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Buyer Beware

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 29
Date: December 14, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I purchased the original EU and found it to be quite enjoyable, though the most stimulating aspect of game play came through playing the free scenarios and a modified form of the game that was created by some fans of the game.

It is a very intellectual game and the historical aspects can be quite informative as well as stimulating.

Upon release of the sequel, EU2 in early December, I purchased a copy. The first patch 1.01 is out and available at the official website, however even with this patch there are a vast number, of bugs, admittedly most of these are not game breaking, but will significantly hinder your enjoyment of the game. A second patch, which supposedly will fix many of these issues has been promised for Jan 02.

There is a small but dynamic EU community that resides at the official website forums. Normally this community is eager to help you with problems, offers ideas to improve the game and upcoming versions, and is generally a nice place to visit.

However, recently, and no doubt as a result of the games poor condition, an aura of nastiness has pervaded the forums. Many people are upset that the beta testers did not inform the community about the serious issues with the game pre release. A certain amount of blame is also being put upon the game company, Paradox, for releasing a half finished product, and basically forcing the paying public to beta test for them. To top this off, the forum moderators are using their powers to insult, demean, and terrorize those in the community who try to debate these legitimate concerns.

In short, do not visit the official site of this game, or any game, for that matter to learn if it is a good buy. I would recommend you pick up a copy of EU if you can find it, it should be cheap, and see if you like the style of game. Wait at the least till Feb 02 to buy EU2, if you plan to do so, its not a finished product yet.

If the upcoming patches actually make a large difference in the gameplay, I will come and post an updated review reflecting this.

Edited 01Jan02

Happy New Year to all ...shoppers. Well its a new year and sadly to say a patch for EU2 was released shortly before Christmas, it was itself flawed, and so while the game itself is slightly improved, it is not yet a 'finished' product IMHO. This review has caused some consternation on the game forums, and moderators have even hinted that members should make counter-reviews. Use your heads guys, don't pay out your hard earned money till the game is finished, plenty of other great titles to be had here at....

very good game, i recommended it for strategy lover

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 10
Date: August 11, 2004
Author: Amazon User

i love this game very much, and also i like the music. it made me love medieval music.

Great Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: February 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is one of the best for open ended playing and replaying I've seen. It's a great challenge to command one of many nations in the game. You can be a great diplomatic leader and bring great prosperous times to your nation or be a great war commander and bring provinces of others into your ever growing empire. Or be both and bring the entire world under your flag through force or cunning. Graphics aren't the best but this game doesn't need good graphics to be good. The sound is suprisingly authentic for the time span and good to listen to. This game has awesome gameplay and good interface, some of the history information might seem daunting to people wanting to dive into commanding a nation but the game tries to give acurate detail of what is going on at the time your playing in the game. Over all this is a great game, and deserves a good look if your deciding between games.

ADDICTIVE

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: June 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

EU2 is a real-time strategy game that puts you behind one of the strong european countries or weak nations of the rest of the world. It combines strategy and diplomcay that delivers a game that seems like RISK on crack. IN the game you control a country. You make many desicions that affect your country such as who is your friend and who you should declare war on. You control your nation through diplomacy (realtions with other countries), trade, religion, colonization and economy. The time period of this game spans from roughly 1450 to 1840 (VERY ROUGHLY) In EU2 real events that happened back then happen (ie. the revolutionary war in the US, treaty of todisailles, ect.) The other reviews claim this game to ba hard, but you can set the level of difficulty which is handy. It seems hard ot learn but you catch on quickly. this is a great game!!!!...

Refuse to spend more money on this game.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 38
Date: November 29, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I owned the first version of this game and found it a major disapointment. Although the game had been in Europe for many months, the English version was very buggy and had several major game issues. It was only through reading the online support rooms that I was able to figure out why the game was acting in certain ways. Once I did I wish I hadn't. Then the game became too easy. I found myself handicapping myself more and more just to make the game interesting. Are you a francophile and want to play as France? Forget it! The game started in 1492 and by 1600 you could rule the world. Someone even did it as Etheopia (although that did take several more years). Sadly games aren't returnable since I'd like to see if this game is the one they should have put out with EUI but I wouldn't risk my (money) on it.

I hate those rebels

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: October 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Europa Universalis II has a large cult following among players of Paradox Entertainment, the Sweden-based company that has produced strategy games like "Hearts of Iron," "Crusader Kings," and "Victoria." One of their first big games, it has a lot to offer. It takes place during the time period of 1419 to 1820, taking players through the ages of exploration, enlightenment, the Renaissance, and well on to the Napoleonic Wars. You can play ANY nation during this time, from France to England to the Ottoman Empire, even any minor nation in Asia or Africa. (I actually played a decent game as Zimbabwe)

Diplomacy is fairly advanced, compared to other games in this genre. You can offer other nations royal marriages, you can improve relations through various diplomatic efforts like a "letter of introduction," and you can even sign trade agreements. (don't get too excited, all this means is your merchants won't compete as much) The trading aspect of the game deals with regions of interest, such as the major trading area of Venice, and placing your merchants in the hope of gaining wealth from profitable business. Monopolies are even possible, depending on how high your trade technology is. Speaking of which, technology is based on researching your army, navy, stability, (how stable your nation is, which can affect income and battle results) trade, and infrastructure. The higher the go, the more advanced your nation is in each regard. Higher infrastructure can allow you to build improvements like refineries, and depending on the resource of the province you build it in you can earn more income.

