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Excellent idea, poorly documented. Be sure to patch.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: April 15, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The game is fun, especially if you have ALOT of time. The level of detail can be overwhelming, but is also fun. You have control over generals, resources, trade, science, consumer goods, just about every major area is covered. Graphics suffered for good execution. You can play any country in the world that existed at the time. Literally any country. How well you do is another story. But it's fun to play, say, Nationalist China every once and awhile.

Basically, it reminded me of what everyone wanted wargames of my youth, the old board games, to be.

Another interesting point: It is a European game, heavily promoted in Germany.(...)

The website provides a lot of documentation, which you'll need.

Here's the bad:

1) It doesn't work well out of the box. Patch it before you play.
2) It's very poorly documented. The manual says there are things that aren't there, and doesn't meantion things that are. Go to the website and look at the forums. That's the only way to make it work.
3) Mac and PC versions are not compatible. That means no long game sessions between friends unless they all have one platform or another. There's really no excuse for this, especially given the low-level of graphics.
4) It takes a REALLY long time to play. This can be a bonus, but it can also detract. I basically play it when I'm home sick for a week from work.
5) Victory conditions are not scaled to different countries. If you play China, you are basically held to whatever side you join in the war, probably Allies. But if you don't join an alliance, you don't "win".

Great Stratagy Game, But Simple Graphics

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: January 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The game takes a little time to master the functions, but it has endless possiblities. By far one of the best WWII games I have played. The editor doesn't really work though. I have only one complaint about the game, for anyone that has played the axis and allies computer game, you will notice the graphics are almost identical which is a little .... But game play is great.

Good idea, poor attempt

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 9
Date: December 25, 2002
Author: Amazon User

While I am a fan of complicated strategy games, and would love to recommend this game, I found it to be extremely buggy. I am using the latest patch (1.02) and still experience random crashes and broken features.

The best WWII sim yet

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 9
Date: May 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is an amazingly comprehensive and detailed WWII sim. The game picks up where Axis and Allies left off. This is a detailed stratagy game, not a shoot-em-up graphics game. Anyone who enjoyed old fashioned book case games will love this.

Hearts of Iron

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: April 23, 2003
Author: Amazon User

A simply fantastic game. The only reason it doesn't have five stars are some problems that should be fixed in the next patch, due out any time now. The play is immersive and addictive and the replayability is excellent. If you like history, WWII, and anything military you will love this game.

Addictive, realistic

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: January 17, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is an outstnading simulation of World War II covering the period from 1936 to 1948. You manage your country (and you can play ANY country) dealing with research, resources, building and deploying a range of historically accurate troops.

As pointed out the manual is very flawed -even expert gamers should do the tutorial that comes with the game. You will also (surprise) need to patch the game as soon as you bought it - the 1.02 patch corrects a range of bad flaws with the shipped game.

For help and forums relating to the game go to hearts-of-iron.wargamer.com.

Very good, but could of been a bit better

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game could have been one of the best ever ww2 strategy games. It is very realistic in all most everything. The "bad" part about this game is that there isnt a lot of tech support. There are patches but they still have many bugs to fix, i.e. lan multi is sometimes screwy. overall, a better then your average game.

excellent ww2 game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: December 01, 2002
Author: Amazon User

i've actually been playing the game, unlike most of the other reviewers. it is very good, and will keep you glued to the computer.

Might become a good game... When finished

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 7
Date: January 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Having played Europa Universalis 1 and 2 for a while, developped by the same studio, I really had high expectations for this game as it is roughly based on the same engine and gameplay. Huge disappointment.

On the plus side, you have the initial ambition: recreating a deep, complex simulation of WW2. But the final game really fails to hold to its promises, due to:

- bugs. The game crashes regularly and there's a number of things that you should be able to do, but you can't.

- absence of AI. You really feel like there's absolutely no sensible strategy in front of you when fighting other countries, as they do not react to your own actions and seem to act randomly.

And I would also mention the absence of a decent manual sold with the game, and the hideous graphic aspect among other flaws. Well, I think a strategy game doesn't need to be really beautiful or perfectly designed, but it could have been nicer.

The developer uses to provide the gamers with good support and two patches have fixed some of the problems that made the game almost not playable when it was released... May be it will be worth buying when all the problems are fixed and the price has come down, but for the moment I think it offers extremely poor value for money. Strategy gamers will find it too easy due to the poor AI, and casual gamers could be overwhelmed by the complexity and level of detail.

Slow moving - Complex - Unexciting

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 8
Date: November 21, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I played this game avidly for two days then, permanently uninstalled it from my computer. I am an avid wargamer, going back to the days when most games of this genre were boardgames. The old Avalon Hill title " Hitler's War ", would be a much better choice. Considering that this is a wargame, combat is unexciting and it is very difficult to predict the outcome of an individual battle. Given all the complexity, one has to either slow down the gamespeed to a slow crawl or pause it constantly as events unfold. As a single player game, Hearts of Iron is not the best choice out there. It might do better with mulitple-players but, I'm not willing to give it the chance.

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