Knights and Merchants
Worth it · Strategy · 2013
The verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $9.99.
- Length
- 40h
- Value
- $0.25/hr
- Reviews
- 85% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 512 MB of memory, 3D graphics card with DirectX 9.0c support, 502 MB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
KNIGHTS and MERCHANTS recreates the era of the Middle Ages. Apart from the purely fictitious geography of our world, all game elements and scenes are based on the Anglo-Saxon period, 1200 A.D. And we haven't used imaginary elements like fabled creatures, either. The player takes on the role of an ordinary captain in the Palace Guard.
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
The lowest price on record is $0.83, set in December 2015. Its cuts run 50 percent off as a rule. There have been 111 in the 13 years tracked, about 5 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 2 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 5 weeks.
On value it sits in the top 3 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 69 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 88 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Kingdoms Reborn ($19.99, scores 73) beats it on value, while it beats Anno 1404 - History Edition ($4.49, scores 64).
Of the 434 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 1 comes from a buyer who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written April 2020 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 74 percent of the 524 reviews written there were positive, against 85 percent overall, and those are 19 percent of everything written about it.
Players
47 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
I played a demo version a very long time ago - about 20 years? - and finally got a chance to play again. It's an old-school RTS with awesome graphics and good AI, featuring different scenarios and scripts. Most of the time you need to build the city, gather an army, and push. The game makes you think, especially when the PC has better starting positions or a stronger economy at the start or during a mission (classic...
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.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic), achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
Embed the live badge, copy the line, or download the card.
Knights and Merchants scores 71/100 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/253900/knights-and-merchantsThe 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 Aug 1, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.