In the world of gaming, where modern games tend to become ever more colourful, faster and action-packed, and even complex strategy titles like the Total War or Civilization series offer more and more eye candy, this grand strategy game is the ugly duckling. It's not one of the cheerleaders but the geek you choose to learn math with. It's like an encyclopedia among hollywood movies. Instead of stunning effects and pretty graphics it has statistics and maps.

It presents itself with minimalistic visuals and sounds. But this is not what this game is about so I leave it at that.

HoI3 lets you take control over almost any nation that existed from 1936 to 1948 and lays its destiny during this difficult time in history in your hands. This is your chance to rewrite history, depending on your actions historical events like Japans attack on Pearl Harbor can occur earlier or later (or never) than they did in reality. Let's say you start a game in '36 with the U.S. You will have some time before Japan decides to attack. Will you prepare for war in the Pacific or build strong trade relations with Japan to make a war with you undesirable? And when all hell breaks loose in Europe, will you join the allies against the German Reich or do you have other goals? Or maybe you long for a real challenge, want to stay away from the major powers and try your luck with one of the smaller nations? How about playing as Brazil, joining the axis, trying to conquer South America and hold your ground against the U.S.A. The possibilities are unlimited.

You are given an enourmous amount of freedom when organizing your military. You can even put together your own divisions with three to five brigades to combine different types of units to tailor them to your particular needs. Set up chains of commands to influence supply lines and and combat strength or let the A.I. play individual commanders (and with them all units under their command) for you.

Not only do you command your troops but you are also responsible for reconnaissance, diplomacy, espionage, domestic politics, technological research, industrial production and infrastructure. All these elements are important and influence each other. For example: If you use your entire industrial capacity to produce troops you will not be able to produce enough consumer goods to maintain the approval among your civilian population and you will have to deal with uprisings (in totalitarian nations) or a power shift towards opposition parties (in democratic nations). The same goes for your A.I. controlled opponents: Use spies to influence their domestic political climate to your advantage and weaken their war efforts. Every one of these tasks can be delegated to the A.I. but its highly recommended to do at least the most important jobs yourself. The A.I. is not totally incompetent, in fact it does a pretty decent job, but a reasonably experienced player will still make the better decisions. And besides, why would you want to spend your time watching a game play itself?
Only new players might want to concentrate on one gameplay element at a time to get used to it before taking over complete control.

The size of the world map is immense, it is divided into 15000 (!) areas and maintaining the overview can become a difficult task, especially when you're playing as one of the big nations, with a huge army, war on several fronts and try to handle as much as possible without the help of the A.I.

HoI3 is played in real-time but lets you adjust the speed to your liking or pause any time during the game.

If you like a game to take you by the hand and tell you what to do, Hearts of Iron is not for you. It is difficult to learn and difficult to master, the six short tutorials are not overly helpful. It doesn't even lay down objectives for you. You won't miss them because there's always a lot to do and take care of. But if a strategy game with an impressive depth that puts all other representatives of the genre to shame in terms of complexity is what you want and if you have the patience and time to get over the initial steep learning curve, you can have fun for years to come with this title.

A few words about the DLCs (HoI3 has a lot of them): Semper Fi, For The Motherland and Their Finest Hour are the must get expansions, all the sprite packs... not so much. You will most likely not want to use the option to replace the nato symbols with new fancy sprites, as they provide more information about the units at a quick glance. The three aforementioned larger expansions on the other hand come with a great many features that really enhace the gameplay a lot. These include but are not limited to: New types of units for many nations, A.I. improvements, an extended espionage system, enhanced economic diplomacy, a strategic warfare screen that visually displays important combat information, improved, more in-depth naval warfare and more realistic amphibious assaults, enhanced character development of your commanders, additional combat tactics, balancing adjustments of unit attributes and many more.

Hearts of Iron III is an excellent game. It allows the player to control any nation in the lead-up to WW2, or during it if you prefer. These range from Nazi Germany, of course, to the Dominican Republic, which gives you an idea of the level of choice on offer. The game essentially drops you into the world as head-of-state of one of these many nations, and it's entirely up to you what to do from there: will you align with the Axis in Europe to gain your share of the economic gains in the upcoming war? Or will you side with Stalin's Russia and work to undermine Fascism and the Allies, in an attempt to dominate the world with Communism?

