Let me start this review by saying that if you’re a fan of the Cities & Knights expansion for the tabletop version of Catan, this DLC for Catan: Console Edition is going to be right up your street.

It does a great job of adapting the expansion to the video game and may even be more enjoyable, given that it keeps track of all the new elements that Cities & Knights layers onto Catan.

Barbarians, Knights, City upgrades and progress; it’s all here and all implemented very well indeed.

Which all sounds and seems really positive, right?

Here’s the thing. As much as I used to enjoy Catan, once upon a time, even the base game feels dated these days.

The things that keep Catan interesting are its simplicity, relative speed of play and its off table trading; much of which is obliterated when you add the Cities & Knights expansion.

Games start to take too long, too many elements are added in, overcomplicating the game without adding any particular depth and there are too many moving parts even when trading and building.

I’m not averse to a complicated game with a long table time, but Cities & Knights adds on numerous complications without the base game becoming more enjoyable or enhanced as a result.

Your turn and your access to resources are still far too subject to the whim of luck, with this meaning that you aren’t able to make plans too far in advance, sometimes being thwarted by nothing more than unlucky roll after unlucky roll of the dice.

The extra, symbol led die adds a further layer of uncertainty to proceedings: will you get something useful on your turn or simply move the barbarians closer to the island?

It’s luck based to an almost impossible-to-enjoy degree and, though the base game of Catan is subject to much the same problem, Cities & Knights can feel interminably long and needlessly complex, therefore becoming much more frustrating as a result.

So it’s a DLC pack that I can’t recommend to more casual players of Catan, or those fans who are unfamiliar with the original tabletop game’s expansion.

If, however, you’re already familiar with Cities & Knights and happen to enjoy it, this DLC is as well produced as you’d expect and will be a good purchase for you.