Quick answer: Yes, and it has aged better than almost anything from its year. Bannerlord has sold more than six million copies, holds a Very Positive 87% on Steam from roughly 297,000 reviews, and TaleWorlds was still shipping patches in August 2026. The average Steam player has put nearly 169 hours into it. One warning though: the War Sails naval expansion is the weak link, sitting at 54% on Steam against the base game's 87%, and it does not run on PS4 or Xbox One at all. Buy the base game, think hard about the DLC.
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
Most writing about Bannerlord is stuck at one of two moments. Either it is from March 2020, when the game entered early access and immediately pulled nearly 250,000 concurrent players on Steam, or it is from October 2022, when version 1.0 landed and the game arrived on consoles for the first time. Both of those reviews describe something rough, promising and unfinished.
Four years on from that 1.0 release, the picture has settled, and it is unusually clear. This is one of the few games from its era that genuinely kept going. It is also a game where the single most recent thing you can buy is the one part we would tell you to be careful with.
Where it stands now
| Measure | Figure | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Metacritic critics | 77, Generally Favorable | 21 reviews. 81% positive, zero negative |
| Metacritic users | 8.0 | 701 ratings, 72% positive. Users and critics broadly agree |
| OpenCritic | 76, rated Strong, 68% recommend | solid rather than spectacular |
| Steam, all reviews | Very Positive, around 87% | roughly 297,000 reviews. A huge, reliable sample |
| Steam, last 30 days | Very Positive, around 89% | it is getting better reviewed, not worse |
| Copies sold | over 6 million | TaleWorlds, November 2025. Excludes Game Pass and PS Plus |
| Concurrent players | roughly 15,000 to 30,000 | four years after 1.0. Still a busy game |
That sales line is worth pausing on. TaleWorlds reported three million copies in June 2022, five million in March 2025, and passed six million by the time the expansion launched in November 2025. The game was still selling a million copies a year, three years after release, and none of those numbers include people who played it free through Xbox Game Pass or the PlayStation Plus Extra catalogue.
Compare that to how most of the 2022 class has fared. Our Battlefield 2042 review covers a game that was repaired just as thoroughly and still lost its audience, which makes the contrast here fairly stark.
The War Sails problem
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
War Sails is Bannerlord's first and so far only paid expansion. It was announced on 20 March 2025 for a 17 June release, delayed in late May because TaleWorlds said it would not be ready, and finally arrived on 26 November 2025 at $24.99.
On paper it is substantial. Naval traversal and combat for the first time in Bannerlord, around eighteen to twenty customisable ships you can fit with rams, sails and siege engines, a reworked overland map with a northern sea, rivers and islands, three new seafaring skills, mariner troop trees, new companions with maritime backgrounds, and an entirely new Nordic faction called the Kingdom of Nordvyg with its own culture, items and character creation options. There is a dedicated story questline too.
Critics were reasonably warm. Metacritic put it at 75 from six reviews and OpenCritic at 73, rated Fair, with 70% recommending.
Steam users were not. The expansion sits at Mixed, around 54% positive from roughly 2,500 reviews, and the recent thirty day window has been Mostly Negative at around 31%. That is a wide gap between the critical verdict and the people actually living with it, and the direction of travel is downward rather than upward.
War Sails does not run on PS4 or Xbox One. The expansion released only for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S. If you own Bannerlord on a last generation console, there is no version of this DLC you can buy, and there is no indication one is coming. Check your platform before you spend anything.
On that 54% figure. Steam review scores for DLC are structurally harsher than for base games, because only people invested enough to buy an expansion ever leave one, and the sample here is about 2,500 against the base game's 297,000. The recent 31% window rests on fewer than a hundred reviews, which is small enough to swing on a single bad patch. Treat it as a strong signal to wait and read current reviews yourself, not as proof the expansion is broken.
