Hearts of Iron 2 review

January 14, 1940. A few months earlier Hitler chose not to honour his non-agression pact with the Soviet Union over the division of Poland, in order to capture the whole of Poland for himself. Today he pays the price.

While the German Wehrmacht attempts to defeat the French army, Stalin declares war and the meager forces of 30 German divisions in Poland suddenly face more than 100 Russian divisions. There is but one escape: The Germans retreat to shorten the frontlines and try to stand firm until the fall of France. Only a lucky combination of Romanian diversions and a lack of agression from Russian forces save the German army from a total collapse...

Hearts of Iron 2 is the latest hardcore strategy game from Paradox Interactive. The Swedish company has created classics such as Victoria, Europa Universalis and of course Hearts of Iron 1. In terms of graphics, sound and innovation these games are hardly perfect, instead you can pull them from a drawer years after their publication and still find yourself gaming into the small hours.

Hearts of Iron 2 is no different - if you love historical turnbased strategy games HoI 2 will keep you warm as the engine covering of a T-34 tank.

No appeasement deals

HoI 2 is a game of choices, options and decisions. In fact the number of possible actions will probably seem overwhelming to some. For instance the number of nations - you can choose from more than a 100 different nations in the years 1936-1947 and they will all be historically correct with regard to politicians, armies, economy, events, trade etc.

You control the action on an hourly basis throughout these years but always have the option of pausing the game to make your decisions in comfort. For the impatient there are Battle Scenarios like the Finnish - Russian Winter War which will last you an evening, but if your attention span is any smaller than this you should spend your money elsewhere.

The first visible change with regards to the predecessor is the vast improvement in the graphical interface. The game is filled with nice menus, clear pictures and a nod to especially user friendliness.

We are still dealing with the classic Paradox way of displaying information, but the graphical engine has had a serious kick up the backside. And when the initial joy at the new eye candy has worn many major changes will be visible.

Simpler yet deeper

Paradox actually succeeds in lessening the predecessor's overwhelming micromanagement and yet deepening the game. The primary change is in the research and productions aspects of the game.

Instead of researching a series of parts and components in order to develop the next generation of ie. tanks, you can choose between five different (and historically correct) teams of scientists and make them develop a certain programme such as advanced fighter planes. The many projects are divided into areas such as industrial, tanks and artillery or secret weapons.

It is possible at any time to see when the same invention appeared historically and should you try to research something which did not appear in the real world for another two or three years, the progress will be slower than the development of Duke Nukem Forver. This prevents the phenomenon that fans of HoI 1 called 'Tech-rushing', ie. you having Me 262 jetfighters in 1941. It is still possible to be faster than history, but it costs because of the inevitable loss of priority in other inventions.

I might have had V2 rockets by 1942 and used them with great personal satisfaction to terrorize England, but my failure to upgrade my warships resulted in some serious bashings in a series of naval clashes. At first I was slightly dissapointed at the reduced number of projects caused in this new system, but after several campaigns I found plenty of researchable material.

The production interface is much simpler than the one in HoI 1. You can select to produce more units of the same type at the same time, so if you need nine infantry divisions this is done by just a few clicks. It is also possible to produce units in parallel (simultaneously) or in serial (one by one) and gain various bonuses due to the advantages of mass production. It is all done on one screen with a perfectly logical interface.

However, you need to keep a closer eye on how you exploit the industrial capacity of your chosen nation. The game requires you to allocate resources to maintaining and rebuilding your existing armies as well as upgrading units. This can be quite costly and slow the production of new units to a near standstill if you have to, for instance, upgrade all infantry divisions to the next generation which has better equipment and combat stats.

But... Are planes any use?

The Germans may have had a chubby, incompetent man (with a certain love for Danish pastries) in charge of the Luftwaffe, and the RAF might have sent too many less potent types of aircraft into the fray, but that does not mean that you have to neglect the arial side of the game.

The same goes for warships which have become quite useful. You no longer have to keep a constant watch over your planes and ships, but can assign them missions and time schedules to uphold. This allows you to allocate a number of fighter squadrons to maintain air-superiority in the combat zone and still insert bombers to raid enemy infrastructure or lower the morale and efficiency of enemy units.

