The appeal here is pretty different from what typically is involved in grand strategy. This isn’t a game of conquest or necessarily even of alt history (the national flavor here is lacking on launch, though I suspect this will be addressed over time), it’s very squarely a game about keeping a well-oiled economic machine running as efficiently as you can manage, with world events being interesting wrenches thrown in that plan you have to work around via managing different interest groups and the political coalitions they form. Like Vicky 2, the game is very concerned about pops and keeping them well cared for and happy. This is a game that wants you to do the best you can for many different people with many different interests, and I love it for that. When you're looking through the needs of each pop trying to figure out why they're struggling and what they need to live better lives, it sometimes puts you in this benevolent / parental god mindset, not unlike ActRaiser. The difference being that to actually help people and make them happier, you need to pursue economic prosperity and justice. You have to push through these rapidfire stages of history in order to please them, and I love that. In doing so, you get to really FEEL the way that early industrial economies built on top of themselves again and again, culminating in this fantastic lategame economic explosion finally giving your brain everything you spent hours training it to yearn for. I love it.

Much has been improved with regard to the portrayal of non-industrial and decentralized societies compared to Vicky 2, though I pretty much just echo the sentiments here: https://acoup.blog/2022/10/24/miscellanea-victoria-iii-confirmed-first-impressions/

In the future I’d like to play harder difficulties, because my main complaint so far is that it hasn’t really forced me to engage with the more involved systems as much as I’d like, though that does improve in the lategame. A lot of the negative reaction aside from the typical concerns about Paradox’s business model and “grr sjws grr no war micro” comes down to the fact that in many nations you can bypass a lot of the more complex stuff and just build things the game says will be profitable. With more aggressive AI settings and playing more difficult nations, I think I’ll get into that more.

I love this game. I understand the complaints about it being somewhat barebones, I really do. I don't like modern Paradox's business model either, but the truth is I already love what's here and have gotten a lot out of it. I suggest piracy with all games, but especially Paradox ones. I have a legal copy myself, but if the idea of keeping up with the wave of expansions that are sure to come sounds like it'll be too much for you, please just grab a torrent and enjoy what's here without the baggage of wondering if it was worth your money.

A hard one to rate, because it's got a much better onboarding process than its older sibling (i.e. working the economy no longer means wrestling with this screen), but the difference between treading water and seeing real success is understanding when the simplified menus are betraying you.

I've been playing the Vicky series long enough to have met some of my most long-lasting friends as a result, but this isn't the case for all the players who are picking up the shiny new Paradox game. You can generally stay afloat by playing the tutorial and clicking the options that have the biggest, greenest "predicted profit" numbers next to them - good! It's good that people who don't know how to sort through all the info can pick this up and play with their friends without immediately crashing and burning. However...

There's a lot being calculated here, and the big "predicted profit" numbers are only so useful unless you understand what they represent. I've heard many complaints from friends who have picked this up for the first time, clicked all the correct Big Green Buttons, only to assume that it was a bug when their attempts to cut costs by gutting the military result in an economic crisis. All the buttons and numbers that you'd need to understand the economic crisis are present, but I don't think the game does a good enough job of indicating where they are and when you'd use them. This (combined with the UI simplicity) deprives the unaware player of a great deal of gameplay depth, to the point where my friends picking up Vicky for the first time describe it as "a game you watch more than you play".

If you do know what you're looking at, though, and you like the idea of "building tall" rather than "building wide" with your empires, this game will really sink its hooks into you. Learning the intricacies of Vicky 3 means you'll spend a lot less time scrolling Twitter with the game on max speed and a lot more time engaged with the game's systems, poking through the data provided to determine how you'll meet your long-term goals. The feeling of satisfaction you get from a Victoria 3 game is not dissimilar from the fun you have playing Factorio or Satisfactory - knowing a complex system of supply chains like the back of your hand, continually tweaking it to become more efficient, to grow bigger, to provide a better standard of living for the people in your country.

