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It's Simply the Greatest Strategic Wargame of Our Day

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 35 / 43
Date: January 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Armchair generals rejoice! Paradox's Hearts of Iron II offers a playing experience sure to satisfy those strategic gamers who revel in the joys of total command!

Nothing like the Medal of Honor shoot'em up style tactical games, Hearts of Iron II is nothing short of a grand strategist's wildest dream! No two games you ever play will be alike! A player acts as the poltical, military and economic leader of their nation, becoming as detailed as a player chooses.

The game is premised on the player choosing to lead any pre World War II nation in existence in 1936 guiding them to victory over the competing world powers of the era through 1948. Advancing hour by hour, day by day, it is wargaming that is unsurpassed by any other game out there!

From building grand alliances, to negotiating trade deals, to setting research and production priorities, to promoting and assigning historically accurate commanders and leaders, to planning and executing a world war on the grandest of scales across the land, sea and air of every continent and ocean in the world, Hearts of Iron II is leaps and bounds more advanced than its predecessor.

Hearts of Iron II sports a newly redesigned and much improved strategic combat interface, a more detailed map, many more diplomatic options, a newly enhanced multiplayer game style that allows teamplay over the same nation, more detailed historical events, and easier management of military unit's ranging from their development, creation, deployment to their strategic maneuvering to their tactical combat orders; the game is certain to become a giant among war games.

Combined with Paradox's long standing reputation of continuing to improve their games after release, as well as a detailed manual and online support unlike any other game out there, Hearts of Iron II will blow away every strategic war game yet made.

It is World War II under your command. It is nothing less than strategic gaming at its pinnacle of achievement.

Paradox Games are the Best Strategy Games out there

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 26 / 33
Date: January 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

If you liked board games that involve this topic in any way.. you must purchase this game.

If you are looking for a click-fest and a "tank rush" as found in other RTS games you will not find it in "Hearts of Iron II", nor in any Paradox game for that matter. The makers of Europa Universalis (1 and 2) and Victoria and Crusader Kings, Paradox Interactive makes games for the thinking man.. or woman.. or historian.

Warning: You will be forced to think to play this game. You will LEARN about history while playing this game. You will have the opportunity to take a country, any country, that existed in 1936 and manage it through the time period of World War II. You will move your government towards freedom, or facism or communism.. you will choose what technological advances to pursue, which countries to ally with, which to trade with. You may choose to go to war, and if you do, you will build an army and an air force and a navy... and you will decide when and where to fight (in a huge number of provinces, well over a thousand) all over the world... unless, of course, the decision is taken out of your hands.

There are thousands of historical events in the game that may or may occur on or about hte historical dates on which they occured. It all depends on choices made and conditions that must be met.. plus the randomization factor. Will you support one side or the other in the Spanish Civil War? Will you allow Germany to militarize the Rhineland? Will you, as Germany, attempt to militarize the Rhineland just to see if the Allies will allow you to do so this time around? There are even events for countries you might not think of as being part of a WWII game. Example: Perhaps you play as Argentina and decide to ally with Germany and do a land grab with Brazil.

Perhaps you play as a Chinese faction and decide to side with Japan in order to become the real power in China? The original HOI was banned in China, by the way. Apparently, the history it portrayed is still outlawed there.. despite its accuracy. That alone tell you that Paradox is doing something right.

If you watch the History Channel at all, chances are you will like this game. It will reward your efforts to think through a grand strategy. And, like for all great games, there is already a huge online community who will support this game. Graphics and strategic mods from the user community are being built now.. even before the game is in the hands of any of them outside the beta testers.

Buy the game, do the tutorials, play it.. and join the online community who will be discussing strategies for particular countries and the historical accuracy of events and tanks and planes and technologies and so on. I did so with a previous Paradox title, "Victoria", which was about the era from 1836 to 1920, and I learned a lot.

Fast-moving deep strategy

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 27 / 30
Date: January 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I used to write books about wargames, and I've been playing them for 40 years, but I've never had as much fun in a historical wargmae as this. Hearts of Iron allows you to play any country that existed in the period 1936-48, from Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union to Switzerland and Bhutan, and explore its potential and see how you could have changed history.
Since the original Hearts of Iron game, a lot of work has gone into easier play and providing a smooth interface, as well as ensuring that the game runs stably in multi-player mode, and I've played with a dozen others at once with no problems. Division-level land forces, plus individual capital ships and air squadrons, each with numerous different types to choose from, fight it out over the world map in real-time combat, while you produce reinforcements, research more advanced forces, keep your population happy with consumer goods, and trade for rare resources, negotiate with other powers, and more.
The system is a development of the popular Europa Universalis system, but has been greatly streamlined since that game.

