No launcher required, fast loading screens W paradox

If you completely disregard performance being poor as its likely the first thing to get improved; Initially the game will feel overwhelming, deep and you see immense potential. You'll notice during your first campaign you get bored around 1600 because the mechanics are starting to feel repetitive and you feel as your actions have no impact. You will notice yourself automating features because for each click, your clicks have less and less relative impact. You get bored, start declaring wars just to try to get a coalition against you but now you have to automate even more as you spend your time chasing small stacks of levies around the map constantly as the AI is willing to kill 10% of its population over this, Vicky 3 style. Maybe that other nation you wanted to play would be more fun? You start the new campaign and you get hit by the brick wall of a realization that all that surface level tedious clicking for little reward has to be done again, for what could be considered a work-day in terms of time to even scratch the surface on the time span of this game. This time you start looking into the features a bit more, surely there has to be something you missed. Some deep rich mechanical flick of a switch that makes the whole simulation more interactive. You start noticing how easy the game is in its essence, as long as you just expand all your RGOs and build cities you will never, ever struggle for money or food no matter what, even if the potential mechanics are there to make it a more engaging experience. What could have been a rich learning experience and sold itself as a massively deep game for only the sharpest minds (this was an actual advert) is on release, a bunch of unconnected shallow systems with a bit of potential. Its as if they just arent balanced or plugged in to prevent the AI from imploding in on itself. Some systems are so shallow that its clear they will get DLC, like colonization, weather and food. Some systems like combat are just revamped copy pastes from older games i.e March of the Eagles which was never a popular game for a reason. TLDR; the game hides its simplicity behind bad UI, the AI is passive and incompetent. With any type of previous PDX experience you will snowball 100 years into the game rendering 4/5ths of the game boring as hell. Needed more time.

It is a masterpiece, John Paradox. Complete, comprehensive. It captures the Map-Excel experience. Jokes aside, I think it's a strong 8/10. A lot of fun and surely thousands of hours ahead of me. Still definitely some improvements to be made to AI, balance and other elements, but I already don't think of coming back to EU4.

1000 hours from now I will give a bad review

Paradox does it again with another undercooked title on release. It could have used another half year to a year in the oven before release but nevertheless it has released. Ultimately, I do not recommend buying this game on release. Here is why: The AI is bad. It cannot handle the capacity it has been given. As a player you are unchallenged by the AI around 95% of the game because the AI will not expand very much and not take advantage of weak neighbours like a player can. The AI also rarely declares on the player, even with the entirety of the HRE in a coalition against me the AI never declared on me. The UI is atrociously bad. From looking like a mobile game and being a pandoras box of menus upon menus. Many times I looked for what a modifier meant by hovering over it, to which the game greeted me by defining what a modifier is which was really helpful. You can get to the budget screen 6+ different ways using the top bar and the hanging banners cannot be removed. Even if you discard them they will magically reappear. The application of events is bad. Playing with friends I was France and a friend was the Papal States. During the Western Schism neither of us received events. All the event was was improve relations with Cardinals, who can tick up to 100% twice the quickest. There was 0 flavour. This game boils down to that fact a lot when you realise it. The flavour is ocean wide but as deep as a puddle. There is no feeling of difference between Spain and France, just random historical events you occasionally get where usually the historical option has good bonuses and the non historical one doesn’t. It’s bad and doesn’t make me feel like I am playing the country I picked. The pop system is underbaked, ultimately unless you are a small nation you don’t really notice them. I can build any building and they will be filled, there is no steady promotion as all buildings are beneficial and with unlimited money basically throughout the game there is no reason to not just keep snowballing. Events like the plague wipe people out however the impact is minimal. I lost 3.5 million people as France in the Black Death and didn’t even notice it. There are many problems I have with this game and these are a select few. Do I think the game could be good in the future? Maybe. It depends, but having to wait 2-3 years for the game to become playable with 100+ £££s worth of DLC. Features are lacking, sure EU4 has had years worth of content added to it but again on yet another release we have regressed losing features that were cornerstones of the previous game. The game isn’t difficult. It has been painted as the grandest of pdx strategy games but honestly, I learnt it within 5 hours of what to do. Issues need to be fixed, there needs to be some detailing. Which is possible, it’s up to PDX to not fumble it.