Religion and government also take affect. Every ten years or so you can choose to change your government's standing on ideas like plutocracy or innovativeness. Religion plays a big part in this time period, and if your government is a different religion than your people you will find yourself dealing with religious revolts. You can set the tolerance towards the different faiths to ease people's anxieties, or you can hire missionaries to

From what I've described above, one would imagine this would be an amazingly fun game to play...but as much as I try my hardest to get into it, I keep getting disappointed. I have to say my main aggravations are towards the general game system as well as Paradox's own lack of skill in perfecting a game.

As others have described, the game attempts to follow historical accuracy a little too much. Native countries are SOL as far as exploration goes, while major nations of the time period will have lots of events that give them the chance to explore new lands. (sometimes you get explorers through random events, but these are rare) And, as another reviewer pointed out, your gameplay doesn't affect historical events at all. If you play a nation your best, make friends with all your neighbors, and generally play a peaceful existance, but your nation had a massive political/economic crash in that time period, then it's going to happen any way. One really notices this playing as America and trying to stray away from what happened historically, only to get events that are irrelevant to how you've played thus far.

I also have to say the battle system is extremely aggravating. Peasant rebels, traditionally poorly armed militia, are somehow far superior to your own troops, as if the cyborgs from "Universal Soldier" went back in time and were hired as mercenaries. I also cannot understand how I can have a superior army rating, a good government, good stability, an organized rating for my forces, and full army funding, yet I am constantly defeated by smaller and weaker enemy armies. I also agree with other reviewers that the constant revolutions can get on your nerves. I realized that it depends on your "Free Subjects" or "Serfdom" rating, which means if you don't want any peasant revolts at all you have to at least get a middle rating towards Free Subjects. As a result, you waste your first few government reforms just to avoid those annoying revolts. They wouldn't be so annoying if they made sense - you could have a good government and you'll still get a revolt event that basically justifies it with "Revolts happened a lot back then, so ha!"

The economic system also fails to keep your interest. It's difficult to raise funds, and even if you get a good economy you will still have problems as soon as things go a little bit awry. Sometimes I'll be sitting there staring at the computer screen, just waiting for my coffers to fill up. This limits not only how much you can use your military, but even your diplomacy and trading - all three need money to be used. While this is expected in "the real world," in the game system of EUII it limits how much you can really do. If your nation's economy goes down the toilet you might as well quit the game and start a new nation, unless you want to watch your treasury increase by 1 gold every ten years.

I also have to say there are few nations you can really have fun with. Even though it brags about the 200+ nations, the non-European nations, with some few exceptions, will stay backwards most of the game and raise their technology at a slower rate. (even with government reforms to make it go faster) Because you're not allowed to explore undiscovered terrain without an explorer or conquistador, many nations with a lack of map knowledge are stuck in their own isolated world, which is great for historical accuracy but terrible for gameplay. It makes one look for the cheat code to reveal the entire map.

My other aggravation is towards Paradox's inability to perfect their games. Their games as of late have been getting buggier and are feeling more rushed. Europa Universalis II came out nearly a decade ago, and at the time of this review has been patched nearly 9 times...yet the game STILL CRASHES ON ME!! Paradox apologists often say, "Oh, just turn the music off" or "Just save a lot." Those are absurd excuses. Every other game I've played has never crashed because music was playing, and I should have to save every second because any small reform I do might be dashed because a Swedish beta tester was lazy.

I have had fun with this game, admittedly. When you play European nations, even smaller ones, you can have fun, and some of the bigger uncivilized nations are fun as well. The game system does allow for creative gameplay, such as forming alliances against your foes and attempting some serious political play on the international scene. I have to also admit that the AI never does the same thing twice in terms of long-term strategy. I've seen things happen like Poland conquer all of Germany, only to have the Germans rebel and liberate themselves, and I've seen England fall into chaos and the British Isles become various small city-states. These aspects are enough to make me load the game up every week or so to give it another go.

Europa Universalis II will interest the people who enjoy this time period, or those who want to play a different type of strategy game. Casual gamers are advised to stay away, and people first hearing about this game should be warned some of its hype has been overblown. I give it three stars for fun, but two stars for overall.

Great game must buy!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: January 09, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This is probably the best strategy game ever made, the original board game is supurb, it deals with a reasonably complex system for economics, diplomacy, warfare, exploration and more. this is an excellent game that will take ages to play, best played with the maximum number of players.
It closely mimics the History of the late Dark ages to the Renaissance and Industrial revolution, it is not so much about winnng as playing! It is well balanced so that weaker nations are not disadvantaged, points being earned by the strategic advantage you gain for your nation based on it's realistic expectations of success.
You must buy this game!

Buggy multiplayer

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 6
Date: April 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

People have to know that this game is buggy concerning multiplayer cessions. While you can decently play with one other player, trying to run a game with 5 or 6 players is impossible, despite what it is said about the game.
Patches don't correct that fact. Even, it can worsen it (patch 1.03 made multiplayer impossible).
Furthermore, Paradox Entertainment is telling you can use their valkirie.net service to play internet game. That's a lie because valkirie.net is almost alawys down and is limited to a chat area, not a gaming area.

That's pretty sad and Paradox, obviously, doesn't care of the multiplayer community.

overrated

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 17
Date: December 03, 2002
Author: Amazon User

if you are looking for the best- try medieval:total war or hearts of iron instead.

intimidating at first but you'll get used to it

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: March 26, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I agree completely with the comparisons--Civ 3 was very disappointing and EU2 leaves everything behind. The music is carefully chosen and historically interesting; the map may be intimidating at first (looks like a Risk map multiplied 100 times) but as you get to know your provinces they get better. Unlike Civ there are no unique monuments that confer special advantages but rather specific increments of technology that makes more historical sense.
Almost reminds me of Koei's Romance of 3 Kingdoms games on Nintendo...

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