Hearts of Iron III reviews

Hearts of Iron is a grand strategy that allows you to take control of pretty much any country during the period of World War II. This can be anything from the major powers (Germany, England, USSR, America and Japan) to the many minors (Albania, Cuba, Mongolia, and dozens more).

The game allows you to control the politics, economy, scienctific research and military of your chosen country. You are then allowed to follow whatever path you want, creating your own alliance, or joining the Axis, Allies or Comintern. You can achieve anything given you try hard enough.

HoI3 introduces many new features, including a revitalised AI, which can be told to take over aspects of your country, to allow you to focus on only specific areas. The developers have been releasing alot of information on the game through Developers Diaries on their forums, as well as several previews written by gamers that took part in beta/press releases.

Paradox Interactive also supports their games indefinitely, with patches released quite often, even for games released 4+ years ago. Bugs are also usually ironed out quickly.

Fans of the Europa Universalis series, Victoria and Crusader Kings should definitely keep an eye on this game.

Those who enjoyed Civilisation and the campaign map of the Total War series should download the demo when released and see if this is their type of game.

It is important to note that many previews (while positive) are quite uninformed, and seem to give good ratings because they don't really know what this type of game is. The Grand Strategy genre is a bit of a niche, and many people are quite intimidated when they first learn to play these games.

Gameplay 9/10
Graphics 6/10
Learning curve very steep
Ease of use 7/10

HoI3 is a remake of the second of the series that has revamped a lot of areas of the game, particularly research, diplomacy and the HQ system where you can set the AI to take over the actual functioning of corps/armies if you so choose and sit back and play it as purely a strategy game merely setting axis of advance and letting the AI do it's thing. Unfortunately, as of patch 1.2, it really is not up to the task. The game is very buggy at the moment and is affected by disappearing armies, poor AI choices for production (UK building transports almost to the exclusion of everything else for example), broken weather that pretty much negates air combat, broken naval AI that splits navies into groups of 1 ship and the list goes on.

The underlying game will be a good one but I really would recommend buying it until at least patch 1.4 unless you enjoy the beta-testing experience as that is where the game is at present.

If you haven't played HoI before then I'd really recommend getting the Hearts of Iron anthology (currently $30–50 on MightyApe depending on whether you get it on special) and playing HoI2 and it's expansions (all included in that anthology) to dip your toes in the waters. It has a much less steep learning curve, is a finished product and will give you some idea of whether the genre is one that will appeal. Be aware that HoI3 is a significant step up in complexity/learning curve from there.

Woah – what a big game! Have only had it a few weeks and have spent hours learning how to play, and am still coming to grasp with it. If you like the campaign map of the total war series you will probably love this. Very in depth, complicated but still learnable, and so much to do!
I will probably be playing this for a long time yet.

Admittedly my first strategy games but most games I looked at in the past seemed so simplistic. This games grabs you plus I like the topic and the way it has been implemented. There is a learning curve. Highly recommended!

a good computer game, hard to master at first but it does get better. more than just an army game, it employs diplomacy, strategy, warfare etc. a good game for strategists. it keeps me thinking, not a game that once you've played it, you know all about it.

Over complex and for a new player to the Hearts of Iron series I had no idea what to do. Seems you don't do much? Doubt I will even play it again.. I gave it three separate attempts.

I will not pretend that in the time I have spent playing this game, or any of the other titles by Paradox interactive, I have gotten to the point where I consider myself “good” at them.

Hearts of Iron 3 is hard, I still don't completely understand everything about it. I know that somewhere along the line, there's this big thing that happens called World War 2; which apparently happened in real life as well, you may have heard of it.

Other than that though, all the details of fighting that war, the diplomacy, economics, intelligence gathering and technology researching behind it is still not my strong suit. But I still love the challenge,
And the problem lies with my ability, rather than any faulty game design.

This game, among other titles by Paradox, is a novelty in that it goes into so much detail about everything. It's one of the few internationally made titles that I know of that actually bothers to include small countries like New Zealand, at least to the small degree that New Zealand was involved in a world war.

I suck at it, still. But losing horribly is a kind of fun in it's own right, and it's probably my fault for not starting off as an easier nation to play as, like Germany or the USA.

If you don't like micro-managing, and don't find the 1936–1947 period particularly interesting, I wouldn't recommend it. And there are enough changes from the earlier Hearts of Iron 2, that you will go through a period of not knowing what you're doing, as is happening to me. But all in all, I would heartily recommend the game to anyone with a fair amount of patience.

Side note in case certain Swedish game developers happen to be reading this for some unrealistic reason:
There is no such place in New Zealand as “Wanganur”, but I see what you were going for, and it's nice that you tried.

This game has incredible potential but theres a few major elements which really let it down. The biggest problem is the AI which is terrible. It has no understanding of what its trying to do and endlessly and stupidly re-arranges itself. The supply system also doesn't work so units will be constantly out of supply. People are hopeful that patches will fix it but really its going to take a complete overhaul to fix the AI. It's sad because apart from these few things the rest of the game would be amazing. It just happens that the things that don't work are probably some of the most important things in the game.