Experience: 56 hours on the public build + 338 hours on the "press build" EU5 is in many ways broken, janky, and sometimes frustratingly so. But, despite all that; EU5 really is the platonic ideal of a grand strategy game, it is the GSGest GSG I have ever played. In the same way that dwarf fortress is a buggy, janky 10/10 game, EU5 is a buggy, janky 10/10 game.

Started the game, went straight into a random nation. I'm a man, not a child, I wont need a tutorial. I stared the screen for an hour, clicking random buttons. I have no clue what I'm doing, and I love it. I bought this game because it promised to be a complex world simulator using features from imperator, ck3, vic3 and EU4 and so far, this is what I'm getting. I understand however that if you come from EU4, a lot of new mechanics will seem to be complicated and bothersome compared to the previous game. However, I believe the goal of a sequel should be to improve the formula, and this is what EU5 is aiming to do. All the new system seek to imitate real historical dynamic that happened in history and allow you to play with them, and that is why I love paradox games. I cannot say if the bet is successful yet, as I just started learning the game. But so far I see a lot of things from previous games that I liked and a lot of potential. Is this enough to make you pay full price for this game? It's up to you. However, I can tell you that I am very excited to be part the vanguard for this game.

Underwhelmed and worst of all bored EU5 made a very bold choice in bringing back the start date to 1337, considering that EU4 really hit it's stride in the 1500s and most players wouldn't play more than 150 years. This could be fine if the extra 100 years is filled with interesting content to keep the player engaged, but unfortunately this has not panned out. You'll find that the late medieval period has little going on, and worst of all the addition of hourly ticks in a 500 year game makes this boring period feel excruciating because of how much those extra ticks pad the game time. In the time that the average EU4 player would finish a campaign you will still be in the first 100 years of the game in the late medieval times. I was playing on fast speeds and after over 20 hours of playtime I was still in the Age of Renaissance. But say you power through it in the hopes of better times to come. In the age of discovery your options open up with better technology to allow you to do more. However if you've been playing the game remotely competently then the game is pretty much over because the AI cannot properly oppose you. The AI has no direction in terms of expansion with the removal of mission trees and the whole situation system does little to shake things up because they don't work properly or the AI doesn't know how to use them. The game promises a lot of content but when you look closer at it you realize how shallow it is. Thousands of events it claims, but it's all just different versions of "-10 noble happiness, -7 stab, +30 gold, etc" You'll find that you're doing the same thing as most nations, and the concept of doing the same thing over again playing through 20+ hours of nothing just to have no competition when the game starts opening up is not appealing at all. Perhaps a later start date and more proactive AI will make this game enjoyable. The game is also held back by a poor UI that will often obfuscate information and mechanics you're trying to figure out along with an economy system that isn't well balanced with Pop growth being insane ( I played France and had about 2.5x the historical population of Paris by 1500). I'm sure this game will get better over time but in it's current state, it's hard to recommend.

