Recent reviews by Azunti

Edit2, 50h: It feels like a grey goo because of the UI. Dont get me wrong, the UI is the best a Paradox game has had at launch for a very long while. But with this game having such a large scope, a lot still gets lost. What gets lost that makes it feel like goo is that what culture, religion, etc you play has a huge bearing on techs and reforms, but no where is this spelled out. So until you are many hours in, you dont even realize you have unique options available to you. In general, this is a fault of the god-awful tech UI, but you should also be able to go to one place to see all the unique options available to you.

Edit1, 30h: I think this review comes across as harsher than I feel. I will update if I find better words for this

Intial Review, 20h: its okay.

Im having a hard time putting to words exactly what is wrong with it, but it feels like just a goo. Its trying to do so many things that it fails to find a voice. Its too unfocused to the point that none of your actions feel meaningful or fun... just skinner box dopamine hits that ultimately make you feel hollow.

This game could be my favorite game of all time. I am not being hyperbolic.

At current, I would not recommend the game unless you catch it on sale and its really up your alley. My hopes is the developer and publisher see the promise in this game and continue to develop and iterate on it until it really clicks into place. I will update my review should this moment happen, and I am hopeful it will.

Overall, the general idea of this game is a civ-like deep economic game. After about 40-60 turns of delivering on this promise, it will have gradually turned into a busywork game and lose its luster. Ill elaborate:

-Industry-
The main mechanic of this game is: buildings produce resources, and urban-style buildings will likely be able to produce more than one type of resource. Some resources require a node on the map, for example, elephants for ivory. Most buildings will have "supply" slots - one time costs to increase production as well as "ingredient" slots which provide ongoing increases to production. The resources themselves typically have multiple uses, so may be able to be used as a supply, ingredient, and/or as a luxury for the city. As you increase your tech, you unlock better things to build. Its a very integrated and deep the system and a solid core to the gameplay that gives you satisfaction very frequently of making your nation's industry a little bit more efficient each turn.
HOWEVER,
While the UI is not terrible and there was definitely some thought into it, each one of these changes is building-by-building. This isnt an issue at first, but as you get a few hours into the game, youll unlock a new resource and you have to manually check each building in each city - a few hundred supply and ingredient slots - to see if it is an upgrade for the building so you know how many to produce. Then, each turn you are scrolling through the 25 things you built this turn, to see if this is a turn you built that item and can slot it. It becomes exhausting.
HOW CAN IT BE FIXED?
UI upgrades are the easiest solution. The ability to look at ALL your Dwellings, for example, and click a single button to give them all baskets. An alternative is to set an "auto equip" process, but this is a major burden on AI. I think there may be some temptation to cut goods, slots, or mechanics, and I hope that is not the solution.

-Resources-
A bit of an extension on the above, but I wanted to point out a couple specific things with resources. First off, I think its absolutely lovely that some of the resources are rarer. You may have to trade, find alternatives, or go without elephants, silk, precious minerals, etc. It feels historical. I honestly think they could expand on this system with DLC because the unequal distribution of nature's goods is what fueled trade historically, and trade fueled everything else from wars to science to religion.
HOWEVER,
Resources obsolete, but there is nothing to do with them after they do outside of having them sit on your warehouse.
HOW CAN IT BE FIXED?
It would be great to recycle resources, target-export them for money, or have them be upscale-able (for example, using Lithic Tools to make Metal Tools produce faster).

-City Statistics-
This game has a really neat system of tracking your cities' Happiness, Health, Knowledge, etc. These are scales that, per city, provide benefits and negatives, and a significant portion of your industry will be dedicated to producing luxury goods to shove into your cities to boost these numbers and get those buffs.
HOWEVER,
These numbers go down over time with city size, gradually. And the same problem with graduality crops up; you dont notice it, its not really shown in a ledger anywhere, and youll just suddenly notice your capital's security is at 15 and your giving you a -20% force strength modifier. Whoops. Thats why my armies are losing.
HOW CAN IT BE FIXED?
This game has a significant notification problem already, so I dont think adding this to the bottom right helps. I think a ledger UI to see all your cities would help. An alternative would be to just remove maluses altogether, and instead have the values start on or near 0 and give you benefits for boosting it. Technically thats the same mechanic but its all about perspective, like the industry story of the WoW 'rest' mechanic.

