Why do you love Hearts of Iron & how would you explain it to a friend?

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-"Why do you love Hearts of Iron and how would you explain it to a friend?"
Because it let me take full control over any country in ww2 era and satisfies my megalomaniac necessities.
-"What do you feel makes the game series different from other WWII games out there?"
The details full control over units, research, production, military operations and the Huge scale of the conflicts.
Every decisión and acts matter in the way to victory.
 
As we were young we played "Risk" till coma. We love strategic war games dealing with ww2. We modded the world plan up to 500 provinces and implemented new units a.s.o

HOI series excatly is what we ever wanted!!! A deep and complex strategy game which has all important stuff (air, sea, land, production, development...) in and was not so limited (whole world, every country...)

And: You can mod it to your likings !!!!!!
well said.
what makes it unique are the details. companies of that time, politicians, admirals, generals. with real photographs, not drawings. it has the potential to be fun and educative at the same time.
no other game i know has that (i admit i dont know many games, though :D).
 
I LIKE HOI because it is an unforgivably complicated game that makes players thing of the high-level strategic decisions that were made in the lead-up, during, and after the Second World War. The game is extremely detailed, it allows you on the one hand to play as almost any nation that existed in the time period, yet is uncompromisingly uninterested in balancing these countries, forcing you to make decisions that take advantage of advantages and limitations available to each country.

I TELL MY FRIENDS that Hearts of Iron is a grand strategic warfare game that lets you command any nation in World War 2 and you will either get it, or you won't.

Soo... this is interesting because I get a mixed reaction to this game from people who are otherwise pretty hardcore gamers. So really I don't sell it, just tell them to try it because if they DO like it, they'll become obsessed with it.

They players remind me somewhat of the DayZ community. A little more learned, but people willing to dig really deep in a game and uninterested in the "fairness of the game". The term that both communities use again and again is "is it realistic".

- C.G.
 
Why I love HOI......

It was the first grand strategy WW2 game to actually be fun, while thought provoking. I discovered HOI1 by this game company I'd never heard of, and thought... (expletive deleted) I'll try it. At first I was where the hell is the manual and what just happened :eek:

Then HOI2 came along, and.... thousands of hours later... HOI3 was announced... thousands of hours later HOI4 is in production.

So how to describe it to a friend...

Do you like WW2? Yes. Do you like PC games? Yes. Then there is only one game that you need, it's called Hearts of Iron. It's so good, soon you'll be added to Paradox's list of known stalkers :D

In addition my love of HOI is also based on the fact that it has always had an amazing modding community and that the devs also give a crap about their fans.
 
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Hearts of iron 3 is the first paradox game I ever played I had no idea what was going on but I liked it few lets plays later and I had an idea what was going on, but the main 2 reasons I tell my friends to buy it are these.

Replayability as with paradox's other grand strategy games no two games feel the same and the wealth of nations to select also and this kinda ties into the second one which is the awesome modding community here on the forums so many mods but it's also the quality of the mods too nothing's half arsed (in the mods I've played).
 
Here is a question for you:
Why do you love Hearts of Iron and how would you explain it to a friend?

Hearts of Iron is for war-games what football manager games are for football games.

On the surface it appears to be less action, lots of statistics, worse graphics and a bit boring, but once you get into it the game just sucks you in and rewards you with so much more attention to detail, immersion and depth! Instead of just watching on the sidelines and trying to use your timing like in the action game you are in control of everything. Instead of good graphics the game plays out in your imagination.
 
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The HOI series is where Finland holds out against the full might of the Soviet Union, losing nothing in the Winter War. Then it joins the Allies to strike Germany before Operation Barbarossa can even begin, in order to steal some valuable research. Finally, it researches the atomic bomb for use against the Soviet Union in order to get Karelia back.

The HOI series is where Chiang Kai-Shek cleans house and gets his officers under control. He ruthlessly crushes Mao Zedong, brings the warlords to heel, and easily holds the Imperial Japanese Army at bay. He efficiently utilizes American aid to turn the Republic of China into a first-rate power, and funds a military coup in Japan.

The HOI series is where Hitler proclaims that Celts are Aryans on account of the lightness of their skin, and that Northern Ireland must be returned to the Republic of Ireland for the sake of popular self-determination.
 
As the finest, most complex but still easy to play, work of genius. So accurate it could almost be used as a teaching tool. I say almost because there is no mention of the Holocaust, the abuse of prisoners by the Japanese and Russia's lack of
leaders due to Stalin having most of them shot, and also, how out of 90,000 German prisoners taken at Stalingrad,
only 6000 ever returned.
I'm not saying these should be actual gameplay elements, but I think they should be events that pop up when these facts come to light towards the end of the war. Dropping the atomic bomb and carpet bombing of civilians are included, so why
not other significant war crimes and genocide?
The people who buy and play this game are not children. They all know what went on and in a game that is so in depth and goes to great lengths to be accurate, these events shouldn't just be ignored like they never happened.
 