I don't really have a neat way to put a little bow on this, but I wanted to throw this review out there so people understand that this is NOT Crusader Kings 3. It's one of those games where you have to get really familiar with it for everything to click if you're not madly in love with the setting, but it's also a pain in the ass to become familiar with everything here. Paradox have really put forth a solid, earnest attempt at cleaning this up so it resembles a game more than an Excel spreadsheet (the map is fucking gorgeous!) but there's really only so much you can do with a product like this. At some point, you either bounce right off of this, settle for clicking Big Green Buttons, or you sit down with a YouTube video or friend (or your knowledge from economics classes) and go "okay, so while it says you'll lose a lot of money by making this switch, you're producing a LOT more oil, which drives the price down, meaning other businesses that rely on it are more profitable, and since you've got worker cooperatives, those dividends go to the workers which (with graduated taxation) are taxable at a higher rate than ordinary wages, which mea--"

Um bom jogo mas ainda precisa melhorar muito. Falta mecanica e melhoria de qualidade de vida. Eu particularmente acho que a Paradox esta no caminho certo, melhorando o jogo a cada update. Mas tem um porem muito grande: a DLC Voice of the People foi um tiro no pe, puro scam e adiciona quase nada a um jogo que carece de muita coisa ainda. Eu gosto de Victoria 3, acho que tem muito potencial, mas precisa ser polido e aprofundado. Espero que isso venha a partir de updates gratuitos e não de DLCs pagas com features que deveriam estar no jogo base.

most half-baked Paradox launch since, i don't know, EU4? i have a laundry list of issues with this game and i'll try to touch on many of them

- In an effort to simplify war and make it less micro-heavy, they basically removed the game part. you just assign battalions to your generals and tell them to attack/defend a front and they automatically do everything for you. seriously, that's how war works lmao. I know some people had issues with how Hoi4 sort of does a (slightly) similar thing where you make battleplans for your generals, but the difference there is that making good battleplans presents an ACTUAL fun challenge. The game also gives you an option to micro without giving your generals battleplans if you so desire.

- the user interface is, with no exaggeration, the worst to be included in a Paradox title. take that in for a moment. worse than Victoria 2, worse than CK2, EU4, etc. There is so much information (some of which is rather important) that can only be accessed by hovering your mouse over an icon for two seconds, then hovering your mouse over an underlined piece of text for another two seconds, then hovering your mouse over another piece of underlying text and you get the point. CK3 handled this type of UI much more gracefully.

- they changed construction to a system similar to hoi4 for some reason, though Hoi4 once again handles it better. that means Great Britain, a country that holds territory worldwide from the beginning of the game, can only construct one building at a time. baffling step back from the previous game.

- the economic sim would be much more impressive if the information was presented more clearly. this stems from the user interface issue and the war issue. the fact that war is basically not even part of the game anymore means its better to focus your attention on economic affairs, but the information on that stuff is just not easily available.

this game's saving grace is the fact that there was a lot of genuine thought put into the meat of the economics. its just a bit difficult to really have fun with it at times due to the game's issues.

right now Victoria 3 is maybe a tier above a basic map painter as far as im concerned. Paradox has been on top of their game lately but this is an exception, bit disappointed.

Victoria 3 stands in the shadow of its predecessor, but it tries to go in a new direction with many of the mechanics. I personally welcome many of these changes, but it's infinitely clear they're not being used to their full potential. The game as stands just feels incomplete, and if this was a finished product, I would judge it rather harshly compared to Victoria 2. Given that we know many updates, DLC, and mods are on the way, however, I suspect the game will improve vastly from this point onwards. As stands, it is still enjoyable nonetheless.

Paradox games have always been enjoyable but always complicated. They will be aware of this in their new games, so they started to prefer interfaces that make games easier in order to fix this complexity in their games. I think they achieved this in Crusader Kings 3, but I can't say the same for Victoria 3. The learning process of the game seemed extremely difficult and boring. You probably need to play 50-100 hours to start enjoying this game, but I don't have that patience. Maybe I will try again in the future.

I am a big time lover of these Paradox 4x games for about as long as I can remember, with Vicky 2 probably my all time favorite. So when they announced and were developing 3 I followed it so closely!

And this week I finally played it and it’s good. It’s fine! It’s as addicting as ever, and there were a couple days I just utterly lost because I was sucked in so much!

But 3 compared to 2 is missing a bit of…magic? It’s hard to describe, but I I’m still more pulled to Vicky 2 or EU4