Big day for the unemployed

this game would be a great game if eu4 didnt exist. johan took four games and threw them together like a some weird concoction, that's not bad in itself but it quite literally a situation where in about 3 to 4 years they will mesh well together you can snowball harder in eu5 than you can in eu4 (lol!) ai has no idea what it is doing, suicides into you, can not keep up with the everchanging economy and your nation being an outlier and even if paradox say in two weeks "the ai won't walk into your armies now" it'll be another year before they can get used to them, and the new systems they add them the ai will struggle with!! ---------good things----------- colonisation compared to eu4 is great infinitely better, but also since conquest of paradise was one of EU4's first dlcs and colonisation got piecemeal updates over a decade it is no surprise to see how great colonisation is now, the new pop system compliments it very well. estates are fun and fluid, more annoying than in eu4, but definitely more substance and ways to manage them, im fine with annoying estates, it adds more to the game at the moment since estates will annoy you more than any neighbouring country. -----boring part----- i will never play this game as much as i ever played eu4, will never be that age again so it's not going to happen, however i will say the foundation for this game is much better than base hoi4, eu4, and ck3. at launch. all of those games were entirely playable except eu4 and eu5 is firmly fine at the current stage. in the next few months to a year i imagine this will have an ai that will try to emulate an actual threat, but if you were on the fence about this game and you didnt like how you could snowball in eu4, then you won't like this game. if you never played eu4 or didnt like eu4 at all, you will probably like this game. i think it's fine, i will play it when im off work and im sure i will learn to enjoy it as i learnt to enjoy eu4. also for anybody out there who hoped that this game was not going to be a snowball competition i am lolling at u eternally

A new level of excellence from Paradox Grand Strategy. It looks good, it plays good and it released in a commendable state.

It took me an hour before I dared to press the unpause button. Then I got smacked. Love it, would unpause again.

Me in EUIV: Some of you may die (in the millions), but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make Me in EUV: Noooo don't kill my taxable peasants

Another Paradox launch another broken game that exists to shove DLC down your throat. As of writing this review there have been no major changes to any of the complaints leveraged towards this game. What I will now do is make a list of pros and cons about this game, with a TLDR at the bottom as this is quite a long list. Pros: - Very impressive potential. On Paper this game sounds incredible, with a promising economy system, pop management and time period, the game shows it has the foundations to be something incredible. - Incredible art. As always the Paradox art teams hit it out of the park with the beautiful artworks present in the loading screens. - Impressive Load Times. After launching the game once, everything stays cached and allows you to get back into the game at incredible speeds after a crash or break. Cons: - UI. The UI in this game is by far some of the most cluttered, awful to navigate and tooltip riddled mess I have ever seen in a GSG. The top bar on your screen with the different currencies all take you to your economy management screen when left clicked (for some reason). There are also elements that are just not explained in depth to the player even after hovering over and attempting to examine why something is wrong, an example is when trying to pass a law you are not expected to hover over the "This will not pass X" red text to understand why the law will not pass, but rather the gold text next to the mouse button below it. - Instability. This game, at it's core, is extremely unstable, with constant crashes and frame drops on even the most high end PC's. The frame drops would normally