Good fun if you play a sizeable country
Hearts Of Iron II is a wargame set in the era of WW2, so do not expect a civilization-type of game with this one. It looks like an Axis And Allies boardgame, but in this one you can play any nation of that era from the entire globe. You are preparing for war, if you choose the start of the game being in 1936, build up your forces, research technologies and conquer other countries, to gain more resources, become stronger and start to conquer even bigger nations. Thanks to GOG, this version includes the Armageddon expansion, so the time is being expanded to the Cold War area and does not end in 1947. The game has no real goal though, only three factions exist in the score, so you can set the goals freely for yourself, which I like very much. The strength of your forces, weather, territory etc. have to be taken into account for every battle and I highly advise you to read the huge manual too, because the game is really deep within itself and nothing for gamers that love a quick game for just 30 minutes.
Yes, you can shape the outcome of history and it is funny watching the USA having Alf Landon as their president instead of Roosevelt, then invading Middle and South America or the Germans using paratroopers to conquer London, yet if you play a country like Switzerland, Tibet, El Salvador or any other small nation, expect to do almost nothing throughout the entire game. Bigger nations can research more technologies at once, so you are quickly falling behind, you do not own enough resources to build up a sizeable army, sometimes you need years to change your nation’s government from totally introverted, which prohibits you to declare war, to a more interfering one and then the other nations have already advanced too far in strength.
If you play a mid-sized to large-sized country you will find an extremely challenging wargame with an extreme amount of strategical depth and a lot of historical surprises, yet, unfortunately, you will get bored playing the small ones.
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