Review: Hearts of Iron III

Amateur, I mumble to myself, as I see my understrength attack on southern Sweden fail. My three mountain divisions and my three marine divisions can't move because of lack of supplies and the Swedes manage to establish a solid frontline despite only having a small army. At the same time Italy decides to attack Yugoslavia and thus I risk not getting my share of the spoils of war in the Balkans. I only have a few heavy panzer divisions at the border and they can't make a difference before Italy turns Yugoslavia into a puppet state. Sometimes I just feel more like Göring than Guderian.

That's how Paradox Interactive’s Hearts of Iron series always has been - tons of possibilities but also tons of times where you can make huge mistakes rivalling that of an infamous Austrian corporal. Like the previous games HoI 3 takes place in the period from 1936 to 1947. While that may seem like repitition, you can be asured that the third game is whole new experience.

This game will not expire before like forever

Nowadays it seems like games don't have to last more than 10 hours. However, there are games that remind us how it used to be such as Cilization and Hearts of Iron. These are games you can play for years and still discover new things to enjoy.

You can control any country in the world - from Tibet to Germany. Even though the main countries offer you more things to do, it's certainly possible to create your own schemes as a small country in the shadow of the World War. As ruler you are in charge of research, production, diplomacy, espionage and politics. And of course you command the army. You can either play the full time line or enjoy smaller scenarios.

As in the previuos games time moves forward hour by hour in various speeds, but you can always pause the game and make decisions without having to rush. It's the way an Hearts of Iron game is - stop and go, stop and go.

It's a big, big world

The world's size has increased dramatically. Now there are no less than 14.000 provinses, which is many more than in the previous games. This not only increases the map size, but also increases the demand for tactical and strategical understanding. When I attacked Poland in 1939 in Hearts of Iron II, I'd usually not attack from more than 10 provinces. In the new game the initial attack usually covers 20 provinces.

You can't stack your divisions as you please, either. Now every province has a logistical limit and a frontline that dictates how many divisions that can participate in the attack.

The new map is one of the game's major advantages because it's followed up by a really good AI, which affects two areas. First and foremost the AI fights much like a real player would do (apart from weird attacks here and there). The big offensives seem well-thought through and it's a pleasure fighting the AI. The other area is the control over your own army, which is structured realistically with HQ's, armies, corps and divisions. You can change the structure, but you have to keep the distance to the nearest HQ in mind as that affects the army's effectiveness. The structure matters, because you can tell hand the control over to the AI and give for example a corps a specific order like defending a coastline. It will automatically engage any enemy that tries to enter the given area.

You can of course hand out offensive orders, too, and in theory just tell the AI of the entire German army to head for Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad. It really works. The choice to leave the entire army or just any small part of it to the AI eases the workload, and you can even attach air units to specific part of your army. If you hand out orders, the AI can also tell you if it thinks it needs more units and add those to the production queue. Impressive.

I'd like a new uboat, please

Production and research have changed a lot. You now research myriad subsystems, which influence not only your country's economy but also your units. Instead of "inventing" the new generation of uboats, you improve things like radar and anti-aircraft weaponry, which are then gradually faced out to the units.

You can even design your own army units. Every division is composed by a number of brigades just like in the real world. That meansy ou can create a tank division with two tank brigades and a motorised infantry brigade. This gives you a lot of flexibility and the option to customize your entire army. If that's too much for you, Paradox has included a good number of templates.

The coordination between the airforce and the army is straight-forward, especially the option to let a mission run indefinately and the way you choose the mission area are great. The same goes for the fleet.

Americans in the Baltic

Diplomacy is quite differently structured as well. The world is divided into three factions: Allies, Axis and Comitern. The countries float between the three factions and can be influenced if you spend enough ressources on diplomacy. This area has seen extensive changes already in the first patches as many countries behaved like a stoned squirrel joining and faction they came remotely close to. Usually Sweden would join the Allies - way before the war - for instance. I've also seen the US declare war on Russia over Finland and then joining the Allies in 1940 just to invade the Baltics shortly after fighting both Russian and German troops. For a game that boasts of historical depth that's just a bit too wacky.

It's natural that a game like Hearts of Iron III moves into various alternate-history scenarious, but this time it's even more chaotic because there are no longer historical events. They have been replaced by decisions, which require your country to live up to certain requirements (like the number of divisions). Once you do that, you can decide to for instance annex Austria into Germany. In theory this gives you more flexibility, because you can decide where and when to take a certain action but in reality it's not much different from events because you could often decide against them, too. I wouldn't mind the change if there had been tons of decisions to make ensuring lots of gameplay fun but there are way fewer decisions than events. Even the largest countries might only have a handful of decisions to take before the war. I really miss all the small historical events that created some historical understanding, too. Clearly decisions mean less entertainment - not least because the game is much more sluggish and time takes longer to move forward.

Even on the fastest time-seting it will take you many hours to reach the declaration of war if you play the grand campaign. Here historical events would have been a great way to pass the time. The slow forward momentum could be caused by the overall game being quite demanding. Once you are at war it can be difficult just to move around the map in small steps.

But Hearts of Iron III ultimately misses the mark because the flow of information isn't as good and clear as in the previuos games. There's minor stuff like not being able to get a quick overview of your total army size to major stuff like missing a declaration of war because it drowned in the hundreds of messages about some trading agreement being made or being cancelled. The user interface is a clear step back from the slick (and much faster!) view Hearts of Iron II offered.

Still a long way to Berlin

There are many other changes in the game - including an extensive espionage part - but it would go beyond the limits of a review to mention them all. The most important part - the waging of war - is clearly the best any World War 2 strategy game has to offer. But there are also dissapointments like diplomacy and user interface.

Technically the latest version of Hearts of Iron III is stabile (might vary from pc to pc though), and the new map looks great and is fun to play on. The game is sluggish, and there are already many suggestions and tweaks that can help you. Hopefully Paradox will prioritize performance in the next patches. Music and sounds are quite dull, but that's just the way it is in games like this and will probably not bother Paradox fans anyway.

The expectation for Hearts of Iron III has been insanely high and thus it's easy for a developer to fail. While Hearts of Iron III is definately the best game in the series being both more challenging and entertaining than the first two games, there are still areas the developers didn't quite nail. Thus the final score is an 8 rather than a 9, which it had the potential to get.