Victoria 3

What is here though is a deep simulation where every aspect of your nation interweaves with itself telling a story that you built. I’ve never been this in love with a strategy game before. I finally found the one for me, and I won’t need another one for quite a long while.

Victoria 3 hides its light under a bushel, but once you invest enough time to get acquainted with all of its mechanics, you’ll realize it’s one of the best, most engaging grand strategies ever.

Victoria 3 is a game that has captivated me now for weeks. I love the level of granular detail Paradox Games allow me to dive into, and Victoria 3 has this in droves. But my favorite parts of Paradox Games are the alternate history playthroughs. I found myself talking to friends and family about the quirks of the countries in my playthrough as if it were real geopolitical news. Every second in Vicky 3 I was hooked, sometimes finding myself sitting at my desk for hours into the night, losing track of the time yet never getting tired of the simulation. I craved more. And for me, that is high praise. As someone for who it takes quite a bit to really hook me, Victoria 3 certainly has in a big way. In fact, I think I’ll start my next campaign right now.

Quotation forthcoming.

Victoria 3 is an excellent addition to the Grand Strategy genre that I think will very much live up to expectations. There are a few issues but it does many more things right than it does wrong. Victoria 3 is a highlight amongst strategy games released this year, and I’m extremely impressed by the developers making peace just as fun and engaging as war. This is a must play for anyone who likes grand strategy titles, but wants to play something a little different compared to its competitors.

Victoria 3 is an incredibly detailed strategy game that’s as laborious as it is rewarding. You’ll need to put in the work and be prepared to spend a lot of time busying yourself while waiting for things to complete.

Victoria 3 finally arrives after years of incessant requests from the Paradox community and grand strategies, and it does it in style. The team responsible for the new chapter has managed to implement what fans were hoping for: expand, innovate and simplify a system of social and economic simulation without sacrificing the complexity that had so amazed already in the second title of the series. Victoria 3 is not a game for everyone but all those who want to play it hard will see this "investment" highly rewarded.

Victoria 3 is very complex. You'll need a lot of your time to get it up and running, but once you do, it's very entertaining. With some graphics and loading time deficiencies, but still almost a gem.

This game should be used as a training tool for politicians worldwide. A harsh, uncompromising simulation of global socioeconomic power struggle.

A deep and well-crafted economic simulator, not without flaws or room for improvement, but still immensely fun and faithful to the spirit that made the series great.

If not the most complex socio-economic simulator out there, Victoria 3 is certainly the most fun and user-friendly. Another hit and another "nextgen" strategy game after Crusader Kings 3.

Victoria 3 is a complex grand strategy game, however Paradox Development Studio went above and beyond to make it accessible to anyone with enough patience to learn the basics of how it works.

If you’d like a chance to lead millions and create a nation to rival all others, then this is the game for you. Just be careful what you wish for. The role of a leader can be fickle and overwhelming at times.

If you're a fan of strategy games, the big society simulation Victoria 3 offers very high quality dynamics that will take you to other lands.

Victoria 3's attractive historical sandbox is filled with potential, but it's on you to unlock it.

Victoria 3 is a well-done, amazing, deep and potentially infinite grande strategy, exactly what we expected from Paradox.

Victoria 3 is a fantastic business simulation game. But unique and unusual as it is, it will not please everyone.

A grand strategy simulation game depicting the global situation from Belle Époque era to interwar period. Though the game managed to embody a big world with amazing details, it is still quite boring in visual-wise since pretty much all design is focused on diplomacy and economy system. I'm sure you will have fun while playing it after getting used to it, but the process to it is quite tough.

Be patient, work through your failures. If you do, you’ll get to enjoy a truly fascinating simulation of the 19th century world with all its diplomacy, trade and social developments. War is secondary. And it’s for the best.

