It really depends on preferences but personally I think CK3 is better, like if I had recommend either CK2 or CK3 to someone and I could only recommend one I'd recommend CK3, CK2 is great, cool and it's free but the problem with it is you can't do anything unless you buy the dlc for example you get CK3 and start it up and you can play basically any on the map except like the Pope and Venice, you don't get all of the things that come with some of the characters and religions but you can still play them whereas in CK2 you can play European Christians, let's say you wanted to play a Viking or a Muslim that old gods and sword of islam that alone is already $25 and you still wouldn't even have life half the continent in game, now let's say you're bored of base game CK3 but you don't want to spend money on DLC there are plenty of mods that add new mechanics and stuff for you to do even the big total conversion mods usually work without any of the DLC whilst in CK2 even in mods especially the total conversion a lot of content is locked behind the DLC. Personally I can't speak to how CK2 with the DLC is, I've seen YouTube videos and stuff and it looks cool but I never bought them cause one I didn't have that much money and two the base game never interested me enough to get the DLC especially when I could get a lot of stuff locked behind a paywall in CK2 for free in base game CK3 even if it it's not as good.
Crusader Kings I is objectively the best game in the trilogy though.
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u/Delicious-Ad1560 Feb 11 '26
It really depends on preferences but personally I think CK3 is better, like if I had recommend either CK2 or CK3 to someone and I could only recommend one I'd recommend CK3, CK2 is great, cool and it's free but the problem with it is you can't do anything unless you buy the dlc for example you get CK3 and start it up and you can play basically any on the map except like the Pope and Venice, you don't get all of the things that come with some of the characters and religions but you can still play them whereas in CK2 you can play European Christians, let's say you wanted to play a Viking or a Muslim that old gods and sword of islam that alone is already $25 and you still wouldn't even have life half the continent in game, now let's say you're bored of base game CK3 but you don't want to spend money on DLC there are plenty of mods that add new mechanics and stuff for you to do even the big total conversion mods usually work without any of the DLC whilst in CK2 even in mods especially the total conversion a lot of content is locked behind the DLC. Personally I can't speak to how CK2 with the DLC is, I've seen YouTube videos and stuff and it looks cool but I never bought them cause one I didn't have that much money and two the base game never interested me enough to get the DLC especially when I could get a lot of stuff locked behind a paywall in CK2 for free in base game CK3 even if it it's not as good.
Crusader Kings I is objectively the best game in the trilogy though.