Recent reviews by The Amazing Mr. NF

Unfortunately in it's current state you may as well just play the tech demo. Every stage except the cellar suffers from abysmal performance drops even on high end hardware like mine, on multiple machines. Was expecting the game to be more of an ARPG or something akin to Mount and Blade, instead all we have is more endless tourneys setup as a rougelike.
Reviving is an awful experience that may as well not even exist. After death if you want to keep your rank progression and items, you must play through a gauntlet in the original demo arena of every single enemy you have killed with that character so far. Except now they're zombies who can lunge at you and 1tap you with an unblockable bite attack.

This is one of my favorite eras of Chinese/Japanese history, was super stoked to see it get added. Of course, there's no actual gameplay beyond the bog standard snails pace expansionism and clicking on event chains every 45 seconds.

Coming from HOI Darkest Hour/4, this is just a boring as sin event clicker simulator. DLC pricing is outrageous as it typical of Paradox. Largely a passive roleplaying experience where everything takes ingame years to occur as you stare at the screen, waiting for the game to autopause so you can click on an event chain. Warfare is a straight copy/paste from Imperator Rome, which is at least better than the dumpsterfire that is Viccy 3.

I NEED MORE SKELETON TRADING CARDS

GIVE ME YOUR SKEELEETOOLS

BONERS4HIRES

The only game where Saddam Hussein can take over the planet

Seriously though the learning curve is pretty large and totally engrossing. Definitely not for the faint of heart.

Like a butterfly fluttering
My wallet feels lighter
1000 Years of Map Painting
BANZAI!

Jokes aside the pricing is absolutely egregious for the content on offer and clearly shows that Paradox has shifted towards satisfying the expectations of public investors on the stock exchange rather than it's playerbase. Absolutely disgusting display of corporate greed and monetization practices that have undoubtedly been scientifically honed by committee to exploit those playing this highly addictive game. Some of the alt-hist paths are cool (and the new resource should have been in the game since launch, hence why it's not even a part of this DLC but a free update), but the fan mod 'Eight Years War of Resistance' has existed for 6 years and blows this DLC out the water in terms of quality content for the region. Some of the alt-history doesn't even make sense; for instance, the Pureland path is strictly limited to going Communist with one specific country leader and then going down a single hidden 70 day focus, despite the fact that the non-aligned path has multiple Abbots exclusive to it's path. The end of every tree for Japan is the same anyway, that is, coring the majority of Asia.


Also the changes to the naval invasion system is by the far the absolute worst change I have ever seen added to a strategy game; you are now forced to invade only a single point and are heavily restricted down on the amount of units you can actually prepare and send, while being gimped to the extreme with the new naval dominance mechanics.

A good example of the overheating of the games industry and the desperate nickel and diming of players to try and stay afloat with investment capital.
Dishonor upon Fredrik Wester's family for 10 generations.

EDIT: Anarcho-Feminist-Communsim path for Japan is comically broken. You can easily push 12+ million manpower in reserve with over 5 million units in the field with godlike infantry buffs on Limited Conscription. I ate the entirety of Asia by 1948 with 5.2mil ground troops, 1.2mil navy and hundreds of thousands of airmen with 11.4mil in reserve on Limited Conscription and the new "War Communism" economy with only 6% factories on consumer goods, ready to bumrush a now totally drained of manpower Soviets and then Allies post WW2. This is after I defeated the Chinese using almost nothing but waves and waves of 40width infantry+40 width ultramarines w/ support companies. Insane.
Phillipines can similarly break the game by getting free cores around the world in every Hispanic nation with the Monarchist Branch, getting 100+ factories, tons of manpower and a straight shot to the US Southern border, all through descisions and not firing a single shot.

For the longest time, the Steam version of this title has been completely unplayable on any systems beyond WinXP, with the porting developer (Dan of NightDive Studios, with this being one of NightDive's first portjobs) apologizing years ago in the Community Page that he could not manage to get it working. Well, years later GOG has released a version of the game that you can copy the EXE of and slap into the Steam version to actually get it working again. So be sure to seek out the GOG edition or crack to apply to your steam purchase.

As for the game itself in terms of design 30 years later, it's still completely playable but definitely shows it's age. Gameplay is fairly simple, even too simple and easy, if you're a fan of modern grand strategy. The battle animations of units fighting it out on city tiles that you've created is a fantastic feature and the real highlight of the game, that really needs to be ported over to new titles.

Fun for what it is and great to go back and examine the DNA of early Windows grand strategy. Recommended but be sure to use the GOG patch.

MALWARE WARNING! DO NOT DOWNLOAD!
THIS SOFTWARE IS HARMFUL TO YOUR PC

This program is nothing more than a handful of AI slop images slapped onto a ~~packet sniffer or some other softwarer~~ that runs maliciously in the background and boots with Windows, adding itself to your registry without notifying you and continuing to run even after uninstalling the game via Steam, hiding it's executables in layers of folders. I ran this app in a virtual machine and confirmed it as malicious without running it on my PC proper. The app also maliciously signs itself to your Windows boot process, so that when you attempt to uninstall the app via Steam, it will blue screen your PC on boot, forcing you into safemode to hunt down the malicious apps or fully reinstall Windows; there are multiple reviews in numerous languages confirming that installing, running and uninstalling this app with lead to boot bluescreens or notifications on boot that windows/steam is "missing files".

The "developer" account responds to negative reviews with ChatGPT generated answers and appears to be the sock puppet account of the scammer behind this, who may or may not be on said accounts friendslist.

There are also multiple copy paste fake positive reviews from throwaway accounts boosting the rating.

REPORT this MALICIOUS SOFTWARE by hitting the REPORT BUTTON on the right side of the apps store page!

*EDIT* The "developer" accounts claim to have pushed an update that "fixes crashing at startup" on the community page

One of, if not THE most egregiously priced content expansions ever released in a videogame. Unfortunately I am an ADHD suffering weekend games addict and enjoyer of this period in history and grand strategy so I'm stuck buying this turd. Avoid if you have any good sense about you and just play Road to 56 or Eight Years War of Resistance, which PDX is directly aping from with this release.

Fantastic software that makes it possible to complete project workload while in VR; the problem is that the Steam version is functionally abandoned, with the full version packed with more current features being locked to proprietary stores like Meta and Vive. We desperately need the full version to be released to Steam so users like me with a non Vie/Quest/Pico device can use the complete software.

EDIT: I am hoping that the recent confirmation of the long awaited Valve Deckard/Steamframe will light a fire under the devs ass to push current builds of the app to Steam! I love using it for late night workflow and video watching/browsing on my PSVR2, would love to get a hold of the updated features the other platforms have had for years now ASAP! (will change to positive once we do!)