Knights of Honor wows you with its scale. In your quest to become the supreme ruler of the Old World, you have to take on diplomatic relations with other kingdoms, create and maintain a healthy economy with the ever-looming possibility of inflation, train and command a strong army to protect your lands, and, if you wish, to conquer others. You'll delegate your authority through a royal court, which can include merchants, clerics, marshals, and spies; you'll inspire your people and keep the morale of your kingdom high, quelling rebellion should it rear its treacherous head; and you lead your soldiers on the field of battle, siege castles and plunder towns.

A pausable, plausible real-time sim, Knights of Honor gives you the choice of playing a quick battle, in which you control squads of soldiers in a fairly standard real-time strategy setting, or the campaign, which is infinitely more satisfying. The latter thrusts you into the britches of a custodian of a kingdom in early, high or late Middle Ages. The territories on the map depend upon the period you elect to play, but it covers Europe from Munster in the west, to Georgia in the east, from Norway in the north to Algeria in the south.

A simulated battle.

You're offered three difficulty settings, but be warned: even on "easy" the game is devilishly tricky. In fact, that brings up my biggest complaint: the learning curve is one hell of an incline to scale. While the manual is fairly explanatory, it's not well organized, and a tutorial goes over some of the more common tasks but doesn't walk you through a sample game. It'll take a lot of experimental play, and many trips to the online library (accessible from within the game) before you really feel like you know what you're doing.

You can choose how you wish to win; for example, you can attempt to conquer Europe through diplomacy, by military might, by becoming the most technologically advanced kingdom, or, most likely, through a balance of several elements. You control a royal dynasty comprised of a king figure, a queen, and several children. The male royals, or other promoted officials, can become your knights. You can have up to nine knights in your court, and they can serve different purposes: marshals lead your armies, merchants trade with other kingdoms in an attempt to secure gold or resources, clerics can convert provinces that you have conquered, and so on. You can even recruit spies, which can infiltrate the royal courts of enemy nations and steal gold, sabotage trade, or assassinate members of the royal family. Of course, the possibility always exists that one of your own royal knights is a spy for an enemy nation...