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Solo Disaster

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 14
Date: January 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Been playing EU and EU II since they came out. Spent a couple of weeks playing this game, then paused, tried again with the latest patch.

As well as the broken features, inaccurate and misleading manual, omitted features and random crashes, the biggest problem with this game is that it fools you into thinking it's competative.

The AI randomly controls it's units with no plan, and might be more effective if it didn't move them at all. There is no challenge at all to this game, except to see if imposing different restrictions on yourself makes it any tougher.

Aside from that, this game is not even as complex as some have said. Yes there is micromanagement hell, yes you have a lot of options to chose on the tech tree, and yes you must manage production, diplomacy and combat. However, the number of decisions you must make are limited and the problems which faced strategic commanders are entirely missing.

For an extreme example, I invaded Australia from Germany, never had to worry about supplies, or the Australians for that matter who were abscent from their own country. As the USA island hopping in the Pacific is a waste of time, just invade Japan in 1941, 1000's of miles from home, no problems.

Naval combat doesn't work, air combat is filled with bugs, and if you try to play multiplayer you will be lucky to get through 15 minutes without a crash. To top it off, air combat causes multiplayer games to crash, so what exactly is the point.

The unfinished problems and bugs I could live with, Paradox was pretty good at patching their EU series, but the game itself is so flawed by poor design decisions and a non-existant AI that I doubt they have the capacity to fix it.

If this isn't bad enough, when you try to play the game the interface will cause you more problems than the AI; Production and Expense sliders move randomly when you try to lock them, each unit needs to be deployed singularly - a chore when you create 20 transports for instance. When you use timed attacks on an enemy province, that timing order is retained, so if you try and move a unit 100's of miles away it will plot it's movement to coincide with the original attack, that is of course when the Combat Timing Box appears which seems to be random.

The game is an epic; an epic waste of time by the developer, and anyone who plays it expecting an improvement from the EU games.

It is not EU2, so don't buy it

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 9
Date: August 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

After playing EU2, I was very excited about this game. As a graduate with a history and political science major in college, I was extremely impressed with the historical accuracy of EU2 which engaged the player in the historical milieu of Europe from 1450 through 1820.

The problem with this game is that unless you want to play a major power, you have no chance of having any fun. I tried playing Poland, South Africa and Ethiopia. With Poland, I worked with the idea of at least holding off Germany with a decent defensive war. Unfortunately, starting in 1936 gave me three years to try to undo all the Polish military shortfalls. Even with the 20/20 hindsight of history, I could not stop the Germans juggernaut. Likewise, good luck if you play Ethopia. If you are required to play the major powers to have any chance of success, it completely undoes the fun of EU2, in which you could play any country and with some skill and luck, make a reasonable show of skill and change the course of history, which is why you are playing this game.

In EU2, I was able to make the declining power, Venice, into a Mediterranean power, defeating Turkey. Likewise, I was able to change history completely when Poland eliminated Russia, allied with Austria and survived to fight Napoleon or when Brittany decline to accede to be part of France or a lackey of England. In this game, the short time span makes it impossible to do anything with the minor powers. Thus, it essentially allows you to fiddle with Nazi Germany to see if it can defeat Russia early and stop the Allies in the West: Whoopee!! I get to make the genocidal maniacs succeed, how fun!

This is a game with a ton of possibilties that is limited by a too short time frame. If it started in 1918, then there might be a chance to make the game fun playing unusual minor powers. As it stands, just pray you survive the Nazi onslaught if you decide to play the Allies. Very disappointing.

Could have been great

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 11
Date: January 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game had great possiblities but the current version is unplayable. I don't know who wrote the reviews at the very beginning but they must not have opened the game (perhaps the publisher?). AI is so bad that a 3 year old could beat it. It is possible to take over the world playing Spain. Real let down.

