So, I've played for two and half hour yesterday mostly just checking countries and stuff for the first hour and then moving on to Florence. Surprisingly zero crashes. On my laptop with 16GB and CPU slightly below minimal requirements the performance was acceptable. I've progressed 18 years changing between speed 4 and 5 and pausing A LOT to check out different things.
Fought in two wars, one scripted(?) against Verona, one against some Tuscan minors to consolidate region. In both my side had a significant advantage so I can't comment much on the new warfare. One thing I've noticed was that enemy's stack hiding from bigger armies in the middle of bumfuck nowhere got completely decimated by lack of food. This hopefully means that there won't be any chasing of the shitty AI stacks running around your territory.
Might be a Dunning-Kruger effect but the mechanics don’t seem that complicated compared to the impression I got from reading through Tinto Talks (admittedly I’ve automated trade and production methods). I have no idea about the best meta and what outcomes should I go for but I can understand what mechanics cause certain things and how can I affect the outcomes. I like return to sliders and it seems that you may have significantly different gameplay depending on how you approach them.
Content wise, as Florence, I got a few events, the most significant of which led to war with Verona and PU with Epirus. Of course, it’s too early to tell but there is comparable amount of content for other regions, I think it will be fine. The new situation and international organisation mechanics also seem interesting. For Italy there is Guelphs and Ghibellines, I think you can also take sides in 100 years war but I stayed away from that one. From what little I saw, situations and organisation will be a good way to provide some goals for player outside of just painting map without railroading you like the EUIV missions did which, if I’m right, would be a huge plus.
Interface. Yeah, it’s ugly. 3d characters are pointless waste of space (I do like the role characters play in the game though, it’s nowhere near CK3 level, but they do affect estates. It’s a bit like they do with parties in Vic3, which is neat for EU game). But I can completely disconnect from that. I’m a type of person who could play a single character in CK from infancy to old age for hours and couldn’t tell what he looks like after turning off the game. The bigger problem is the functionality of the interface. I don’t think it's only a matter of getting used to it. It’s inconsistent in its design there are different looking tabs, buttons, icons. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether some UI element even is a button. This makes looking for specific things take much longer than necessary. I wouldn’t be surprised if I missed the existence of some menus completely.
Overall, though, all I can say is that I can’t wait to go back home to play more tonight. I’m more excited now than I was yesterday before starting game for the first time. These are very early impressions so I’ll reserve my judgement until I get to play it more over the weekend but I’m optimistic. So far I would put it above any current PDX launch. It’s much better than CK3’s launch (which despite the disappointment it turned out to be, its original release seemed like a solid base to build on). Back then I could point out tones of mechanics missing from CK2. Can’t really do that with EU4. Majority of content that got lost comes from mission trees and country specific mechanics introduced in the later dlcs. If the mechanics of EU5 work the way they are intended helping to generate narrative, that loss should not be that much noticeable.
