Recent reviews by Ayrwyn

Only writing this after Domination came out, making this review about Paradox and the state of EU4 in general.
Lions of the North was decent, but Paradox's DLC policy is insane.
With the work they do on those DLC's, they should fire most of the staff. One person alone could do what they publish at this point. And firing most of the staff would enable these DLC's to actually be represented accurately in the price department. Wouldn't spend more than 5€ on Lions of the North. It is still the same game after all. And for Domination, all the bugs and performance issues it brought, I wouldn't spend a single Euro on it. If it actually worked in the first place, at max 5€ too, not necessarily for the content, but for the continuation of the product. You could get the same content by making a mod, free of charge.

Hey Guys,

I can strongly recommend this game to put my review into one sentence because of its massive potential for replayability.

Don´t worry, I´ll expand.

Europa Universalis IV is just the perfect game if you´re looking for grand strategy. I am a great fan of it, and of history. This game is all about you getting the chance to change it from scratch basically.

Now, let´s come straight to the Pros and Cons:

Pros

- long playtime
It´s an open end game. You can start the game at any time of history and you can end it whenever you feel like it. Now, the original game only goes for an ingame period of 400 years, but when you can take in consideration mods that last from Caesars Empire until present day.
- replayability guaranteed
Every nation in the world can be played and has a unique position in the game. And if you should feel that you nation should be different (much stronger I suppose), then you can simply change it in about 20 minutes.
- all customizable
You can mod the game yourself without a problem. You´ll find anything and everything well documented and easy to pick up.
- a lot of mods out there easily integrated into the game
- the game is constantly being improved
New DLC´s coming out on a regularly basis always giving a new boost to gameplay. I actually think it to be a shame that you´ve only discovered this game now. Because you can´t appreciate how far it´s come. I´ve been on the game since EU3, discovered it´s beauty and greatness (though I had my problems a few years ago when I was still a child because I didn´t understand the game very much). I followed the game until now and will follow it indefinitely. I kind of fell in love with the game (but that probably has to do with me just having watched a romantic comedy with a happy end)
- > support is one of the best you can get.
The gamemakers really really care about their gamers. They implemented a lot of the ideas that came into the game by the means of player-made mods.
And if you look the game up on youtube, you´ll see a lot of Let´s Plays out there and even series of multiplayer games that the Paradoxe Interactive staff is playing itself. That´s really cool.
- really lovely music
They just brought out a new music pack that brings just much more life into the game. Guns, .. and Drums are something like that.

Cons
- you´ll never stop playing the game (addiction guaranteed, but controllable if that is your worry)
- you cannot possibly reach 100% of the achievements. Some of them are only achievable if you count to the 1% of players that go so deep into the game to try it out

I think that way really it.

If you would like numbers in a rating style, I´ll provide you with some:

- Audio: 5 of 5
Ingame sounds are great, and if you should not like them you can always have any secondary Media Center or youtube have your own music played or you can change the music game folder.
- Story: 5 of 5
You create your own story. And I don´t know avout you, but I like my own stories.
- Graphics: 4.5 of 5
The game itself does not need advanced graphics or anything because you are always seeing the strategic map of the world. There are no battles shown or actual fighting going on. Now, the reason why I subtracted that 0.5 is because of a user-made mod that enhances your interface a lot. And as I said aboive, the developers are probably going to integrate that in the sequel.
- Performance: 4.5 of 5
EU IV can be played on a laptop, provided you have a mouse because there will be a lot of clicking around. Now, EU III used to play really smoothly on laptops, as for EU IV, you expire that you can´t fast-forward that fast anymore because there is so much going on that your processor has to calculate. And here again, the advanced graphics slow down again. But on a Pc, you should not experience any difficulties.

Thats about it
Love you guys

Ciao