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 Strategy Historical 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
Read More: Best Strategy Medieval Games.
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
Darkest Hour: A Hearts of Iron Game
Darkest Hour would merit an award not only for its terrific value but also for the care put into its playability and historical accuracy. Historical events will generally always occur but sometimes at a different moment than anticipated depending on a number of factors. It is generally impossible to avoid having Stalin’s purges as the Soviet player, or election results in France for instance. But in spite of this, outcomes may be very different from game to game because of all other factors that may come into play. It is a complex game that requires a lot of attention, but that is also very rewarding to play.
– Real player with 2008.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Strategy World War II Games.
I have 250-something hours in this game, and it is truly worth every cent i payed for it, i think it was like 2$ CAN. As Hoi4 can never hope to run on my system so this was my first hearts of iron game and i think its a good introduction for the series. It does have a steep learning curve and requires some mental capacity, but it is sorta simple when you look at it and its parts.
Some reviews say that the game is rather linear, that is sorta true at a glance depending on how you play. You can choose to play any nation at a variety of start dates and choose multiple paths to go down for your nation, (though not nearly as extensive as hoi4s foucus trees). there are options to go down alt-history in the base game, through the great number of events and decisions. they are limited though, it is impossible to have a communist USA for example, without the use of a little thing called console commands, which opens up alot of opportunities. make canada a fascist industrial powerhouse rivaling germany in might? you can do it, you can cheat your way through alot, but my advice is to use it only for developing minor nations or capitulating a already defeated enemy, or bypassing the script and creating your own scenarios.
– Real player with 812.1 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
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
STAR WARS™ Rebellion
This is and will remain one of my favourite games of all time, I still play it now and the game time I have logged is a fraction as I’ve only had the it in my steam library for a 3-4mths, I’ve been playing it for years.
It costs less than a pint of beer, infact you could buy a copy for you and a mate for the price of a pint.
Is it for everyone, no.
People who want modern graphics, walk away. (for the old skool SW fans, you’ll see some unique artwork.)
People who want fast paced, walk away.
People who think their Jedi are going to be a super weapon, walk away.
– Real player with 224.0 hrs in game
Star Wars: Rebellion is a classic grand strategy game that’s almost as old as I am, and it shows. A word of warning; many of the negative reviews here (rightfully) deal with issues regarding graphics and loading the game, which can be resolved with a bit of tweaking.
I played this game to death as a kid, even though a lot of my success in it was the result of endless hours of trial and error; the learning curve is perhaps the steepest in video game history, there’s no tutorial, and everything that’s thrown at you can be overwhelming even for people who are familiar with grand strategy titles (a PDF scan of the old instruction booklet can be found in the folders, though). Likewise, while the graphics might have been cutting-edge in 1998, they’re… lackluster nowadays.
– Real player with 161.3 hrs in game
Field of Glory: Empires
Field of Glory:Empires is a good game and a great one when paired with Field of Glory II. I’ve owned the latter for over a year and have enjoyed it but it is spectacular now that stakes are involved. The purchase of this game is worth it just for the improvements to FoG2 as it really captures the ebb and flow of tactical battles during this era better than any game I’ve ever owned (including the Total War which IMO only becomes better for gunpowder era battles).
I could gush about FoG2 but this review is about the base Empires game and my feelings there are a little mixed. My initial impression was overwhelmingly positive but I wanted to play an entire game before fixing my opinion and I’ve found issues there the further you go into the game.
– Real player with 630.8 hrs in game
I’ve edited this review to become a response to the most upvoted negative review because that review does not permit comments. That review was written by @Saber_6 and can be found here:
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198006747725/recommended/1011390/
Random Selected Objectives: They aren’t random. They seem to instead be based off of a combination of geographic proximity, historical conquests, and ethnic/government type affiliation. For example, when I played as Syracuse the objectives were first the rest of sicily, then tarentum, then epirus and massalia, and finally they extended to much of the hellenic world, with the result that you create a Hellenic Mediterranean city state league. When I played as the Picts the objectives were the rest of what is now scotland, and then expanded into the greater celtic areas in northern ireland and Brittany, and then out to the rest of britain and ireland, and then into coastal northern Europe. As Carthage I got objectives to secure southern and easter spain, sicily, sardinia, corsica, southern italy, etc…you get the point. They aren’t random at all. Random would be like if Hibernia was given an objective in India or something like that. Can you tell us what nations with what objectives you are referring to?
