ohbane

I am surprised how many fanboys are defending the malpractice of this particular AAA studio, Paradox Interactive, which is why I decided to create an account and write a review. We know that the same people would not defend EA, Ubisoft, or Epic Games like that. Yet, somehow, they are fine with Paradox because what? It was once smaller? Paradox is a publicly traded company with a team size of approx. 1,000. Paradox should do better than 5/10. So, what's the fuzz about Victoria 3, then? Well, if you've played Victoria 2 before, you will likely be quite or perhaps a bit more disappointed. If you are optimistic, you'll say that you hope it will get better over time once they get rid of the inexperienced game director and that it hopefully does not end like Imperator (or all the other Paradox games that got canceled or aborted eventually). I'd say Victoria 3 is not that bad... it is just not a good game. UI issues. Serious gameplay issues, not just in terms of warfare but also the actual economic gameplay, as many pointed out (there are so many good economic games out there, and Victoria 3 is not as fun to play as the others, economically speaking, despite all the fancy and deep economy system in the background). And once you've figured out how to exploit the economy model, you'll win every time but also notice how every nation, every culture, every government, and economy type plays the same -- and this is a game design issue. Victoria 2, HOI4, EU4 and Stellaris are better designed in this regard. The latter is, in my opinion, the actual issue everyone is either meh or not okay with, making them go mad or defend the company. The game is not well designed. It suffers from a bad game direction and an inexperienced game designer. Maybe it is just a lack of talent. We know from EA and Ubisoft that they struggle with talent in game design and game direction in particular, right? So, why would we assume that Paradox would not suffer the same (after multiple years of average to below-average game releases and a large team of approx. 1,000)? I mean, guys, please. We are all adults. We know that this game could be remembered as a turning point of Paradox -- to the better (hopefully), or the worse (if you take the past years into account and if Paradox does not release something truly magical and great soon).