The reviews made me think this was much closer to Total War that it actually is. It's most likely a good game for those who enjoy a slightly shallower yet familiar experience to Paradox titles, but it absolutely won't satisfy anyone looking for a kind of total war replacement for those of us who feel like CA have abandoned what made them great.

It's more 98% Paradox 2% Total War

Many years ago, I played the first Knights of Honor game. I liked it and recommended it as a good entry point into grand strategy games – a Crusader Kings lite.

I don't feel that Knights of Honor II Sovereign is any great improvement over the first title. It is slightly more complicated and less well explained, which increases the initial challenge. However, once the somewhat revised system is learned, a crushingly powerful strategy can be developed, just like the first game, so that all that remains is to accelerate time to the inevitable.

The hard limit to the number of knights remains, and the need to use up slots to field a steadily increasing number of knight-generals means trade, diplomacy, and espionage still become increasingly ignored if you want to significantly expand.

Time is still deranged. Example: the first king's brother, made a knight-general, was still alive and an “adult” 4 generations after his brother and 3 more successor kings had all died of old age. Theoretically, one could play the same game for several real months and time will never be up.

This supports my recommendation that this title and its predecessor are good entry-level grand strategy games. However, there is nothing substantively new here for players of the first game, so I don't recommend it for players who are well familiar with the first title.

VERSION 1: This is a vampire simulator. While your King dies with alarming frequency (and even sometimes due to old age), your advisers only die when (ostensibly) assassinated. Likely with a stake through the hear. How long do they live otherwise? Who knows, I haven't noticed a date aside from one of the three starting dates.

VERSION 2: This is an improved remake of the original _Knights of Honour_, a game I played about a half a century ago. If you never played the original, If you've never played it before, it is a bit like _Europa Universalis_ in that you have a royal line. Marrying out your children is a key part of the game, and it also reflects the unfortunate chattel-like status of daughters. Unlike the original version, you can select the maximum number of buildings/improvements slots per territory. I think of this as an improvement, though it likely alters the impetus for expansion given you no longer need as many territories to build all the possible (standard) buildings/improvements. Honestly, the rest of the game seems like the old game with better graphics.