Review | Hearts of Iron III
With the manual read and the tutorials completed, you can then choose to play either the four scenario campaigns, or start from any time period within the World War 2 era as any nation. Essentially the campaigns are like extra tutorials, and help add to the knowledge obtained from the actual tutorial and manual. The campaigns are still challenging and occasionally confusing, but on each one, certain elements of the “full” game are AI controlled, allowing you to concentrate on only a couple of the game’s elements at a time. The campaigns also provide a great way to get straight into the action, especially as times of peace can be somewhat dull when playing the main game.
The opposition AI certainly keeps you on your toes during times of war, with attacks coming from every angle they can get units to. It’s well-balanced, though, so being completely destroyed early on is unlikely. What will bombard you from the very start are the pop-up boxes, with tidbits of information regarding world events relevant to your nation. These boxes can overwhelm your screen with the timer turned all the way up, and turning them off isn’t always adviseable, since occasionally the information is worth knowing. It can, at times, all be a little too much.
After several hours of playing, newcomers to this series will eventually figure out how to play, and now you’re ready for the “full” game, which is where Hearts of Iron III really comes to life. Choose your nation, choose your starting year, and off you go into the big wide world. Quite literally, it’s now up to you to survive the war. To help you on your way are tons of management options, but most of the micro-management options that we are all familiar with from similar games are replaced by sliders, so the task is a little less daunting; and the ability to switch management of resources to the AI, as in the campaigns, is a fantastic and life-saving addition.
Even with the AI’s help the game is very demanding, and there’ll be plenty of people out there will struggle to enjoy it initially. However, with perseverance, you will find an amazing RTS game underneath the shroud of complexity. Accessibility is very important – and however warranted the complexity, it does limit the appeal to new players – but fans of the series will find a tasty treat indeed. Hearts of Iron III plays to its strengths and builds upon what made the second game so popular.
//Time is of the essence
Combat is not what makes up the majority of Hearts of Iron III; the building of units and acquisition of allies and resources play the biggest part, especially in the peaceful years leading up to the war. During this time you can prepare you country for the inevitable, but due to the realistic parameters, building things can be slow, with something like a battle ship can taking upwards of a year on the game’s timeline. Managing and optimising your nation’s production is the biggest fight you’ll have, and ensuring you have everything set up to accommodate speedy progress will benefit you immensely.
Due to the slow building and realistic nature of production, peace can occasionally prove tedious. During times of war, however, there is more than enough going on to keep you occupied. Combat is fairly simple and automatic, but if you’re fighting on too many fronts it will soon overwhelm you. A real problem is its real-time nature. Often, you don’t really have enough time to sort yourself out during heavy periods of combat; at other times, when things are calmer and the timer feels a little slow, speeding it up causes the animations to become jerky. It’s a lose/lose situation. I can’t help but feel making the whole game turn-based would have solved these problems entirely.
What you need to consider, when pondering whether or not to commit to Hearts of Iron III, is whether you can maintain the patience and persistence required to fully appreciate what this game has to offer. If you can, and I must stress if, then Hearts of Iron III will keep you entertained for an incredible amount of time.
7/10
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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!