Victoria 3

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What is here though is a deep simulation where every aspect of your nation interweaves with itself telling a story that you built. I’ve never been this in love with a strategy game before. I finally found the one for me, and I won’t need another one for quite a long while.

If you’d like a chance to lead millions and create a nation to rival all others, then this is the game for you. Just be careful what you wish for. The role of a leader can be fickle and overwhelming at times.

Time for some revolutions.

Victoria 3 offers up a level of complexity in its political and economic simulations never seen before but flubs it a little in warfare.

Paradox grand strategy games are something of a genre in and of themselves. There’s a lot of overlap between games, but there’s no denying the shared DNA in Stellaris and Crusader Kings and Hearts of Iron. Each of them places the focus on a different aspect of empire management, but one look at the giant map and you know the sort of game you’re in for. Victoria 3 carves out its own path in the Paradox pantheon by focusing on economy and growth.

Victoria 3 is a game that requires patience and homework, but once you get the hang of things can be tons of fun. The game offers so much variety both in terms of ways to play and succeed along with unique challenges in the array of nations to choose from to play with. Victoria 3 definitely has some things it can improve on and can be a lot to ingest for new players. However, we already know there are more updates and content coming in the pipeline so there will be continued support and Victoria 3 can only get better from here.

All in all, Victoria 3 does a brilliant job of bringing this era of global politics alive. Its brilliant law systems create a truly enigmatic power struggle that will keep us playing for many hours to come. While there is a lack of flavour for some of the smaller nations and a handful of other problems that stop Victoria 3 being as good as it could be, there’s a vast myriad of strategies available to players, and many ways to plot out a successful campaign. And ultimately, that’s all that we want from a strategy game: the freedom to make credible choices.

An extraordinarily detailed economy and range of interlinking systems make Victoria 3 a grand strategy to rival some of Paradox's best.

An ambitious, beautiful, and obsessively detailed society simulation that still needs to iron out a few rough edges.

So will Victoria 3 end up like Stellaris, which released to middling reviews but received years of updates that transformed it into a sublime experience? Or will it suffer the fate of Imperator: Rome, which launched in 2019 but had its support cut last year, leaving the game functional but tantalizingly unfinished?

Victoria 3 is, without a doubt, grand in scale and scope, and it's downright gorgeous, too. Sadly, the countless mechanics mean that there are too many moving parts, which lead to more questions than answers. The automation and streamlining of battle is, likewise, a baffling change. Even as a veteran of Paradox Interactive's games, this is still one series that I can't get behind.