Let’s say you’re making a game about the Renaissance. Not merely a slice of it. Not patronage of the arts, the rise of science, Florentine or Venetian city councils, Reformation and Counter-Reformation, trade routes and the tension between East and West, or the exploration of the New World. I mean all of it. The entire thing. The whole loaded ball of wax. Where do you start? Where do you finish? Perhaps most importantly, who are you, the player?

Pax Renaissance is a game with aspirations no less grand than capturing the entire ideological struggle of the Renaissance, the churn of ideas about religion, state, art, science, law, and every other little thing that produced Western culture as we now see it. Which isn’t actually all that surprising, given its pedigree. Both Pax Porfiriana and Pax Pamir were ambitious games as well, functioning as statements and simulations and playthings with equal mettle. This is the broadest topic yet for the Pax series, however, and it wouldn’t be hard to imagine the entire thing going up in flames as surely as Girolamo Savonarola’s attempt at governing Florence.

And yet, while Pax Renaissance is forced to make a few compromises in service of its gameplay, the final result is nothing short of a triumph.

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