not be an issue, as this is a GSG game, however the games speed is tied directly to your FPS count, meaning if you are running below 120FPS your game will go through time even slower than it already does. - In-Game Ticks. The tick rate of this game was made hourly like in Hearts of Iron. If you have played EUIV, hell any EU game, you know that this is an inherently horrific choice due to the series time frame, late medieval to the start of the Victorian Age. 500 years goes by at a snails pace in this game, requiring multiple sessions for even singleplayer games. Sitting in observer and going 5 speed, never pausing clocks a full campaign in at 18 hours. While using a full campaign time frame is a poor example, as most players, myself included, do not finish EUIV campaigns in their entirety, 4 speed and 5 speed campaigns I have "completed" have seen me clocking in 20 hours for an Ottomans game which ended in 1545, and 10 hours for a Castille game that ended in 1450. If you want to experience late game you would need to end up offering up some 60 hours of your free time, an incredible ask for a GSG. - Multiplayer. From all the previous cons mentioned before this you can imagine why MP is a nightmare to play. I understand that most people do not play MP in games like these, but for those who do please know that this is by far one of the worst MP launches Paradox have ever done and I could not recommend against it more if you were expecting an enjoyable MP experience. - Finally, the largest problem of all, the AI. Paradox have now released 3 games in a row with AI that cannot properly function, CK3, Victoria 3, and now this game. The AI in this game lacks any general purpose, and I believe it is entirely intentional to create a sort of "sandbox" experience. Out of the 2 MP games I have done and 2 SP games I have done I have not once seen an AI form a historical nation such as the UK, Spain or the Timurids. China remains fractured throughout the game as does Japan, with no Ming unification or any of the Three Great Unifiers in Japan. Throughout my games the AI has declared war on me, the player, a single time, and that was during my first game where I hardly understood any systems and was vastly inferior to it. The AI will not declare war on players, even if they are in a substantially large coalition against them, unless they view the player as vastly inferior to them, something that will never happen for most experienced players. The AI also refuses to interact with its economy past a certain point, causing it to save up tens of thousands of ducats in its treasury and shutting off buildings it owns during war. It will constantly vote against its self preservation in the new Unions system and will constantly bribe the player to vote against measures it PUT FORWARD ITSELF in defensive leagues and other international unions. The HRE fundamentally does not work when in the hands of the AI as it does not understand how to interact with the systems present. TLDR BELOW!!!! I genuinely am aghast at the state this game is launching in, with more problems than what I've even listed here. Paradox should not have released this game for another year at minimum, with half baked features, an inexcusable lack of AI intelligence, poorly designed UI and horrendous optimization, as this game currently stands I cannot, in good faith, recommend it be purchased at full price, which is now $60 as apposed to previous titles launching at $40. In no way did I come into this game wanting to hate it, I was initially extremely excited about what was promised in the Tinto Talks and dev diaries, but what is here in front of me is nothing like what I had initially expected. I believe that this game has promise in the future, unfortunately that promise will be locked behind $300 worth of DLC and another 4 years of waiting, but I believe that this game can come around. I write this review painfully, with love in my heart for the Europa Universalis series as it is my favorite GSG series and genuinely hope that the future holds something better for this game than what it is in its current state.