-Tech-
The core idea behind tech is that they come in sets. In each set, you can research all the techs or you can skip a handful and advance early. You cant ever go back to those techs, but usually the items you unlock in that tech come back up in future techs, allowing you to say, for example, "I dont need rope for a while" and instead get to iron earlier. This is a brilliant, unique design and one of the better parts of the game, and couples well with the economics.
HOWEVER,
For one, techs come so fast that you very, very easily outpace the production of your cities. You might have finally built that building that can produce [x] for you, but now you are two turns away from [x+], or worse, you dont really need [x] anymore because [y] is better.
One other small issue is that with so much depth to the system, its hard to know what you're really getting from each tech.
HOW CAN IT BE FIXED?
Slow down tech a moderate amount and speed up building production ever so slightly. I think if you focus on only the tech the game will move glacially, and you cant just make buildings build incredibly fast or youll fill up your cities too fast. This sometimes happens already in your capital and older cities.
The small issue is resolved with a mixture of experience and tooltip research, but one thing that I would really love to see is what each good's potential ingredients are. When I unlock the ability to research "books" it tells me where I can produce it, what techs I can unlock it with, what they do as a supply, ingredient, and luxury - all great information - but strangely, not what this could have as ingredient. Since ingredients are a huge factor in production speed, this is a huge oversight that could be easily recitified.

-Military-
I love the idea behind the system. You build units and they go into an unmobilized pool. Then you unlock formations for your units to slot into, for example a Shield Wall needs 3 melee infantry and 1 archer. Then it gets certain abilities and benefits depending on the formation, and the unit itself is, for example, 2 swordsmen, a spearman, and an archer, known as "Shield Wall." Your Shield Wall formation itself levels up, not the units therein.
HOWEVER
You cant ever upgrade the units themselves, which was a weird decision because its completely contrary to the rest of the design of the game. I cannot fathom why this choice was made.
HOW CAN IT BE FIXED?
Allow units to be upgraded, or at the very least, unslotted and replaced. Alternatively, rather than assigning unit experience, assign an overall nation military experience, so it isnt as painful to disband that unit of veteran archers that simply cant go toe-to-toe with knights.

-Others-
Graphics are 10/10. Very, very pretty game, especially for the genre. Im not usually a graphics guy within this genre but I did find myself zooming in and following the roads between my cities and other civs.
Roadbuilding is a 8/10. The system is great and smart at a macro level but graphically on a micro level makes some weird decisions.
Diplomacy is a 6/10. Pretty standard fare (okay, inoffensive) but the merchant system is nice; limiting the amount of imports you have access to. It would be great to see why a nation's baseline is where it is
Religion is a 5/10.
Leaders are 7/10.

As of right now this collectively means I really, really enjoy the first 50 turns or so of the game, and lose interest once it feels like I need to do a nationwide audit every 5 turns. I hope to see some changes in the long term to bring this game to its ideal state.

Ive never typed a review this long so thanks for sticking around and listening yall. I almost ran out of chara

If you liked Empires, you will like this game

Victoria 3 has a lot of haters, unfortunately. It definitely plays different than any other Paradox game since Victoria 1, of which I view this as a spiritual successor. All that being said, this game is fantastic, and it absolutely will be my favorite Paradox game when it has as much extra content as its other franchises do. Its already come such a long way since launch - more than CK3 did in the same timeframe.

Check it out. It may not be the -kind- of game you like, but it is a masterfully crafted game and exactly what I would want for this period.

P.S. Paradox, make me a Cold War game so I can live out geopolitics on a grand scale.

there is a common bug for this game that wipes literally all of your save data they refuse to fix. do not buy this game.

Honestly, I don't get why this game still has mixed reviews, years later.
I know it was a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ at launch, so I avoided buying the game until a large sale. As sales would come, I would look at the reviews and if they were still bad, I wouldn't buy the game. Until recently.
Let me tell you now this game is a bit of a hidden gem. I cant speak to its history but man, this combines all the things I love about paradox in a neat bow. Map painting like EU4. Pops from Victoria (and to a lesser extent, Stellaris), and a CK-ish character system. All tied together in such an interesting system.

Ive put hundreds of hours into it and some of my favorite moments come at those collisions. I had a Druidic character because I had just conquered Cisalpine Gaul, and he was talented so I put him in a pretty high position in my government, where he was using his power to help my unintegrated cultures and religions be happy and assimilate better. Which was great for me! But he was assassinated by the senate because of his growing popularity. Which meant for about 10 years I was on the verge of civil war, trying to appease both the common folk and the senate, who convinced my general-hero, conqueror of Spain to their side. Great dude. And let me tell you, a Civil War would have been the end of me with Carthage ready to strike. With 3 months prior to a civil war breakout, I put him up to trial on charges of corruption, despite his 0 corruption value. Trial of the century; he was barely found guilty and civil war was avoided. Stressful in such a good way.

Anyway, I rambled.
TLDR dont let the haters tell you this isnt a good game.

snek go pewpew