After this you will not need to think any more about these units before their mission time is up. It's a brilliant system that increases the level of fun had by one stroke. In the old game I only used my army for 95 percent of the time, because I did not have it in me to micromanage my planes and ships. Now, however, it is much more balanced. A few bugs sadly remain in the naval section, making it slightly less useful than the planes.

Land based combat has also become more realistic. Before, units had to move all the way to the next province before actually fighting. This meant that attacks became predictable for player and computer alike, partially ruining the tactical aspect of the game.

In HoI 2 battles commmence as soon as you move units into a hostile province with enemy troops present. The province is not captured until the enemy is defeated. It is even possible to use other units to support your attack or defence. If you place a unit in reserve, it will feed soldiers to nearby units who are in combat.

Communist Germany

Gamers with a love for politics and the options for political influence found in Europa Universalis 2, will adore the following. A series of options exist now to gain various advantages and disadvantages.

For instance you can change your country's political standpoint from right to left, closed to open society or professional army to draft based. This could mean production benefits, a larger pool of manpower for the army or more rebels in conquered territory.

It might take a while, but in principle a country such as Germany could be changed from Nazism to Communism. This system could have been more advanced, thus including other nations responding to your policies and ie. not trading with you if they disagreed with your overall standings. Yet on the other hand, other factors such as your value on the isloation-intervention scale decide if you can go to war or not.

The AI in the previous game did not impress me much. It was too predictable in how it would react diplomatically. For instance you could attack Romania with Russia before the outbreak of WW2, making Romania instantly join the Allies and having Russia at war with France and England, which was not particularly realistic.

You can no longer count on such things to happen. As mentioned previously, I chose to take all of Poland without any agreement with the Russians. Had I played a human adversary, he too would have chosen to attack me when I fought the French a few months later, since this is the only realistic time to beat the Germans early in the game.

In another scenario, I tried as the British to intervene in the Spanish Civil War by declaring war with the Nationalists. Neither Germany nor Italy stepped into the fray at that point, which safely can be regarded as realistic. I would still say, however, that if you want some opposition from the game you should increase the agression of the AI a little, as it is otherwise slightly on the passive side tactically.

The computer opponent often fails to produce enought units and I have experienced a game where the Americans still only had a standing army of about 15 divisions by 1943. I also wondered at the fact that even with all of Russia conquered as far as to the Pacific, the computer still did not sue for peace as it did in the old game after the fall of three or four vital cities.

The usual breakdown

Unfortunately I didn't find a human adversary in order to test the multiplayer part of the game. But HoI 2 supports as many as 32 players, which is a lot in this genre. I only hope that the game is stable during multiplayer since the predecessor were not.

I did not avoid breakdowns in single player mode, especially frequent during attacks on Russia where the computer seemingly buckles under the pressure of calculating logistics, transport, supplies and so on. My best advice is to set the game to autosave once a month, so you won't lose too much work. Probably Paradox will fix this problem with a patch or two.

One of the few dissapointments is the music. As usual Paradox has included a set of classical works, but the selection seem somewhat uniform in comparison with former games. Thus I often chose to simply turn down the volume. The effects are ok but only because we are talking about a strategy game.

On the other hand, graphics and the new interface has really lifted the game. Only a few annoying details remain - such as boring aircraft animations and armies that are hard to pick out if they are in the same province as others. If this occurs you will have to select them individually to assign missions, especially a problem in great offensives with many units.

The greatest asset of Hearts of Iron 2 is the fact that you can keep playing it over and over again. Most people will probably not bother to play the entire 1936-1947 campaign with a smaller country - this will be simply tedious.

But few will tire of the almost endless possibilites available to England, Germany, Russia and so on. There will probably never be a more realistic and detailed WW2 game for the PC, and if this is the sort of thing that floats your boat, go buy it now.

If this is your first game from Paradox you will find the first few hours rather frustating. These games are very, very complex and need both the tutorial and a close study of the manual before you will be just an adequate desktop general.

Source: Boomtown DK
Translated by: William Bjarnø (Dworkin)