Recent reviews by Waino

Great game, but can't recommend due to a recent update that breaks the ability to even launch the game.
Tried numerous fixes and none have worked.

Changed review to Recommended. The fix that worked for me was uninstalling the game, manually deleted the Civ V folder from the steam/steamapps/common filepath, and then reinstalling.

10/10 would accidentally space myself again



In all seriousness, if you like the puzzles in the Half Life games and space exploration, you'll definitely enjoy this game here. Strongly recommend playing this blind.

<strike>It doesn't work for me. Just a plain black sceen.</strike>

It does. You just need to open up your folder and create a non-steam shortcut for "FALLOUTW.exe" because Windows 10 ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the HR version as many here are saying.

Tutorial, USA, and UK were literally Hitler 0/10


In all seriousness, this is a fun game. Don't let the recommendation throw you off. Based on the long play-sessions I had, I can split this into a few pros and cons. If you need the short version, scroll to the bottom.

Pros:
- Almost total control of any nation (although if it is not a major power, it will be a grindfest and boring).

- Full Military Versatility: You can create custom divisions, which leads to custom corps, armies, and army groups.

- Map Layout: There are various tab options above the minimap, which let you view things such as terrain, revolt risk, infrastructure, and most importantly (in my opinion) supply routes. These minor things add to the grand strategy immersion, which I love.

- The tech tree gives you PLENTY of options, which is not a bad thing.

- The battle system may be somewhat bland, but at the least they display battle progress and various events such as "Breakthrough" and "Encirclement" make it interesting to watch.

- The espionage. This is the reason why I was able to make the democratic allies into Nazis. Which leads me into the last point.

- The funny scenarios. Spain defeats Franco in the Civil War, and then they ended up taking over Tibet, Belgium, and various other enclaves of countries I declared war on. Yunnan (a Chinese faction) also managed to invade Ireland.

Edit 6/16/2018: There was also another scenario that I'd like to call "The Most 'Murican Timeline Ever", where while I was trying to prepare Argentina to try and unite all of South America, the U.S. does an amphibious landing in Poland while Germany was attacking the Soviet Union, and they singlehandedly liberated all of Europe, and better yet, they annexed Germany. Basically a reverse Wolfenstein.

Cons:
- DLC fest. Not many people (including myself) like to look at the store page of a game and see a dropdown list of 50+ DLC stuff. This was actually the factor that put me off of HOI4, which many people were panning for the DLC milking. In retrospect, I should've gotten that one instead, because this leads me into my next point. Also, don't bother trying to circumvent this with mods, there aren't that many to choose from.

- CRASHING. This is the reason why I can't reccommend this game. When I first started on writing this review, I was going to reccommend it because I was use to the crashing. As long as you save often like you would in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, you'd be fine, but I just couldn't stand it anymore. Crashing happens way too often in this game, and I am not sure what is causing it. In my first campaign, I was close to victory. But then GB surrendered to Saudi Arabia, and the save is pretty much unplayable. Another factor I think is the year (1974). With that, I say DO NOT SIT AND TECH UP. I waited until 1950 to actually kick off WW2, and then I sat and teched up with what might have been an OP military, but my hunger for tech could not be satisfied, which now leads me to think that spending a lot of time teching up is not a good idea. Don't pay too much attention to that. I discovered autosave, which migitates my frustration, and my save still works. Another possible fix if a certain event leads to crashing is to just load the save as another nation. The only thing that sucks about this is when the AI takes over your original country and messes up your plans. Another thing you should not do is constantly tab in and out of the game to do other things. If you do this, it will crash.

- The learning. The tutorial alone isn't enough. You must supplement the tutorial with a campaign as a major power on "very easy" so that you may learn the ropes. It took me a while to figure out the supply chain, custom chain of command, unit production, building on provinces, basically everything not mentioned in the tutorial.

- Long loading times. Crashing wouldn't be so much of an issue with me if I didn't have to sit through long loading times to get back on.

- The end goal can glitch out (in vanilla). In the aforementioned game I pretty much made every nation on the Axis side, be it through diplomacy or conquest... yet Poland's government is hiding somewhere in the antarctic or something because they still refuse to completely surrender despite every nation being on my side. I have to do another playthrough, and I need to see if the victory point bar/system has any actual meaning in the game. I'm guessing probably not, but we'll see.

Don't get me wrong, I love this game. I just think that with the everything I know now, I might as well have gotten HOI4, because at least I can guess that it won't crash as often, being a newer game. I didn't go to HOI2 because I saw lots of reviews reporting that it doesn't work on Windows 10.

Overall, I'd give it a 5/10 6/10. Added another point due to the previously mentioned changes. It'd be way higher if the crashing wasn't so frequent and annoying in addition to long loading times. Additionally, I wish there was a blend between the sandbox of Vanilla, and actual results from achieving objectives from the DLC. Read the addendums below for further details. (Changed 7/5/18)


Short Review (7/3/2018):

For those that need the short version, it's a 6/10. It's a really fun game, but it is also a waste of time, as there will be lots of crashing and apparently if the war continues by January 1948 gay space communists invade Earth or something. I was doing a playthrough as the US I did 2 playthroughs as the US: one before "tweaking" and one after (read Addendums for details). The first time around, I was about to do my own invasion of Europe, the Commintern faction won despite the Soviets being BTFO'd and having no power whatsoever. There's a "continue" button since it automatically pauses the game, yet it is broken. It's this aspect that made me uninstall the game as of now. The second time around I did the tweaking mentioned below, and the game ended before I could complete my invasion of Brazil. (Changed 7/5/18)

If you think you can accomplish everything by 1948 and decide to buy it, you do you. This phemonena happens when you have the Their Finest Hour, Semper Fi, and For the Motherland expansions.


Addendums:

7/1/2018:
If you do decide to buy this game, I reccommend you buy the For the Motherland, Semper Fi, and Darkest Hour DLCs as well.

7/4/2018:
Google is most definitely your friend. There is a fix to change the start and end date as you like for the game right here:

http://heartsofiron3tips.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-to-change-start-and-end-date-of.html

I'll try the game again with these tweaks, and if they turn out well, I'll change the reccommendation.

7/5/2018:
Nope, the supposed fix does not actually work. Buy this game at your own risk. Without the DLC, it is a sandbox with the impression that victory points actually do anything. With the DLC, it is a race to acheive certain objectives by 1948, so don't be like me and decide to start a super US by conquering all of the latin american countries as the USA.

All in all, this is a fun game that crashes and has no end goal in vanilla, and has a set of objectives in the DLC that you have to acheive within a certain timeframe, sacrificing the ability to achieve funny things you would actually love to do. This is my last word on it before uninstalling. I'll go try Darkest Hour: A Hearts of Iron Game to see if it is any better.

#1 game I have been playing recently, better than the original Coh, and has unlocks. To get full effect of the game, I suggest buying Tales of Valor as well, because it is required to get a couple of unlocks, medals, armies (American and Wehrmacht), and even a different game mode!

Gets updated most of the time, and is very fun for how long the adventures last. Basically Minecraft and Legend of Zelda having a baby.
However, this in no way should be compared to Minecraft because Minecraft is more building and creative-mind based, whereas Terraria is more adventureous and combat based.