Hearts of Iron III

I really want to like this game. I`m a fan of WW2 and I like strategy games. I bought this when it first came out and tried to play it. The problem is this game expects you to manage stuff to an unrealistically complicated level. Yes, unrealistic, because if you were a leader of a country in real life, say Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin or even Hitler, there is no way you could manage this level of complexity on your own without becoming insane! Ok, maybe I exaggerate a bit, but seriously, you are expected to do complex diplomacy (which I like), then complicated war manouevering of your troops to the nth degree while also inventing your tanks or vehicles to a ridiculous level of customisation. It sounds great on paper, but nothing is presented in a graphical 3D way so you can really get infused in it for all your hard efforts- It`s a huge spreadsheet of maths, and I`m crap at maths. It`s too much! Most of this would be delegated while you got on with the most important decisions like where to put your money, whom to agree diplomacy with and where you want your troops to go. Now I`ve played the Total War games from the 1st Shogun to Atilla, the Galactic Civ strategy games from 2-3, Civilization from 1 through to 5, etc, but Hearts of Iron III is just too much! I bought it anyway off GOG again, because I still want to try this game and at this price it`s a bargain, but I have a bad feeling it will just sit on the shelf and I will every now and then just wistfully think about playing it before doing something else instead.

The game use the 4X approach for WW2. That is there are various screens for technology, production, diplomacy, politics, plus the main map where the main actions take place. HoI 2 was already a complex, but HoI 3 increase in granularity. Each subsystem is more detailed and more complex. Unfortunately this doesn' t lead to a better simulation and the AI as trouble handling all this complexity. Although full of details and WW2 chrome, in action ,the game quickly dive in fantasy land. The game is so poor at recreating the historical course of event, it doesn"t make alternate paths believable at all. Un-modded the game is disappointing historically, mods improve a lot here, unfortunately I had many crashes with mods, and had to reverted to official expansions. As a result the increase in details and complexity feel completely gratuitous. I had the feeling that the devs took each subsystem separately and tried to increase the level of details without thinking at the whole game experience. For example, tanks techs are now broken down into armor, gun, engine, and reliability, but you have to research this four techs, for each type of tanks, light, medium or heavy. This make no sense to have to research armor separately for each type of tanks. Combat is very off-hand, and make large scale military operation a boring exercise in micromanagement. For example playing Germany, the invasion of Poland is ok, invasion of France is plodding, and invading the USSR is a real pain. The game use a detailed chain of command with HQs of various levels, rebinding your complete chains of command for a major operation can take 1-2 hours. The game is playable if you choose a remote country, but playing a major nation is a real pain. Which is a terrible. The UI is not good. You have the option to automate a number of subsystem. But the AI does a poor job, moreover it follows its own "ideas". Overall it was a very disappointing experience, I rather play HoI 2, despite its older UI

... well, you might end up disappointed. As with the Europa Universalis series, in its third imstallment Paradox took a step away from historical authenticity towards randomness. There are considerable less events than in EU 2 and the overall game feels much more like Risk-on-steroids. I remember buying the game when it came fresh out and uninstalling it after two days of unsuccessful flirting. I was disappointed. Lots of things have happened since then - the extra downloadable contents (DLC) added lots of the long awaited features and lots of bugs have been fixed. I don't recommend this game in its "vanilla" state, unless you love the Risk-like gameplay. For some historical flavour (or flavour at all!) get the DLC and try out some of the awesome mods available. (just to give you an idea - there is a really good World War 1 scenario out there ... along many others). These mods are what makes Hearts of Iron III really shine and entertain you for month to come!

Once you purchase the DLC you can play the functional version. Example: Can't combine ships (No sea invasions) Can't adjust Theatres (or make new ones) Can't build certain units that you research Can't adjust your trade The real price is this plus DLC Complete Crap!!