It was good. Until the most recent DLC. Legitmacy and plagues have ruined the game; And you can barely do anything about them unless you buy the DLC. They're extorting players with mechanics that can only be fought with DLC. They did the same thing with CS1.

Edit after more playtime: Plagues suck. I hate this update. I had every protection yet I died, the following heir died soonafter, now the 11 year old is in charge and two generations of dislike have stacked to a point of the entire empire collapsing. All due to a low level plague.

The constant stream of popups is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ obnoxious. Despite setting plagues to occur as rarely as possible, they are ALWAYS popping up. You would think I had the setting on maximum plagues. And how many times do I have to click "are there no sick houses available?" Then I take the stress gain because otherwise I'm losing 450 gold every thirty seconds because that is LITERALLY how often that ♥♥♥♥ pops up. Something needs to be fixed because I can't make any progress in an acceptable amount of time with how often I get game pausing popups. ♥♥♥♥ is wack. Frfr. Fix yo ♥♥♥♥.

Really disappointing . Ck2 Vanilla was twice as good. Even with older graphics and wonky AI. The DLCs add very little mechanics . They mostly more story telling that doesn't Impact the games over all history. You would think the basic mechanics that we had and leaned in CK2 would be in the game they are not. No Hordes no Playable republics , balance when it comes to battles.
Tribes are left out in cold due to the fact that Pope can commission the Holy Knights Templar at 867 for free . When they were really formed around 1100 AD in Jerusalem NOT in Italy or France. Tribes don't have Heavy Infrany yet or Heavy Calvary. Big Boners on PDXs part.

Then when people make suggestions that are historical PDXs dev. responded in "O trade is not Historical . Realms didn't really trade during any part of the Middle ages" -Actual quote from a PDX DEV.
I could not lay down CK2
CK3 I let sit for over a year after purchase and then had to mod it myself to make more playable.
I cant recommend this . As the DLCs offer nothing I cant see recomand this in the fur-true.
CK3 and Imperitor were just a cash crab for PDX

CK2 but with less content

My family tree looks more like a christmas wreath.

The game is also fun.

Maybe wait six to eight years and buy the game bundled with all the dlc they have ever released

incest funny

This game was kinda fun, but a little clunky, now it's near unplayable.
I get plagues every few years that kills all of my dynasty members and locks me up in my capital, disabling my ability to do anything.

Then i have entrenched regent mechanic that's broken and drains my prestige into the negative because the bugged out AI, that's in the -1000 or more, keeps spamming the sway power button endlessly. Can't even counter it because it takes two years to be allowed to press the button to counter them, yet they'll counter it in a few months and drive you both into prestige debt.

How did they manage to mess up this badly?

Despite taking the counter measures to survive and stop plagues, I'm still getting them every few years? Everyone dies quicker than I can replace them. It isn't even on high plague frequency.

Can't they make a single DLC that doesn't break the base game?

Can't recommend this game until they actual fix it.

Average county gameplay:
1. Win a war against a weaker county
2. Liege demands you surrender him the territory you just got
3. nuh uh
4. get your army massacred because your liege married the half-sister of the cousin of a random king on the other side of the world who shows up with his 5 billion soldiers
5. get imprisoned and lose the county you just got
6. be released and repeat from step 1

If you know, you know <nod> .