– Real player with 533.5 hrs in game
Arsenal of Democracy: A Hearts of Iron Game
The basic campaign game is just fine as a WW2 simulator. I think the best fun is changing a saved game by changing governments, research levels, TC levels etc and then playing as a single country (either Russia, USA, Britain, Japan and Germany mainly) and trying to actually conquer every single province in the world before 1966 with no allies and no trade. This is still quite a struggle and lots of fun, and a lot harder than you would think. If you play Russia in 1936 with hyper tech you still need to get over the Atlantic into Canada/US before the US develop the bomb, the same with Germany. Japan taking on Russia, China and India as well as the US all at once is a challenge as well. A evil USA conquering the British empire and then choosing which Eurasian to take on first can be fun too (either Germany or USSR). Being an Evil Britain and expanding your empire at the expense of France and the US in the late 30s can also be fun, giving you lots of resources for a death match against Germany and then Russia. There is just so much you can do in this game, and that’s why I have spent so much time playing it. It is way better than the Hearts of Iron games it springs from, and I hope it keeps developing. I’m a big fan!
– Real player with 6009.1 hrs in game
I played the first hoi2 more than 10 years ago. I have spent several thousands of hours enjoying different hoi2 versions, mostly against AI, but I cant recommend it as it is now, unless you already are player of some other variant, love it, and know how to use cheats, create mods and events in order to get a challenging campaign.
First this game was created by people who understood and/or created the game mecanhics. So the war played out mostly according to history and pretty much every nation on earth was a nice play and a possible path to become a major power. At some point the creators most probably left and moved on to other projects, but did however leave some dedicated people with the task of fixing bugs and to do further developing. This was a mixed blessing, as whoever have been assigned thoughout the years they have lacked the full understanding of the game. Some things improved, but at a cost that made the game unhistorical, imbalanced and pretty broken. As it is now, every scenario execpt the 1936 and 1945 Cold war clash will create an overpowered Soviet Union. However The 1936 scenario on the opposite creates a Germany that destroys Soviet in 1941, unless its army runs out oil first. (Current German AI more or less only buils army units that are motorised. Anybody else cringe at this totally unrealistic behavoir?)
– Real player with 3174.9 hrs in game
Hearts of Iron 2 Complete
Hearts of Iron II is one of the best Grand Strategy games I have ever played. It’s deep and detailed yet easy enough to learn. Keep in mind though, when I say easy, I mean easy for a Grand Strategy game, for the usual RTS player it still is quite a hill to climb.
The big strategic elements are well made and fulfilling with lots to do in building your country up, fine tuning your army and position it just so. The expansions add tons to that with an expanded diplomacy system and a espionage system both of which, although not as good as the actual warfare, works fairly well.
– Real player with 496.2 hrs in game
This game was released 16 years ago and it is still the best of Paradox’s entire catalogue. Yes, you need to run it on 16-bit compatibility mode, and yes it does not support HD, let alone 4K but the immersion is incomparable to any other historical strategy game. Think about this, there are hundreds (thousands?) of real life generals accompanied with their real life photographs that you can promote, remove from command, or to send into a suicide mission in Cambodia. I remember reading about El Campesino and Lister Forjan in For Whom the Bell Tolls, and imagine the excitement of 13 year old me when I got to see their faces and even got to command them in Hearts of Iron 2.
– Real player with 365.1 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
Total War: ROME REMASTERED
~ DIFFICULTY ~
🔲 My 90 year old grandma could play it
🔲 Easy
✅ Normal
✅ Hard
✅ Dark Souls
It can be changed to hard or Dark Souls depending of your difficulty settings and your faction choice.
~ GRAPHICS ~
🔲 Graphics don’t matter in this game
🔲 MS Paint
🔲 Bad
🔲 Meh
✅ Good
🔲 Beautiful
🔲 Masterpiece
~ MUSIC ~
🔲 Soundless
🔲 Just SFX
🔲 Not special
🔲 Bad
✅ Good
🔲 Beautiful
~ STORY ~
🔲 This game has no story
✅ Like playing Temple Runners for the story
🔲 It’s there for the people who want it
– Real player with 156.2 hrs in game
Even with it’s problems it is the best way to play Rome Total War. Wish the new menus and intros were better and wish it got more updates and also that co-op campaigns would be added. Other than that it’s a great looking game and a lot of fun.
– Real player with 153.7 hrs in game