This one is really interesting in how its set up, though many mechanics are kind of opaque (in particular, it's not made clear that you can create new trade goods, nor that if you deliver enough to ports without them (in most cases) they will start carrying that good too.) However, it is still very good despite occasional opacity.

This is the odd one of the tradewinds series, in that it's about land trade, and trading for money isn't actually that effective generally without extensive time investment, and pack animals and soldiers are disconnected entirely and have interesting behaviors and tradeoffs. However, while this does make sandbox play kind of dull, it adds significantly to the story mode, so it balances out.

Genuinely pretty solid, and unlike the previous game, ship combat is actually viable late game meaning fights aren't just about spamming superweapons to get them over with. The quests are often interesting too.

Way more developed than the original, though often the quests do become samey. It's generally okay, though the endgame quickly becomes about selling enough contraband to finance your tiki bomb consumption.

It's pretty basic, but it's very obvious how this spawned a franchise.

It's hard to believe we lived without bannerlord, or that there was a time this was considered vaporware, but this is an excellent game.

It's janky and it's certainly a weird choice to adapt a polish book series as a video game using the mount and blade mechanics, but early modern period Eastern Europe (or indeed, the early modern period in general) doesn't get a lot of love in video games, so I'll take it.

It looks primitive compared to bannerlord, but this was, at the time, very good.

A decent start, but immediately outdone by every one of the sequels.

The writing is all over the place, but it's charming in a "all of these people are awful in their own way" way. The gameplay itself is the issue, where the game has fifty good ideas and then tries to do all of them at once, and also has a party member who renders some of those very ideas redundant anyway, leading to the game switching frequently between states of "you are effectively invincible" and "any mistake will kill you".

I hate this game, and I hate how far its influence stretches. It's really not that good. It's creative and all but it isn't actually good. (In principle I should rate it 1.5 stars but also I personally dislike the legacy it left and the masterpiece status it carries.)

I don't think it's that great, it's nice looking and all but it's also kind of dull and grindy. Maybe it gets better later or I'm just playing it wrong, but there's not much enjoyment there.

It's better than the first one, in particular the relic system being able to prolong your reign is fun. The core puzzle feels solveable also, unlike the first game where it was very much a "how was i supposed to figure that all out start to finish"

It's an improvement over the original reigns but it is often frustrating trying over and over waiting for necessary event cards to spawn.

The core puzzle of the game is extremely obtuse and that undermines much of the experience. Nonetheless, it can be fun to try to optimize an individual king.