Opinions by older HOI2 players.

[lwarmonger]

HOI 2 was broken at launch by the standards that most of the loudest HOI 4 complainers have been using. AI couldn't execute naval invasions. AI Germany built only infantry. Got crushed every time by AI Soviet Union (who also built only infantry). Japan never really pulled it together even after years of tweaking it through patches and expansions.

HOI 3 also had enormous issues at launch, both with AI and mechanically. Some of the largest problems were pretty limiting long term as well, namely the three faction system.

HOI 4 has some challenges to overcome. However as a game, it is far more "finished" at launch than either HOI 2 or HOI 3 were (it is playable, which calling either HOI 2 or 3 playable at launch is a serious stretch). Lots of people on these forums are complaining because they are comparing HOI 4 to games that have had years of development and expansions. HOI 4 has the most potential out of any of them. There is a lot of flexibility in those core systems, and modders have huge scope to change this game. Additionally, the core elements have a great deal of room for expansion in new and interesting ways as time goes on.

 

[Jos de trol]

HoI4 is a lot like HoI2, it's the 3 that was the odd one out

 

[Lubber]

Started with hoi 2, and i really really loved it. But when I bought HoI III, I was bitterly disappointed. It was laggy (1 month took nearly an hour), buggy, and I never got warm with it, even if it really got better later. I shelved it and switched to DH, which was/is way better than HoI III. I play III sometimes with the black ice mod, it is really good now, but I still have, more hours on II than on III per month

But I have to, say even if IV has some flaws and mistakes it feels really nice, especially the "randomness". After replaying WWII countless times it is kinda refreshing

And I'm pretty sure it will only get better with coming updates and take the throne on the hours played list

 

[Teije]

My 2 cents worth as someone who played both HoI2 and HoI3, I liked HoI2 and hated HoI3. Too much pointless micromanagement to actually do anything.

So far liking IV, it seems to have a good balance between detail and abstraction. Looks great, and the UI is vastly improved (if still suffering from Paradox quirkiness). In depth, it's miles ahead of Stellaris and calling it an "arcade" game is just laughable.

In general, I feel Paradox took some good lessons from the previous HoI games and have applied them well. Still work to do of course, but a solid initial release.

 

[Avatar13]

I joined the series with HOI2 and enjoyed the hell out of it! Graduated to HOI3 and enjoyed that also but got very frustrated with the bugs, crashes and quirks that I stopped playing it a couple of years ago due to being side tracked by other games/interests. I've been awaiting HOI4 for a long time to see if it would revive its' earlier glory and I have been enjoying it. I actually started up HOI3 a couple of weeks before the release to get reacquainted with it.

One thing that has surprised me is reading all the people that have already completed a few games! I started the tutorial and played until I felt I had a basic enough understanding to start with Japan. I was basically replicating my tactics from HOI3. Well... the Chinese are a lot tougher for me in 4 than they are in 3! Maybe it's because of the years of accumulated rust from not playing that has me struggling against them but it's April '38 and the Nationalists coming out of ShanXi have been kicking my butt and seem to be never ending! granted, I know there's a bunch of Chinese around but are they really able to crank out the troops like this? I'm slowly being overwhelmed...

I haven't made any final decision about whether I like HOI4 better or less than the previous versions but I do enjoy it and do not regret my Field Marshall Preorder!

 

[Morwys]

I'm playing PI games for a few years, started with CK, then to EUIII and later I've found my true, favorite game of all time, Victoria II. HoI3 was part of it, but honestly, it's my least favorite PI game: I dislike its pace, its unintuitive research system, its depth (It's too shallow) and its cookie cutter AI. Frankly, without the expansions, I don't think I have the patience to play it. So it was with some reserve that I bought HoI4, mostly because I liked EUIV much more than EUIII and thought that the update would do good for the franchise.

After 30 hours or so, I think HoI4 is a good game and I liked it a lot. There's many people who are complaining about the lack of some things, I don't agree with all of them but agree a lot with some. The biggest problems to me are the several typos and lack of region/province names. The lack of immersion because of these issues is sure to turn this game to me into a board game and nothing else to me, and I'm probably going to get tired from it and go back to CK2 and Vicky 2, maybe buying one DLC or two, depending on the content.

But by no means I think this game is the tragedy some people claim it is, to me it's quite good.

 

[Van Diemen]

There's many people who are complaining about the lack of some things, I don't agree with all of them but agree a lot with some. The biggest problems to me are the several typos and lack of region/province names. The lack of immersion because of these issues is sure to turn this game to me into a board game and nothing else to me, and I'm probably going to get tired from it and go back to CK2 and Vicky 2, maybe buying one DLC or two, depending on the content.

