Europa Universalis IV
I’m a divorced woman of color. Recently, my ex got our son Larry a video game called Europa Universalis for his 14th birthday. It seemed good for him, because it takes place in the distant past and he’s always been interested in history, so it seemed like a nice enough game, no graphic violence or anything, at least until I sat down and watched him play at it. I don’t know what sorts of racists made this game, but it’s basically a colonialism and genocide justification simulator. If you want to survive, you need to have access to money and soldiers, and the most (only) reliable way to ensure you have enough is to attack and conquer your weaker neighbors. If you don’t, you can be sure someone else will eventually come attack and conquer you.
– Real player with 4558.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Historical Diplomacy Games.
So EU4 was a good game. Then they released the 450+ ‘bug fixes’. The entire game outside Europe has now been put back behind a new paywall unless you have the paradise DLC as it is now impossible to develop your provinces to spawn institutions as army tradition gives you impossibly high dev costs. I played one game and when I needed to dev an institution from a 1/1/1 grasslands province and starting cost is 120. That is only with 33 army tradition giving a 150% penalty. This was a custom nation and I had -20% dev cost. Good job paradox forcing everyone to buy your shittiest dlc in order to use any of the other DLC’s you have paid for. The game is now broken outside of Europe without the paradise dlc. You make me sick Paradox!
– Real player with 1819.5 hrs in game
Europa Universalis III Complete
Whee. Europa 3, like its predecessors and its cousins Hearts of Iron and Victoria (Crusader Kings as well, but that isn’t as hard to learn), is an extremely complex game that is notoriously difficult to learn, not helped by crappy tutorials. I had an edge having been playing this series since its first installment, but it still took some time to get used to everything. So right from the start expect a significant time investment on learning how to play the game, and learning to do well at it. War, Diplomacy, Trade, Exploration, and more. It’s all here.
– Real player with 535.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Historical Political Sim Games.
As far as I’m concerned, this is the best game ever - especially in this version with the first two additions to the game.
To a certain extent, it is comparable to the Total War games, if they only included the map mode, which would here be simplified to armies only being able to move from province to province and not within a province. However, you have a more complicated diplomacy and domestic policy to deal with.
Another thing that makes it different, and, for my taste, better than the Total War games, is the greater realism and historical accuracy - in this game you can’t just conquer everything, and it remains challenging for the more than four centuries that its timespan covers.
– Real player with 492.4 hrs in game
Victoria II
“Ugh… What could’ve been… Praise KEK that I at least have my videogames to live out my epic power fantasies”
– Real player with 1707.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Historical Political Sim Games.
Really fun game once you get the hang of it, and If you ever get bored of the base vanilla content, there’s so much creative and fun community mods that gives the game infinite replayability
– Real player with 1442.6 hrs in game
Crusader Kings II
If you care about the amount of gameplay you get for your money at all, this game probably rates higher than any other game. (Last I read, the average player had over 500 hours on this game.)
Crusader Kings II is a strategic game where you spend most of your time looking at a big map of Europe cut into little counties, but it is drastically different from a game like Medieval II: Total War. Whereas in those games, every nation had rigid boundaries and an entire nation was a distinct, unified entity, Crusader Kings II focuses upon the feudal system of governance, and especially its hereditary system of succession.
– Real player with 2025.1 hrs in game
Crusader Kings II is one of the most deep, fascinating and replayable strategy games I have ever played. In brief, you play as a family in the middle ages, anywhere between Mali and Mongolia, or from Bengal to Britain. You try to secure advantageous alliances and strategic marriages, and build up a small realm, either as a vassal of a greater power or striking out independently. There is no real win condition, though I love taking people who lost out historically, and helping push them to greatness.
– Real player with 1862.2 hrs in game
Europa Universalis: Rome - Gold Edition
Mix of Europa Universalis IV and Crusader Kings II with an Ancient Era theme?
As mentioned before this game somewhat finds the middle ground between Europa Universalis IV and Crusader Kings II set in the Classical Era, while keeping it a bit more simple. There are individuals with personal properties who are part of families which you can appoint to perform certain tasks in your realm, but you are not playing as a dynasty gaining and losing lands by inheritance. For some people this type of gameplay might make CKII a bit hard to comprehend (or even annoying when you lose your realm because of some patrilineal/matrilineal screw up, or lose your alliances at the death of your ruler), in which case Europa Universalis: Rome offers a nice alternative because you are playing as a state while still having a fun mechanic with indivuals with personal traits.
– Real player with 597.1 hrs in game
My most played game on Steam, and it deserves a review.
Its very indeph with loads of micromanagement, and if you happen to like the timeline, you are welcome to buy it.
You can tune it to play it with unlimited time, if that bothers you.
What sets it apart from normal EU games, is the barbarian mechanic.
There are lots of uncivilized lands where barbarians are uprising all the time, and it takes near the end of the game, to civilize them all. If you play a nation that borders to them, it makes the game very “fun” and unpredictible.
– Real player with 527.6 hrs in game
For The Glory: A Europa Universalis Game
For The Glory A Europa Universalis Game is a very aptly named game. It is, essentially, a collection of advances made in the Europa Universalis II modding scene bundled together and sold as a full game. And while For The Glory is a great experience it is also an experience you can get from playing regular Europa Universalis II and installing a bunch of mods.
From the standpoint of an un-modded Europa Universalis II all the advances in For The Glory will look tremendous. A massive increase in the number of events you will receive, both as a historical player or as someone that thinks the Reconquista should be going in reverse. The AI is smarter, focusing it’s forces much better, new map modes makes conquests much easier to plan and a ton of general balance changes makes everything feel sharper and better. Even graphically there is some improvements.
