Before anyone thinks that I didn't play the game long enough, you're 100% right. It looked like a very promising alternate-history strategy game but here is my single biggest complaint: it has no draw to it. I don't get how you can get to people to play this game for more than a while, because to someone not used to grand strategy games like me, it has NO entertainment value. Maybe if they added something like a stripper on one of the toolbars it might keep me playing long enough to actually know how to enough work this contraption of a game.… Expand

Although the groundwork is in place, the game needs a huge shot of performance enhancing steroids. Being an avid strategy gamer, and certainly a fan of the Hearts of Iron series, I can see that the potential is huge. Once the bugs are ironed out along with performance issues, it will be a delight to play, and will surely be a great sequel, but until then i have to give it a 6 out of 10. Does quality assurance even exist at developers names that don't start with a B and end with an lizzard?… Expand

I'm sure there is a game in here somewhere, but after two hours I haven't found it. This games needs a "first ten minutes walkthrough". Without it, it is impossible to penetrate. The in-game tutorials are extremely lacking. The manual provides a lot of details about individual game features and the effect of different settings, but it does not provide an overview of gameplay. The manual claims that you can find a "Quickstart" overview guide on the developer forums, but after much searching ( and a complicated registration process which requires you to manually enter your game key -- you can't copy and paste from steam ), I still couldn't find it.… Expand

Impressive up step from HOI2. Chain of command is awesome , intelligence and espionage improved, research is improved (epically like practical/theoretical bit about it). Have had some bug troubles with supply in 1.3 , hopefully they will be resolved.

This is written under patch 1.3 and I will not really focus on bugs. I have played HOI2, and find HOI3 to be a good upgrade of this game. It's got an all new game engine (which I assume will be used by Paradox for various games for several years = addons) The game is complex, very complex. It does not really hold your hand either so be prepared to spend a lot of time reading strategy guides, forums, manuals and pressing buttons to see what happens. You can do research, building units, managing economy, espionage and diplomacy and a whole lot of other things a world leader must cope with. But this makes for a serious WW2 game where you can change the history if you want to (another review makes this a problem, a real simulator is boring as we KNOW Nazi-Germany lost) Some of the fun playing a small country is to see whether you can avoid the historical fate. The game has serious replay value since you can play all the different countries of the time, and even the same country can be played differently. Pros: Lots of details, lots of sliders and options to be micromanaged You can play as any country of your given starting time. AI will do the things you don`t, so you can choose the level of micromanagment you want to do. Cons Runs slow, not really optimized No windowed mode, I play on dual screen, and the need to read manuals and guides makes the alt+tab really painful. Conclusion A game for the serious, not a casual game, but it will reward you for being persistent and learning the game. Great WW2 strategy game with lots of detail.… Expand

This version is the first I play so I cant compare with series 1 and 2. Though I have to say that the game detail is impressive and is a platform for a great game. Unfortunately thats it for me, as I cant say I enjoy it. Maybe I need to play longer and go through the learning curve, but there are some things that just dont appeal to me such as: there are certain political leaders you cant change. Some countries are almost impossible to change the general democracy level which makes it impossible to switch sides (allies vs axis). Depending on the research available only some countries can eg. get to the nuclear weapons. A.I on resources does often give insufficient to consumer goods, which increases revolt automatically. etc etc. Although officially this is not a retelling of Word war 2, a lot of things are programmed to happen as they did. No surprises and a lot of details to manage to get to the same result. I hope I am wrong but this is my feeling after playing around 5 seperate attempts.… Expand

Hearts of Iron 3 promises much, but delivers little. The diplomatic mechanic is broken and severely unbalanced, so the German AI cannot help avoiding the entire world to side with the Allies. Ministers do not die of old age nor get otherwise replaced, this means you will NEVER see WINSTON CHURCHILL take power in Britain. Naval transports have unlimited range, which means Finland can easily invade Korea, and the Pacific war makes no sense, as islands can be invaded at random and not in sequence. The AI does not research military doctrines, which means the player will always surpass them in efficiency. Also, many features from HoI2 were removed, such as Claiming Provinces and auto-production-sliders, demanding from the player daily attention to the sliders. Plus, the game has severe performance issues and crawls at a very slow pace. Will HoI3 still be played years from now, as HoI2, once the novelty wears off and only the bugs and issues remain? Only time, and many, many patches will tell.… Expand