Of course you are perfectly entited to your own opinion. But sure, there are more glaring issues than a typo here and there? I would say balancing and AI is the biggest issue. But I do agree that the game is far from a disaster, I generally like it. I do hope that some of the "challenge" issues will be resolved soon though.

 

[RemPerry]

Ok, I am not going to read everyone's post as I don't have the time. I do assume they have basically said what I am going to say but hell, here it is.

I am turning 40 this month. I have been gaming before most of these bitches were in diapers. I have played all iterations of the HOI series. I found the most enjoyment with HOI 2.

That out of the way.

HOI4 is fun. Does it need work, it does. It requires fine tuning like every other title that is now released. The reason is because this is now the trend in gaming. It will continue to be the trend in gaming. The base game is enjoyable. If you like HOI2 better, play it? This is not HOI2 it's HOI4 and this is a different game. There will be changes made that make the game better. There will be mods written that make the game better. Upon release is the game playable and enjoyable, yes, yes it is. It does again require work and balance. There are many aspects that will need some TLC. I personally like the battle plan implementation, the customization of divisions is enjoyable. Divisions feel like divisions. The military composition feels better than it did in previous releases. Overall game play is enjoyable. Is it better than HOI2, i'm not sure. I have had some memorable moments with that title. For example: Para-dropping 20 units into Moscow, taking the city and holding it until my Armor could punch through and resupply. I could not push through their armor lines and this freed up the line just enough for me to make a push. That was a long and tedious gamble that paid off. Very fun and what the HOI series should be about.

Here is what I am hoping to get out of HOI4. I want to continue to execute a multiple front battle plans and watch them work. I like the idea of my generals doing the work and me coming up with the plans. the Generals do approve or disapprove and I like seeing that. If I wanted to add anything to this I would like to have cheaper access to additional generals so I could have many pronged attacks across a larger/theatres.

Here is an example.

I have only played Italy so far and about 8-10 hours total. I am an adult with a child which means I don't have much if any free time.

I want to have say 4 - 5 generals alone push through say Yugoslavia. Each with their own plan of attack. I would rather do this than have a single general push the line bit by bit. This allows you more control over tactics. Easier to perform cutoff tactics, etc. You can in this scenario actually do that with Yugoslavia as you can finish that war before the allies decide enough is enough. If I wanted to have similar tactics in Africa and France and say Greece all at once then I am relegated to using very few generals to accomplish what should be specific plans of attack. Yes I can spend diplo points for new generals, though with the options available It seems more plausible to spend the points on army or infrastructure characters or law changes.

I am going to add one last thing. I had not previously thought about this but if you are an older person then you may have a decreased free time issue like myself. If this is the case you should enjoy what many people are complaining about, which is a streamlined experience. It will take you a few hours to get it down but you can progress relatively well after that.

 

[Myndpyre]

Having played the entire series, hundreds of hours on each of the games, I will say that I believe HOI4 is the best launch product of the series, but still needs a lot of fine tuning.

Many of the complaints that I see MUST be from people who click on an army, click a destination, stay at max speed, and complain when the don't see the result they envisioned. The ability to click on an army, click on a destination, stay at a tactical speed, and make fine tactical decisions that do not interrupt the CPU AI is beyond excellent.

My two biggest complaints are design decisions.

I categorically disagree with allowing peaceful factions sharing a common enemy FULL military access. This should be an in-game decision made by the player, based on the current tactical and strategic climate.

Minor countries can drop naval invasions anywhere on the map. I am not sure WHY or HOW Allied Sweden amphibiously drops a half dozen divisions in China to fight the Axis Japanese, especially when Axis Germany has landed divisions in Allied Norway . . .

Hopefully these issues will be worked out in the next few patches.

 

[Morwys]

Of course you are perfectly entited to your own opinion. But sure, there are more glaring issues than a typo here and there? I would say balancing and AI is the biggest issue. But I do agree that the game is far from a disaster, I generally like it. I do hope that some of the "challenge" issues will be resolved soon though.

Well, if I was to say something that I truly disliked from a design perspective, I'd had to say the National Focus mechanic. They're an alternative to the (much criticized) event based railroading of previous games and are superior to events IMO, but they seem too arbitrary and too, I don't know if this is the right word, 'easy'. Maybe once they go on to expand the unique foci, add new ones and balance the old ones, maybe I'll like them.

 

[Cardus]

First of all in a matter of opinion every opinion is right therefore I can't understand the disrespectful disagree here

Regarding myself when I bought HOI2 it was a shock. It was really amazing to find a game about WW2 that gave the possibility to play any country, that provided so much immersion and the possibility to feel like the leader of your country taking the command of the army and responsible of the key decisions.

