Recent reviews by Revan

I'm going to leave a review from someone who has played since release, and has invested in several key DLC releases. I also exclusively play vanilla single player.
I will be talking about:
Game stability
Fun factor,
and about the historical nerd perspective I have.

First of all, this game is a technical marvel to behold. Everyone complaining about bugs and glitches; they probably don't know how game design works. But more importantly the game is totally playable. Its stable, and most of the updates affect game play statistics, and balance issues. Obviously it has glitches, and there are things about the game that'll make you scratch your head. (Naval battles and invasions will be magic to new players, you wont know if the games tweaking or if its working as intended. Overall its a huge game with a TON of calculations happening at the same time... give it a break. 8/10.

Fun factor is why you get into Vanilla Hoi4. Once you delve into the intense statistics, delve into the game mechanics, start stacking modifiers and you actually "Get it" the game will consume your life if you let it. You have full control over everything! You can make so many decisions that directly affect WWII. Managing production. Political advisors. Generals. Division templates. Navy. Air Force. The game will give you its money's worth in hours spent playing and seeing your plan come together. Its not a quick commitment of time; you will need to read the Paradox Wiki page, watch Youtube tutorials, and learn the mechanics of the game. (Dont spend 100 hours trying to learn on your own, trust me. ) But it is well worth it!
9/10.

Lastly, the Historical aspect. You might come to Hearts of Iron 4 for the historical details, but you will stay for the alternative history. You don't get to relive WW2 events as much as you would think. Which sort of bummed me out at first. Even with Historical focused AI things can fly off the tracks quick. DLC only made this more true. It will set you up on the tracks up until 1939. But after that things get squirrely. You can model your army and decisions historically if you want, but you will find the joy in re-writing history. I'll also mention realism in general: the game is so granular and detailed in so many ways, but in other ways its just a game...with game mechanics, and game rules... don't expect a historical simulation of WWII. Its got its game balancing rules that don't make sense from that perspective. For example: region AA only affects strategic bombing/naval strike missions.. not CAS. Plenty of scenarios like that. But it works. Overall 7/10

Final thoughts. Just buy it. Its changed a lot since 2016. And you see lots of haters with thousands of hours played. But I'm a casual gamer and the game has paid for itself in fun many times over.

If you play Hearts of Iron III, you just might find this version more fun if you're playing by yourself. Being able to escape the confines of history by going into the 50's and 60's gets crazy with the Cold War gone hot. Plus the tech tree is much more fleshed out, and you can more easily (with time and patience) play as micro powers. Politics are also a tad more interesting. Overall I was very surprised by this little gem.

Quite simply the most amazing game of it's kind. Whether you start a single player story and level your way to a master warrior, or jump into the brawl of multiplayer; you'll enjoy this game imensely.
Having started on the original M&B back when it was a pre-release concept game, I can say the stuff they've added since then has dramatically changed how you perceive the game. You can join Kingdoms, fight for them, or break off and create your own. (Good luck, hahaha)

And the mods...ohhh the mods. Truely the best part of this game! It can be changed into almost whatever you want it to be! The possibilities are endless! Most my hours got logged on to the C-RPG mod. As far as the series goes, I'd say Warband is the high point. Fire and Sword failed to impress me as much, but that's a different review.