Start the game, select Florence Don't do the tutorial Spend 2 hours reading everything without unpausing the game Still don't understand anything My population Starve The black death kill 50% of my population 10/10 game, would die again.

it was either this or heroin

Soooo I'm sure ill get crucified for writing this, but I think the game is too complex. And before you sharpen your pitchforks, lets me explain. The Game isn't Europa Universalis 5, It's Europa Victoria Kings X. The main issue I'm having is that the game lacks the focus all other paradox games I played so far have. So you had Crusader Kings (2/3) which focused on very small-scale-conflicts on a county level with strong diplomacy, family-trees, characters a.s.o. but pretty basic warfare and economy. Then you had Europa Universalis (3/4), which was mainly a diplomacy/alliance game with very basic economy and low amounts of politics and only partly warfare and finally you had Victoria 2/3 which was heavily focused on the economy and politics and by design didnt care too much about warfare/characters/diplomacy. This was intended gamedesign to keep the game actually going and not have it drown you in "a bazillion things to do". The main thing here is that when you wanted to stare at trade-screens, productions-chains, politcal resentiments and such, you would play Victoria 3. If you wanted to create interesting family stories in a chaotic world you would play CK3 and if you wanted to effordlessly manage a country, do some sweet diplomatic plays that end up with france and spain fighting each other so you can annex Baden as little Württemberg, then you would play EU4. This was intentionally reduced game design to focus you on the important part that you want to play. This is why Hearts of Iron 4 only has "civilian industries" instead of 100 Products, this is why in Victoria3 you didnt control armies like in HOI4, this is why in crusader Kings 3 you didnt have products at all, even though all these games could have easily copied this from the other games. And then comes Europa Universalis 5 and everyone keeps saying "its the most ambitious game they ever made" and while that may be true, its not a positive thing in my opinion. So the game has the Industrial Complexity of Victoria 3 with a ton of goods produced, production-chains, things needed by everyone, markets importing and exporting a.s.o. - It also features the political complexity of Victoria 3 with the pops having demands, the estates (aka political parties) wanting their own advancement, the research-tree and much more. Basically, the game is Victoria 3 in Renaissance-Era. BUT: Its also Crusader Kings in Renaissance-Era as you need to manage your family tree, inheritance, need weddings for alliances and so on, need to manage your levies, keep your estates happy so they actually provide you with money and levies, have many characters with their own will and opinions. It also copies from Crusader Kings 3 that many actions are not done by the country, as in Europa Universalis 4, but by characters. For example, integrating a county into your country after a war or increasing control is no longer a passive thing done in the back but needs to be done by one of your ministers like in CK3 and states now all have counties so the management gets duplicated by a factor of 4 or so. The game also has a disease mechanic like CK3. So this means in this game you need to do everything you did in Victoria 3 PLUS everything you did in Crusader Kings 3. BUT: It doesnt end there as this is still a Europa Universalis game so you also still need to look on the geopolitical side with juggling alliances, dealing with reformations or the HRE, exploration, colonization and much more. So basically this game is like playing CK3, EU4 and Vic3 together. And while this surely is "the most ambitious" it could also be called just tedious. Before the Release of this game EU4 was one of the most beloved games, even after Victoria3 came out with more than double the daily players of the latter. And the main reason for this can surely be stated, that many people just didnt like staring at production-screens, import/export-screens, political debates and such and just wanted a game where they could lead a complex-but-simplified country, focus on their diplomacy and juggle the big powers against each other in diplomatic plays. I'm in no way saying that Victoria3 was bad, I absolutely enjoyed sometimes playing it, but sometimes I also enjoyed playing EU4 as it was simpler in some aspects and more complex in others, creating a different playing experience. What I am saying is that it filled a different niche than EU4 and this game seems to forget that. Now If what youre looking for is an ultra-complex CK3+Vic3+EU4 Game that lets you deal with everything this game will be for you but to me, this feels a lot like work, not fun. To add to this feeling comes that the technical aspects of the game still need some work, so even the relatively short time I played the game so far I encountered numerous bugs, including random frameratedrops, the tutorial not working correctly and not realizing when I achieved the goals (it said i should declare war but even after finishing the reconquista it didnt realize i did this.) And my defensive-alliance-partner starting a vote whenever possible to change to "automatic support" or "possible support", leading to constant debating. The UI also doesnt make me happy yet. While I realize that once I really get used to it, it will be more welcoming, I have to say that in EU4 I was able to see almost everything with just the main map, the diplomatic map and maybe 1 click, here a lot of important information is in the depths of some menues and many things that were super comfortable in EU4 like the automatic diplomats, quickdeals and army creating via the left-hand-outliner are now all also in the depths of some menues. All in all, I will keep playing and once I get the full hang of it I will update this review but for the moment I have to say I'm quite dissapointed.

