Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very good strategy game, 30 Jul 2004
For those of us who like to look beyond 3-d effects at some intelligent gaming, this game fits the bill nicely.
Whereas Age of Empires, for example, blandly and boringly invites you to spend hours repeating the same unrealistic and ahistorical simplistic and child-like actions, this game allows you to immerse yourself into the realities of the 1930s/40s politico-military situations.
From the makers of Europa Universalis, and similarly (apparently) inspired by the Australian Design Group's earlier boardgame work (World In Flames), the map provided covers the entire world, and allows you to select any country to play, as the political and military events of WW2 unfold around you.
Of course, playing as Bolivia isn't going to be much fun, but you could choose to play Republican Spain, attempt to defeat the Nazi-supported Nationalists, then perhaps think about trying to help prop up France when WW2 kicks off.
One I haven't yet tried is to play as Mexico and open up a second front against the USA....
Throughout the game, the trick is to maintain military build-up, while still leaving some resources left-over to research new technologies. Similarly, you need to balance the cost of developing your existing resources and industry, with the cost of developing your arsenal.
The technology tree is deliciously extensive, divided into a number of main areas such as Infantry, Armour, Naval, Submarine, Signals, Industry, Nuclear, Rocketry, Light/Medium/Heavy Air, and a doctrinal tech track for each arm of the military, each advance giving you slight improvements in existing capabilities, or providing new construction options, etc...
You can completely ignore some branches in order to concentrate on others.
Germany will want to develop their industrial technology in order to be sure they have the ability to synthesize oil & rubber from coal because once the war starts, their capacity for importing rubber from overseas should be curtailed by the Royal Navy.
Playing as Britain, you will enjoy a steady stream of your allies' armies being placed under your control, and you may wish to reward this by using your diplomatic points, not to provoke favourable military coups in places such as Persia (which is leaning towards communism), but to transfer technologies to your allies. You will also have your work cut out patrolling the seas to keep sub numbers down AND chasing and catching enemy fleets AND continually pulling your ships in to refit them with the new technologies you are developing (Radar, gunnery, torpedoes, armour, engines, etc..).
All in all a very interesting game, a fairly steep learning curve, despite the frustrating inability to turn on Stalin once you have successfully done away with Hitler...
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2 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
do not buy under any circumstances, 9 Jan 2004
Hearts of iron may look good on the outside but on the inside it's not. Here is a game which has a good title but not such good gameplay. If you were ever to read a magazine you would see something like this:gameplay : 3 out of 5
looks : 2 out of 5
sound : 2 out of 5
strategy : 3 out of 5 The game i must admit does have a good strategical voice behind it but when playing games in this age it is very difficult to get to grips with a 2d screen.If you play age of empires or enjoy strategical games and world war 2 then this may be the game for you.Personally i would rather play halo.
When playing the game your actions can change the course of the war.With the click of the mouse you could have made an alliance with a country or declared war on turkey.
Overall i would give the game about 2.7 out of 5 and that is quite good for a game which would not feature beside my computer. I think by simply making the map 3d it would vastly improve the game.
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