What the free update brought with it
This part matters even if you never buy War Sails. The expansion shipped alongside a major free update to the base game that revamped enemy and party AI, added new random events, and reworked the alliance and trade agreement systems. If you played before November 2025, the strategic layer you remember has changed.
Support has continued well past that. Patches landed through 2026 in May, July and August, and on 10 August 2026 TaleWorlds released the War Sails Modding Kit free to everyone who owns the expansion, letting modders build custom sea maps, new ships from scratch and new coastal settlements. A modding competition with more than 30,000 euros in prizes opened on 14 August 2026 and runs to 22 November, with winners announced in January 2027.
The most interesting thing in the pipeline is in the 1.5.0 beta branch from 19 August 2026: a blood feud system that turns executing a captured lord from a minor reputation hit into a long running grudge held by that lord's entire clan. That is exactly the kind of consequence the game's politics have always been missing.
Two things about that beta. You have to opt in manually through the betas tab in Steam game properties, save files may not carry across, and console versions get these updates later than PC, sometimes by weeks. If you are on PlayStation or Xbox, do not expect a feature the moment you read about it.
What you are actually buying
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
Bannerlord is a medieval sandbox built on six cultures spread across eight warring kingdoms, with no fantasy element anywhere. No elves, no magic, no dragons. You make a character, pick a background that nudges your starting skills without locking you into anything, sit through a thin tutorial and then get released into Calradia with almost no direction.
From there it is genuinely open. Run caravans and arbitrage goods between towns. Take mercenary contracts. Clear bandit camps. Marry into a noble house and inherit your way up. Invest in workshops. Or just rob farmers on the road and live with what that does to your reputation. Skills improve through use in the Skyrim fashion, so swinging a sword makes you better at swinging swords, and perk milestones often benefit your whole party rather than just you.
The combat is the reason people stay. It is directional melee, where slash, thrust and overhead are chosen by how you move the mouse or stick, plus kicks to break balance and shield bashes to open a guard. Crucially, every AI soldier on the field uses the same moveset you do. Nothing is cheating. That means a wall of peasant spearmen can genuinely kill a fully armoured veteran through sheer numbers, and it is why the large battles feel the way they do.
On scale: this game does pre-gunpowder pitched battle better than anything else available, including the crush where bodies are packed so tightly nobody can swing properly. If map scale is something you care about generally, we measured a lot of them in the biggest open world maps, actually measured.
Hours and value
The main storyline runs around 50 hours, and roughly 90 if you work through the side content. Those numbers are close to meaningless here though, because the average Steam player has logged about 169 hours. This is a game people live in rather than finish.
| What you pay | Price | Cost per hour at 169 hours |
|---|---|---|
| Base game, list | $49.99 | $0.30 |
| Base game, typical 50% sale | $24.99 | $0.15 |
| Base game, best observed Steam low | $19.99 | $0.12 |
| Digital Deluxe | $59.99 | $0.35 |
| Seafarer bundle, base plus War Sails | $63.73 | $0.38 |
Even at full list price this is about thirty cents an hour, which is among the best value in the genre. The base game has been discounted on 39 separate occasions and spent roughly 19% of its life on sale, hitting 50% off as recently as early October 2026. It is also on Xbox Game Pass as of December 2025, which makes trying it free if you already subscribe. It was on PlayStation Plus Extra between July 2024 and July 2025, but that window has closed.
What is still wrong
The interface is poor, and worse on a controller. This is a deeply PC-native game with menus built for a mouse, and the console conversion did not solve that. Menu depth, inventory management and the party screens are all more work than they should be. Four years of patches have not fixed the fundamental design.
It explains almost nothing. The tutorial is thin and the game is comfortable letting you flounder. Some people find that liberating. Others bounce off in the first two hours without ever understanding why their party keeps starving.
It is still rough in places. Animation jank, odd pathing and visual oddities persist. The game looks fine rather than good, and it was never a technical showcase.
The campaign has no ending in the usual sense. There is a main questline, but Bannerlord is a sandbox first. If you need authored narrative, this will feel empty. For that, something like The DioField Chronicle sits at the opposite end of the scale.
Download size is substantial. Around 39 GB on PS4 and 46 GB on PS5, before expansion content and updates. On a 25 Mbps connection budget four to five hours.
Buy, wait or skip
| You are | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| New to the series | Buy the base game | 87% from 297,000 reviews is about as safe as a recommendation gets. Wait for one of the frequent 50% sales |
| An Xbox Game Pass subscriber | Install it now | Included since December 2025. No reason not to try it |
| Considering War Sails | Wait and read current reviews | 54% on Steam and trending down. Critics scored it 75. Those two things cannot both be right for you |
| On PS4 or Xbox One | Base game only | War Sails is not available on last generation hardware at all |
| You stopped playing before November 2025 | Come back | The free update reworked AI, diplomacy and trade agreements. The strategic layer is different now |
| Playing on console and wanting the newest features | Temper expectations | Console patches trail PC, and beta branches like the blood feud system are PC only for now |
| You need clear direction and a tidy interface | Skip | This is the one complaint four years of patching never addressed |
Verdict: Bannerlord is the rare game whose 2022 reviews undersold it. Six million copies, a Very Positive 87% across nearly 300,000 reviews, an average playtime of 169 hours and patches still arriving in late 2026 all point the same way. The interface is still bad and the game still refuses to teach you anything, and those are real costs rather than quirks. Buy the base game, ideally in one of its regular half price sales, and treat War Sails as a separate decision to make later once its own reviews settle. At roughly thirty cents an hour this is one of the best value purchases in the genre.
Frequently asked questions
Is Mount and Blade II Bannerlord still worth playing?
Yes. It holds Very Positive at around 87% from roughly 297,000 Steam reviews, recent reviews run about 89% positive, and it was still receiving patches in August 2026. It has sold over six million copies.
Is War Sails worth buying?
Be cautious. Critics scored it 75 on Metacritic, but Steam users have it at around 54% overall and roughly 31% across the last thirty days. It adds naval combat, eighteen to twenty ships, a new Nordic faction and a story questline for $24.99. Read current Steam reviews before deciding.
Can I play War Sails on PS4 or Xbox One?
No. The expansion is PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S only. The base game runs on last generation consoles but the DLC does not.
Is Bannerlord on Game Pass?
Yes, the base game has been on Xbox Game Pass since December 2025. It was also in the PlayStation Plus Extra catalogue from July 2024 to July 2025, but that period has ended.
How long does it take to finish?
Roughly 50 hours for the main storyline and about 90 with side content, but the average Steam player has logged close to 169 hours. It is a sandbox, so there is no real finish line.
Is there any fantasy content?
No. Calradia is a fictional setting modelled on real medieval cultures, with no magic or fantasy races. Mods add plenty of both if you want it.
Is it good on console?
Combat translates well and the controller handles directional attacks better than you would expect. The menus and interface are where it suffers, because the design is PC-native and that did not change in the port.
Is TaleWorlds still updating the game?
Yes. Patches shipped in May, July and August 2026, a free War Sails Modding Kit arrived on 10 August 2026, and a 1.5.0 beta branch adding a blood feud system went live on 19 August 2026. Console updates arrive later than PC.
Where to go next
- For the opposite outcome from the same era, our Battlefield 2042 review covers a game that was fixed and still lost everyone.
- Another long haul live service that survived: The Division 2.
- If you want scale measured properly, see the biggest open world maps compared.
- For a tightly authored story instead of a sandbox, try The DioField Chronicle or Trek to Yomi.
- Also worth your time from the same publisher label: our Dolmen review.
- On why so few big games get this kind of support, read why AAA games are not fun anymore.
- Browse the RPG, Open World, Action and Multiplayer hubs.
Subscribe to us on YouTube for more gameplay breakdowns and reviews: ClubAssassins on YouTube.