Yes, in my opinion. The game is great for what it is. I can’t comment much if multiplayer is your thing, but for me, the vanilla singleplayer experience was overall better than the old games.

There is much more to do given the questing system, making early- and mid-game far more fun. Cruising around as a smallish warband, taking on whatever work you find, becoming a mercenary or a small lord, protecting villages and doing quests, all really felt like what the game was meant for.

Late-game, giant battles are always tons of fun, and sieges generally work better than in the old games, amazingly enough, and have more options for stuff to bring to the field with siege weapons. Siege weapons are bullshit, but with some practice, they can be your bullshit as easily as the enemy’s. I have far less trouble getting my troops to actually use the siege equipment than I did in previous games, no more aimless milling around at the base of two stupid ladders propped up against the wall or having your entire army cluster at the base of a siege tower until they’re all shot to death.

The enemy AI is generally much smarter and more capable of using field tactics, but to counter this, there is now the glorious F6 button to turn on the AI for your own team as well, letting you rampage around like a homicidal maniac while your squad leaders do all the thinking. Important to remember, where you go DOES matter; the AI is watching you always, and makes its squad decisions based on what it’s commander does! It’s pretty neat!

Not that there aren’t problems, but they’re no more major than in previous games. Most of them happen in sieges, shockingly, such as aimless milling about on top of the ladders instead of at the base (slight improvement). There’s a weird squad mechanic that lets you distribute your troops before every battle that seems to almost work, but using F6 will reshuffle all the squads and make your own commands kind of useless sometimes. You have to learn to work WITH the AI, as they can do some pretty stupid crap, such as hold all of the archers and infantry and reserve while waiting for you and ten other horse archers to drive a hundred and fifty spearmen into them as if you’re a freaking cattle herder and not a half-dead king with a glaive and an empty quiver

Get a long glaive, by the way, that alone practically makes the game worthwhile.

The biggest issue with the game is probably the pacing. The clan system is cool, but on most of my playthroughs, by the time my heir has come of age and is ready to do so much as join me in battle, the war is effectively over. The game is, overall, seems more focused on keeping you moving from combat to combat to combat, which is fun and engaging, but also can end the game fairly quickly when you run out of enemies to fight. Moving nobles around and trying to play the charm game can get tedious pretty quickly, and late game, there isn’t much to do other than chase down tiny bands of stray enemy nobles and crush the occasional rebellion.

Overall, I would definitely say worth it. You’ll get your money’s worth of entertainment out of it and it goes to support the company. The game is a triumph of design on many levels, it’s a real shame that they had to rush so much of the final product and botched the release.