The game has potential, and I thought paradox was the last good company that cared about their fansbase. Wrong, they released a halfassed game full of bugs making it still pretty much unplayable a week later. And the do not plan to release a new patch in 2-3weeks. not good enogh by a long shot. And even the first patch that got released made the game worse. Unfrigginbelivable. The game atm is nothing else than fail as far as the eye can see. In a month, it might just as well be a 6-7-8, who knows.… Expand

Horrendus bugs, terrible performance to the point of unplayablity even on i7 basically its not finished yet it only a half made game and this is after one patch and one hotfix to fix the broken patch. So imagine what it was like to start with! And im sorry what the game will be when and IF its patched is all speculation and irrelevant the game you paid 60 dollars for is useless at present

The game is plagued by bugs. The intelligence system is broken: allied countries sabotage one another, annexed countries's spies cannot be removed and become invincible. Weather is broken: it often rains for 2 years non-stop in places like Poland. Tecnical problems are the sad cherry on the cake: performance is very sluggish. One of the causes are save-game writing bugs that progressively increase the size of the files with repetitive useless data. The game could be playable, if all the bugs were ironed out.… Expand

Huge beta test, the latest release (1.2) is still unplayable (unless you think is funny to spend tens of hours on a game that you'll not be able to reload since crashes to desktop are very common). Paradox is planning to release another patch but won't commit to a date (quote from the forum : "I do not want to promise a date [for the next patch] as I rather want it to be 99.999% polished at release".) The game is simply unplayable in the current state.… Expand

While Paradox Interactive has indeed updated the look and feel of HoI:2, they have failed to really improve it. The 10,000 provinces become overwhelming, forcing you to let the AI handle your wars, taking away much of the pleasure of personally directed an armored assualt. The technology screens are a massive step backwards in terms of look and feel. Perhaps the most annoying aspect of HoI:3 is that in some areas it has fewer features than HoI:2, such as the ability to automanage trades and convoys. You can either give the game full control of all production fields or none. I would keep an eye on this game and perhaps in a few patches and update mods consider it, but for now save your money. I wish I had.… Expand

This is one of the greatest games of all time.. There is a great deal of work when you want to play it so if you are not serious about playing it then it may be a bit to much for casual gamers. Saying that, the game can be overwhelming but if you give it 100% of your attention it can be really great. They added the ability for the computer to control certain micromanaging which is a welcome change from the previous edition.… Expand

Even though the game had a near disastrous launch, it is a pretty good game now with Semper Fi. From the Motherland should raise it to excellent. This was a very ambitious project from a middle market game developer so I am inclined to be somewhat more understanding as compared to Firaxis and the piece of crap Civ 5. Hopefully Paradox has learned from their lesson and continues to put out quality products in the future.… Expand

Looks to be a great game so far. It needs patches, but it's hard to make something this complex that doesn't. However, I'm subtracting one point for the moronic tutorial, that introduces me to each of the six buttons across the top of the screen - and then forgets to tell me HOW TO MOVE UNITS OR ATTACK !!!

Once again Paradox have delivered an absoulutly emense game in both sheer physical size and depth. The learning curve for those new to the series has been flattend, although the game still demands a lot of the player the effort to reward ratio is very well matched. It can be said that palying with history is fun and Hearts of Iron 3 makes it so. Hats off to Paradox for delivering a game ON TIME and well developed.… Expand

Very good game.

The game would not run well at all on my machine, even though it's a pretty decent machine that runs some very high end games, and is well within the specs for the game. After a short time it became completely unplayable. I'm glad some other folks are enjoying it since it is certainly a game with some potential, but it's bizarre to me that some users give it a perfect 10 and then talk about it having severe bugs. HOI 2 is a terrific game, but my advice here is to pass on this woefully inclomplete pice of software. Perhaps it can be fixed. Given that each new patch has broken something else, I have my doubts.… Expand

