Recent reviews by thomfromBR

Third Person Shooter muito bom e surpreendentemente desafiador, ótimo pra quem não conhece nada de Warhammmer 40k porque a história é mínima e a porradaria é boa. Pegar em promoção é recomendado

After almost 650 hours of playing this game, I believe it is time to share my thoughts here on Steam. Victoria 3 is an economic and political simulator of the 19th century, with an emphasis on the latter. You take a nation from 1836 all the way to 1936, while developing its economic forces and shepherding it to (hopefully) a very high GDP.

It is a contrived "line goes up" type of game, with an actual simulation of buildings, employed by workers, that produce goods to be used either in other buildings or consumed by some populace. All the elements mentioned are simulated and nuanced: multiple types of buildings with many production methods; populations that migrate, have needs, qualifications, their own culture, and specificities (often tied to certain goods they prefer); different geographical potential for each country; and different markets with their own prices, importing and exporting to one another seeking benefits — and it all somehow works. I cannot overstate that this part of the game, although complex, is SUPER fun if you like optimization and tinkering in games.

However, there are some hard cons to this game. It was planned from the ground up to be an incremental project at release, improving over the course of multiple DLCs. In other words, while the core of the game is absolutely fleshed out, other aspects are not and leave much to be desired. The political system, which was supposed to be as deep as the population and economic simulation systems, is VERY shallow. The warfare system, a contentious topic among the community, cannot be micromanaged like in other Paradox games and operates on an automatic system that needs to be reimagined. And I could go on and on.

Additionally, although the system requirements for the game aren't very high, it becomes very CPU-intensive as the simulation progresses. There are mods to address this, but the short explanation for why is that the game is constantly performing fractional calculations to merge small populations, determine their needs, where they are employed, etc. With a somewhat decent CPU (AMD 5600x) and some mods, the game is a bit slow in the late game but definitely playable. Even with an old Intel i5 2500, it worked fine, though it was slow.

The part I must alert anyone reading this to is that while some updates are free, most will come under Paradox’s model, with a ludicrous amount of DLC. As of October 2024, they are releasing DLC for other games that are almost as expensive as the base game and, in aggregate, cost nearly three times its price.

Although I really enjoyed my MANY somewhat unhealthy hours playing this game, the current state of the game and its business model prevent me from recommending it. If you're reading this during a big sale, where you can get all the DLC for a reasonable price, this review instantly becomes a recommendation, as the package you'll get will probably be very fun. Otherwise, it saddens me that because of how Paradox conducts business, I can't recommend such an amazing game. What a shame.