I'll just say up front that -- much like The Pegasus Expedition -- my experience with the
Great Houses of Calderia demo was mixed, albeit for different reasons.
To begin with, this demo didn't have the ability to save your progress, which will always earn major demerits from me. I don't care how good or bad a demo is otherwise, if I can't save, you're getting docked for it.
With that having been mentioned, a word or two should be said about the game-world, and how it's represented via the map. The short version is that it looks very good; the artists have definitely earned their pay at every step. Parts of the map look a bit odd when zooming in/out, but I'm chalking that up to it being a demo.
Other comments on art & visuals/graphics: There's no question that Calderia is quite literally a low-fantasy version of Renaissance Italy, just with different geography (which seems appropriate enough). The map alone makes that clear, even going so far as to display a few Roman-style aqueducts scattered about the land. The character portraits and background artwork add to the Italian feel, however, as does the music.
Speaking of... The music is pleasant, though unremarkable. (It's also way too quiet at the moment, though I imagine that can be addressed easily enough later on.) My hope is that more pieces will be added to the soundtrack as the game is further developed.
Moving onto the gameplay: Make no bones about it, Calderia openly lifts a lot of elements from the Crusader Kings series. You start the game with your "home" fiefdom, which is ruled by your family. Your goal is to climb Calderia's social & political ladder, and build up your power-base -- though what your ultimate goal is supposed to be is not made clear, at least not in the demo. (Claiming and eventually seizing the throne of Calderia would be an obvious guess, but that's merely speculation on my part.) You interact with the other families of Calderia, negotiating various deals, diplomatic marriages, etc. You also must spend time managing your own family and lands, which -- not surprisingly -- can be even trickier than dealing with other Houses. Again, this will all be very familiar to pretty much anyone who's played any of the CK games.
What Calderia does a little differently, however, is that it has "social conflicts", which seem to have a greater emphasis over war & battles, although the latter is still in the game as well. Social conflicts can arise when a diplomatic negotiation isn't going smoothly. (At least I think? Honestly, this part seems inconsistent, and I haven't been able to figure out what does and does not trigger them. Social conflicts seem to happen entirely at the whims of the game, rather than at the instigation of the player. It's a bit frustrating.)
These Social Conflicts play out a little bit like real-time small-scale chess games (mini-speed-chess?), wherein your House leader and select "Companions" engage in "battle" against the other House leader and their Companions for certain goals -- paying 10% less than the asking price, acquiring 20% more than the amount of goods originally sought, etc. Most Social Conflicts have multiple goals, meaning that your House can achieve at least partial victory by successfully "winning" at least one of the goals, even if they lose the other goal(s) that were on the table. It's also worth noting that Companions are good against a specific other type of Companion (Military, Economy, Intrigue, Diplomacy) while weak against another; this makes for a bit of paper-rock-scissors gameplay in Social Conflicts, which I've yet to decide how much I like it (or not).
Either way, though, Social Conflicts make for a genuinely interesting mechanic -- perhaps a slightly gamey one, but still pretty cool nonetheless. i suspect this could end up becoming as much a way for gaining power and taking over Calderia than even military means; and if so, I admit I would not be unhappy at the prospect.
Just a couple other thoughts/observations for now:
- Fiefdom management seem a bit bland at the moment. You can place family members in charge of specific aspects (food production, defenses/taxes, etc.), but at the moment it doesn't feel very interactive. That could just be related to the fact that you can only play the demo for 12 months of game-time, however; it's very possibly not long enough for your relatives to truly begin developing "personalities" of their own. Either way, it feels like there could/should be more done with this aspect of the game.
- It's probably just because it's a demo (and therefore buggy), but tooltips were rather wonky: Placing the mouse cursor over something frequently brought up the tooltip for the item *next* to what I wanted more info on; multiple attempts were often required. On the flip side, I'm glad to see the game making widespread use of tooltips as a whole.
