EDIT: Now that this game is free I can change my review to positive. Overall my criticisms stand, but I can definitely say it's worth the price of admission now. I'm leaving my old review up for posterity.

I'm finding it difficult to give a positive or negative on this game. I thoroughly enjoy it and have quite a few more hours than my play time indicates due to playing offline for a good bit of time, but I've become upset at the way some aspects of the game are handled. Mainly I strongly dislike the DLC strategy that Paradox seems to have here. I've had games ended, more than once I might add, my my ruler converting to a religion I don't own the DLC for. There are entire swaths of the map unplayable without DLC. In fact, I think there's more DLC content than base content. I want to give a thumbs up due to how fun that base content is, but considering Sword of Islam and The Old Gods are essentially required to enjoy the game it's a hard decision. My review becomes a thumb down purely because of other bugs I've come across in the multiplayer as that tipped the scales just enough to be a negative review.

EDIT: Now that this game is free I can change my review to positive. Overall my criticisms stand, but I can definitely say it's worth the price of admission now. I'm leaving my old review up for posterity. I'm finding it difficult to give a positive or negative on this game. I thoroughly enjoy it and have quite a few more hours than my play time indicates due to playing offline for a good bit of time, but I've become upset at the way some aspects of the game are handled. Mainly I strongly dislike the DLC strategy that Paradox seems to have here. I've had games ended, more than once I might add, my my ruler converting to a religion I don't own the DLC for. There are entire swaths of the map unplayable without DLC. In fact, I think there's more DLC content than base content. I want to give a thumbs up due to how fun that base content is, but considering Sword of Islam and The Old Gods are essentially required to enjoy the game it's a hard decision. My review becomes a thumb down purely because of other bugs I've come across in the multiplayer as that tipped the scales just enough to be a negative review.