THE NEW MEANING OF THE WORD "DUNG"!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 11
Date: November 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game gives the word "DUNG" a new meaning, very sloppy programming, out of the box this game was horrible, five patches later, almost six now, it's till horrible. The AI has no AI at all worth playing against. Unless you like slaughtering the whole board that is and playing an ahistorical game all the way around. I took a minor like Brazil and crushed the Germans and Italians, BRAZIL!! woopee a real major power overwhelms the world in WWII and single handedly destroys the Axis powers with little or no help at all from the so-called computer allies who's greatest endeavor was sending a division at a time to be crushed by the 20 to 40 divisions guarding the coastlines of France. Pathetic game. I agree with another poster, save your money and get a quality game from Battlefront.com "Strategic Command", you can bet it will at least be challenging and not a "toddlers toy" like HOI.

Worthless garbage!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 10
Date: October 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Paradox took a great concept and ruined it completely. Their obsession with real-time gaming made what was a promising idea into a mess. There are simply too many things to manage and the flow of the game is ruined by having to think about issues like technology and resources; why can't the computer look after these, I only want to plan a war! And then the combat interface is a joke: imagine sending an army to invade a territory while losing the territory you invaded from being itself occupied by an enemy force - ridiculous! It couldn't happen in real life but it does in HoI. My advice: save your money and buy Strategic Command.

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.

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.

Mediocre disappointment

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 11 / 19
Date: December 27, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I LOVED EUI and II and thought that this game would continue the progression of those games. I have been mostly disappointed so far. The AI is very weak, the game logic is lacking in many departments (Diplomacy is one of them), and the game is buggy. Once you get the basic hang of the game it is not possible to lose as the USA, Germany, Britian or Russia. (Haven't played Italy or Japan yet). The minor nations are playable but not worth playing really - I tried playing Nationalist Spain and Turkey and it was boring) I do not really see much replayability in the game, except to the extent that you can vary your technological research and get different weaponry to achieve your ultimate goal - world conquest. I just felt that the real depth that I associated with the Europa Universalis games is lacking here. Maybe more will be done with the game as time progresses and maybe the players will mod the game as well but at the moment its going to end up sitting unplayed in its cd case because I think I have really done all that's worth doing with the game. Save your money until its upgraded some, or until there is a HOI 2.

needs to go back in the oven -- for a looonng time

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 10
Date: December 14, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The short review is -- wait a long time, this one is not anywhere near ready yet.

I enjoyed EU2 and if you do not have that game I would suggest that you buy it instead. HoI, even after the 1st patch, is full of technical bugs and playability problems. The EU series was extensively patched after release, so give this one several months to get patched up. It is playable now, but I doubt that you will find it a rewarding experience after completing a campaign or 2.

I had some initial qualms about their using the EU engine for HoI that may, unfortunately, have been all too accurate. The user interface is woefully inadequate. The game becomes a click-fest --not of the twitch game sort, but of the Master of Orion/Reach for the Stars sort. You can choose not to micromanage your resources, but if you do, your performance will be several orders of magnitude below what it would be if you do micromanage. Computers should be all about removing the burden of tedium from the user, not adding to it. Many more reports are needed. Simple functions common to many strategy games such as a "cycle through all my provinces/units" function are absent in HoI.

As is often the case in strategy games, the AI is, to put it mildly, inadequate. Unfortunately to the point of making a single player game of HoI truely masturbatory. You cannot possibly be challenged by the AI if you play Germany, Britain, Russia, or the USA. I haven't played Japan or Italy yet. And real-time pausable games do not translate well to multiplayer in my experience. Turn-based is far better suited to multiplayer in a game that requires such massive micromanagement (thereby requiring pausing the game as long as 2 hours, potentially). If you limit the amount of time 1 player can pause the game, it becomes a contest of quickness, not strategy.
Another really major problem for me is that HoI is neither fish nor fowl in the sense that it requires far too much time to play and is very detailed in some aspects, but is a very poor simulation of WWII era warfare and gives very little "feel". The chrome is all in the tech development and not to be found anywhere else. So it is neither a true beer and pretzels game, nor a true grognard's delight.

I'm still waiting for someone to computerize the old SPI Campaign for North Africa, but for the entire European Theater. CNA was unplayably complex as a board game, but with a computer to keep track of things for you, it could be quite wonderful.

so few owe so many an apology...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 11
Date: February 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is cumbersome and sluggish. The only reason I didn't give it 1 star is because I havn't spent weeks trying to figure it all out. For people who loved Axis and Allies but wanted more, sit back and keep on dreaming. This game does not deliver.

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