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Extremely addictive. Second only to Civ in terms of grand strategy. For those who are WWII history buffs, the game is unbeatable.Plays much like the Avalon Hill game THE THIRD REICH. For those familiar with NATO symbols - use those instead.
For example, how to the use atomic weapons, that I spent the whole game gearing my tech development towards.That aside, the game's technological advancement and economic models are pretty complex and detailed. The manual is sometimes of little help. Hearts of Iron takes the Europa Universalis system and brings it to the World War II era. As you develop certain tecnologies, your troops become more efficient. Certain interface elements are counter-intuitive, for example, to load troops onto a fleet, you need to move the fleet out of the port. The game's scope is strategic, but there are too many interface elements that require you to handle the minute details. Many times I found myself going to the web to find out how to do things that should be in the manual. Troop supply issues get to be important when you have troops far from home.
Internal dissent causes your troops on the battlefield to perform more poorly.This game takes a sizable investment in time to get ones arms around and feel comfortable. Huh. There is actually a group of people on the internet rewriting the manual for the PC version, it is that poor. Wouldn't it make sense to click on the port symbol where the fleet is in port. But for those who take the time, it can give a good idea for what strategic decisions were faced by the governments and military commanders of the era.
I've enjoyed many startegy games such as the civ series and real time strategy series such as Warcraft series, but this game seems to be all detail to no apparent point. After a few hours of play, I gave up. It was just no fun to play.
This game is great, it is so deep, to understand how everything works. Anyway, this is a great game that I would highly recommend to anyone. I first started off doing the tutorial (playing the 1936 scenario-after downloading the missing scenario from the web-site), and got bored very quickly, and didn't learn all that much. badly. and all of the sudden having your production level drop rapidly because you ran out of oil or rubber. Nothing is worse then trying to build up your tanks for an assault. So I played this for a few days, and learned a lot more about picking technologies to research, and building up my armies.
I learned a bit about the economics of the game, and about supporting your external colonies. I would suggest that anyone playing this game for the first time, should try a small country to learn about the economics to maintaining a country and forget about the tutorial. I just got this game last week, and have been totally hooked on it from day one. But Portugal had too weak an econonmy to go to war with. Turkey has a fairly decent economy, and is in the middle of all three different alliances. So I restarted the game, as a small country, Portugal, and played that country for a few days. and how much variation there is too each scenario. Brazil kicked my armies ass.
Now I have switched over to playing Germany for a while. So, I restarted the game, this time as Turkey. So I restarted as Spain, took over Portugal right after I won the Spanish-Civil War, and attempted to invade Brazil in 1942. with the russians right next door. and having your economy stall out.
You may choose to play any number of countries between 1936-1948. You may also maintain neutrality if you wish, but it can be a challenge not getting dragged into the conflict. anti-air, artillery, engineering, mtn elite, anti-tank, etc). Personally, in regards to game-play, HOI is a fantastic "RTS" game. I won't even try to go into the units, but every aspect of warfare is considered (e.g. The 1936 scenario, "The Road to War," is missing from the released version; however, its an easy download from Virtual Programming's web page for HOI. If you can go online and register w/ Amazon.com, you've got all the skill necessary to find "The Road to War." Don't give this one a try because of the missing scenario.
Like EU2, HOI has a complex, but easily understandable w/ experience, economic system to manage. There are three ideologies at odds: Axis, Allies, and Comintern (communists). In addition, one needs to consider resource supplies, industrial capacity, military readiness (tech and production), and diplomacy. If so, you'll be the one missing, missing out that is.
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