this is like a big marvel movie wherein they just fit in as many retarded features and systems (characters) as possible to blend them all together in a big victoria 4 slop grinder of unreadable terrible UI and boring gay ass population and economy mechanics. are those mechanics necessary? no. are those mechanics fun? not really. this game, which comprises 1337 to 1836 (500+ years) and uses the fucking hoi4 HOURLY game speed system, like fucking what? if you seriously thought that initial line was a joke, it was not. you're going to spend days if not WEEKS on a single game that might take you a day if not a couple of hours in eu4. if you liked eu4 but did not like imperator or victoria 3, thought they boring nonsense, or just really hated their UIs you will not like this. that being said, I don't like this at all, because its just victoria 3 AGAIN with a europa universalis sticker on it, but with ten times more micromanaging of retarded functions that don't belong here at all. this is victoria 4 with a few icons and diplomatic actions that were in eu4 and that's it. if you think this is the successor to eu4, you will come to be very disapointed as you can't do anything you could in eu4 at all. you cannot play this like you played eu4 because this is an entirely different game. the only countries you can really play, like victoria 3, are ones that are already countries. there is no real playing as a smaller nation and getting bigger, you're just fucked and have to rely on other countries to help you. this game STILL uses the shitty clausewitz engine which only runs on ONE core back in the day where that was still the only option (made in 2007 LMAO), and while I have not yet bothered to do so, I imagine the late game will most likely be just as shitty and hardware intensive as all the other ones, because the engine LITERALLY cannot handle it. the ONLY similarity this game really has with the exception of the time period, flags and icons is that, like eu4, this game will be ACTUALLY playable after around 10+ years of constantly pushing DLCS and not actually updating the game with the content you were promised upon buying it (60 dollars LOL) my first problem, and the biggest, is that the UI is a big fucking yellow piss cancer to the eyes. it's honestly the worst one i've ever seen paradox produce. its like they grabbed as many systems from previous clausewitz games as possible and tried to mash them all into one screen with a billion numbers. like, what the fuck am I looking at and why can't I just right click a country to get to their diplo screen, why do I have to click on a string of 4 boxes within boxes to get there lmfao. paradox has some weird obsession with making very simple windows and menus that, previously were condensed and stylized to be as simple and straightforward as possible, into GIANT fucking bloated menues full of random unrelated shit, with a window that takes up half if not your ENTIRE fucking screen and this game is the fucking magnum opus of ugly unmanueverable "user interface" which is half completely fucking automated by pressing a few buttons. what's the point of even playing? seriously just look at the FIRST screenshot this game shows you of a turkish army and fucking count how many things it looks like you can click (you most likely can); he's got ONE army selected and 1/3 of the fucking screen is taken over with fucking random ass buttons, icons and other useless fucking bloated shit. and trust me, it's like this for EVERY WINDOW IN THE GAME if not even worse. click on a fucking boat? here's a giant window that takes up half your 1920 by 1080 monitor to be chock full of squares and icons and shapes that don't do a fucking thing. my second problem was that the "automation" button even existed, as this implies the devs knew they put in too many systems and functions that the player would not be able to micromanage without games lasting a hundred times longer than they are used to. that being said, automation just tanks my economy every time so I don't even know why its a thing. I played as some random irish minor (because noob island right?) and started with a staggering levy size of, not 4 thousand, not 1 thousand, but TWENTY NINE men. cool, really cool. even imperator gave you more. my first option is diplo micro managing every other irish minor into voting you in as some king to prevent the english or irish from invading. really. cool. or I could spend 5 times my yearly income to hire one unit of the cheapest tribal infantry possible. whatever man. the last option is to sit there and just victoria 3 max it out and just abuse the boring trade mechanics until you have a million ducats after 300 years, really fucking fun that sounds. eu4 was SIMPLE and EASY to navigate and manuever, even when starting out. there wasn't such an overcomplicatedly mismanaged giant shit diaper UI that covers your entire screen and economy that you needed the GAME TO MANAGE IT FOR YOU. oh hey, thats my subject, that's their government and economy, and here are my options, I'll go to war as soon as I can. this fucking thing is - mouse over random number for 5 seconds, get a tooltip that disappears after u waited 3 seconds, click on 5 other boxes to get to what you want to look at, click a province and have half your entire screen filled up, what the fuck is going on, I just want to see my military capabilities, shop doesnt have enough employees, what the fuck who cares, I want to declare war on these guys, click on 4 more other boxes just to finally click establish spy network, cool, fabricate claim after 5 months while automation kills your economy, wait another 5 months to FABRICATE CLAIM, cool, finally go to war, raise 29 men to kill enemy's army of 5 men, can't occupy province with only 29 men, fuck this. imperator rome, ironically enough, was a better eu4 successor than this shit lmao. with actual mission trees and flavor, unique religions, economy, and a functioning, readable UI that didn't take over half your fucking screen to look at one province lmfao. say what you will about the flat static modifiers of eu4, it was far more fun to play with and learn than this fucking snoozefest of micromanaging POPULATIONS and estates that are constantly crying about some random number who gives a fuck? that can all be dumbed down to one fucking event that costs you ducats or unrest like eu4. christ. I don't know who could find this fun at all and ive played literally thousands on eu4. and from the looks of it, I don't even think the AI knows how the fuck to manage all of it considering every timelapse of this game looks the exact fucking same 500 years later. think i'm joking there too? look em up online "eu5 timelapse" and there you go. I'm going to try to keep playing this, but from what it looks like it will just end up being exactly like imperator rome wherein the more populations you have the easier the game gets, but this time with annoying estates and dog shit victoria 3 mechanics just plopped in because iTs cOmPliCaTeD nUmBerS. and day one fucking dlc? fuck you

