Underneath the GPU-friendly visuals, the game is essentially unchanged. Choose a country, set yourself a goal and see how you get on through 300 years of history. The beauty of it is that the game doesn’t place any restrictions upon your ambitions (or lack thereof).
As ever, the combat could hardly be termed exciting, but the challenge is more about maintaining your military and making sure the populace is behind you. Yes, you are expected to behave in certain ways to other nations, but the game allows you to be cunning, or as cunning as you can be against computer AI.
With the overbearing Catholic faith adding another layer to the grand strategy, and other countries reacting to events as they emerge (rather than as part of what was, in previous outings, a jarring historical script), the game makes for an authentic Machiavellian experience.