Another game in the line of Europa Universalis 3 and Rome. This publisher releases unfinished games and expects the users to fix them. This game lacks any sense of realism. I am not talking about logical bugs, but who woud expect that Ireland would disembark alone on the german coast? Who would expect Argentina did the same on england? As it is, the game should not be sold linked to WW2, but instead in creating an alternative reality that has very few to do with WW2, at least if one wants to play the full campaign. This publisher got lucky with Europa Universalis 3, when a group of users coded Magna Mundi and solved most of the faults. They had no such luck with Rome, because the Magna Mundi team was not interested in fixing it. And probably they are now praying the Magna Mundi team will fix HOI3. This is terrible, because these games have lots of potential.… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. In one word "disappointment". I am an avid and long time strategy game player. Back when Europa Universalis came out in 2001, it was a huge improvement over strategy games so far. Having bought Hearts of Iron 3 I noticed the game play was still very similar to that of Europa Universalis 1. Then it was a fun game, now it is boring. Worse, to balance the game, odds are very much in favour of the AI. For instance, when my dug-in and well supplied fortified troops (13 brigades) were attacked by France in the Ruhr Area by 2 brigades (note: why the AI attacks at all against such a stronger force is beyond my comprehension), there were equal losses on both sides (approx. 10?? Yes, that many!) and I still lost the battle and was in retreat. On other occasions my attacking force overwhelmed French troops inflicting 1700 casualties against maybe 100 on my side and I still lost the battle? Considering I spent 8 hours preparing my forces in terms of supply, technology and training and my country through bunkers, AA and infra, such illogical battle losses quickly "killed" my interest in the game! No fun and unrealistic. Then I am also taking for granted that Churchill does not come to power, transport ships can sail forever, that it rains for 2 years in some areas etc and that the game requires a heavy computer to deal with performance. Don't buy it, even when it is at bargain prices!!… Expand

best game with this timeline. there is nothing else outhere, with this kind of complexity. if you love great strategy games you should give hoi III a try.

This game is one of the best examples of why you shouldn't fix what isn't broken. Hearts of iron 2 was a great combination of simplicity and fun, this game makes everything extremely difficult to understand by compaison with no seeming good reason, for example the tech tree in Hoi2 was pretty standard and straight foward (select team, department of research, tech,go) while in this game, the whole system is horribly convoluted and diffcult to understand as it's so radically different to Hoi2 for no good reason. The battle system is the same as Hoi2 on the whole however even that has been made more complicated than point and click, for example when attacking, other units in the surrounding provinces can be told to "support attack", in Hoi2 it was as simple as (right click, support attack, go) in this it's CTRL right click, not only does the game never tell you this but neither is there a good reason for changing it. The Map has also been made much more complex by adding a ton of new provinces that were not in Hoi2, making the lines that defined provinces much smaller and not having their names displayed on them until you are right up close. The new provinces slow down the game and help to make the game really unfamilar to Hoi2 veterans. The provinces are different colours and are a similar shade to the text making then hard to see. Having the names hard to see means that only when you see the name of the province, you've zoomed in too far to see the entire front while in Hoi2 the names could be see from any distance. The 3d effects are terrible and completely unneeded. Hoi2 was effectivly a text based game with the lack of visuals it had and that was still better to look at than this. The 3d models often get in the way of the province name and don't represent the size of the force e.g. The amount of troops you have in one province isn't represented by the 3d effect. The performance of this game is dreadful, mainly in part due to the horrible 3d models and perspective. This game really shouldn't have Framrate issues with any computer made before 2004 yet I get a better framerate on Crysis. I would go on about "national unity" and how the game thinks that there's a difference between Politics and diplomacy seeing as Hoi2 had then under the same partition but writing down everything that's wrong with this game would take as long as actually understanding this game. This game should have never been made, or atleast've been a remake of Hoi2 with 3d graphics. But no they had to release a game that bears almost no relation of Hoi2 apart from the sound effects which are identical. The bottom line is DO NOT BUY THIS GAME(especially for £15), buy Hoi2 it's much cheaper and much much better.… Expand

After the excellent Hearts of Iron 2, I was expecting much from this game. Regrettably, I was sorely disappointed. After purchasing, with version 1.00, the first thing I noticed was the horrendously slow game play. Now my system wasn't particularly good, but this was awful. It took several patches to bring things to a reasonable speed. Micromanagement was heavy, detailing down to the brigade level and I never really got far in either the politics or diplomacy settings due to dire game speeds. The only good thing to say about the game is the technology tree which looks good. Paradox then went and released Semper Fi, an insult to injury - Effectively you have to pay for further patches to the game.… Expand

Ever bought a game and thought you were going to love it but the game actually ended up laggy and barely playable? Yeah, thats this game. I loved HOI2 and I still play it today, and I was very excited when I picked this game up, with all the new features promised, I nearly wet my bed in anticipation (I didnt actually btw). Well, their are many new features to this game, thats for sure, the developers really spent their time on this game, but they failed in the most important aspect...fun factor. This game isn't fun more than a hassle, firstly, the game is slow....and by slow I mean it. Secondly, it's too complex, it's easy to take over a simple country like say Belgium, but go against the Soviet Union and you'll have carpel tunnel trying to order your units around. Overall, this game won't interest you, unless your a hardcore HOI fan, stay away!… Expand

