annovictoria

I am into Anno 1800 with thousands of hours, but I also did some 120h in Victoria 3. A few points: I've been wondering why nobody points out how the art style of Anno 1800 was stolen here, to the worse. Understandably, projects influence each other, but in this case, the UI style, the illustration style, even the color set and the music, and many small details are a rip-off of Anno 1800. This is not okay for a publicly traded AAA company like Paradox, like a lack of talent. The warfare system is not worth mentioning. But the team behind it is still defending it, which would be funny if it would not indicate some talent issues among the directors. The diplomatic system is also not worth mentioning compared to Stellaris, CK2/3, or Victoria 2. There is a great Steam comment where someone illustrates how hillarious the system is. However, the economic gameplay could have been a lifesaver here. After all, there is quite some depth in the background. But the actual gameplay is rather lackluster and badly designed. I see the Anno 1800 influence here, compared to Victoria 2. But the micro hell of the building configurations... Did they test it? No one complained about how annoying it is, how often you check on it, like very 1-2 minutes? Not only is Anno 1800 but there are better economic games out there which solved all these issues already and are better at it. I will return to Victoria 3 after 1-2 years of patches, but for now, it is too badly designed for me. It has neither the gameplay excitement of EU4/CK3, nor the economic gameplay depth of Victoria 3, nor the warfare and conquest fun of, say, Victoria 2, HOI4, or Stellaris. It is, therefore, kind of nothing to me -- maybe because it tried to compete with Anno 1800 too hard.