Hearts of Iron IV Reviews

no clear information on game mechanics....fun game but SOOO hard to understand that it is tiring....fix that and it could be a blast, yes i did look at wiki. next issue updates remove your saved game...i play single player why would you do this dev??? fix it.... i should not have to go to a different app just to save a game that I save via your game. third is cost of DLC get a grip with reality

My hearts of iron experience after like 2 matches (i lost both of them): > Try to do tutorial > Tutorial sucks i dont understand sh1t > watch youtube how to beat tutorial > still dont understand anything > try to learn myself (it kinda works) > play as italy and declare war on france > half of the world turns out to be my enemy > starts losing the war > italy enters civil war > somehow i became on the same side as france during the ciivl war (amazing) > thinking how i got civil war if i had 90% stability > play as romania > puppet bulgaria and align hungary > i lost to hungary even thought i had 20 division versus only 2 > doesnt make any sense > next goal: form roman empire (i dont think i will be even close to that)

You should get review bombed at this point. The quality of the DLCs is gradually falling off and you keep the prices up at ridiculous amounts. Not only that, you are SOMEHOW unable to do a basic playtest of your game during the development, seriously how do you fail to do a bare minimum QA??

These can be long games, and too many updates make the previous game not loadable. I don't play everyday, and when I get back to my game and I can't load it, it is more than frustrating. It means I won't play anymore.

Took me a long time to realize that there isn't actually anything fun about this game at all. >I want to play a historical war game! Then this game is not for you, because it flattens the interesting social dynamics of the time into a Bethesda-esque, two-option choice that invariably leads to the exact same outcome, plus or minus 0.04% recruitable manpower. >I want to play a cool alternate history scenario! Then this game is definitely not for you. The allure of alt-history collapses when you realize that the Confederate States of America can rebel under the leadership of Alf Landon and the Republicans over the reestablishment of the Gold Standard. (Here we see the full extent of Swedish historical literacy.) This game is not about politics, it is not about warfare, it is not about history, or strategy, or resource management. This game is about pleasuring yourself to abstract statistics and +15.00% bonuses to concepts such as "division trickleback" which are never explained whatsoever. >What should I play instead? Nothing. There is nothing that will satisfy the above. Go ♥♥♥♥ yourself and cry, because every attempt at a map-based historical strategy game that isn't made by Paradox has failed. >What about le youtuber gameplay? It looks so fun! WAOW!! If you insist on earning a 4-year degree in Paradox Interactive game design (equivalent to lobotomization), then sure. Except it isn't, because ALL of those people constantly complain about how shallow and easy the AI is. If you subject yourself to the game's incoherent, nonsensical systems, you will find a way to cheese every single one of them (this is how those 'tube guys' make it look fun). >What specifically is bad about it? The foundational elements of the game are disconnected and dissonant from each other, held together by a patchwork of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ code that modders have fruitlessly attempted to mend. - Army system: sucks ass to the point of no return. There are EXACTLY 4 viable army templates you can use. Any deviation from these 4 is an instant loss or a meme. There is also precisely ONE strategy to use: dig in and let the enemy attack your lines, then attack them and encircle them with tanks. Every country in the game plays the exact same way, aside from how long it takes for them to go to war. - Naval system: is widely panned. Nobody understands how to use it, and half the time it doesn't even work due to Paradox's coding ineptitude. Ships are ludicrously expensive (keep in mind the real life USA was producing several *entire* ships per day in 1944) and violently explode the second they see a heckin problematic enemy unit, sentencing 2,000 souls to the frigid depths. - Air system: is incredibly overpowered despite taking no effort to use. You can easily design planes that wipe out the Soviet infrastructure in three days of bombing. And YET, the air system is literally just a number game. More planes = you win. Don't have planes? You lose. - Spy system: does nothing but take up your time. I hope you're extra patriotic, because you will have to condemn your units to 24 hours of state policing, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, for 6 years straight, in order to arrest merely ~200 people a day. And you'll somehow have to imprison all 12 million of these partisans. That math just doesn't add up... If you don't use it, your manpower gets sucked and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ into obliteration as your strapping German boys enter the alleyways of Warsaw, one-by-one, every Tuesday at precisely 6:30 PM- never to return. - The AI: regularly commits suicide by Allied Intervention and effectively ends the game by 1941 (the signs were not there). Half of your games devolve into an utter slog, fighting the entire western hemisphere for control over the crucial aluminum mines of southwest Tibet. Playing as any country besides the ones you can easily name is an exercise in retardation, because you either won't do anything for 10 years, or get steamrolled immediately. - National focuses: should be the core of the game, yet come exclusively in the varieties of overpowered, underpowered, and abysmally underpowered, to the point where the default focus tree from 1.0 is better. - Peace conferences: are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Italy demands control of Siberia and this one obscure township in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, but nothing else- BUT will actually fight a third world war if you dare contest their claim to the Don-Kuban Autonomous Oblast. All of these things have been brought up countless times, and they will NEVER be addressed. Mark my words. >I like logistics and masturbate to graphs. I think I'll love this game. Then play Hearts of Iron 3 (the last game Paradox put any modicum of effort into), because HoI4 doesn't even deliver on that. 45% of the game's systems don't work, or are so convoluted that they'll stop working for no discernable reason. Examples include: - Your ships suddenly refuse to leave port and just die. - Your spies get captured and cannot be rescued, so you just lose a spy forever. - Your units become part of a Seth Rogen plot and Shanghai themselves into the middle of a desolate wasteland searching for the fabled weed caves and starve to death. - Your armies suddenly forget how to eat, drink, or breathe, and refuse to take the supplies which reach them. - Your conquered land decides to unconquer itself because Prime Minister Tojo signed a new railway gauge standardization act into law. Final verdict: Who REALLY won WWII...?

I love the game because very real and you neet much time for play but i dislike 1 because i neet pay dlc for enjoy all the game but is a good game 9/10 recomend (sorry for my english i am soo bad)

As much as I love this game, Paradox's increasingly overmonetization of this game can't be ignored at this point. The Devs are constantly rushed to pump out more DLCs for minor countries, and then Corporate slaps ridiculous price tags on them. They also have made DLCs that literally overwrite other DLCs, and will pair giant features with minor DLCs in order to make an excuse to bump up their prices; Features that should be in free updates. The base game is incredibly bare bones, the DLC is essentially 90% of the actual content for the game. The Dev team also constantly get blamed for the poor choices and pricing that the upper-management makes and are typically used like the first line of defense, Shields that will absorb and deflect most of the criticism away from the rest of the company. Paradox listens to shareholders and business consultants on critical and creative decisions more so than their actual Dev teams and audiences

Hearts of Iron IV offers a captivating experience for strategy and history enthusiasts. Despite its positive aspects such as deep strategic options, historical recreation, and military planning, the steep learning curve and certain mechanical shortcomings might be challenging for some players. However, for those who appreciate the complexity and details, it can provide a rewarding war strategy experience.

only game where even after 1k+ hours, you have very little clue of what's actually happening in other words, buy it

My first game I played as the German Reich, I lost to Poland. My latest game I played as Poland, and also lost to Poland. 10/10