(...)

Words are not enough...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 26 / 33
Date: January 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

...to describe the excellence of this game. The level of historic detail is incredible! Paradox might be a small company, but they have fanatical fans....hoards of fanatical, intelligent, well-educated fans that are willing to help them with the research, and the extensive (understatement of the century) testing that goes into a game of this unparalleled scope.
The result is a game that will conquer the world.

Ha

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 35
Date: January 09, 2005
Author: Amazon User

As you all can see, the guy who is two post below me has no life and thus should not be taken seriously.

It is a very good game. Thank You :)

Ignore Raginhood...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 25 / 41
Date: January 09, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This guy obviously has it out for Paradox and is trying to kill their sales as much as he can by writing negatively biased reviews in the hopes of killing off a sale before it can be made.

Why am I wasting time...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 32 / 36
Date: January 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Why am I wasting time writing a review...
when I could be playing Hearts of Iron 2 (HOI2)?
The answer is the one "thumbs-down" review I read. You know which one; I really don't think there can be a second similar review.

To tell you the truth, I am a fan of Paradox games. I like micromanagement; I like the historical aspects of their games and I REALLY like the fact that they have taken the term "modability" to new levels.

HOI2 has all the advantages of the original HOI, very few of the disadvantages and numerous new features.
The new diplomatic options are great: No more, easy & instant tech-exchange with every friendly country. You can exchange blueprints with your allies but you have to research the tech.
You need to influence a nation? With HOI2 it has become much more realistic because you (may) influence its policies towards your own views. You won't take a country "closer to Axis" per-se, but will do it in a subtle way influencing its politics: You will make them more Authoritarian, their ideology more Right-wing and then MAYBE they will come closer to the Axis.
The new production/consumption/trading system is incredible. No matter what country you play you will find yourself trying to achieve that "delicate balance" for countless hours.
Research? Well, I had my doubts on the new simplified research system but they have disappeared ever since the first game of HOI2. The new system gives you much better control over the technological status of your country and your army, without emposing hundreds of "the 40mm or 50mm gun?" useless questions.

And if this is not enough, the new war system is SO good that I found myself wondering "why hasn't someone else had this movement-is-attack idea before?". The new mission system for naval/air units is also extremely helpful and effective.

Things I don't like?
The AI cannot be compared to a human. But since I don't expect my computer to smile at me every time I have the blues, I REALLY don't expect the AI of a €30 game to be any better than it already is.
And it IS better than the original HOI, even with all the updates.
Is it better because it's more scripted?
Do I *really* care???

My major concern is that they still haven't added the timestamp on the saved files, so I really don't know if I should reload SavedGame12 or SavedGame13 after the fall of Stalingrad.

And this must be the biggest shortcoming of this game... "Saved games timestamps". Please don't smile... I am serious!!!

All in all, HOI2 is an EXCELLENT game. I would never give 5 stars to ANY game (except perhaps Simcity4 and the original Civilization), not even to the original HOI. But HOI2 deserves all the stars in our galaxy... and then some.

That's all... I'm off because it's June 1941 and I have a hunch that something's about to happen off the coast of Honolulu.
One final note: If you do buy the game, make sure you: 1.Fight with your spouse/parents 2.Take all your remaining sick-leave from work/school 3.Disconnect the phone (you don't want to fight with your spouse AND your friends)
;-)

------------
[edit]
I am ashamed...
and I apologise to all for this edit.

But I just found out that HOI2 DOES have the timestamp of the saved games!!!
The positioning and font size are a bit awkward though.

So this is my final negative comment on this game:
"The positioning AND font size of the timestamp of the saved games are all WRONG"

There, I said it!

Fantastic Strategy Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 141 / 144
Date: January 15, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This will be another wonderful strategy game that doesn't sell as many copies as it deserves.

The bad:

The graphics are lacking, there's no denying that. Being able to change the resolution would be a nice option as well. The sound is functional, a few more chimes for events would be nice. Being able to reconfigure some things on they keyboard would be very helpful as well, I have to disable the F-lock key on my keyboard to use the pause key; if I could move it to something else that would be keen.

