Veteran Europa Universalis player here (5000+ hrs) : I have never left a negative review for a game in this series before- but after the most recent update to EUV I feel I have to speak up.

I really really really want to like this game. . . but it just isn't fun. Here's where the game breaks down for me:

Historical Flavor: A lot of players have commented that there isn't a noticeable difference in playthrough experience between starting nations. Notably absent from EUV at the moment is a mechanic similar to mission trees in EUIV- a unique map for nations that rewards players who achieve historical goals with buffs, claims, and event chains that ground the roleplaying experience that this series is known for. Instead, players are mostly left to experience a series of unchained historical events that have minimal impact on most nations that receive them. While the sandbox experience has a lot of appeal for player agency and encouraging replayability, it currently feels like there's not much in the box besides sand.

While I like sand as much as the next person its ultimately "coarse and it gets everywhere", and well you get the point. . .

Pacing of Conquest: It seems the devs are aware that the game feels like it takes too long from the player perspective and are working on speeding it up. While I can appreciate that consideration, here are two areas I have yet to see progress in: the speed of conquest, and the speed of integration of territories. Building the CB acquisition process around a 4 year cooldown timer titled "Call Parliament" is a mindbogglingly bad choice. It slows down an already long game and forces the player to wait to participate in what should be a core aspect of this role playing game- warfare and conquest. If the player does manage to conqueror vast stretches of land, they are then forced into a different waiting game around integration- the average territory can take up to 10 years to core- over double the amount of time in EUIV and that's only if you have an advisor working on the process. Passive integration can take well over a hundred years to complete, and with the shear number of provinces and territories in the game, its almost a guarantee that a playthrough with an expansionist country like Muscovy or the Ottomans will face ahistorical limitations to growth.

I cannot stress this enough: it is not fun to be punished for winning wars and attempting to recreate historical empires. I expect a challenge- but this is not challenging, its frustratingly limiting.

Economics and Trade: On the one hand, I appreciate that the devs have put so much detail into creating such a detailed system for trade and economics. I think there is a lot of potential here for something fresh in the EU franchise. Currently, however, this system is mind numbingly tedious. All aspects of a nation's trade and economy can be fine tuned, but in order to run these systems efficiently- the player feels like they must constantly be pulling levers up and down. If I only had 30 or 40 levers to pull, I think it could be a fun experience. This game has hundreds- making it feel impossible to steer the ship without steering it a snail's pace. The rewards for doing so are not significant enough that I want to keep doing this for 400 hrs of gameplay- which feels like a fair estimate of how long it would take me to get through a playthrough at this pace.

On the other hand, almost everything can be automated, but the AI seems to make poor long term choices for your nation's financial health. Eventually, you will run into hard limits and economic crashes that feel frustrating exactly because you trusted that the system would take care of those things for you and from the player's perspective it seems like it isn't doing its job.

Colonization: I'm not sure what happened here, but this mechanic was a big miss. Colonization is not at all fun to manage- again, there are too many necessary levers to pull leading to the feeling that the player is actually managing 3-4 separate nations at once. In a game bogged down by complexity, the player gravitates towards nations that avoid this mechanic. The end result however is that they then lose out on one of the key historical processes that shaped the Early Modern Period- and should be a key mechanic within EUV

Ultimately, I think this game can be salvaged, but it will be a monumental task for the devs to do so. I've seen some players recommending that that new players wait until Q4 2026 to buy in, but I wouldn't be surprised if this game ends up taking much longer than that to fix because of how much needs to be changed in order to make this a fun player experience. My biggest worry in all of this is that the devs wont be able to fix it because it will be too costly and the player base will be left with a bad game in an absolute gem of a series.

I'd like to recommend to new players to buy into the development process that Paradox is known for- but after 6 months of patches, I'm not convinced that this game will make it.

Veteran Europa Universalis player here (5000+ hrs) : I have never left a negative review for a game in this series before- but after the most recent update to EUV I feel I have to speak up. I really really really want to like this game. . . but it just isn't fun. Here's where the game breaks down for me: Historical Flavor: A lot of players have commented that there isn't a noticeable difference in playthrough experience between starting nations. Notably absent from EUV at the moment is a mechanic similar to mission trees in EUIV- a unique map for nations that rewards players who achieve historical goals with buffs, claims, and event chains that ground the roleplaying experience that this series is known for. Instead, players are mostly left to experience a series of unchained historical events that have minimal impact on most nations that receive them. While the sandbox experience has a lot of appeal for player agency and encouraging replayability, it currently feels like there's not much in the box besides sand. While I like sand as much as the next person its ultimately "coarse and it gets everywhere", and well you get the point. . . Pacing of Conquest: It seems the devs are aware that the game feels like it takes too long from the player perspective and are working on speeding it up. While I can appreciate that consideration, here are two areas I have yet to see progress in: the speed of conquest, and the speed of integration of territories. Building the CB acquisition process around a 4 year cooldown timer titled "Call Parliament" is a mindbogglingly bad choice. It slows down an already long game and forces the player to wait to participate in what should be a core aspect of this role playing game- warfare and conquest. If the player does manage to conqueror vast stretches of land, they are then forced into a different waiting game around integration- the average territory can take up to 10 years to core- over double the amount of time in EUIV and that's only if you have an advisor working on the process. Passive integration can take well over a hundred years to complete, and with the shear number of provinces and territories in the game, its almost a guarantee that a playthrough with an expansionist country like Muscovy or the Ottomans will face ahistorical limitations to growth. I cannot stress this enough: it is not fun to be punished for winning wars and attempting to recreate historical empires. I expect a challenge- but this is not challenging, its frustratingly limiting. Economics and Trade: On the one hand, I appreciate that the devs have put so much detail into creating such a detailed system for trade and economics. I think there is a lot of potential here for something fresh in the EU franchise. Currently, however, this system is mind numbingly tedious. All aspects of a nation's trade and economy can be fine tuned, but in order to run these systems efficiently- the player feels like they must constantly be pulling levers up and down. If I only had 30 or 40 levers to pull, I think it could be a fun experience. This game has hundreds- making it feel impossible to steer the ship without steering it a snail's pace. The rewards for doing so are not significant enough that I want to keep doing this for 400 hrs of gameplay- which feels like a fair estimate of how long it would take me to get through a playthrough at this pace. On the other hand, almost everything can be automated, but the AI seems to make poor long term choices for your nation's financial health. Eventually, you will run into hard limits and economic crashes that feel frustrating exactly because you trusted that the system would take care of those things for you and from the player's perspective it seems like it isn't doing its job. Colonization: I'm not sure what happened here, but this mechanic was a big miss. Colonization is not at all fun to manage- again, there are too many necessary levers to pull leading to the feeling that the player is actually managing 3-4 separate nations at once. In a game bogged down by complexity, the player gravitates towards nations that avoid this mechanic. The end result however is that they then lose out on one of the key historical processes that shaped the Early Modern Period- and should be a key mechanic within EUV Ultimately, I think this game can be salvaged, but it will be a monumental task for the devs to do so. I've seen some players recommending that that new players wait until Q4 2026 to buy in, but I wouldn't be surprised if this game ends up taking much longer than that to fix because of how much needs to be changed in order to make this a fun player experience. My biggest worry in all of this is that the devs wont be able to fix it because it will be too costly and the player base will be left with a bad game in an absolute gem of a series. I'd like to recommend to new players to buy into the development process that Paradox is known for- but after 6 months of patches, I'm not convinced that this game will make it.