– Real player with 168.5 hrs in game
I got hooked on EU II back in 2002 and played it almost constantly until the release of For the Glory. so I bought it… twice :D This is Europa Universalis II as it was supposed to be. Well, except for one thing: the promised new map that was never made. Fortunately, that can be easily fixed, as there are 2 or 3 community-made map mods and several mods for either vanilla or modded maps, and that makes For the Glory the EUII as it was supposed to be. So, don’t get me wrong, even without the new map this is the game worth recommending and worth playing, no matter what. This is a game that will grab you and hold you for a long time, and if you get involved in modding (as I have) that hold will only get stronger and longer lasting.
– Real player with 156.0 hrs in game
Hearts of Iron III
This game lets you play as any country during World War 2. I played the base game plus all expansions (SF, FtM, TFH).
You can manage every aspect of the war, from diplomacy to espionage to research to actual combat. You can even try to stay neutral and sit out the fighting if you want, but what fun would that be?
There is an enormous amount of complexity - casual gamers beware! If one part of the war is too tedious for you, it can be set to be automated. For example, rather than personally overseeing every trade deal you can check a box and let the computer handle all of your trades. The computer is not as smart as a person and it can’t metagame but in most tasks it does an adequate job.
– Real player with 755.9 hrs in game
The King of Grand Strategy
Most of you who visit the shop-page for Hearts of Iron III probably already know what this game is all about. It’s a hardcore (as hardcore as it can get, actually!) Grand Strategy Game by Paradox Interactive. That one sentence really says it all.
This review is intended for those who don’t yet know what Grand Strategy (the capitals are there with a purpose!) is all about. Simply put: Grand Strategy games are the best, but also the most complex, pc gaming has to offer. They are immersive, complex, and very addictive. They are not for everyone, that’s for sure. You don’t play them for the graphics, nor for the sounds or some great level-design, but only for the gameplay, which can also be very, very difficult to master. There are tons of stats, of units and/or provinces to be controlled and only one person who has the power to control them: you.
– Real player with 408.6 hrs in game
NOBUNAGA’S AMBITION: Sphere of Influence
Writing a review for Nobunaga’s Ambition: Sphere Of Influence is going to be tough the game is truly amazing. please dont let my hour’s make you think differently of my review, I played this game quite a bit offline when I had no net where I played it at times, anyway lets get down to business!
Nobunaga’s Ambition: Sphere Of Influence is an historical strategy simulator game, where its based of of the warring states of feudal Japan the Sengoku era that was between 1467-1615 when the last of the Toyotomi oposing the Tokugawa shogunate was finally defeated.
– Real player with 154.8 hrs in game
As someone who was just a wee lad playing on his NES when the first Nobunaga’s Ambition hit the US, I was definitely turned on when they announced the 30th anniversary edition. The story of the Warring States Period is a crazy part of world history, not just Japanese history, and SOI adds infinitely more flair and backstory to this than previous editions of the game.
The game’s combat has some similar elements to Total War: Shogun, but there’s more art to it and fewer technical options available for directing your armies… The personalities in this game are more important, and your generals and their special talents can make or break you in a tough situation. The game has stronger RPG elements in developing their individual traits that can turn them into some serious powerhouses on the battlefield.
– Real player with 106.4 hrs in game
NOBUNAGA’S AMBITION: Sphere of Influence - Ascension / 信長の野望･創造 戦国立志伝
As an individual who are obessed with Asian history, especially Japanese history, I found his game is a blast. I would call NOBUNAGA’S AMBITION: Sphere of Influence - Ascension a education sowftware rather than a game. You can actually learn a lot history knowledge if you follow the scenarios.
Compared to NOBUNAGA’S AMBITION: Sphere of Influence, Ascension is a huge improvement. Heres the every reason I prefer Ascension over SOI.
1: Enemy and Ally AI improved notably, especially on max diffuculty, For example, smaller Daimyos would actually form alligence to protect each other, so it is hard to invade them without much strategy like in SOI.
– Real player with 1616.0 hrs in game
Hello, welcome to my 600+ (25 days in game) hour long review for a game I am going to overall say, “Yes buy it.” “BIG IF” you like strategy games. As I am someone who has over 600+ hours on this game it’s pretty safe to say I have played this game and I know what I am talking about. I’m going to be honest. I am no expert at this game, Only defeating 4 scenarios so far out 18 scenarios, I have not completed every scenario and defeated every stage of this game, because quite frankly, it is too much fun challenging myself playing as weaker daimyos (lords or warlords) in the early scenarios with less powerful clans running around, and fighting against impossible odds later in the same scenario if I did not build up fast enough. So check out my review first before you go with other reviews that are less than 40 hours, because chances are they started playing this game thinking they were gonna get a Dynasty Warriors (hack and slash) game and were like, “WTF is this?” and then they quit after 10 hours of scratching their heads and not understanding a thing about strategy games or KOEI games for that matter. If you’re looking for a mindless beat them up fighting adventure game move along and stop giving bad reviews to a game company that has been around for over 3 decades now producing strategy games. Go buy Dynasty Warriors 45 or whatever hack and slash game KOEI has produced lately, so maybe KOEI will continue to produce such classics games as these for their true AMERICAN fans.
– Real player with 1445.2 hrs in game
Total War: NAPOLEON – Definitive Edition
This is one of the best historical games I have ever played. It’s very detailed, has lots of varieties of modes and mods, and is just round well one of the best games I have ever played in my life.
– Real player with 326.5 hrs in game
Everything. maybe bigger longer campaigns would be nice for this era. but after beating twice i need a new total war.
– Real player with 243.0 hrs in game