Recent reviews by Turais

Wait for the bugs to be fixed and for the DLC to go on sale to buy this. In AUD the base game is $69.95 when not on sale, and the DLC is $42.95, so even without bugs I'd recommend waiting for a sale before buying.

Pros:
- Actual diplomacy
The added diplomacy options in this DLC make Victoria 3 into what it should have been on release, it's improved that much.
- Foreign investment
Being able to build in your subjects and profit from it should have been in the game from release, however it's great to know that your first step as Great Britain isn't annexing your subjects.
- Tech sharing with subjects
As with the previous points, this should have been included with the base game on release, but I'm glad that we have it now.

Cons:
- Bugs
There are a lot of bugs at the moment, some that have been noted on Paradox's forum and some that haven't. Bugs like Persia getting a claim on the USA state of Georgia instead of the Georgia near the Caucuses for one. As Circassia you can't put your ships out into the Black Sea, which is surprising given they've made a whole new event chain and an achievement for the country.
- Nationalising your industries via war
This might be a design choice or it might be a bug, but in the current patch you have to invade the country you're nationalising from. I think it makes a lot more sense to have to defend your territory (like an independence war or defending against war reparations) because you've already got the industry in your territory - it should be on the foreign power to invade and take back control. As an example, I don't think it makes sense that as Korea you have to invade the Spanish to take back control of your iron mines.
- Getting kicked out of Power Blocs
In my Circassian play through I got kicked out of Great Britain's Power Bloc with no explanation - they didn't have a Lobby against my country, and we had +80 relations. I found it weird, and I was allowed to ask to be invited back into the Power Bloc, but then Great Britain would kick me out again after 2-3 days. I could keep repeating this until they had reduced our opinion down to -100, all with no indication on what was causing me to be kicked from the Bloc.
- Random UI changes
They flipped the Military Tech Tree from Navy on the right side to Navy on the left side without changing the actual techs as far as I can see. They've also added an 'All' buildings tab (which is what it opens to by default) which is generally too broad to be helpful, and have made several changes to the layout of your construction. I've tried to keep an open mind, but just can't wrap my head around why they would make the changes they did.

I'll probably update this review when they release 1.7.1 and/or 1.7.2, but I think that I'd still recommend waiting for a sale to buy it.

I'm updating my review as I feel that the game is now different enough from the state it was released in that it deserves a new review.

I'd give this game a tentative recommendation*, with the asterisk being try the base game before buying any of the DLC. If you do decide to buy the DLC, it's worth waiting for it to go on special first, as the DLC pricing (particularly for Sphere of Influence) is pretty egregious for what you actually get out of it. To put it in perspective, Sphere of Influence is priced at $42.95 AUD when the base game is $69.95 AUD, which is roughly 60% of the price of the base game. At the end of the day it's up to you if you think the DLC would be worth it, and I'm just glad that I got it for free as part of the season pass.

This game has good bones for mods, and with the Steam Workshop you can craft this game into something that you can enjoy for nearly a thousand hours. I'll be honest and say that only approximately 400 hours of my playtime is in the base game, if that, and the rest of my playtime is with various mods such as Divergences or AD 1648, and I look forward to seeing what the Anbennar team can do with the game.

I'm just asking, nay begging, the team to properly play test the updates before they come out. While Paradox is fast at releasing hot-fixes for bugs, it honestly feels a bit like they're leaving in easily noticeable bugs that can quickly be fixed so it looks like they're listening to the community. Either that or the devs are so overworked that they can't give the game the proper polish it deserves during the initial development time, and can only work on bug fixes after the DLC has been released.

I'll finish this off with a quick list of pros and cons.

Pros:
You can develop your economy and laws however you want within the frame that the game gives you. Want a Lassez-Faire economy with a strong public health insurance policy? Sure. Want a Communist Dictatorship with a Peasant Army? Why not. Want to release Jan Mayen and turn an Arctic Island into the best place to live in the world? Go for it.

You can play out several alternative history scenarios. This is great if you're one of the lost causers think that the American Civil War was about 'State's Rights' (to own slaves). It's also great if you're one of the people that think that the USA post-Civil War was too lenient on the South and should have instead focused on lifting up the then-freed slaves as equal citizens.

It scratches an itch to develop your country and watch your GDP and Standard of Living go up.

If you have issues with any part of the game then 9 time out of 10 you'll be able to find a mod that fixes it for you.

Cons:
There are objectively good ways, or meta ways, to play. There are states that are objectively the best to build certain industries in, and it's worth going for these states in each play through because they're that good. There are starting moves, such as puppeting Mexico as the USA, that set you up so well for the rest of the game that if you don't do them it will take a lot more time and effort to reach the same level. 'But you should just roleplay' - I don't find handicapping myself in games for the sake of 'roleplaying' to be fun. If you choose to actively hinder yourself for the sake of roleplaying, you're probably better off watching a youtuber play the game.

The warfare and battles system is a mess, and it will probably keep being a mess until the DLC that addresses warfare is inevitably released.

You can't join in or swap sides during the course of a war. To point to Italy as an example in WW1 - they declared neutrality in 1914 when the war first broke out, then joined the war in 1915 almost a year after war started, so there's historical precedence during this time period to let you do the same.

There's a steep learning curve for newcomers to the genre.

Much like the other people in the reviews I got this as part of the expansion pass - Paradox, why is this $42.95 Aussie Dollarydoos? The base game is $70 dollarydoos, are you telling me that this is worth 61.36% of the cost of the base game?

Buy on sale, or if you already own Northern Lords then buy the expansion pack because I think you get a discount that way? Either way there's absolutely no way that I can recommend this at the current price.

For $4.50 AUD this game is an absolute steal. Not only are the individual runs short and sweet, fitting in well for a short decompression session before/after work, the most recent update has added a "loop" mode where you can continue for another 25 rounds while keeping your current setup and gold. Speaking of updates, this game keeps updating, reworking aspects which weren't as fun before (for example, healers used to heal your units directly, now they spawn little healing orbs you have to pick up to heal, adding to the interactivity of the game) or even adding in new classes in general.

Provided you have a good strategy for every run, you could probably complete this game up to NG+5 in 5-6 hours, a little bit longer if you go for 100% achievements, but for less than $5 that's well worth the price.

P.S. The OST is an absolute banger, I recommend turning down the other game sounds slightly to give it a chance to really shine.

I make more money per day in this game (even without bribes/drugs) than I do in real life :)

(TL;DR) If you play a lot in Iberia, play colonisers a lot, or want to play a pirate nation, consider this a yes recommendation. Otherwise, wait for a sale or don't buy it at all.

The reason I can't really recommend this for the general playerbase is because the actual paid content, and not the stuff that comes with the free patch, can pretty much be replaced with mods or just gives you more buttons to press every 5-10 years, or falls under "neat idea, but is it worth paying $14.50 Australian Dollarydoos for?"

I like minority expulsion as an idea, and it was definitely prevalent in places like GB, but I'm pretty sure that Spain didn't expel minorities to the new world. I could be wrong though. It boosts the dev in colonies while ensuring the ethnic purity™ of your home land, while costing you bird mana. Good for pretty much all colonisers as a utility tool. (EDIT: Minority Expulsion is overpowered as heck. As Castille, if you get the Burgundian Inheritance around 1480, get the Council of the Indies government reform, and complete the Exploration tree as normal, you can have the Netherlands clear of Dutch people by about 1510. That means that the Dutch revolts won't fire and the Netherlands won't break free, the whole Low Countries won't have the unaccepted culture malus, which is an extra 33% tax and manpower you'll get out of the region, and expelling cultures is cheaper and faster than normal colonisation. On top of that, it basically creates free development at the place you expel them to, with no debuff to the place they're expelled from. All at the cost of Diplo points, which are the easiest points to stockpile.)

The three orders are just three buttons which are a flat cost (50 of any power) development with a minor bonus on top. Only downside is that only catholic iberians can use it, meaning there's less incentive to go an ahistorically protestant or reformed iberian nation. (2ND EDIT: You can use holy orders on your own states, your vassal's states, and your colonial's states. For just 50 of any given power, you can get on average 4-5 development per state you put the holy order in. Just in case it needs to be said outright; this is overpowered as heck. Pretty sure you can also do some shenanigans where you lose one of the provinces in the state, which resets the holy order in said state, letting you spend 50 of a power to get another 4-5 development.)

The mission trees are neat, I guess, but you can find better ones for free on the workshop. I haven't played enough to tell you how over or underpowered they are, but assuming it's anything like the Rule Brittania mission trees, it'll give you a sense of direction throughout the game. A definite positive if you play ironman for the achievements. (EDIT: They managed to make the Purple Phoenix of Iberia (White Flower? Whatever.) over powered. In a couple of test runs when I played out of Iberia, Granada usually allies the Ottomans/Mamluks/Some Berbers which scares Castille off from attacking them. From there they either expand into Portugal, expand into Morroco, or expand into Andalusia after Aragon attacks Castille. They're supposed to be a doomed start, not blobbing 4/5 games.)

The pirate republics are kind of a niche thing, and something that I won't see myself playing, so I'll refrain from commenting on their usefulness. Basically, if you're buying the DLC for pirates, it doesn't matter what I say, if you don't care about pirates, then there's no way of me convincing you otherwise. (EDIT: the AI pirate republics never amount to anything, so this is pretty much only a feature if you want to play as a pirate republic.)

The flag ships are cool, for lack of a better term. They basically add up to three mini-national ideas to a specific fleet of yours. All of them seem good, but there will definitely be a meta of which ones are best for which kinds of fleets. (EDIT: Flag ships are just a bonus on top for if you're already winning. Add the trade flag ship to your 50 light ship fleet to add 50 trade power. Add speed and combat width to your combat fleet so that you can clear out the enemy ships faster. Add troop speed to your transport fleet so your people can get on and off the ships faster. By the time you have the navy and economy to build support a flag ship, you should already be dominating the seas. If you aren't dominating the seas, then there's no real point in building one.)

Naval barrage is just cannon breach walls before you have artillery. No point in using it after getting artillery because, well, artillery should be in pretty much all of your armies for the faster sieges. It also has the same flat 50 sword mana cost that the artillery barrage. I also understand it's for game balance reasons, but how does ordering your ships to fire on a fort off the coasts of Africa set back your military tech by 1/12th? They could have made it more interesting by using bird mana, a lower sword mana, or some mixture of the two. (EDIT: Practically not a feature. The forts that you want taken down faster in the early game are the inland mountain ones where you don't want your troops taking attrition ticks they don't need to. Besides, early game you should be saving your mil points to rush mil techs anyway for the tactics bonus, which is much more important than finishing off a fort 1-2 months earlier.)

(EDIT: Unless you play zoomed in enough to see the unit models, they don't impact your experience at all. So if you're the kind of person that likes zooming in really close and admiring your dudes, then go for it. If not, then consider buying/not buying the DLC on the other points.

If I could give this rating a mixed recommendation then I would. It's basically like the other immersion packs, great if you are playing in the region or playing against someone in the region, but otherwise has no impact on your gameplay. Basically, read the TL;DR.