Recent reviews by TacoCat

They retweaked the whole air feature but they broke paratroopers. FFS. Playing as Japan and not being able to paradrop China is so freaking triggering. Paid $20 just to have to wait for them to fix paratroop drop.

Scratch that. This expansion is completely broken and unplayable at the moment.

Played as Japan my first round. All the battle factors are completely bugged. Every factor is negative and its impossible to push against the Chinese. I don't know what the developers did for China but the Chinese are unbeatable at the moment. I even maxed out my tech, had nukes, dropped 50 nukes on every division on their frontline and despite fighting against a complete mechanized division of modern tanks, mechanized inf, rocket artillery, etc. The Chinese division will not budge because my army, navy, and air do negative damage. Can only push them out when I drop 50 nukes on one division and even then, I barely take the tile.

The game is good and all, but once you stabilize the economy and get all the policies that works, its all uphill from there. In my first game, I made was able to lower my expenditure and make a surplus by simply lowering military spending to middle. Everything was uphill from there. Wasn't able to pay off all debts due to US limit of only 2 terms though. My second game as Canada, I paid off all Canadian debt, raised GDP through the roof, pushed financial class of all my citizens right, and stopped only because I was bored.

My main point is, its really easy to "beat" the game. I feel like it would be more challenging if AI added random policies because in real life, politics isn't conducted in one direction. You have multiple angles pursuing their own agenda. I studied political economy so I can generally predict what policies would cause what and get backlash from which group so navigating the policies was not that difficult for me. What I think would make the game more fun is if AI could make their own policies and you had to use political points to try to stop them/cancel, etc. Also a starting goal would be helpful. I tend to strive for capitalistic advancement in the beginning and shift for social progress as I pay off debt, raise GDP, and improve the economy. But if I had a set political goal in the beginning like "become purely capitalistic and look out for only a certain group of voters," then the game would be more interesting as every game would require me to pursue different goals.

Battles are all 10/10. Sieges and large scale battles are so epic. Everything else needs to be patched/fixed.

Cavalry - op as hell. 50 cavalry can destroy an army of 100 inf.

I understand its beta.

Recommend 10/10.

Beat the game in 12 hours. Didn't perform ritual, let Asalia become a lesbian, adviser survived, spared Radovian king, and killed Ivo.
Sucks that game story is very linear with not much alternative endings.

There are enough critical choices that affect game ending to count with your fingers. Everything else is about being economical and balancing your resources so that you can gather enough troops/build defenses/store supplies for battles. Wasn't that hard honestly. I ended up with 10 supplies with full defenses at the last battle. You can feed everyone enough with 2 supply crate left over and win. I made the mistake of letting my family get sick by not feeding them for 1 week because I thought I didn't have enough but game concluded with 3 extra crate I never used.
I give it a 8/10. Falls short due to not a lot of different endings but the story is really good. The story line itself is a 10/10.

Why not?

Game lags and drops people/you often. Other than that, its fine.

Huge paradox fan but gotta admit this game has lots to improve on. Particularly, my complaints are: you can't move capitals, you can't arrange marriages with foreign nations, no character search (this is a huge one because I don't want to search through 50,000 family groups just to find the general who has loyal troops so that I can kill/reward). Also, I would like a ctrl/shift + click feature where you can convert/assimilate entire city/province population. Sometimes I like to enjoy the game with cheats and it gets pretty tiring to try to free all your slaves when you are large empire and you have 50 slaves distributed in every city within your empire.

Was not the game I thought it would be upon release but hopefully it will get better.

Great game but kinda makes me depressed because it reminds me of my high school life. I used to study hard, play harder and would frequently sneak out of my dormitory during the weekends to go raving with some of my rave buddies. I wish I could relive high school life. Its certainly more exciting than college life. The aspect of the imminent danger of getting caught was part of the thrill I enjoyed so much. In college, no one cares and its not so fun.

Not bad. Preferred if I could have saved both everyone, but I sacrificed Chloe and saved the town. Pushed Chloe off the cliff. It was sad. (Spoiler Alert)

Hearts of Iron 4 is fun until late game when it starts to lag alot. I kinda wish the game has an objective late game since once you gotten to the point of fitting all your armies with weapons, you don't really have anywhere to go after beating every nation.