Recent reviews by Elite Cataphract

Hearts of Iron is different to Many other Strategy Games, but overall the core and game-play is almost the Same as Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis, both from the Same Publisher. If you have a lot of time and you want to learn how to administer and govern a Country this is the perfect game for you, if you want fun and chilling out to relax, this game won't be what you are looking for, it has a lot of different functions and options that if you don't pay attention to those details your Government can become quite unstable and lose a lot of territory if you don't have the right tactics.
So although I like and recommend this game, don't expect this to be an easy game to interact with yourself especially when you need to check all your supplies, all the troops and industries with the right balance to not lack resources during gameplay.
So I give a 3.5/5 stars.

This game has a great potential for being one of the best historical rts in its own way, it looks like a combination of total war with age of empires III in mechanics, but the best part is that you can choose a great number of civilizations to play and overall even if it's not too easy to play for new players on this genre, you will start to get used to the user interface once you start to understand the strategy that is set on this game, so though it might not look too interesting on the graphics but overall is still a good game, I recommend you to give it a try.

This game though it looks by the outside a lot like Civilization V, and the mechanics are almost the same, this game has a different take in what has been done in turn-based strategy games. You will find a lot of more missions you need to accomplish by completing quests. and by choosing your ideology (called affinity in this game) you don't have only economical and technological benefits, but unique unique units that can be upgraded to a higher level of strength. If you install Rising Tide expansion, it gets even better, because you can choose which type of special artifact you can create once you have accumulated enough objects recovered from an expedition. So if you think Beyond earth is too similar to Civilization 5, try getting the game with its expansion included and you will get a lot more than what is in the base game.

This is one of the best Turn Based Strategy games I've ever played. The huge amount of features this game has is so long that I can't list them one by one, the best thing I can describe to summarize this game is that it has different strategic paths to victory, not winning only by military conquest, but by economic, cultural, technological and religious victory which makes it very complete compared to other games of this same genre.

I like the way this game has been developed and the different features it has, like having a base camp to start and some settlers at the beginning of every match and also the ability to customize certain aspects of your Home Cities once you gain enough experience in your battles or technologies research, though this feature is great, I would have liked it could have been more complete, it feels good but once you play a lot it gets to a point were all the different utilities have a limit which it makes it feel like a Demo instead of a Complete game.

For those players who are wandering which are the main differences from the AOE II HD edition and the 1999 Release of Age of Empires II, I will explain it right here:

1.- The base game of AOE II in this Steam version already Includes the Conquerors Expansion, so there is no need to buy it separately.

2.- There are 3 different DLC (Expansions) that you have to buy apart from the Base Game
A) The Forgotten with 5 new Civilizations (Italians, Indians, Slavs, Magyars, Incas)
B) The African Kingdoms with 4 new Civilizations (Berbers, Malians, Ethiopians,Portuguese)
C) Rise of the Rajas with 4 New Civilizations (Burmese, Khmer, Malay, Vietnamese)
Each one of these DLC's costing $10 dollars to be able to play them. (Except when there is a sale)

3.- For those nostalgic fans who are expecting everything to be the same on AOE you will find a few suprises. The water is no more bidimensional by default, but also 3D if you activate it the the options panel, other things that changed are the graphics for the fire when a building is burning and the cliffs from the terrain have a different aspect.

4.- When you play on Hardest against the AI, villagers don't stand idle or escape when attacking them, but try to defend themselves when they see they have an advantage, and also they build and gather more effeciently. The original AI is also playable as an option when selecting your opponents on a single player or multiplayer game.

5. There is a new technology for each civilization added in the Castle Age besides the Goths. Back in the year 2000 in The Conquerors expansion, every civilization had only one unique technology that was researched in the Imperial age but the Goths (who had two), this increases the balance of the game and adds more unique buffs when improving your specific Civ attributes.

I hope this brief review might be helpful for all new players and AOE2 fans from the past who want to know some details about this game and see by themselves if they like these modifications and their expansions or not, for me it has many good things, although there might be some details that need to be polished, like historical accuracy or adding voice acting to the Forgotten Campaigns Expansion.

I rate this game 3/5 Stars.