Where does one begin with a review of a game like Hearts of Iron III (‘HOI3’)? The first problem, as with all Paradox games, is that reviewing it is a bit like shooting at a moving target. The game has only been out a couple of weeks and already there have been two patches, with another due out shortly. Each patch deals with various issues that the fanbase has raised and will often make a small but significant change to gameplay, so the game that I am reviewing now will be a somewhat different game after a few patches have been released. For the most part, this review is based upon version 1.1c of the game.
On the subject of the fanbase, the Paradox forums have been full of the doom and gloom merchants who pop up whenever a new Paradox game is released. We get the usual posts along the lines: “I’ve found a typo in one of the dialogues – this is a GAMEBREAKER!” No it’s not. Calm down. OK, there may be more bugs in the released game than in titles from other companies, but Paradox are a relatively small outfit. They don’t have the resources of the big boys. Instead, they listen and engage with the fanbase, unlike most other games producers. They clearly have a passion for their games, and want to give their customers the best gaming experience possible. So, if there’s something you don’t like about the game, make a reasoned constructive criticism and the chances are that Paradox will listen. In this way we all end up with a product that is probably considerably better than the original game would have been even without bugs.
Ok, enough of the rant. The second problem with reviewing a game like HOI3 is that it is HUGE. The game divides the world into an incredible 15,000 provinces and gives you the opportunity to control just about every aspect of just about every country in the world between 1936 and 1948. Naturally, this can be rather daunting to newcomers to the Hearts of Iron series, but HOI3 eases the micromanagement burden by enabling the player to hand over any part of their county’s affairs to AI control, including the military. The clever thing about this is that even if you hand over everything to the AI it still feels that you are taking part, rather than just watching the computer run a simulation, as you get to direct the military’s overall objectives, in much the same way as a leader at the time would have done. For example, playing Germany in the September 1939 scenario you can simply tell your forces in the east to take Poland, and they will proceed to do just that (don’t forget to tell your forces in the west to defend against the French, who will happily stab you in the back if you don’t).
This, of course, raises the question: how good is the AI? Again, the forums throw up the usual complaints that the AI comes up with crazy things like Mexico invading Germany, or whatever. To that I would make two comments. Firstly, the game is not intended to be a historically accurate simulation of the events of the Second World War. If it were, it would be boring and have no replay value at all. Instead, the game is a sandbox set at the time of WW2, where you can play endless ‘what if?’ scenarios and watch events play out differently every game. The second point is that I think people expect too much of the AI in computer games. A comparison to chess was made in the forum. Yes, chess AI can now beat world champions, but that is because chess is played on a 64 square board with two sides and 32 pieces, and programmers have been working on chess AI for about the last 40 years. HOI3, on the other hand, is played on a 15,000 ‘square’ board with 100+ sides and goodness knows how many unit types, and has been developed by a small company over a couple of years. On that basis, I have to say that the AI is pretty damn impressive. For the most part it seems to carry out your orders reasonably well, and it does a fair job of looking after other countries. OK, some really weird things do happen, but as I mentioned above these are likely to be swatted by future patches.
And on the subject of patches, perhaps the biggest problem reported by users has been slow gameplay, including on high-spec machines. Some of this relates to the speed that time flows compared to previous games in the Hearts of Iron series. Not having played those games, I can’t comment but the second patch has already led to a speed increase, and I understand that slow gameplay is one of the major issues that Paradox hope to address in future patches. For myself, I haven’t really had a problem with slowdown (my machine is quad core 2.67, 4 GB ram, Vista 64), save for occasionally when scrolling across the map, with the result that I might end up in Canada when I intended to be in France. Scrolling with the mouse, incidentally, can be a bit of a pain – often when I go close to the edge of the screen to click a button I find myself unintentionally scrolling the map, which can be a bit irritating. This wouldn’t be quite so bad if you could control the rate of scroll with the mouse, but the option to control it seems to only affect scrolling with the keyboard.
Gameplay is divided into six parts: diplomacy, production, technology, politics, intelligence and, of course, military. Each of the first five has its own screen, and the military plays out on the main map. All I can say to any newcomer before fiddling with anything is: RTFM (see Glossary). The game is difficult to pick up; the options are so great that this is almost inevitable, although there are some areas that could probably be made easier, or more intuitive – another thing that may occur in future patches, or expansions. An effort to make things clearer has been made, for example on the diplomacy screen there is a triangle with Allies, Axis and Comintern at each corner, with all other countries floating around as they gravitate towards one corner or another. This is a reasonable idea, but I’m not sure that it is particularly informative, especially as countries are often obscured by others. The main map now has an outliner in the top right-hand corner telling you what each of your units is doing, and this is a boon, as it was with Europa Universalis III. Access to information is everything in a game like this and, apart from the usual (for Paradox games) comprehensive statistics log, there are various map modes showing all sorts of things including terrain, politics, intel, supply, infrastructure and even weather, which I understand is a new feature for the Hearts of Iron series (obviously, weather can affect movement of troops, as any Barbarossa veteran would bitterly attest). I've read reports that the weather isn't always very realistic (another thing for a patch?), and sometimes I've found that the clouds don't display when they should, but a nice feature nonetheless.
HOI3 is no Crysis or GRID when it comes to looks, but then those games are no HOI3. For a strategy game the graphics are pretty good, and a lot better than some other strategy games I’ve played. I’ve seen HOI2 and can say that the graphics in HOI3 are a definite improvement. The map is a little bit dull for my taste, and sometimes it isn’t always easy to distinguish where one country’s influence ends and another begins. HOI3 now has the option of sprites, which look OK, but sometimes appear to be heading in entirely the wrong direction (incidentally, some users report less slowdown using counters rather than sprites, which makes sense). On higher resolutions, some of the text becomes a little difficult to read, but perhaps that’s because I need a new pair of glasses.
Sound? Well, there are the usual generic sound effects as, for example, battle takes place, although I can’t say that I’ve particularly noticed them (but no doubt would miss them if they weren’t there). The music, however, does deserve comment. I understand that it was all written for the game, in a style appropriate to the period and the country you are playing, and pretty good it is too, although I had to turn the volume down from the (very loud) default, in order to hear myself think out my dastardly plans.
HOI3 does have multiplayer, playable over lan or internet, but this is not something I’ve tried and so I’ll make no comment. Just ensure that your game is patched to the same version as the person you’re playing with!
As I said earlier HOI3 is huge, and any reasonable length review can only scratch the surface. There are many aspects of this game that I haven’t covered, but no doubt if I discover or remember anything of particular note then I will mention it in future posts.
HOI3 is not yet perfect, but it is already a great game. I therefore award it four stars, with the proviso that I fully expect it to be a five-star game after a couple more patches have been released.
RATING:
