Crusader Kings II
Worth it · RPG · 2012
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
PLAY IT.
Worth it at free.
- Length
- 66.6h
- Price
- Free to play
- Reviews
- 91% positive
Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 or ATI Radeon X1900, 512mb graphics memory required., 2 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
Explore one of the defining periods in world history in an experience crafted by the masters of Grand Strategy.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
Value puts it in the top 1 percent of the games it competes with. It is better reviewed than 94 percent of its genre. Among the games that feel like it, Victoria II ($19.99, scores 87) beats it on value, while it beats Crusader Kings III ($49.99, scores 79).
Critics scored it 82. Players sit 9 points higher at 91 percent, which usually means a game that plays better than it reviews.
Steam's global achievement data says about 1 percent of players ever finish it. On a 66.6-hour game, that is a lot of evenings most people never spend. Inside the two-hour refund window, 55 percent of the 911 reviews written there were positive, against 91 percent overall, and those are 3 percent of everything written about it.
66.6 hours to finish it, 464 to exhaust it. The completionist tail is 7.0 times the campaign.
It came out 14 years ago and 1.4K were still playing it at the last check.
It is still busy. 1.4K players were in it at once at the last check, across 81 days of tracking.
The drop-off
15% start to 1% finishMost players never reach the end. On a 66.6-hour game, that's a lot of time most people never put in. Steam global achievements
Players
1,373 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
**130+ hours in, and I still find myself coming back to Crusader Kings II.** What I love most about CK2 is its incredible historical essence. As someone who's a huge history nerd, there's something genuinely fascinating about being able to play as historical characters I've read about in books and then completely change the course of their lives-and sometimes the fate of entire empires. You can start as a relatively...
One of a kind strategy game. Don't be put off by the many DLCs, if you are new, just try the base game. And only ever buy DLCs on the frequent discounts.
> Be 16 y.o. left-handed, prodigal tribal chief that's also good with women > We take no prisoners > As in, we just free them outright except if they can be ransomed for gold > Expanding here and there > Found High Chiefdom of Saxony > Eventually Grand Chiefdom of Saxony with all of its titular > The chiefdom prospers > all is well > until I found out my wife doesn't really want to spend time with me anymore > found...
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
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Crusader Kings II scores 81/100 on the BANG Score (worth it). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/203770/crusader-kings-iiThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 11.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.