"Food is a complex mechanic, we shall not cover it in the tutorial"

Works great as a crash dump generator, I have 5GB of crash logs, thanks Johan.

now add sex

You can become a Jewish banker, force nations to take loans from you and print imaginary money, then force them to tax their people to pay for it, and trick the nations into fighting wars so you can profit from the loans (oh and the weapons you trade of course) just like real life! It's so realistic! Conquer the world without taking any land or spilling a drop of blood. :)

This game is not even a single inch related with eu4, this is just like a brand-new game series of paradox pretty much mixture of victoria and crusaders king. I am really suffering to play and get used to it. it is not a beginner friendly game. But After a certain time I learn enough to have a decent gameplay of eu5 I'd just change my feeling about game. I'm just disappointed about its hardship I wasn't expecting that complicated

TLDR: The AI is laughably bad, the game is laggy (being just below recommended PC specs, nearly all the buttons had to be clicked twice for the game to register the input) the hourly ticks make the game run painfully slow (17 years in about 2 hours). Its an underbaked mess that should've never had a 2025 release date. No matter how many thousands of little boxes of text you add, it won't make a good game. So. I started my first game on Hard difficulty, ironman mode. Ottomans. I understood nothing. I haven't read the tinto talks, haven't watched the Content Creators. And so, it was a mess. None of the buildings were doing what i wanted them to. There were a hundred different buttons leading me deeper and deeper into different new menu's: i loved it. It felt like those early days of eu4 when you got wiped by byzantium as the ottomans. Difficulty through the roof, and so much to learn. But then i went to war. And i won. And i went on another war. And i won. without building any proper buildings, watching CCs, knowing anything about the game before release --- i just kept on winning. I never ran out of money, never took a single loan, and i just kept on winning. And not because i was good, but because AI was just laughably bad. (repeatedly walking into a stack 3x their size instead of consolidating their troops to match my strenght) then finally, in 1350, i messed up. Byzantium declared war on me. with 8k levies against my 6, i thought i would need to utilize terrain, play slow, actually think. nope. they just split their stack into two small ones, and allowed me to beat them as many times as i wished, with them constantly coming back for more. The sequence of events that followed is why i'm writing this review right now, regreting that i passed the 3 hour mark, and am unable to refund the game. Feeling frankly bored with what was happening, i clicked on Constantinople, and my army just walked there. The byzantine fleet never came. I sieged constantinople for 760 days, with 7k men, while my forces dwindled. I was cut off from supplies, surrounded, having 0 food, and THE BLACK DEATH literally at its peak within my army camp. and for 760 days, byzantium with an army 3 times my size (i had like 2k by the end of the siege) just kept on walking around anatolia, boarding ships, leaving ships, never engaging me despite a colossal advantage. And so, in 1350, i conquered Constantinople, and quit the game. If you expected a fun, entertaining experience that challenged you the way eu4 did, this is not it.

This game somehow released in a state that made day one Victoria 3 look complete. I just paid £70 to alpha test a game with the most unpolished UI that doesn't even save your audio settings and makes fun of you for trusting Paradox after its recent shitslide of horrible game and DLC releases. And how does this game run WORSE than its predecessor from 12 years ago?