Hearts of Iron 3

Heads up, this game is confusing and difficult. If you are new to the Hearts of Iron series or Grand Strategy games in general you will have a lot of difficulty until you get into the swing of it. I stand by the 9 I have given it though - take the time to learn its intricacies and I think you will too. If you like strategy games Hearts of Iron 3 is definitely worth it.

Hearts of Iron 3 scares my girlfriend. Well, more to the point, I scare her when she asks what I'm doing in Hearts of Iron 3. I guess she doesn't like how casually I talk about my plan to coerce the Philippines into war against Australia so I can justify 'liberating' the people. I'd already placed half a dozen spies throughout Australia, raising the public morale and getting them to like the idea of war. Now with my spies in the Philippines creating dissent and convincing the Filipino people that war with Australia was also a great idea, I knew it wasn't long before I had a much better vantage point when the Japanese came down. Offense is the best defense right?

If you heard Hearts of Iron 3 was a World War II Real Time Strategy game and jumped in expecting Company of Heroes, you are in for a big surprise. It certainly is set in WW2, and all of the action occurs in real time, but there are no capture points or DirectX 10 graphics here. In fact, if you jumped in expecting Company of Heroes you might be upset, you might even walk away in disgust. Being presented with counters to represent your troops can have that effect in this day and age, where graphics reign supreme.

I personally like the lack of fancy graphics. Games used to require some imagination, the lack of graphics required you to fill in the blanks. Go back and take a look at the original Pools of Radiance. Your character was 21 pixels high. You had to use your imagination when you designed your character in Pools of Radiance. If your imagination hasn't already been destroyed by TV and cinematic video games, it can certainly do a much better job at making you feel part of the action than any game can. Sure, getting my domestic spies to whip up the blood lust of the nation in HOI3 is a matter of clicking a couple of buttons and waiting, but I still feel like a bad ass because I can see what's going on in my head.

Another reason an ordinary gamer would walk away is the difficulty. While Hearts of Iron 3 is a lot more user-friendly than its predecessors on the whole, its level of difficulty is still beyond what the average gamer is used to. Regardless of the setting you select, the sheer scope of the game is difficult to come to grips with. Aside from commanding your troops, you are in charge of a country. You have to manage your country's production, politics, diplomacy, technology and intelligence (as mentioned above). Fortunately, if any of those aspects seem too difficult to control at first, or too boring, you can switch them to AI control and focus on other things.



If you do decide to hand over control to the AI, I would definitely recommend holding onto production and intelligence. While in many other Grand Strategy titles you might almost need a History diploma to know which units you should be building for each given situation, HOI3 gives you suggestions, which can be very handy when you are having trouble getting on your feet. You can also let it deploy your units for you when necessary, and the AI does an excellent job of setting priorities.

The AI can also be helpful when it comes to commanding your troops to battle. Depending on what HQ or unit you select, you can take as much or as little control as you feel like at any moment. By taking control of your main HQ you can send every single unit to a single location, allowing the AI to decide the best strategy. Mind you, this can be a slow process. Take control of one of the HQs underneath your main and you will only control the units deployed by that HQ, still allowing the AI some control over the specific strategies deployed. Naturally, if you want to control everything yourself you can - the game makes it very easy for you to select each unit and give it it's orders individually.

All of that aside, when you decide you want to control all aspects of your chosen country you will have to read the manual. The tutorial won't be much help as it is light on information and english is definitely not its writer's first language. Jumping into a new game and trying to learn as you go would be near impossible for a newcomer to Grand Strategy games - it is anything but intuitive, even with the user-friendliness introduced in HOI3. The game has tooltips for almost everything on screen, but without some knowledge of what those tooltips mean you'll probably only end up feeling more confused.

Once you've got a grasp of the situation, things can still be a little mystifying at first. Only when you've mastered the game will you understand why Italy joined the alliance this time around, or why Russia collapsed even before Kristallnacht. Aside from the AI occasionally throwing a curve ball to keep things lively, the reasons are obvious - you did something different. HOI3 is not just a WWII simulation, showing you with counters or sprites what happened from 1931 - 1945, it is your chance to change history. You can finally put everything you learned about where Hitler went wrong on the History Channel to good use. You can now go back and win it for him. Or you can give another country a more vital part in the war - as I am doing in my Australian campaign.

And that is what makes this game so great. HOI3 has a steep learning curve and it will be a struggle at first, but once you've got it all under control you can have some serious fun. You are hit with a huge rush when you do something that changes the course of history completely, it's a rush unparalleled by any other type of game. If you can master Hearts of Iron 3 then you will also have a leg up when you play other Grand Strategy games, such as Paradox's own Europa Universalis or Victoria series. Perhaps you will have even more success than I did getting in the Australian public to support the necessary war with New Zealand.