As someone who has played every Paradox game series, the best review I can give is: I've spent 1000s of hours playing Europa Universalis games alone, with Victoria, Hearts of Iron and Crusader Kings series easily in countless 100s of hours each. The devs have singlehandedly created and been filling up a separate Grand Strategy genre. And it all really started with EU1. So is this game still relevant today? Eeeehm, not really. If you want to spend less than 50 hours playing older EU game and you have never played one before I guess it is fine. Just bear in mind that EU2 is an incremental improvement. It is like EU1 on stereoids Ultra Mega Gold GotY edition. It is better in every aspect without changing the fundamental way how the game feels and plays. Even better there is For the Glory, which quite frankly is EU2.5, a final installment in this line of EU games. So EU2 obsoletes EU1 and FtG kinda obsoletes EU2. Is this the case with other PDS games? By no means. Since then every installment (I mean the final iteration) of each series is a relevant playable game in its own right. Sure the graphics may be a bit dated (like it mattered), some UI streamlining may not have been invented yet and worst of all development (new features and balancing) is long abandoned. With medieval timeline Crusader Kings is still a viable choice among CK2. With Renaissance to Classical era you have actually three possibilities: Aforementioned FtG, EU3 and EU4. Each does things slightly differently so try them all and choose what suits you best. Entering the industrial era Victoria has many reasons to be played over Vicky 2. And if WW2 is your thing you have a plethora of options: Hearts of Iron, HoI2, both its forks namely Arsenal of Democracy and Darkest Hour and HoI3. Having said that I'm still waiting for the very latest PDS games here on GOG to ensure a true DRM free version, because really there is no reason not to.
