Hearts of Iron 4: A Short Review

[Cyborg]

First thing you should know is, I returned it.

There have been a lot of big steps forward for this game, if you ever played Hearts of Iron 3, which had one of the worst user interfaces I've ever seen. Hearts of Iron 4 is a little bit of an upgrade.

What's that you say? What! It looks so pretty!

Well yes, they gave it some nice coloring, a little bit better graphics, and some depth. But let's take a deeper look:

* Some technology trees are horizontal. Some are vertical. Seems to me different people were in charge of each interface.
* Buried menus. Now this is what really sucks about this game. There is a ton of depth, but they make you click through various submenus to get to it. If you are new to the game, you really don't know if you are missing something huge by not ticking a box layers deep.
* Flooded menus. Some of the menus are vertically scrolling and go on for miles. They recently released statistics on the popularity for each played nation. I have to believe that the USA statistics are based on how annoying it is to control all the armies everywhere.
* Countless menus. There are just a shit ton of menus. Holy crap.

Needless to say, I spent most of the time trying to figure out which menu was where, if I was missing anything, and pouring over YouTube videos while turning the game off so it didn't burn my two hours until refund.

I actually spent a few hours on YouTube trying to figure this out, and I was beginning to get the hang of it, but I felt I needed even more training. In short, I just didn't have it in me to go through all these goddamned menus, and I couldn't imagine myself doing it when I have other games to play.

I like paradox games. I like Europa 4, Crusader Kings 2, and Stellaris. The time to learn how to play those games is probably five hours or less (a lot longer to master, but at least you can start playing!). Hearts of Iron 4 continues to have a very high barrier of entry. Buyer beware, if you're not prepared for it. There is a tutorial, but it is woefully short, and they do what we all find lame and lazy: they just link their in-game browser to the wiki.

And paradox, hire someone who knows what a GUI is. Also, how about making a tutorial that's more than five minutes long?

[Mánagarmr]

I really don't know what it is about Paradox and UIs. They seem really bad at it.

[madcow]

As somebody who has tried to dabble in many Paradox games I'll put in my own input here with my other experiences.

I've tried HoI III, and it was literally unplayable for me. Way too complex!

Crusader Kings 2, is one I've tried to get into as well.  I can play it on a base level, but I haven't really found the game super fun. It always seemed like I was just playing at x5 speed waiting for the next thing to happen. It also had major performance issues on my computer.

Stellaris I enjoy, but the game seems a bit empty at the moment. Still I actually feel like I know how to play it, but I find the options available could use some improvement.

EU - never tried. Not sure that I really want to.

HoI IV - maybe it's because I watched some of the paradox streams, but I actually understand how to play and I've been loving the game. It's still not got the best GUI/interface (especially naval/air warfare is badly done) but I still have been able to wrap my head around it better than hoi 3 and ck 2. The gameplay feels more fleshed out than stellaris. And while it has a bit of the fast forward waiting for the next unlock in the early game - once the action ramps up it feels like the game is actually engaging at all times without the wait at 5x speed syndrome.

I'll agree it has issues still and can use work, but I've been thoroughly enjoying it after doing the tutorial as Italy and then two other campaigns (as Soviet Union and Germany).  Paradox has a business philosophy similiar to Arcen's (except with more cosmetic DLC) they'll keep working on the game for years to come - so I expect it'll only improve in time (as I'm hoping stellaris does as well).

Sorry for any typos by the way, written on my phone.

[Sounds]

I'll throw my 2cents in here.

I'm currently enjoying it thus far (10 hours in), but it seems the UI like all Paradox titles is quite impenetrable. What I've concluded is that it starts to flow once you put the learning hours in. Whether you consider this 'fun' is another story.

CKII on day one had many 'quirks' with the interface, but a lot of that has now been streamlined. Love this game. The way I play it is never use the pause feature, and don't over think things to avoid analysis paralysis.

EUIV I play when I want a more 'grander' civilisation game. Interface falls somewhere between the CKII and HOWIV for obscurity for me, but I'm now quite familiar with its cumbersome approach.

All that said; my biggest issue with HoI IV is the tutorial is in most respects MIA. Paradox needs to replace it with something similar to the one in Stellaris. It's early days, so here's hoping a future patch provides a better UI experience.