If you are a grand strategy fan, and you are one of those people who avoids war whenever possible (I know you’re out there), Victoria 3 is the game for you. What it lacks in breadth it makes up for in depth. There isn’t a more sophisticated nation simulator around, and the game will only grow in time. Much like The Sims before, Paradox games tend to have dozens of expansion packs. I will probably leave Victoria 3 installed in anticipation of those. This is a gigantic, excellent strategy game and for some people (nerds), it’s going to be a fave.

Victoria 3 deserves high praise as a very good title. Building and changing a society becomes really engaging. The only worrying part is the plans to expand the game through small, but potentially expensive DLCs.

Victoria 3 is a game that requires patience and homework, but once you get the hang of things can be tons of fun. The game offers so much variety both in terms of ways to play and succeed along with unique challenges in the array of nations to choose from to play with. Victoria 3 definitely has some things it can improve on and can be a lot to ingest for new players. However, we already know there are more updates and content coming in the pipeline so there will be continued support and Victoria 3 can only get better from here.

Victoria 3 is like a giant, complex machine where each gear affecting all the other gears. It just needs some more maintenance though.

Victoria 3 is a complex and deep global strategy game that can pull you in for hundreds of hours. But attempt to make it accessible to beginners isn't successful.

Victoria 3 is the kind of game that sucks me in and doesn't let me go, whether I'm trying to turn Hawaii into an anarcho-communist utopia or make Afghanistan the centerpiece of the global economy by monopolizing the opium trade. The scope and depth of its simulation is remarkable. I would need to double the length of this review just to explain the enormity of it in full. And that's only outdone by the fact that it actually runs well. I wish there was a fair bit less overall jank and weird AI behavior taking me out of the illusion, and the warfare system feels very work-in-progress. But that hasn't stopped me from playing it until the sun comes up more than a couple times in the last few weeks. It's a great first step, with an even more promising tomorrow.

Victoria 3 is an excellent game. Despite its complexity and intransigence, it is a real pleasure to play. A game that we can only recommend to history lovers.

Quotation forthcoming.

Victoria 3 is a grand strategy game with perhaps too much depth and complexity for genre newbies, and genre veterans might find the simplified warfare a turn-off. That said, I am wholly invested. It’s the most sandboxy of the Paradox lineup so far and I’ve been enjoying my time with it immensely. It is gorgeous, impressive, and absolutely worth the time it takes to learn. Now onto my fourth playthrough. The World Welsh Order will rise, mark my words.

Victoria 3 returns in all its glory and does not tune down its difficulty level. It's not a game for all, but once mastered it shows a depth that only a few other titles can boast.

Victoria 3 is a political and economic simulation of unparalleled depth, complexity and indifference to you. Stumble upon a narrative hook and it can reel you in, even if it struggles to maintain a human connection.

An ambitious, beautiful, and obsessively detailed society simulation that still needs to iron out a few rough edges.

Victoria 3 does a brilliant job of bringing this era of global politics alive. Its brilliant law systems create a truly enigmatic power struggle that will keep us playing for many hours to come. While there is a lack of flavour for some of the smaller nations and a handful of other problems that stop Victoria 3 being as good as it could be, there’s a vast myriad of strategies available to players, and many ways to plot out a successful campaign. And ultimately, that’s all that we want from a strategy game: the freedom to make credible choices.

So will Victoria 3 end up like Stellaris, which released to middling reviews but received years of updates that transformed it into a sublime experience? Or will it suffer the fate of Imperator: Rome, which launched in 2019 but had its support cut last year, leaving the game functional but tantalizingly unfinished? There are no shortage of directions for Victoria 3 to go in, but whether it fulfills its own economic goals remains unknown. I wasn’t always satisfied with it, but I am rooting for it.

Victoria 3 is, without a doubt, grand in scale and scope, and it's downright gorgeous, too. Sadly, the countless mechanics mean that there are too many moving parts, which lead to more questions than answers. The automation and streamlining of battle is, likewise, a baffling change. Even as a veteran of Paradox Interactive's games, this is still one series that I can't get behind.