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More of the same from Pardox

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 18 / 73
Date: November 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Paradox games is probably best known for Europa Universalis II, a game that is sometimes fun to play for short periods but that is fatally flawed in longer games (mostly because of the "unrest" factor, but also because the game is too locked in to actual historical events).

Last year Paradox used the EU2 engine to produce a global WWII grand strategy game, Hearts of Iron, which is also fun to play but still seriously flawed (many reviewers have commented on the gameplay problems and sheer bugginess of HOI). In Victoria, Paradox uses the same engine yet again to cover the "Victorian" era.

A grand strategy game of this period is not a bad idea. But the EU2/HOI platform is just not the best way to go about this. For some reason, the designers seem to love having the world broken up into hundreds of teeny tiny little provinces. This was an OK mechanism in EU2, where you are usually focused on a relatively small geographic area. But for a globe-spanning Empire game, this province-based system is just a big headache, too crowded and cluttered. Paradox really needs to re-think their system and come up with something fresh; either hexes, a zone-less system, or something else novel. What looked kind of cool 5 years ago looks very stale now.

There are also sure to be lots and lots of bugs. Even now, a year or so after the release of HOI, there are still dozens of known bugs, some of them serious, that haunt the game. The player community always tries to brown-nose Paradox to keep on their good side so that they will continue to release more patches, but their patches often introduce even more bugs. Pay a visit to the Paradox website and check out the bug forums for their other games. Judging from their past performance, it will be many months before this game is patched up enough to be considered playable.

incomprehensible

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 16 / 28
Date: September 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Do not by this game unless you are a genius! As a veteran of 3 generations of Civilisation and Railroad Tycoon and many other strategy games I found this game completely incomprehensible.

For such a complex game to have no tutorial is unforgiveable. The manual is useless: inaccurate, incomplete and states the obvious at length without telling you the real things you need to know to actually do things. Most of the time things that the manual says you can do you cannot do for a reason that is kept secret.

Example 1: The manual tells you to move a division onto a transport in an adjacent sea zone but when you do this nothing happens. The game does not tell you why it is ignoring you. Eventually, by trial and error, you discover that it takes 2 transports to ship one division. There is no excuse for basic information like this not to be in the manual and in the on screen help.

Example 2. At the start of the Civil War the USA has high unemployment and NO manpower available. This is very odd in itself but as there is no way to increase manpower the Confederacy - whose army outnumbers the USA by 2.5:1 - wins every time.

My advice to Paradox: take one programmer off of making the game more and more complicated and put him/her on making the game playable.

More of the Same from Paradox just not more game.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 20
Date: December 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Once again another copy and repeat of the now infamous Europa Unversalis II. Yet, this one is even more complicated, comes with the same initial "crash to desktop" bugs, lack of a tutorial, and a user interface that only Albert Enstien could enjoy.

This is yet another one of those "buy it now, we'll fix it later games" from Paradox. You'll be pulling your hair out, from the moment you run the game for the first time with all the spreadsheet popups you'll have to deal with. It's more of a financial game instead of a strategy game. If you can win the world economy, which once you spend a week figuring out how to play it, becomes quite easy to do, then you can win every game with any province. Tahiti rules the world anyone? It's nowhere realistic by any means. It's just another toddlers toy that wanted to be great, but, instead is just mediocre. This time period is rather boring as a strategy game. If you don't have Europa Universalis II then I suggest getting it instead, it's been patched to 1.07 and for $7.99 it's a better buy overall.

I'd recommend a wait on this title, in 6 months to a year it will be "patched" finished and you can probably get it for $15 or less, why pay for an unfinished game?

Unstable, bizarrely overly complicated

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 13
Date: February 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Victoria is another game by Paradox using the same engine used for EU, EU II, and Hearts of Iron. I enjoyed EU II and Hearts of Iron, so I was looking forward to trying Victoria.

EU II and Hearts of Iron are incredibly complicated, but in a good way. It's a strategy gamers delight to tinker and play with the micromanagement of your military and economy. But Victoria adds levels of complexity that seem to have no value. In addition to managing hundreds of provences, units scattered across the globe, and relations with hundreds of countries -- all things you do in EU II and Hearts of Iron -- Victoria adds a bizarre, complicated commodity trading system with workers and factories to produce these trading goods. You can put it on computer control, which means it adds little to the game, or manage it yourself, which is incredibly unpleasant.

Although EU II and Hearts of Iron were known for being buggy and unstable, Victoria is substantially worse. With the latest patch levels, I'm still getting crashes frequently and seeing a lot of oddities that don't seem like the game is functioning properly. The bug reporting forums at Paradox are filled with complaints.

It's unfortunate, but I'm giving up on Victoria. If you want to try a game in this series, I'd recommend Hearts of Iron. For WWII history fans, it's a delight, even with it's remaining bugs. But skip Victoria. It's bizarrely complicated and entirely too buggy to be enjoyable.

I TOLD YOU SO!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 59
Date: June 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

You see, I told you so in my early post this game would be less than $15 within 6 months. I've been playing games for 35 years and I know a FLOP when I see one, and knowing PARADOX's ways, I knew the game would be a flop out of the box. It's just not that great of a game like the man fanboi's that rushed here and posted how great of a game it is. That's why is "SAVES" to listen to outsiders who will give critical and "honest" opinions of the game based on "mechanics", "manual", "tutorial" and general bugginess like I do when these new games come out. I have the ability to play the games and return them when they are flops, many people do not. Thus I can give fair and honest reviews of these games and not be BIASed like the man fanboi's that have posted below me.