However, the level of historical accuracy in HOI3 is astounding, despite the player's ability to make independent and alternate choices. For example, there is a system of "decisions" in the game which often provide some sort of benefit, one of which is the historical Anschluss of Austria for Germany. As well as this, there are literally thousands of officers, with their own traits and skill levels (which can be improved with combat), to assign to command your divisions or brigades. These are just two examples in an intricate web of historical detail. WW2 history buffs like myself will be elated at the opportunity to not only, for example, command Rommel's Afrika Korps, but lead it to complete victory in the Middle East! Again, this is just an example that popped into my head, the level of possibility is insane.

Aside from the military aspect of the game, which is the focus, there are various other sectors of your nation that you can alter control. There is the politics tab, where you select your ministers and make policies, as well as administer the areas that have come under your occupation through war. There is the diplomacy tab, where, if you are a leader of a faction, such as the Axis, you can influence nations to join you in alliance, and make trade deals, sell equipment, declare war, ETC. Other tabs include research, production, intelligence. I won't go into detail on these, but all are as important as each other.

PROS
+ Insanely high level of historical detail (accurate divisional names, commanders, ministers in governments, literally tens of thousands of provinces)
+ Ability to relive or rewrite history, in your own unique way.
+ Greatly immersive, you get to the point where hours just slip away in what feels like minutes!
+ Huge scale wars, on land sea, and air, where you are the commander in chief.

CONS
- Not recommended if the player is looking for amazing graphics- the gameplay is what sells HOI3, not the visuals.
- A tad buggy. The game crashes relatively frequently, especially if tinkering around in console commands.
- Steep learning curve, but once you get the full hang of it, you'll realise it was well worth the time put into it.

Overall rating: 12/15 (Great!)

This is the game for leaders, commanders and heros. If you want to play as Germany in 1944 and push back the Russians and stop the invasion of Normandy, do it.
If you want to play as Japan and never attack the USA, do it.
If you want to Austria and refuse to be annex by Germany, do it.
If you want to play as Luxenbourg and join the Axis so you dont die in a useless war, do it.
If you want to play as Switzerland and stay netrual through World War II and War World III, do it.
If you want to play as Cuba and nuke the USA in 1938, do it. If you want to play as Tibet (The Peace-loving country with little to no IC and has a 8-year old monk child as a leader) and invade India and nuke America, do it.
If you wand to play as the USA and "Unite" all of North and South America, do it.
If you want to play as France and over throw the Italian government before World War II is started, making them a puppet of france, do it.
If you want to play as the Soviet Union and refuse the Non-Agression Pact Stalin and Hitler signed, so it.
If you want to play Britian and let Germany take everything over (and most likely you), do it.
THE POSSIBLITIES ARE ENDLESS!
If you want to play as Hati and... have an earthquake, do it!
If you want to play as Ethiopia and get taken over by Italy in 1938, do it. If you want to play as Australia and join the Axis or Communists, do it!
Do it! Do it! Do it!

To be honest though, this game is not for the light minded. You don't sit down and have a "small" match of Hearts of Iron III. My friends an't play this game bcause its too sonfusing for them and it gives them headcahes. People may think they can just get into this game in the first 3 hours. I am almost 300 hours into the game and I am still finding new stuff everytime.
As my first playthrough I decided I was going to the small island nation of Haiti. I didn't even know cheats exsited and on top of that the tutiorial was too f****** confusing for me. Being the strategy player I am I had to play this game. I managed to make it to 1943 before the US decided my fate would end with a small invasion of my capital.
My next playthrough I played as Germany. It was simple. I never declared war on the Soviets so I managed to invade Britian, France, South America and for the lulz America. The game ended with me dropping a nuke on Washington.
My next playthrough was as Romania. The whole slavic region was my b****. I took over Yugo, Hungray, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Iraq (after many attempts of overthrowing thier government), Persia and Afganistan. The Western Roman Empire was ack at its peak.

This game has never failed to give me a challenge and make me think.