Then I played thousands of hours for months and years the mods as well as IC, DH, AOD.
I was still playing HOI2 years after the release of HOI3 because I did know that it was buggy and poorly implemented but I still remember a thread on the Paradox forum in which we were discussing the game of our dreams. At a certain point Johan came and said: all you asked will be implemented in next game (HOI3). WOW!!!

Having this in mind I waited until when HOI3 was back on track and, sorry guys, HOI3 with BICE, The Fox and the Lion (see below my signature) and other few mods it's really shining! The OOB even if still poorly implemented is there (even though improved a lot from the base game), trades, resources and money are there, PHYSICAL ships, planes, brigades (even battalions) and supplies are there, a map (maybe not so cool but exactly what needed for warfare) with more than 10,000 provinces is there, ship improvements (not the naval brigades of HOI2) were there, real planes based on carriers were there, etc. etc.
So, yes, after so many years playing and enjoying HOI2 I had no regret and played HOI3 for months and years. The only thing I missed were the tech teams. Full stop.

Now I see a game which is not bugged as it was HOI3 but which apparently has a completely different design philosophy from the previous games. There was an evolution from HOI1 to HOI2, to HOI3. I feel HOI4, instead, a big step backward and I can't think about improvements in terms of what I like: immersion, plausibility, historical accuracy.
Now let's see what time will bring but for the time being I share this opinion http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...-a-grand-strategy.942849/page-8#post-21362100 or this http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/good-game-but-not-a-grand-strategy.942849/ so the cons are way too much than the pros.
No OOB (I have seen 300 divisions commanded by a single general), no planes (as they are abstracted) therefore bombers pass trough and bombs+paratroopers are teleported, no supplies, no fuel, ships built with all the needed supply/fuel requirement for their full existence independently if they are sunk the same day or if they are scrapped after 100 years, no province's names, no unit leaders and so on so forth.

Sorry guys HOI4 is for a very different kind of player. I wish who likes it and to Paradox all the best but I am out.

 

[Peter Wass]

My biggest gripe is the late game crawl. Expected but still frustrating.

 

[z914296]

I go back to Carriers at War on the Apple IIe, and to SPI boardgames before that (Objective: Moscow, anyone?). I have played the CK/EU/Victoria/HOI cycle since its inception, with something like 2500 hours on CK2 (and have never gotten past the year 1050 yet...just keep wandering off and finding new and intriguing start scenarios to play around with for a few centuries). All that said, this is a typical paradox release, though less buggy then some. Of all the HOI games, I liked III the most-once the modders got to it.

Things to dislike:
1. Every time paradox releases a new game, there is no zoom functionality for those of us who cling to track balls. And then, a month or two later, those magical +/- buttons are added to the UI, and I can actually play the game. So, still waiting on that to be able to really judge the combat mechanics. That's something simple that could have been there from the alpha build. In the meantime, I am pretty much done in 1939.
2. The OOB. It's not that I dislike the way HOI IV zooms out the focus, it's that it is incompletely done. If this is a grand strategy game-as it appears to be, I understand why my lowest command elements would fall somewhere between large armies and small army groups. What I do not understand is why divisions are my maneuver units. It would make more sense for most maneuver units to be corps (special, elite and garrisons perhaps being the exceptions). That would declutter the map, simplify battleplan execution for both A.I. and meatworld supreme commanders, offer an obvious opportunity to add a heavy dose of immersion with corps commanders, and would still support the division/equipment production systems as they are now implemented.
3. Not really sure I understand the use of air units yet, but I am leaning towards the idea they would have been better deployed by creating air wings/armies/flottes etc than just sort of blobbing out of a particular region. Not a hill to die on, yet, just not sold on how it was done.

Things to like:
1. Production-absolutely the tits. I love what they did with production.
2. Variants-I can already see modders drooling over the possibilities
3. Experience-which really highlights and models the qualitative advantages enjoyed by blooded armies. Combined with the variants, it is probably the most immersive part of the game at present.

I think HOI IV is a better jumping off point than the previous three initial HOIs.

 

[Captain Frye]

Played Paradox Games since I was a kid in early 00's. Back then, Hearts of Iron and even Victoria 1 felt extremely hard, but eventually I became good at these games. My favorites are DD and DH. HOI3 is objectively the deepest Paradox Game, although it's still not my favorite, because DH has way better immersion, and is less tedious.

Hearts of Iron 4 - I didn't even bother buying. Youtube Videos clearly showed that Paradox had chosen a different path - a path that I can't go. Don't get me wrong - if you enjoy the game, all the power to you. But I just can't understand why gamers these days think it's acceptable for companies to make shitty releases, and then fix problems via DLCs. You as a consumer have power - you can choose not to buy the game. If everyone would vote with their wallets, Paradox would reconsider their behaviour and maybe in the future they would make better games. It is not acceptable when Germany can't defeat France or even Denmark. Problems like these should have been terminated during the beta testing. Obviously, Paradox hasn't tested the game at all. They just poured a shitty alpha version on the market and thought they can get away with it. Unfortunately they were right.