The manual is a bit too conversational. The fact that they include a manual is nice, many games just give you PDFs. There were a few things that weren't explained well in the manual, but overall the explanations are reasonably good. Some things, like the formulae for industrial capacity should be put into the manual. It's nice to have in writing the base number of resources required for industrial capacity. There is no table of contents and the index is in page order at the back of book instead of alphabetical order by topic.

A game of "grand strategy" shouldn't come in a grand paper sleeve, a jewel case would be nice.

The good:

The players are allowed to choose any sovereign state at the time of their scenario. You aren't restricted to playing only major powers. For interesting games, try some of the regional powers like Brazil, Italy, or even Spain (extremely complex with the revolution throwing off your plans). Plus, playing these other capable, but extremely limited states helps you improve your efficiency since you cannot merely squander any resources. Every country plays in its own unique way, you cannot merely use a one-size-fits-all strategy.

The political model is very good. Your actions are restricted by the policies of your government, which you can slowly change over time. This means that pre-Pearl Harbor US is an extremely hard country to use well on the global level, because you are limited by very isolationist policies. Essentially, this forces you to play in-character for your choice, although you still have very many ways to play each state.

The units are extremely well made, clearly a lot of research was put into this.

The research trees are very, very good. Excellent variety on the air, land, and see doctrine research trees. Each nation again has it's own options here. The ability to try secret weapons research is a great addition, it's not a guaranteed things which adds some actual choice in the matter to pay for it or not. Plus, again each nation has it's own feel for research due to it's available research capacity and research capabilities. Some nations are extremely powerful in research, some are destined to always be behind a bit.

There are many other good things about this game, leaders, special events, etc. I wish I could list them all, but I'd need much more space.

Overall:

Overall, this is a great strategy game. It won't dazzle you with amazing graphics. You can find nearly all of the information you could wantthere were a few things I'd like that aren't available, at least anywhere I could find. My list of complaints are minor and are mostly concerning things that happen outside the game itself. If you like serious, number-crunching strategy, this is a great game. It takes quite a while to play, but every state in every scenario can be a rewarding challenge which makes the replay value seem quite high to me. Plus, it's a nice light lesson in international relations, history, and strategy. Paradox has put a lot of research and effort into this game and it really, really shows.

Fantastic - Detailed - Obsessive Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 12
Date: January 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

All sense of reality will disapear while playing this game. Immersive is an understatement. I fell asleep running through scenarios that would allow me to resupply my 12 divisions in Moscow. (I pushed a little far into Russia hoping to force a quick capitulation - mistake #1).
HOI 1 was great this game fixes most of the mistakes and is just as much fun as the first one. I can't wait until the CORE mod is available for this version!

HOI 1 or HOI 2?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 16
Date: January 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The sequel of the best WW2 strategy game to date arrived. Anyone that bought HOI 1 in the past might have realised though that the game was not worth much until excited owners that saw great potential in the game system begun to modify the basic programme. The best attribute of Paradox games is that they could be almost fully customisable by owners and these modifications made by independent communities are in fact shared freely in several websites (e.g. make a quick search for CORE and Stony Road). In fact thanks to those modifications HOI 1 became rapidly a huge success being at the moment the best WW2 simulation to date (this is currently including HOI 2 I am afraid).

Unfortunately from several HOI 1 veterans that already own HOI 2 the general critic is that the pure vanilla game (without customers programme modifications -non Paradox related- which because the game is newly released they do not seriously exist just yet) the game is not worth much and it is easy to see how disappointed they are.

My suggestion to the people that own HOI 1 is to continue using it together with the custom mods (it took more than two years to evolve to where we stand now with the game and I can assure the result is awesome) and wait to buy HOI 2 until the veteran community begin to release the game corrections and modifications (Paradox is also famous for their bugs and terrible graphics although as I said almost everything can be improved with time by the customer community and it will be). This will take minimum 2 to 3 months which means that if you are desperate to get the game you should wait until around April 2005 if we are lucky to have the initial serious attempts. If you have never played HOI in the past I would go for the first version of it which should be at least half the price and together with the free downloadable mods it is better than the current HOI 2. Again I would expect that with time and the help of the HOI community this will be reverted and as an added bonus HOI 2 will also be much cheaper without having to pay the release price.

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