• Summary: Players can enjoy over 300 years of gameplay by starting at ANY date between 1453 and 1789. Nation building is flexible: decide your own form of government, the structure of your society, trade politics and much more. The great people and personalities of the past are on hand to support you. Take history in your hands and call personalities like Sir Isaac Newton, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or René Descartes to your court. A lush topographic map in full 3D allows for a rich and complete world view, and contains more than 1700 provinces and sea zones. Lead any one of more than 250 countries that originally existed during the game’s extensive time span. Have more than a thousand historical leaders and over 4000 historical Monarchs at your disposal. Manage more than 100 individual unit troops to secure as much power as possible. Co-operative multiplayer mode allows several players to work together to control a single nation. Customize your game: Europa Universalis III gives you the chance to customize and mod practically anything your heart may desire. [Paradox] Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 21 out of 25
  2. Negative: 0 out of 25
  1. You can do anything you want with this game, the limits being only your time and imagination. If any of you budding warmongers, strategy fiends or history buffs out there are looking for complete control, world domination and a great wargaming experience, look no further.
  2. An excellent, addictive historical strategy game. The awful graphics and the wandering enemy units are minor flaws. [Feb 2007]
  3. Plenty of depth and enough diplomacy to hold the attention, but it'll be too ponderous for some and too ugly for others. [Mar 2007, p.76]

See all 25 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 19 out of 31
  2. Negative: 10 out of 31
  1. JohnA.
    10
    I think it is a shame to see low votes from people who either lack the system specifications to play the game or don't understand that "history simulation" means that it will be different from history (often excessively so) based on how one plays the game. The game play is rich and addictive, with fantastic depth. The graphics are well above par for a game like this, and the replay-ability, especially in light of the game's open ended modification system and active player community. Multiplayer support is not really up to snuff right now for their metaserver, but LAN etc multiplayer seems to work fine. Seeing as that will undoubtedly be fixed in upcoming patches, I could hardly let it overpower an otherwise pristine review of probably the only game I will play until the release of Spore. Expand
    • 7 of 7 users said yes
  2. ToddC.
    6
    After installing it, as a historical strategy game, I feel a bit cheated. The game has a historical setup but once you start playing all types of random and silly things happen. For instance, in my game (already patched) by 1480, when Historically nobody had set foot in the new world, I have Spain colonizing Canada, the Teutonic Order colonizing the US and Aragon together with Genoa are colonizing Brazil/Venezuela. Also strange is the way ihneritances work. In my game, Provence inherited Portugal and Milan inherited Norway. This means Provence is now Portugal and Milan is now Norway too. This is completely silly. The graphics are very poor, as their quality is from 2000, not 2007. What makes the game a bit interesting is the engine that is not very different from previous Europa Universalis game and was not ruined in this attempt to make a fantasy game claiming it is historical plausible! Expand
    • 2 of 8 users said yes
  3. I love historical games and I really like simulation/strategic games too. Looks like everything is in place to have a great game play experience. Unfortunately, it wasn't the case, I pick up Aztec for my first game and it was horrible. I read a lot of stuff on the internet in order to have an idea what to do to get out of this stupid tribal political system. I had to westernize, which I haven't been able to do after seven attempts and 37.4 hours of play time. And what is this annoying behavior of those "riots army" who flee when I WON?!? They run everywhere and I have to play cat and mouse all over my territory to fight over and over again until they finally get all killed. Ridiculous, it's as if they had not even tried to play their own game. Expand
    • 1 of 3 users said yes

See all 31 User Reviews