Review | Hearts of Iron III
Format: PC | Genre: RTS | Publisher: Paradox | Developer: Paradox | Release date: 07/08/09 | RRP: £29.99
By Greg Giddens
The Germans have moved military hardware into the Rhineland and invaded Poland. As England, perhaps I should feel a responsibility to do something about this situation.
But screw it. The Spanish are only just recovering form civil war, so I’ll invade them and join the Axis forces. It’s my choice and, for better or worse, history will certainly remember me for it.
//Reshaping history
Hearts of Iron III allows you to make a lot of these choices. This epic strategy title begins as an accurate simulation of the years surrounding WW2, but can end up with you playing almost any scenario you can imagine. It’s an incredible achievement, and once you get past the complexity it’s rather enjoyable.
The ability to play as any nation is absolutely fantastic fun. The sheer amount of options and scenarios available is really only limited by your imagination. Haven’t you always wondered what would have happened if Poland was able beat the Germans back? In Hearts of Iron III, in theory, you can find out. Theoretically speaking, anything is possible, but due to the realistic parameters of the game you’re very unlikely to be able to change anything major with any of the smaller countries. The big world players, however, do have that potential – Italy choosing to support the allies, for example, or Russia choosing to support Germany.
Before you get to make these world changing decisions, though, you need to learn how to play the game – and believe me, this is no easy task. Heats of Iron III is a complex game, and the sheer scale alone is overwhelming. Part of me wants to criticise this, but honestly, without it, Hearts of Iron III would lose its individuality and charm. It’s also mainly just a case of learning to understand its ways. Hearts of Iron III is what I would call an almost completely realised RTS game, in that it contains everything you could want from an such a title. Simplifying it would potentially compromise the scale.
Hearts of Iron III may be comprised of everything an RTS game could ever need, but it’s far away from the type of strategy most gamers will be used to. It’s substantially deeper and grander in scale. For many the water might seem too deep, but you certainly should dive in.
The all-text tutorial does its best to gently introduce you to the complex environment of Hearts of Iron III, with its clear instructions amongst an amusing little tale. It’s almost properly funny, and certainly distracts from the lengthy tutorial. The typos are distracting too – it’s something that certainly doesn’t ruin the game, but it does draw attention to itself, and raises questions about the level of quality control during development.
//Knowledge is power
With the six tutorials over, you may feel ready to take on the game, but you’re not. No, don’t argue with me. You’re not ready. The interface is vast, with so many options that a further tutorial is required for you to really understand how to play Hearts of Iron III. Unfortunately, there isn’t one. It’s time to actually read the manual.
[Continues...]
Pages: 1 2
You might want to mention that if you play the 1936 scenario, you’re looking at several hours realtime of sitting there doing absolutely nothing until the war starts. Particularly if you automate your diplomacy, intelligence, production, and technology – all a player is going to do is stare at a little game clock for hours and hours realtime as it crawls from Jan 1 1936 to the beginning of the war.
Your review does a great credit to the free-form nature of the strategic possibilities. However, in describing the freedom the player can take, you neglect to mention that the AI has the same freedoms. In fact, no matter how hard the player tries, you will never fight a World War II with Britain, France, the US, and Russia versus Germany, Italy, and Japan. With the seemingly random nature of the strategic AI, the player will see Italy, Finland, or Japan join the Allies, Switzerland or Poland join the Axis, or Germany will never start the war because it’s so threatened by all of its neighbors ganged up on it.
Or, the war may never start and the game engine prevents democracies from starting wars except under extraordinary circumstances.
Unless you are Germany or one of her immediate neighbors, the player may not even be able to fight the war because all of her neighbors tend to align against her and beat her into submission before the player even gets to play.
I do mention the slow progression during times of peace, but you’re absolutely right about the 1936 scenario in particular having a slow, borderline boring, start.
Again you’re right in mentioning that the AI is also subject to the same freedom as the player, but I still ended up playing a game where almost everything was identical to how WW2 actually happened. The possibilities are so vast in this game that perhaps the scenario I witnessed (that was so close to reality) rarely occurs, and that’s what makes this game so magical, it has the potential to be different every time.
There’s a lot to do in the 1936 scenario, assuming you don’t delegate everything (and then you clearly need to play in 1939 or later to enjoy the game). There are techs to research, industry to build, diplomacy to be conducted, spies to be provided with death laden syringe…
1936 is particularly enjoyable when you want to change the historical start of the war.I mean if you want a France able to fight germany it is the scenario. Nevertheless event when you are defeated, your government can go in exile and continue the fight! It’s a really great idea. As an example i played France since 1936 after seven months of fight the germans succeeded in countre attacking my forces, 2months later my government was obliged to flee to london but we still continue to fight! Terrible isn’t it?
And it’s not a boring part of the game: you have produce your industrial bases , organize your troops, influence nation, increase the threat of other nations, make a block of nations to realize your strategy, send troops into the different theatres (not easy when you play France or Britain)
One thing to mention about this game is the “combat” AI… It is really strong. If
you take the blitzkrieg scenario as Germany, find the Oberkommand of Whermacht and just assign it to “Blitzing” with Lublin and Warsaw. In 8 or 9 clicks you’ll see the AI making a nearly perfect blitzkrieg, trying to pocket units. You have ordered the invasion a complete country with tenth of units in few clicks.
The hierarchization of units is also great (long to put in place but very effective when well done), and the front width obliges you to think. The big stack of units is quite useless. When you can only deploy 12 units it’s not usefull to charge with 34units. In practice it allows the opponents air force to shatter your divisions and to resist with a limited amount of troops to a stupid invader.
Pocketing and taking production centres (ie cities) are vital in this game. With no supplies and fuel an army collapse in 30 days maximum, generally 1-2weeks. Fuel is also a great idea. you import oil but you must refine fuel with your industry to have your tanks moving. So attacking convoys is a good strategy to isolate an opponent, until the opponent fleet sinks your fleets
I won’t enter into details but it’s a very complete wargame. The tutorial is usefullas it presents the needed screens (in “here you have that” style…) but not the combat system ( an aberation!) so it’s a crappy tutorial.
But the game itself is very deep and good. There is a lot of factors to take in account but , amazingly, the game design allows you to keep most of them in mind easily.
There s only the production interface (and the diplomatic one) which needs a small improvement but your production screen will not be consulted every minutes if you’re able to plan your production. Just keep an eye on “the new units icon”
However the game is a bit buggy, some modders have found ways to debug it. Have a look on threads and your game will be nearly perfect.
I don’t play RTS and Wargame but that one:i love it
“Haven’t you always wondered what would have happened if Poland was able beat the Germans back? In Hearts of Iron III, in theory, you can find out. Theoretically speaking, anything is possible, but due to the realistic parameters of the game you’re very unlikely to be able to change anything major with any of the smaller countries.”
I have always wondered what would have happened in September 1939 had France and Great Britain not sat on their asses while Poland was being hammered. The top Gwerman generals admitted that they had virtually nothing along the West Wall, and that most of the Luftwaffe was engaged in Poland. Had the British and French mounted a sustained ground and air offensive, even with their limitations, I doubt the Germans could have held out. Indeed, the Poles lasted longer with less than did the French in May 1940 – and they were also attacked by the USSR!