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Why do I find the World War II era so compelling?

I have wrestled with this question for years, and have come to a unique understanding of why this period in history is so enticing.

There are two main points:

The first is how our society was so deeply affected by the technological developments of this period. There were so many startling and new developments of how we came to understand the tools that we use. So many crucial modern inventions were an extension of WWII - from all the various factions - that have come to define the modern era. To understand how our elaborate technology came to be, we must experience how the people of these times were transforming the very nature of their own perceptions. So many of the discoveries encountered completely changed the way everyone saw the world.

The second point - and what truly brought me into this genre - was the sense that this technological history is intuitive enough that I could understand it all (in its most basic form, of course). Playing a Grand Strategy World War II game, I feel as though I can grasp this entire technological evolution in my hands, and shape it the way I wish. It is an extremely powerful feeling.

The advent of advanced electronics, computers, nuclear technology, turbine engine flight, and advanced engineering is all in its infancy at the beginning, and by the end of the game, I have wrought a new order to my world, where information and productive efficiency has blossomed into a whole new potentiality.


It is not without some irony that this rebirth comes during such at cataclysmic series of events, but that is the way of nature. From the ashes of destruction, new growth begins.


I would strongly recommend that anyone who is interested in the history of our civilization take the time to experience this era first-hand, through the eyes of those who had to make the hard choices. This game is an amazing simulator that gives the player a unique perspective on how our society - our economy, our technology and our social beliefs - were molded and forged through these tumultuous times.
 
I love the HOI game series because it reproduces the feeling I had as a teenager reading history. Each time, it's a discovery as the history turns out slightly (or dramatically) different than it did, which means I get to have the joy of watching it happen over and over again. Probably my favorite example of this is the HOI2 game (Arma, I think) where I played Japan, Russia went to war against China, then the USA and Britain got involved as well, while Europe stayed quiet (no Polish invasion). So WW2 was fought as a huge three-way struggle in the Far East. Epic!
 
The Hearts of Iron series evolved from the best basic WWII-era grand strategy game to the best WWII-era grand strategy game ever. I was hooked from the beginning but HOI3 needed to get better and it did. I describe HOI3 to people as the ultimate WWII-era military strategy game where you can play any country and go historical or completely new with battles around the World.

What sets HOI apart from other war games is the deliberate move by the Paradiox team to keep historical accuracy, exciting military hardware, and avoid gamey shoot-em-ups. Too much abstraction and gameyness are for gaming consoles. In depth strategy, tech, maps, and leader are why HOI leaves all other games in the dust.

I have HOI3 for my WWII strategy fix and Close Combat series for my WWII tactical fix.
 
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I love Hearts of Iron because of Darkest Hour and the fact I can make an accurate China scenario and have it be in the vanilla game. :p

That said, I hope to love Hearts of Iron 4 because of podcat being at the helm. :D

(Even if I have to mod China to be correct all over again)
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Because Hearts of Iron is fun, let's you learn history, change history, and is a strategy game!

(As for my roommate, if you don't like history, or strategy games, or changing history, then the game isn't for you unfortunately. Go back to playing Call of Duty)
 
''Why do you love Hearts of Iron?''

Because of how challenging and rewarding it is. There's nothing I like more than getting my ass kicked, learning why I got my ass kicked, then proceeding to kick some ass.
 
Why I love HOI4? Because there are not enough WW2 strategy games out there on the market. HOI is a unique experience that provides players with deep, rich political, economic and military style of gameplay.
 
I love HOI3 (and DH) because I could spent so much time playing it, and I could replay starting from any previous savegames and end up in completely different situations even if I make the slightest of changes. Also, I really enjoy the emphasis on military strategy and having all the other aspects (economics, diplomacy, technology, etc) be designed to support the military functions.

Also, the steep learning curves that I had to endure for the first few weeks made the game ever more rewarding once I got the hang of it.
 
Part sim. Part wargame. All fun. Easily one of the most addicting games I've ever played. Whether you're trying to hold off attacks as Germany while the empire you've carved out comes crashing down, or playing as Britain trying to liberate the continent of Europe, or the US using its enormous might to fight both the Japanese navy and the German army, or one of a hundred other smaller nations trying just to survive one of the most turbulent periods of recent history, this series is a hell of a lot of fun.

It's a game that's not quite like any other. There are others that fall in the same vein, but none that have achieved quite the level of enjoyment that Hearts of Iron has over the years.

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