Hearts of Iron III

Paradox has been known for his emphasis on historic strategy games for well over a decade, and arguably its best-received series has been Hearts of Iron - which looks at the Second World War. Now a third installment of that series has been released, with what may seem to be scads of improvements and expanded to be the company's most ambitious game ever.

THE VERDICT by Will Herring Will Herring's Avatar While he didn't think it was the definitive strategy title, Andrew still thought that Hearts of Iron III was a huge step forward for the prestigious franchise.

Complexity, Complexity, Complexity

Most Paradox fans -- not to mention those looking for a solid World War II grand-strategy game -- are sure to feel daunted by Hearts of Iron III. When one looks at the newest addition to the series and compares it to the previous installments, they'll very quickly notice that the level of complexity has been ratcheted up by several degrees in Hearts of Iron III.

One of the most noticable differences in Hearts of Iron III has to be the game's new design focus. In previous Hearts of Iron installations, in-game provinces could be hundreds of kilometers in width, and whole corps would be moved around with a click of a button. Hearts of Iron III's new design focus has been focused downwards -- for example, the amount of provinces that you'll be fighting over has increased by what seems to be a factor of four or five and frequently, in even the most fought over fronts, provinces will be held by a mere two or three brigades of troops. Fairly streamlined affairs such as diplomacy and tech research have also been bolstered in complexity. In some ways this is a positive boon to the player -- diplomacy now gives players more options, allowing for countries to purchase licenses to build units they might not otherwise be able to produce or giving Axis members the ability to declare limited wars. The amount of things that need doing in Hearts of Iron III can be a little daunting, especially at first, and have also included the ability to allow the computer to take over just about anything to allow you to focus on specific issues.

Not everything benefits from this increase in complexity though. Indeed, in many ways parts of Hearts of Iron III have arguably become worse than in previous installments. Take research, for instance: in the second game, nations had one to five research teams with which they could research things such as new battleship or tank designs. It was simple, yet still allowed for both major and minor powers to research effectively. This system has been done away with for a more complex system in Hearts of Iron III, where players now research component parts to units such as tanks. Where in the previous system you'd research the tank itself, you now research its engine, gun, armor, and reliability. Moreover, each nation can now research only so much as its leadership points allow -- an all encompassing resource that needs to be divided between not only research, but also spy production, diplomatic action points, and officer training. This is all well and good for larger nations, but smaller nations are now generally penalized to a greater degree than was ever seen previously and tend to lag far behind their historical counterparts.

Hearts of Iron III
Hearts of Iron III

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mikecheck973

Do not buy Hearts of Iron 3. My PC runs Crysis just fine, and this game runs slower than stephen hawkings. Paradox left out cornerstone technology from the original game so they could release sprite packs with them in it. Go buy HOI 2 Doomsday or wait a little bit longer till they fix all the bugs. BTW, theres no ME-262 or the Bismarck in the retail version of HOI 3, which in my opinion, makes this fantasy simulation more like cake without the icing.I emailed paradox and asked why they left such important technology like the ME-262 out of the original game, and they told me there was so many jet fighters, they just chose to leave it out. A) It was the most important and influential jet fighter if WWII and B)In my opinion they chose to leave it out because they saw an oppertunity to charge for extra content.

fortissimo

mikecheck973 wrote:

Do not buy Hearts of Iron 3. My PC runs Crysis just fine, and this game runs slower than stephen hawkings.

C,mon, dude, have some respect. Stephen Hawking (not Hawkings) could destroy you with the power of his mind alone. And he had a higher IQ than you when he was four years old. Oh, and HE COULD DESTORY YOU WITH HIS MIND!

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