A great game when it is patched up to 1.4. A few bugs and optimization issues, but nothing that can't be fixed. The structure upon which to build is rock-solid. Gameplay is addictive, absorbing, and, most importantly, a lot of fun. Buy this game if you have any interest in grand strategy.

first thing i'm not an english spoker so sry for my bad english.I think the game deserves a 9 cuz it's great game i think, i've played stratedy games for ever.The level of realism of the AI is very good!i've tryed many triks to see enemy's capacity attaking flanks cuting regions...etc and wow the enemy was answering with flankings,,,tryng to cut my supply road strategic bombings on my industry ,and tryng to circle me very nice!I enjoy a game where the Ai puts me in dificulty.BUT the performace is very bad....the game is perfect and very very realistic and everything but i think i wasn't necesary to offer the possibility to play in China Africa new zelland Australial....to complex i think the performance is bad for that reason...i enjoy the first 20 min then i lose fps....I've played even ver 2 very smoth unlike this one.I'm waiting for 1,4 hoping that will render the game better!… Expand

Bad game as it stands now. Like most games by this developer they get better and better with patches and expansions. I have no doubt this game will be a 9-9.5 but not yet. Do youself a favor and wait for them to fix all the crap wrong with it and dont buy it now. The problems will get fixed eventually, i have no doubt

The great Grand Strategy war game I've been waiting for since the Apple II. Minor bugs here and there that will get fixed don't dilute the fact that running a true World War, and delegating items that bore you to the AI, is like a history time lab. You can see how the world could have turned out very different. I am loving this one.

Hearts of Iron 3 is the most in-depth strategy game i have played. however it is like unfortunately most new games coming out now and is full of brutal errors and bugs. So the rating i give it is really based on the future potentional of the game, as after a few patches will be the game everyone wants it to be

The game is a great step forward from HoI2. The command chain is impressive and the modular divisions give the player a lot of room to customize their armies. What many people don't really grasp is that the research system is very realistic. You are neither looked in historical options, nor can you disregard the traits your nation have. You start out with both theoretical and practical capacities in a wide range of areas, and the more you focus on thiose areas the better you become. But the reverse is also true, for example. Germany is good at submarines at the start of the game, but if you as Germany don't build a single submarine or even research submarine technology, then your capacity in both submarine research and building subs will dwindle. The game is very playable with the current patch 1.3, and it will be supported further.… Expand

Great game - once the game has ironed out some bugs and fixed performance issues as Zach G already said. Hooowever, just because a developers name isn't Blizzard doesn't mean that they don't have a feeling for quality. (WoW has faced many issues..) Blizzard, however - have alot of money and can basicly decide their own development time - other have to work quickly, maybe even stressed and release it... This game is definetly worth my money (supporting Paradox) and the value will grow over time. 10/10!… Expand

Amazing game in spite of a shaky release. If it was another company, I'd give the game an 8, but I have faith that Paradox will fix the bugs, AI and map problem, and add content, as they have done so with their past games. The actual mechanics they have made for the game though are nothing short of brilliant. The system for land, air, and sea battles are by far the best simulated in a Paradox game. The ability to create a command structure and customize brigades and the like is amazing. The tech system is once again, the best in any Paradox game, from Hearts of Iron 2 to Victoria. Diplomacy needs work, mostly AI work, as do events, but as long as Paradox addresses these problems this will be the epitome of World War 2 gaming for a long time to come, and for a much wider audience too this time, as it is very intuitive and much easier to play than their past games without losing anything in complexity.… Expand

This game has the potential to become the greatest strategy game ever. Right now, it has some severe bugs, and the AI needs tweaking, but Paradox is working hard to iron out all the bugs.

COMPLETELY DISREGARD ALL OF THESE NEGATIVE REVIEWS! IT IS NOW 2011 AND THE GAME IS NO LONGER BUGGY OR S****TY! If you are looking to buy this game, go on youtube and watch some gameplay vids first, before you buy it. This game is very complex, and takes awhile to learn. I absolutely love it, and have spent 220+ hours on it. It makes you feel like the commander of a country during WW2, and I love how you can play as anyone. The only downside is that nobody plays multiplayer, and whenever you try to connect to someone it doesn't work. And the AI gets frustrating to play with after 50+ games, because it is quite repetitive. But besides those two things, its a great game.… Expand