At first Hearts of Iron IV started a skeleton. Although it certainly was and is an upgrade over the last: a game so overcomplicated that nearly every mechanic could be handed over to an AI, imagine a game doing that today. With time and many overpriced DLCs that can hardly be called more than a paid patch, it's gotten to a reasonably solid state but still lacks a lot of basics. On top of that, many basic features are locked behind paywalls because the earliest DLCs were anorexic.

Time is the only thing that has redeemed this game. Between sales and update after update, it's not stupidly overpriced and features are coming to the point where I'd say it's worth buying, when everything's on sale at least.

Hearts of Iron herself is a bit more of a beast than some other Paradox games, difficult to understand and you'll probably have to fail a lot to really even know half of what's going on. Between army templates, an economy based on a couple factory types and resources, technology, and focus trees for each nation with their own priorities/strengths/weaknesses to wrangle make it hard to understand why you're getting your ass handed to you sometimes. Honestly a lot just comes down to having guns to put in someone's hand and hands to put guns in. As long as your men are supplied well, you'll generally win. If you're willing to fail, and you're interested in what it offers on its surface in first place, you'll probably come to like it quite a bit and dump hundreds of hours on it.

P.S. And if it's any consolation, I still suck after 400hrs.

At first Hearts of Iron IV started a skeleton. Although it certainly was and is an upgrade over the last: a game so overcomplicated that nearly every mechanic could be handed over to an AI, imagine a game doing that today. With time and many overpriced DLCs that can hardly be called more than a paid patch, it's gotten to a reasonably solid state but still lacks a lot of basics. On top of that, many basic features are locked behind paywalls because the earliest DLCs were anorexic. Time is the only thing that has redeemed this game. Between sales and update after update, it's not stupidly overpriced and features are coming to the point where I'd say it's worth buying, when everything's on sale at least. Hearts of Iron herself is a bit more of a beast than some other Paradox games, difficult to understand and you'll probably have to fail a lot to really even know half of what's going on. Between army templates, an economy based on a couple factory types and resources, technology, and focus trees for each nation with their own priorities/strengths/weaknesses to wrangle make it hard to understand why you're getting your ass handed to you sometimes. Honestly a lot just comes down to having guns to put in someone's hand and hands to put guns in. As long as your men are supplied well, you'll generally win. If you're willing to fail, and you're interested in what it offers on its surface in first place, you'll probably come to like it quite a bit and dump hundreds of hours on it. [i]P.S. And if it's any consolation, I still suck after 400hrs.[/i]