresy – a less accepted doctrine with fewer followers – and try to get that religion widely accepted. Take the Cathar for instance, a Catholic heresy that accepted women as their priests and bishops, if they win the religious power struggle, their doctrine actually overtakes Christianity as the main doctrine.
Next there are holy orders like the Templars. More often than not, they act as a military force, doubling as financial support. The more powerful they grow, though, the more lands they will start to covet, forcing you to either get rid of them or give up parts of your domain.
If you’ve read all of the above, it should be abundantly clear that there’s plenty of new content to go around. But there’s more, like hundreds of events and the addition of pilgrimages which will give your lords some nice bonuses.
It has to be said though, that Sons of Abraham feels substantially less important to Crusader Kings II that some of the previous expansions did, mainly because most of the changes are only visible through interactions between characters.
There’s also the case of an already cluttered interface gaining even more choices to wade through.
But when all is said and done, I must admit that Sons of Abraham is the expansion I had the most fun with, if only because of the extra layers of strategy and the struggling that comes with them.
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