The same is likely to be true for Hearts of Iron 4.Īlso there’s a bunch of cosmetic DLC that is purely optional. The DLC model is meant to be a la carte based on what the player wants in their game (“want to play Vikings in CK2? Buy The Old Gods,” etc.).
Also unique to Paradox is the release of huge free patches with each expansion, providing all players with some of the content of the expansions for nothing. Crusader Kings 2 was released in like 2011 and is still getting regular expansions. Paradox has a fairly unique continuous development cycle for all of their internally-developed titles, with games continuing to be supported with regular new content for years after their release. As the USA, you can choose to appoint Communist or Fascist advisors, which will gradually increase the power of those factions and lead to them taking power - though probably not without fighting a Second American Civil War first!Īren’t Paradox games just one big DLC-fest?
There are two game modes to choose from at start: one where things will tend to follow more of a historical path that leads to WW2 starting in August of 1939, and another where things are slightly more open-ended in a vein similar to CK2 or EU4.
A short bulleted summary of the major changes:
With Hearts of Iron 4, Paradox has spent several years in what has generally been a quite long development cycle to re-examine the holy cows of the Hearts of Iron series and to make sure they hit this nail on the head. Still, it has a small but dedicated base of people who somehow insist that it's great. As with most Paradox games it gradually got better over time (and with expansions), but it remains a mediocre game. It was broken at launch in ways that are pretty much unthinkable for modern Paradox games (welp, Imperator: Rome's awful release pretty much undid all of that progress but at least it was playable, unlike launch HOI3), and suffered a lot from questionable design, bad AI, overcomplexity, and piss-poor optimization. I thought Hearts of Iron 3 was a poo poo game? What’s different now? The Hearts of Iron series (mainly HOI2) have been showcased in almost all of the major goon mega-LP’s that span the entire timeline of Paradox games. Prior to Europa Universalis III, the Hearts of Iron series was Paradox’s best-selling product, allowing the player to take control of an country in the world during the conflict, from the great powers of the Allies and Axis, all the way down to tiny little Bhutan.
Hearts of Iron IV is the latest installment of Paradox Interactive’s Hearts of Iron series of grand strategy games, covering the rough time period surrounding World War 2 (1936-1948, though previous games have bumped the cap all the way up to 1964).