Crusader Kings III: Coronations Review

Crusader Kings III: Coronations is the newest event pack from Paradox for the grand strategy game, promising to add a mechanic from its predecessor. DLC for the Crusader Kings franchise is a well-known mixed bag, and it should be noted that multiple people had massive issues with Crusader Kings III: Coronations from launch, with the reviews on Steam being categorised as “Very Negative” at the time of writing this, due to a bug that won’t even allow the event to actually work. It got so bad that a QA manager for the game released an apology letter, stating that “'Coronations ’ was not up to the standard you deserve, and that’s on me”, and “you have every right to be upset, and I want to acknowledge that openly.”

Personally, as of the 11th of September, I got the pack to play in-game without any major bugs. That said, I did want to point out that my lukewarm experience does not seem to be the vast majority of players’ at this time.

Coronations in Crusader Kings III count as an activity, one that can be either attended or held, depending on your campaign. To host one of your own, you must be uncrowned, meaning that just because you started a fresh campaign, you don’t automatically get to have one. If you’re an Empire rank title, you can instead have an anointment ceremony.

Planning a coronation provides two activity options: Ceremony and Celebrations. The more money you spend on these, the better outcomes you’ll get, and the higher your starting level will be for your coronation. There are five different levels of results for this particular event, following the foundation of all other events in-game. These are: Meager, Modest, Respectable, Grand, and Resplendent. Hopping up these levels increases legitimacy, prestige activity, prestige oath rewards, and guest opinion.

You’ll also be given a list of intents, basically your overall goal, for your coronation or someone else’s, if you’re just attending as a guest. As a ruler, your options for this will be to Impress Attendees, Embrace Supporters, Weaken Detractors, and Exalt the Crown. They all do what they say on the tin: increasing cultural acceptance, increasing prestige, weakening certain vassals, and making you friends with other rulers. You’ll also get to pick who will officiate the ceremony, having the choice to tell everyone else to leave you alone and do it yourself. I mean, who is going to stop you? The Pope?

Once the activity is in swing, you’ll go through five activity phases: Planning, Prelude, Ceremony, Feast, and Conclusion. It’s extremely similar to the wedding event in feel and tone.

One of the newest features is major supporters and major detractors. These are vassals or peers who can either side with your being proclaimed the next monarch or try to weaken your power. Depending on their side, they’ll put in a valiant effort to ruin or improve the result of your coronation. Depending on how the cards fall, you even have the option to duel your annoying detractors to the death — or, if you really want, you could be the bigger person and make them love you. Eh.

As the person being crowned, you’ll go through these activities and interact with other characters, with other characters, gaining boons (or drawbacks) based on your focus and traits. My wife actually gave me a sword that didn’t suck! Amazing! I also got to hang out with Haraldr Hardrada (who isn’t dead from the Battle of Hastings), his horse, and King William of England.

At the end of the ceremony, you’ll be given the ability to make an oath to your people, with twelve options, one of them being to take no oath at all. These provide a new goal for you to complete in a specific time frame, like the promise to strengthen my house, which means I must have seven legitimate children in 30 years.

After the actual coronation, which includes nothing of note other than being crowned and the aforementioned oath, you’ll attend a feast. This, to me, was a literal copy and paste from every feast activity in the game; you see murder get murdered, you possibly murder someone, you make a friend, you spend too much on wine.

Is it worth it? Well, the pack is only 4.99 USD [£4.29]. While that’s not steep in the world of videogames, the pack doesn’t add all that much and is really just a rehashing of old mechanics. It’s nothing revolutionary, specifically when you add in its terrible release and Paradox’s response to it. I’d personally recommend holding off until a sale happens and, just maybe, a couple more patches.