>"The sprawling CK3 is our Best Strategy of 2020. We'll be updating our GOTY 2020 hub with new awards and personal picks throughout December.Fraser Brown: Crusader Kings III is this year's best strategy game, but it's also one of the greatest RPGs and sandboxy sims around as well. On the surface, it's not much of a departure from its predecessor, but this is a game with astounding ambition that couldn't have happened without eight years of Crusader Kings II. It refines and reconfigures so much that, while at a glance it's familiar, it's far from a [repeat.It](http://repeat.It) 's been made knowing that the audience for this sort of thing is surprisingly large and broad, something Paradox probably wasn't that sure of last time, and that means it's also the studio's most accessible grand strategy behemoth. It remains endlessly complex, but the abundance of nested tooltips and all the different ways it guides you, subtly and overtly, makes it a lot more palatable, even if it's still a bit on the intimidating side. Let it get its hooks in you and you'll have something that will keep you engaged for the foreseeable future. If you fancy a quiet life managing some small holdings in West Africa, you can take that break, or you take some Vikings to Asia, start a generations-spanning war and establish a controversial new religion where you eat people. Whether you dream big or small, it's really about the members of your court. Jealous knights, torture-obsessed spouses, kids who keep getting lost in the woods and eaten by bears—you'll have to keep your eye on them all. They're maddening and wonderful and I'm really sorry I keep assassinating them."