I give this game a 10/10
Helped me pass Geography my senior year of high school

It took many hours, 3 in game years and countless spies, but i got a nazi elected as the president of the U.S.
10/10

-Be me
-Be on Holiday
-Just had lunch one day and decide to play Hearts of Iron 3 for a while before doing some work
-Start playing
-Currently playing as Germany and Invading of France
-Tell myself I'll take Paris then quit
-Take Paris, but the Soviet Union declares war on me immediately after
-I should really stop now, but I've only been playing for 20 minutes, what the hell I'll just see how this goes for a bit

-Take Moscow, Commitern Surrenders
-#Pride
-It's been a really hard fight, with lines moving back and forth through Poland and Western Russia from 1939 to 1943
-Look outside
-It's pitch black
-WTF? I've only been playing for an hour at most
-Check watch
-It's 3:30 am
-I've been playing non-stop for 14 hours
-No Regrets

• Australia 1935- All is well peace Reigns supreme.......
• Aus 1936-peace remains but i now Reign supreme and my policy to keep peace is to prepare for war......
• Aus 1937- still preparing for war..........
• Aus 1938- New Zealand seemed very threating so we invaded and swifty eliminated the threat......
• Aus 1939-Europe is at War and England has requested Aus join the Allies-we refuse...
• Aus 1940-Aus has realised that Europe can no longer look after there colonies, Aus declares was on netherlands and the Allies and joins Japan and the Axis in the liberation of south east asia and the pacific from the Allied Tyranny....
• Aus 1941-Papua, Indonesia are liberated with out opposition and French indochina invasion has begun.....
• Aus 1942-Indochina, Siam and islands have been Liberated only Singapore and the phillipenes remain, the war in Europe is going well and USA joins the fight........
• Aus 1943-We begin creating defences and a fleet, singapore has fallen to Japan and they have begun there invasion of the Philpenes, Russia is about to fall...
• Aus-1944-We have taken pearl Harbor and invaded the US mainland it was a huge fail, India has fallen to the ♥♥♥♥, Russia holds on........
• 1945-Aus- Everything has gone to hell US have invaded france,Russia is beating back ♥♥♥♥ and Germany.
• 1946-Aus-''They have taken the Germany and the Japan. We have barred the gates but cannot hold them for long. The ground shakes, drums... drums in the deep. We cannot get out. A shadow lurks in the dark. We can not get out... they are coming.''..........
• 1947-Aus-pearl habour has fallen to the US, Brits press indochina.
• 1950- Aus - we have held them at bay for 3 years game ends AUSTRALIAN EMPIRE REMAINS !!!!
• 11/10 would be Australian Dictator like Tony Abbott again.

This is the only game by Paradox where killing France is easy.

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THIS GAME IS AMAZING. this is the most comprehensive, most complete game I've seen in any gernre. It's definitely the type of game you need to invest time into learning. There is a deep learning curve but once you get a feel for the game, it makes sense why its so difficult to learn, because it basically lets you control almost anything. The game dynamics are amazing and very complicated but then again, so is global warfare. There is a great community of devoted HOI3 players who have answered literally every question related to this game so if you get it and find yourself not understanding the game dynamics, such as the supply situation, you can easily go online and read up on it. The supply dynamics, while sometimes buggy, is one of my favorite aspects of the game. If you're invading Western france, make sure to get large ports and not to outpace your supplies, less you fall victim to an axis counter attack that finds your front undersupplied and pushes them back in chaos. I like how the game manages the organization of the troops, both in terms of command structure and in terms of the org of the specifc unit. If they're under supplied or disorganized, they'll fail in an attack and soon you'll find the enemy routing you across the continent. It really takes a great deal of practice and patience to mount the correct offensive. You get a sense for how underprepared offensives can go awry in a second, especially when playing as Germany and trying to raise through the Soviet Union. You might get within 2 provinces of Moscow before you realize that you're supply lines havent caught up (because you didnt research the techs you needed) and then the Soviets counter attack with inferior forces and you have to scramble to recover. Thats the fun of the game though. You can prepare all you want but if things dont work out the way you planned, you often have to plan on the fly.

I played as the Soviet Union and thought I was perfectly set up to protect the mother land against the germans but got my but handed to me three ways to leningrad. It was the game of my life, reorganizing and launching desperate and doomed counter attacks to slow down the germans while I get more troops ready. It's very interesting because when you play as the Soviets you get the impression that the germans better conquer you within a year, because if they dont, you can create about 10 infantry divisions a month and thats a pace the Germans can't ever sustain.

Anyways, this game is amazing. You can play as anyone, Brazil for example, and work just to contribute a tiny amount to the war effort. Or you can play as the US and let Europe be while you focus on hunting and eliminating Japanese carrier groups that you know they can't replace the way the US can. Nimitz, Halsey and Spruance to the rescue!

If you like strategy and grand warfare, give this game a try, If you take the time to learn it and you understand what kind of game you are buying, you will not be disappointed!