Playing Crusader Kings 3 on console: a bit unwieldy but it works

I’m trying to unite Ireland. It’s 1066. Harold is about to get shot in the eye over in England – I know that because of – so I’ve snuck in early and befriended him, and arranged for my daughter to marry one of his sons when she comes of age. Icky, I know, but when the French later decide to help my Irish neighbour in a war against me, and turn up in their thousands, I’m able to call on the English to fight them off. Step by step, I’m getting there.

Crusader Kings 3 consoleDeveloper: Paradox, ported by Lab42Publisher: ParadoxPlatform: Played on PS5Availability: Releases today – 29th March – on PS5 and Xbox Series S/X. Available on Game Pass. Out on PC since September 2020

This is Crusader Kings 3, and I’ve wanted to play Crusader Kings 3 for a long time. I’ve tried playing on PC before but bounced off it. Why it’s taken until the console release to try again, I don’t know, but here I am. And now the question is whether, on console, it works. The answer? Sort of.

It’s a port with adaptation; it’s not a complete rethink for consoles. The game you might already know has been squeezed onto a gamepad and slightly enlarged for TV, and though it never quite feels natural, it works well enough to play.

You can, for instance, activate a cursor by clicking-in the left stick and using it to hover over tooltips for additional information, but it’s awkward and slow. It’s clearly a PC thing shoehorned onto consoles rather than being properly rethought.

But there are now radial menus which appear with sustained left or right trigger pulls, and bring up various map overlays or character skill trees and things like that – non-essential menus, I’d say. And then quicker trigger-pulls cycle you through more commonly used menus at the top of the screen, with bumper presses taking you through menus within them. There are a lot of menus as you can see. Really, this a game about menus. And while everything has been made pad-accessible, sometimes it’s a bit fiddly getting there.