Those who listened to me, you can now see the savings I told you about. I still predict and even lower price in another few months, but, for the less than $10 now, for those that like this particular time period and since they've finally FIXED the game and it works as it should have out of the box, it's a worthy purchase. Personally I have no interest in this time period except for games like Railroad Tycoon or Industry Giant II, those two games are much more FUN to play if you like more of a beer and pretzels type of finacial game, sure Victoria has some military efforts, but, they are so abstract and not really necessary for this type of game platform. Buy it with the pleasure of knowing you're getting a finished product and something of interest to you of this time period. And you can thank me for saving you some money. ;)

frustratingly unplayable

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 15
Date: December 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

the concept of the game is great! half the stuff you can let the AI do for you concerning econimics, trade, manpwer, military leaders, et al. but some basic stuff like changing from army to navy management cant be done! or seeing and possibly retreating from certain territories under atack! to heck with diplomacy if you cant do these basics forget it!

A shot too far

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 19 / 24
Date: January 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I hope you know the former games, which earned Paradox rewards - Europa Universalis or Heart of Iron. If not, it will be a hard time getting into this game. The manual is incomplete and near useless, a tuorial is not available.

The game itself is meant to be a strategic game based on historical developments in the 19th century. You can play nearly any country existing at that time and are supposed to shape its march into the 20th century. Politics, diplomacy, economics, warfare (on division/corps level) - all there. The interface once learned is pretty good, various statistics help keeping overview, the map is scalable. So far, so well.

But be awae of the things that made me rate a 2 instead of the 5 the game earns according to its fans:
- There are way too many flaws in the economic model on top of the fact of its poor (for beginners: non existent) explanation of the interdependencies.
- The warfare AI is incompetent, incongruent and incapable
- History recreation and a free strategy game did not blend well - the one approach always harms the other one
- You may indefinitely (enough troops given) invade other countries by sea. Yep - that's right- from Prussia to China directly, no limit on troop numbers, no stations required on the way. With sailing transport ships in 1836 (game start)
- And - as with each Paradox game - the game you got shipped is not the one you will play. The number of bugs and flaws forced Paradox to ship at least 3 to 5 patches out, before the game has a sufficient grade of completeness. And you are supposed to test them until a dedicated fan community together with Paradox finally manages to set the game to a purchase state (one year after first sales)

In a nutshell - you do not buy a game. The challenge is to master the inexplained (failed manual), not to master the game AI. The fun is to micromanage your economy and to watch strange computer moves in various computer controlled nations, not to play the game. So you buy a huge, impressive and well thought through ... sandbox. If you like model trains and spendhours on setting up train environments on many square meters, you will love the game. If you like strategy and challenge - keep your hands off.

Thorsten

Like Work, Not Play

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 12
Date: April 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I love Paradox' Europa Universalis series, but Victoria requires far too much micromanagement to be fun. The lack of any tutorial or halfway decent manual makes the learning curve far too steep for such a small payoff.

Great concept, poor execution. Try Europa Universalis II instead!

Decent Game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Alright, I'll admit it: I'm a Paradox fan. I have been ever since I took a leap and bought Hearts of Iron II on a lark. The game was so incredibly deep and historical and magnificent that it continues to entertain me. With that great experience, I decided to expand into other Paradox titles, and I began with Victoria: Empire Under the Sun.

So, regarding the game. If you want an easy game, this isn't it. If you want your typical real time strategy game, this isn't it. If you want to find a game you can learn quickly, this isn't it. If you are looking for a wargame, this isn't it.

The game is, at its digital little heart, a economic simulator wrapped in a package of a game. Economics will be your primary concern throughout the game. There are numerous other facets, including politics, diplomacy, imperialism, (a little) warfare, and country making, but all this pales in comparison to the amount of time you'll be spending attempting to manage your country's economy. Certainly, it could be argued that this is exactly what world leaders do, but it limits the entertainment of the game.

I'll confess, I'm a wargame buff. And that's why I loved Hearts of Iron II. This is definitely not a wargame.

And while I love depth, this game has so much depth it's smothering. When you combine this with little help manual-wise and absolutely no tutorial or learning campaign, you'd need rock climbing gear to surmount this learning curve.

In conclusion, if economics and history are your thing, have at it, otherwise, you might be better suited to some other game ... I know I am.

Complex, but worth it - well worth the price

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 53 / 55
Date: October 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User

There are many games you can jump into and understand well in a few minutes. After a few hours, you're done with nearly any of them.

Victoria is not one of these games. After a few hours you're still early in the learning cycle, but you're having fun, and you are just starting a long-term relationship with a great game.

You have to approach Victoria differently than a simpler game. Download the latest patch (1.03c as of this review), go to the Paradox website to review the advice to new players, and play as an easy country for your first game. I suggest Sweden (ignoring the military) so you learn the economic system, and eventually build up to playing countries like the USA, before taking on the UK or Russia.

What you'll get is the ability to play an incredibly detailed recreation of the world as it was 1835-1920. You can play as any of dozens and dozens of countries, from Japan to Sardinia-Piedmont, from the Confederate States of America to Prussia. You advance scientifically, developing and buildign railroad, advancing politically (if you like), moving from Monarchy to democracy.

There are shortcomings to the game. The manual contains information on what is in the game, but not much on how you *should* play. The Paradox forums provide plenty of advice, however. There's a reason for this - once you learn the game, you'll get far more playing time for the tiny price Amazon wants for this game than you will out of nearly anything else you play (that isn't by Paradox, that is). Others have already realized what a great game Vicky is, and they are eager to share the joy with the rest of us.

This is a deep, sometimes difficult game, but it is worth the effort. It offers more replayability than any game I have ever seen from any other publisher.

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