So I've been playing the Victoria 2 demo and I've been enjoying it immensely, as someone who never really "got" the original game.
For those that don't know, Victoria 2 is a Grand Strategy Game like HOI or Europa Universalis. Where Europa Universalis is more focused on discovery and exploration, HOI more on warfare, Victoria 2 is more about domestic politics and economics. I know to many people that sounds boring, but honestly I think domestic politicking and economics is a very underutilized direction of game design. Granted, secretly, I'm a 19th Century European politics enthusiast so I shit my pants for this sort of thing.
If you go through the tutorials, the game is just as complex but 100% more intuitive than Victoria 1. After a couple of hours I was "getting" it much more than I did the original. If you get good at the game, you could probably influence the simulation for some very strange results. A communist United States or a democratic Russia? I like how those sort of policy issues aren't as simple as moving a slider... you really have to plan and engineer changes like these.
I still find it endlessly fascinating to see how little tweaks influence little demographic changes. It's cool how your capitalists go around building railways and factories without you telling them to do so. Next time, I'm going to engineer a Civil War that starts in the 1840's.
My only real complaint is that England seems to suffer from a lot of armed insurrections on the home islands, and there seems to be some buggy text. I feel I will be getting this game when I can afford it.