If you haven't played Sunless Sea yet, it's a dark masterpiece that's only flaws are 1. how difficult it is to learn how to not get your ass kicked 2. how it can repetitive at times because even after 1000 hours played you still mess up and have to start from scratch in a permadeath system Both of these are your fault. Get better. Jokes aside, both these games are phenomenal, especially for those who loves exploration, adventure, suspense, and Rogue-Like *PERMANENT* consequences for your action. Don't like how something turned out? Don't worry, there's always the next playthrough after you crash and burn or split and sink. Great games, must plays for anyone who enjoys strategic survival.
I've had this game on my radar for quite a long time. Upon official steam and GoG release I got myself a copy and had been looking forward to an open world experience other than fallout/elderscrolls with a little mount & blade mixed in for a very long time. I had figured on final release the game would at least be playable, I write this on 2/28/2018 (1.2.5) and it is laughably unplayable. The amount of glitches are breathtaking, which although is expected in a game of this size and ambition, is compounded by a punitive save system that punishes the player IMMENSELY for saving. Although this is a great feature for preventing save scumming & enforcing story choices, it is laughably broken when applied to how bugged the game is. In my first 6 hours played, I've only been able to progress about 2.5 hours almost all of which were cutscenes because of game breaking glitches that force you to go back 20-30+ minutes every time. Perhaps as a casual gamer if you don't value exploration or traveling off the beaten path you might be able to wince your way through it. But if you treat it like an open world exploration there's simply no way to progress. 0/10 until fixed, in which case i hope it wil lbe a 9.5/10 game.
Combine Europa Universalis with a Gary Grigsby (War in the East/Pacific World @ War etc) game and you get Hearts of Iron 3, the vanilla game is absolutely abysmal relative to persay Hearts of Iron 2/ Darkest Hour, with the game engine and the fact that you can finally properly ally japan and germany being the biggest improvements from the previous installments, at the cost of a ridiculous amount of tech depth loss and decision versatility. NOW come the Men of the Hour, Panzeroo and the Black Ice mod team. They probably put 50x the amount of man hours paradox put into the WHOLE DAMN GAME turning it into a masterpiece that blows the likes of mods like Darkest Hour: World in Flames II out the damn water (except the music.. god i love the army paratrooper song in that) the tech trees are ridiculously in depth and immersive allowing you to play a country a dozen different ways in addition to focuses that you can use to augment this, they added in about 100X more decisions and political versatility than vanilla rivaling that of World in Flames II, the map had hundreds (thousands) of provinces added, completely redrawn and repainted lovingly from scratch to give a real geographic feel for the place as well as added hundreds and hundreds of new provinces to allow for a more realistic and complex invasion/defense, difficulty modifiers of every aspect have been put in place to challenge the Gröfaz (Größest Feldherr Alle Zeiten) [Greatest Field Mashall of All Time] {Nickname Hitler's top Generals mockingly gave Mr. Adolf} and straight out of boot greenhorn alike, the division system has been completely revamped and feels like you truly control the makeup of your army down to the tank rivet, and the list goes on and on... hell now is even the best time to buy since Black Ice came out with 8.0 late August 2015 and the amount of new content added even from 7.53 is staggering and completely taking me aback with the current lack of a changelog! (their working on it) A MUST HAVE!^^!
