Ive been thinking about getting this, but im not sure id be able to give it the time it'll need at the moment, with elemental out soon and then civ5 the month after, ill probably get it after playing those to death.

Ive played, EU1 & HOI2&3 and liked them all, but they do put me in 'hermit mode'

Also, the music is fantastic and sets a great tone.

Lol, yes, I do lose track of time play Victoria. I guess that's a good thing...

I wish they had had someone actually play the demo before releasing it. The Null_text or whatever that error message is rather jarring and annoying and pretty much everyone runs into it.

I never played Victoria, but I've played their other games, EU, CK... I am not sure if I care for the map and or the message system. It's definitely a deep game, lots of meat even if it isn't the most pretty game.

They burned me on HOI 3.  I will never buy another Paradox developed game.  They still publish some good ones but they released an unplayable mess.  They should be ashamed.  So I'll speak the only way I can; with my wallet.  Well and this message.

Victoria 2 sucks oodles of noodles it's worse than the first one. There's LESS to do. Plus any fool who buys this retail after the HOI III release is well just a fool. Vicky I was .99 cents after 3 weeks release. This one will fall in price also very soon.

What happend with HOI 3 that is getting Paradox so many "fans?" I am guessing bugs which Paradox doesn't seem to get away from. I thought it already had an expansion. Did they never bother to fix it?

Not my type of game I guess...[my favourite Paradox releases are -> EU:Rome + Crusader Kings ]

Paradox is devolving like Creative Assembly, Victoria 2 from what I hear is simplified, and at present has a game breaking bug in the release version that causes full scale revolts to explode across entire countries. If you play up to.. 1880 I think it was, you'll see dozens of countries just buried in rebels that never disappear locking the entire world in an anarcho liberal depression.

Victoria 1 was complex but good, though with some interface problems. Europa Universalis was fantastic but needed a better AI. HOI was more complex and detailed, though slow with too much army micro management.

Then come the sequels and Paradox for whatever reason forgets how to make video games. HOI3 was too "accessible" Aka simplified to the point of boring and riddled with bugs. The only thing they managed to improve was the warfare.

Victoria 2 is looking to be more "accessible" than the previous with its own mess of game ruining bugs, can't say more than that because I haven't played the full game yet. Holding off on a purchase until its own forums have something good to say about it.

I can offer a prediction too about how the next Europa might look, just think of a way it can be simplified and broken, and Paradox will do just that.

Paradox used to be one of my favorite developers, I don't know what happened to them. It's depressing.

Still broken naval and air combat.....

Many things considered as WAD by Paradox doesnt make any sense in WW2 game

AI waste huge ammount of fuel which result in broken Japan and Germany in many games

Paradox released already several broken patches - 1.3 version was broken for 4 months (superstacks, empty reserve divisions)  and its Steam version was broken even more because Paradox screwed up sending files to Steam and they didnt bother to fix Steam release untill 1.4 patch which was 4 months later. Latest official patch 2.03B was released without ANY testing, it contain several gamebreaking bugs which any testing would discover in 10 minutes. After we complained we were told that all programers are on holiday and so work on any hotfix or patch wont start before end of August!!!!!!!

Fact that my account was banned for criticizing Semper Fi (HoI3 expansion which promised to fix original game - for 20€) shortly after its release didnt exactly improved my opinion about about Paradox (official reason for ban was that my post was "inflamatory" - well if game didnt have 10+ major bugs almost 1 year (and 1 paid expansion) after release my post wouldnt by so critical).

Wow, a lot of Paradox hate! I found Victoria I (and HOI 3) to be absolutely impenetrable, so making it "accessible" is not a problem for me. For that matter, the only Paradox game that I can get into is EU3. The bugs you are talking about do worry me though, and in some AARs I've read the countries aren't very faithful to the real-world counterparts in some cases (i.e. a lot of "Canadian Nationalist" revolts, AI USA doesn't reach West Coast very well, Britain is much more unstable than it was historically), although Prussia and Austria do compete with one another very nicely. I guess I will see how the patches fix things before putting money down.

Interesting, thanks for the information. I can't say that I've seen the kind of support you'd hope from Paradox myself. Crusader Kings has been a broken buggy game long before the last patch which was and is beta since 2008. EU3 seems pretty clean now, but I didn't really play that early on when they could have been doing the same thing with that series.

I noticed that as well. The developers and moderators on their forums are some of the worst I've seen in the gaming industry. I also don't like how they segregated the forums by requiring you to buy the game in order to READ them (example: the bug forum). That's such bullshit.

Their only game that I liked was Hearts of Iron 2 - which was a damn good game. After that, they just stopped making good games.

I think they did that starting with the Rome based game. I was pretty unhappy with that too. I went to the technical part of the forums to see just how bad these games were at release or where they were in the getting fixed department. Now I am less inclined to buy their games because I can't see if the patch has been setting in beta for 6 months combined for 2-3 hot fixes which implies a problem.

Arsenal of Democrycy is very good standalone expansion of HoI2 which was made by another company. I hope same people will some day create sequel based on HoI3. I am currently playing 1936 game as USSR on hard diff. against agressive AI and so far its very nice chalange.