Review: Hearts of Iron III

You can call this game a lot of things.  Confusing, complicated and difficult maybe, but you certainly can’t call it a bad game.  The main ingredient for a good Hearts of Iron III experience is patience, and lots of it.   I’ll be going over the flaws, as well as the brilliance, of this game so please continue reading.

I started this game up not knowing what to expect and after trying out the tutorial for the game my main thoughts were “that seemed simple enough”.  Wrong.  It then seemed like I was transported to a completely different game, and to be honest the main reason this game can be a sucker to learn is because of that initial tutorial.  Some might disagree with me here, but for me it felt like the tutorial told me what resources did what and how, but it never told me how to play the actual game.  There were so many questions that I was left with such as what are different resources worth?  How does the warfare work?  How do I command my units?  How do I use my diplomacy to its full effect and create an alliance, invite countries into said alliance and finally establish fair trade routes?  Another thing that annoyed me was that the tutorial was a wall of text.  No moving images to illustrate how things are done, voiceovers or even throwing a pointer in here and there.  I know it’s not that big of a problem, but with all other games having them these days it just seems like taking an unnecessary step back from whats considered the ‘norm’.  I really liked having Adolf Hitler around in order to paint an awful picture of whatever it was in the tutorial though as the humor it used helped me read through the tutorial, whilst at the same time giving me a bit of a look into the head of the dictator, perhaps even gave hints on how to play the game if you were to choose Germany.

The only way you’re going to learn these things is by exploring the game, dragging sliders around and pressing buttons that you aren’t sure what to do with. Most of the time, this will also be your doom.  I’ve played through countless campaigns to understand the game and even now, I can say that I’ve still got no clue what some of the mechanics do.  There’s ever so much to learn about Hearts of Iron 3 and really, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  The thing with having to learn the game on the fly means you will also give you a unique play style in-game, making the online portion much more interesting because you don’t know how any of the other players conduct war or peace.

Still, even with this said, there really could have been more of a learning curve in the game because as it is now way too many people are going to be blown away of how incredibly immense and chaotic this game can be.  My best piece of advice for you is to start out as a small country. The bigger country you start with, the bigger chance you have of getting a war between you and your neighboring countries and you don’t want that when you’re only starting out. That gives you time to get a feel of the economy, build and research mechanics before getting yourself into trouble.  To be honest, after a few hours of not understanding anything I started to hate the game.  Well, maybe not hate, more like I can see the brilliance in the game and I think that’s really awesome, but it’s just not the kind of gameplay I’ve ever been looking for.  I don’t mind long and complex tutorials, if only the tutorials are there at least, but to learn the whole game on your own just blew my mind.

The game is easily controlled by using the mouse and I really don’t think you’ll be using the keyboard for much other than scrolling around the world map and opening the small menus for diplomacy, buildings, research, and so on so one plus is that the control scheme is streamlined.

Now I’ve filled most of this review with ramblings on how difficult the gameplay is to understand, so you might be thinking, “what is the gameplay, really?” and to that I can answer that it’s what you make of it. This whole game is a strategy sandbox game, which I really love it for. It doesn’t seem to have any primary missions or anything; it’s just for you to play around with and see what you can achieve from it. Dominate the world or try to make it a peaceful place for example. If you want to play Poland and take over the USSR, then that’s what you do, no one and nothing is holding you back and this truly is the most awesome thing about the game.

There’s not much to say about the graphics and music in the game. The graphics are what you’d expect from a game that’s basically just a world map with black and white photos on it; however, the game allows you to use different map views and to be honest I don’t know what to use half of them for yet.  For example you can use it to see the weather around the world and I thought this might have an outcome on certain battles, but I can’t say for sure as there’s no conclusive evidence to support this.

The music the game includes must be complemented as a score which befits the genre of the title, with a vast selection of themes that are played as you progress.  Even when loading the game you’re already getting into the mood with “Ride of the Valkyries”.  The music fits what is happening on the screen, so for example when someone’s bombing you, the music will match the action with explosive basso sounds.

Pluses

+ Lots of variation to be had with the online multiplayer.

+ It’s like a strategic sandbox where anything goes.

+ The music fits the overall package.

+ Customizable armies.

Minuses

- LOOOOOOOONG loading times.

- Takes hours to get into the gameplay.

- Very poor tutorial, newcomers will be confused.

- Not much to say about the graphics, bland textures.

- Gameplay is awfully complicated and could probably have been more simple.

In conclusion, Hearts of Iron 3 is a great game, but perhaps a bit too big for some new players including myself.  If you’re willing to play, and learn how to play a challenging strategy game such as Hearts of Iron 3, I assure you that it will be worth every hour.