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The newest grand strategy game from Paradox Interactive, probably one of the few developers out there who still make games in the genre, has released Victoria 3. Recent paradox releases haven’t been that great since players are slowly seeing how they make their game. We all know the joke of Paradox and their DLCs can fight toe to toe with flight simulator DLCs in terms of ridiculousness. One look at Europa Universalis 4 and seeing the sea of DLCs really tells you all about them. Is Victoria 3 the game that will break this mold? Or will it be another DLC spawn point?
Simplified Complexity? | Victoria 3 Review
At first glance you can clearly see that there’s a lot of new stuff to see in Victoria 3. The amazing and stylized UI with different moving parts and even the controls for time at the upper right has small animations when you pause and unpause. The game has had a makeover from the previous one and with it some mechanics have been fleshed out, but weirdly enough some have been simplified.
My first Grand Strategy was Hearts of Iron 4, then Hearts of Iron 3, Victoria 2, Europa Universalis 4, Crusader Kings 2, Stellaris and finally Crusader Kings 3. I’ve played my fair share in the genre and all of them are from Paradox, so what does Victoria 3 bring to the table?
The Good
The game certainly has a modern feel to it in terms of UI elements and how everything is shown to you. Just like Crusader Kings there’s layers upon layers of tooltips which is always good. The game tries its best to explain the terms to you through them and through the tutorials and that’s great.
The game also has Diplomatic plays, think of crises in Victoria 2, but it happens in regions. When another country is doing something in a region you’ve set your interest in you’ll see it on the upper right as well as in the map. These can either end peacefully or in a war, and sometimes each side brings their friends.
This might be a hot take but I don’t actually mind the economy changes in Victoria 3. There’s a big focus in juggling the economy in the new game and it often feels like a minigame you do in the middle of doing other things in the game. Balancing supply and demand, building workshops and seeing the numbers change instantly fires up the dopamine.
The Bad
I just talked about how great the economy system is, here’s how it’s also bad. Even if you have all the capitalists in the world, you still need to make the buildings and factories yourself. There’s no key to automate this process unless you go for the Investment Pool, which still sometimes need your input to correct things.
You get a lot of instances where you have to stop what you’re doing to fix the economy because it won’t move unless you do. It’s like if Emperor Meiji has to stop his war planning for a bit because the demand of fish is too high.
The game can also go off the historical road real quick. I’ve had playthroughs as Japan where Russia takes northern Hokkaido since Colonialism is needed to take that part by Japan. The AI seems to not care about Historical accuracy, which is great if you had a choice, but you don’t. The United States takes Canada, The Dutch East Indies takes the Philippines and Britain takes Taiwan.
They’ve also removed map modes, which is now done through the different menus in the game. So if you want to see who hates who you’ll first need to go to the nation’s diplomacy screen. The screen itself lacks information unless you hover over them. For example, if you select a vassal country and check the diplomatic screen, it’ll show their overlord as “Vassal.”
The Ugly
Micro managing your armies in Victoria 2 was a hassle, and they made it perfect in Hearts of Iron 4. In that game you can easily switch to microing certain units, to just letting the AI do their thing. It was a perfect blend of player and AI input.
Victoria 3 somehow made it worst by removing player input altogether. Now you just send your army somewhere and they do their own thing and take random splotches of land. The combat itself is too simple and always defaults to whoever has the better technology.
The game also lacks fluff, most nations have the most basic journal and decision choices, much like generic focus trees in Hearts of Iron 4, which feels like they’re just saving it all up for future DLCs.
Conclusion
Victoria 3 Review
Summary
Overall, the game feels like it changed a few things for the good, but changed a bunch more for the worst. They had years to look at the strengths of their different games, the most used and downloaded mods out there, and they’ve released a game that feels like it’s still under construction. It’s another Paradox title that will no doubt be great 10 years down the line after 15 DLCs. I’ll give it a score of 2.8/5, it needs more work.
READ NEXT: Victoria 3: Complete Beginner’s Guide
