Recent reviews by ToWe

Edit: It's good now. Most of my criticisms have been resolved.

A quick tl;dr before I start with the long part: Vicy 3 will be a really good game at some time in the future, if Paradox doesn't abandon it like Imperator: Rome (RIP). And I really do want to love it. It's just not done yet.

Now to the full review. I'll try my best to include my opinions about most core mechanics. That being said, I have not tested Multiplayer right now. So my impressions are purely based on my Singleplayer experiences.

General Impressions:
The game is already pretty deep and complex, as I expect a Paradox game to be. The core mechanics that are not broken at the moment are really robust and fun. But the broken bits are kind of a deal breaker for me right now.

The lack of flavor is definitly noticeable but I understand why they couldn't include more of it on release. I'm looking forward for future Patches that will bring in more unique events and mechanics to certain Nations. As a long time fan I'm used to it being this way anyway.

Performance:
I have a pretty beefy system - Ryzen 3900X, 32GB RAM, RTX 2080, Samsung M.2 SSD. But after reaching 1900 the game gets borderline unplayable. It crashes regularly and becomes really slow and laggy. This will hopefully be one of the first things they will improve, but as of now I've quit most of my runs before 1910 since it just wasn't fun anymore.

AI:
Unfortunately the AI is completly broken at the moment. It barely builds stuff or expands, it's constantly behind in tech and worst of all: It dismantles itself regularly. Half of my last run as the US, Great Britain and Prussia were in civil war. GB had a GDP of 55 million by 1910. That's more or less the same GDP it starts with. There is simply no challange at all once you've fixed your own economy and improved your army a bit. I was able to overrun Britain and France as China by 1870(ish), which should be a really really hard thing to pull off.

This is the most frustrating thing right now for me. I'll probably stop playing until the AI is fixed. Which is a real shame since I quite enjoy this otherwise beautiful game.

Economy:
The by far the most fun part of the game right now. Which is good since this is the most important core feature that makes Victoria unique and fun. There are a ton of goods you need to run your country and keep your pops happy. So you have to constantly check your market and adjust your construction queue to keep up with the ever growing demand of your country. It needs some time to learn, as it should, but once you've understood the basics it's damn satisfying to see your GDP go brrrrrt.

Politics:
Really complex but also quite frustrating. But in a good way, unlike real life politics. Your pops belong to political interest groups depending on their job, their education, their wealth and so on. You need the support of those groups to enact reforms and of course you can't keep them all happy at the same time. But you also can't just ignore interest groups that don't share the same visions as you, since they may start a revolution if you do. One thing that should be changed in my opinion is the bias for liberal reforms, which are basically always better right now. From a moral standpoint it's of course good being rewarded for becoming more and more democratic and less racist, but from a gameplay perspective it should also be viable to be a ruthless autocrat without risking constant uprisings. That's also somewhat linked to radicals appearing a bit too quickly and in too big numbers, which is a problem all countries have.

All in all I do like the political part of the game. The lack of helpful detailed tooltips is my biggest concern, but the devs already stated that this will change soon.

Diplomacy:
Diplomatic Plays work pretty well from a game design perspective, but the broken AI makes diplomacy kind of useless right now. There are ways to expand your economic might peacefully by forming customs unions and protectorates. But most of the time you paint the map in the color of your country without the AI doing much. Once the AI is fixed (or in multiplayer) this part of the game will be good as it is.

War:
This may be kind of a hot take but I like the new war system. Or at least I like the direction it's going. War im Vicy 2 was a mess and in my eyes the absolute worst part of the game. The new front system makes it a lot cleaner and way less frustrating. But the new system is also far from perfect. The lack of detailed tooltips makes it pretty hard to find out why you are losing a fight or why your general is attacking with only a fraction of his manpower even when you are outnumbering your enemy on the front. The way fronts expand and battles are started is also way to random for a game like this. It's a good thing that I don't have to micro manage every single unit anymore, but I still want to feel like I'm the one in control.

Naval combat needs a rework in my opinion. Having a few fixed trade routes and nodes for battles is a good thing but you currently have an unlimited naval range. I can send my navy straight to raid the british channel when playing as China for example. This makes building the Panama Canal or the Suez Canal way less attractive since they only give you some prestige without contributing to your naval capabilities at all.

Also there is basically no risk in deploying your navy in a war. After losing a battle your Admiral stays at base for a few days until he continues his mission. In real life a decisive loss of a naval battle was crippling and it took years to rebuild a big fleet from scratch. The might of the british navy was one of the biggest factors that led to the fall of Napoleon and the british dominating most of the world afterwards. And it basically starved Germanys economy to death in WW1. So naval combat has to reflect that in some way in a game literally named after Queen Victoria.