I will not repeat what others have already posted about gameplay. If you like simplicity - then this is your prerogative, I wont judge you for that. But it's still not acceptable for a company to release an alpha version on the market and then polish it via DLCs. You should never give game designers carte blanche to do that. You as a gamer must be more demanding - only then will they start respect their customers more.

To conclude: Paradox is(or rather - used to be) a great company. They made games like Victoria, Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis. They were the gold standard of grand strategy games. But unfortunately, Paradox has left the road of greatness and entered a path of mediocrity.

 

[Van Diemen]

no supplies, no fuel, ships built with all the needed supply/fuel requirement for their full existence independently if they are sunk the same day or if they are scrapped after 100 years, no province's names, no unit leaders and so on so forth.

You are right about the supply demands. I hate that as well, but that is a consequence of having the new resource system to which I'm also not fully sure whether I really like that change compared to the stockpiles we used to have. At least capturing resources now has more meaning in terms of production, if you are pressed to require more oil etc. There is no more that huge stockpile that you can build up before the war, so it has it pros and cons. However, there is logistics of supply in the game, albeit a bit simplistic and just limited by the amount of troops in a certain state. The HoI3 supply trains are gone.

 

[frolix42]

My first HoI was HoI1, though HoI1 was so rough it could be described as a beta of HoI2.

I really like HoI4. It is different, smoother, and I look forward to how it will be developed in a year or two.

 

[kal56]

I've been playing since HoI, HoI2 has so far been my favorite although I realize my love for that one is a combination of rose-tinted glasses and mods that I liked. I felt like HoI2 had a large amount of details that made the countries feel distinct; I liked all the leaders I could chose to assign or promote the same with the different companies or researchers I could have heading up R&D. HoI2 when I played felt like it had massive amount of detail and choice although as I said take this with a grain of salt it's been awhile since I played, base game and mod have blended slightly in memory.

HoI4 from what I've played so far feels like it has the best performance under the hood. No AI is going to be perfect with this many moving parts but so far HoI4 seems smoother than the other releases. I've enjoyed playing it a lot so far, more I think than I did HoI3 when it came out. That said I do feel like it's a little empty right now, I like the performance of the game and most of it's mechanics but I want the little things to be more fleshed out.

Of course this just the launch hopefully Paradox and the mod community will be expanding the game for years to come so that when HoI5 comes out people can complain about how it doesn't stack up to HoI4 at all.

 

[Cardus]

You are right about the supply demands. I hate that as well, but that is a consequence of having the new resource system to which I'm also not fully sure whether I really like that change compared to the stockpiles we used to have. At least capturing resources now has more meaning in terms of production, if you are pressed to require more oil etc. There is no more that huge stockpile that you can build up before the war, so it has it pros and cons. However, there is logistics of supply in the game, albeit a bit simplistic and just limited by the amount of troops in a certain state. The HoI3 supply trains are gone.

Please think about that. Let's say that you play Italy, that your troops are in Ethiopia and that the British have blocked your convoys. Will be those troops still in supply forever?

 

[jpd]

Minor countries can drop naval invasions anywhere on the map. I am not sure WHY or HOW Allied Sweden amphibiously drops a half dozen divisions in China to fight the Axis Japanese, especially when Axis Germany has landed divisions in Allied Norway . . .

Are you sure they got in China through an invasion? Nations not at war themselves have the option to send volunteers ...

 

[fredgiblet]

National Focus system is nice but quite strange : 70 days for any focus ..?

The Soviets have a pair (or three?) that are 210 days.

Entirely putting aside the normal early issues with balancing etc. There are some things in HOI 4 that are, in my opinion, clearly superior to it's predecessors. The focus trees, production, units and variants, battleplans etc etc makes for a more strategically mature game. It's almost as good as BICE or even AoD in that regard and will probably be even better.
It however feels like the operational side of the game got left out (with the OOB being thrown out completely instead of reiterated into something helpful) and the GUI and map and icons could use some work.

The new map and icons was intended to make everything easier to see at a glance but the grouping and "jumping around" of icons doesn't always make sense and actually makes finding stuff harder (again in my opinion). This can probably be adjusted and fiddled with and additions and changes be made but currently I'm not all too easy with the default appearance.

Agreed generally. There's some major improvements, but as so often happens the rush for prettiness causes a lot of issues. Zoom out a bit and then an entire front can disappear into a single stack.