Hearts of Iron IV is a strong contender for the title of ultimate armchair-general game. The biggest problems I can point to are almost all performance-related, putting a slow, frustrating finale on what is otherwise an ingeniously detailed strategic stimulation of just about every aspect of 20th-century global warfare. I long for a way to extract more meaningful, personal stories and tactical feedback out of the hundreds of battles, but rarely did I ever feel like I was lacking for some weighty decision to make or interesting puzzle to put my mind to.
Tutorial is weak and doesn't prepare players for game's complexity
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Hearts of Iron IV is a strong contender for the title of ultimate armchair-general game. The biggest problems I can point to are almost all performance-related, putting a slow, frustrating finale on what is otherwise an ingeniously detailed strategic stimulation of just about every aspect of 20th-century global warfare. I long for a way to extract more meaningful, personal stories and tactical feedback out of the hundreds of battles, but rarely did I ever feel like I was lacking for some weighty decision to make or interesting puzzle to put my mind to.
Hearts of Iron IV (HOI IV) is the next iteration in Paradox Studio's game Hearts of Iron series (Hearts of Iron III was released in 2009). During the campaign you will focus on pre-war and wartime strategies. You can choose to begin the campaign in...
War is tricky business, and when your conflict stretches to the globe's far-flung corners, it gets that much tougher. That's what Hearts of Iron IV is all about. You command one of the world's many countries (you can play as just about any nation that...
Hearts of Iron IV is an easy recommendation for grand strategy fans of all ages and encourages them to take the time to figure everything out. There are some issues including the lack of popups, flavor events and opacity as to what the other AI players are trying to accomplish, but these things are rather small complaints in the grand scheme of things considering the overwhelming quality here. Hearts of Iron IV is the sort of game that requires real thought and that you’ll enjoy pondering even when you’re not playing it.
Hearts of Iron IV is a strong contender for the title of ultimate armchair-general game. The biggest problems I can point to are almost all performance-related, putting a slow, frustrating finale on what is otherwise an ingeniously detailed strategic...
Developer: Paradox Development Studios Publisher: Paradox Interactive Platform: PC (Steam, £34.99 ) Review code provided by the publisher.Every now and then you can play a game that makes time seem like such a fleeting thing, where you start playing...
Hearts of Iron 4 is an incredibly complex World War II simulation that will require potentially hundreds of hours to master, both in-game and poring over wiki articles that read like an economics textbook. And as someone eager to invest that kind of...
I struggled for some time to figure out how I felt about Hearts of Iron 4's latest DLC, La Résistance. Paradox has delivered several new HUGE new focus trees for some very interesting states (Republican/ Nationalist Spain, Portugal, and France/ Vichy...
The key concept when discussing Man the Guns is depth. At launch Hearts of Iron 4 was a fun, yet oddly shallow look at World War 2, but the scope of the game has been broadened by substantial updates and expansions in the years since. The latest...
Despite the fact that Hearts of Iron IV still has some fundamental issues with its design, the HOI team at Paradox Development Studios are certainly doing a great job distracting us by doubling-down on what actually works (and fleshing out areas of the...
Creating games dealing with World War II, developers usually suffer from tunnel vision and concentrate on great powers such as Germany, Italy, Britain, France, Japan, the US and the USSR; other countries are conquest fodder. Paradox Interactive in the...
After three years of meticulous preparation , the fighting can begin. For this part of the review, I've gone straight in with the '1939' starting option – trying out both Germany and Japan as they present very different starting positions.The German...
Grand strategy games have always had two components: civilian and military. Although intertwined, one part usually dominants the other. Paradox Interactive's fourth rendition of its World War II series, Hearts of Iron, may hay hit upon a way where each...