Incredible Mod Turns Crusader Kings 3 and Mount & Blade 2 Into a Single Game

A developer has created a very smart mod that turns Crusader Kings 3 and Mount & Blade 2 into a single game, allowing players to strategize in the former and battle inside the latter.

For as much as Crusader Kings 3 does an impressive job at simulating the complex political and social structures of medieval rule, one particular element that it lacks is a battle simulator that allows players to jump into the action and see their forces battle it out in real-time.

Now, however, a developer has created Crusader Blade - a new mod that remedies that exact problem. Taking your armies from Crusader Kings 3, the Crusader Blade mod then uses the battle engine from Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord to allow you to fight against your enemies at ground level before sending the data back to Crusader Kings 3 to update your campaign.

The mod even accounts for scaling issues and factors in the size and scope of battles that each game can run. As it doesn't have to render conflict in real-time, battles in Crusader Kings 3 can sometimes be fought between tens of thousands of troops on the battlefield at once - a factor that Mount & Blade 2 can't quite manage.

Thankfully, the mod takes this into account. Taking a proportional approach to unit representation as it brings data from Crusader Kings 3 to Mount & Blade 2, the mod looks at both the size and composition of the armies set to go into battle and maintains this as it scales the forces down to a size that Mount and Blade can render on screen. Then when the battle is over, the mod applies a similar logic to sending that data back to Crusader Kings 3 - scaling up your losses so that they make sense in your campaign going forward.

If you're hoping to get a hold of the mod itself then you can do so by downloading it from Crusader Blade's itch.io page. While the mod has launched, its developers plan to keep it updated over time, supported by a Patreon. In order to run the mod, you will of course need to own both Crusader Kings 3 and Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord.

To learn more about both games, check out our 10/10 Crusader Kings 3 review, and our look at Mount & Blade 2's early access version, which we awarded an 8/10.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.