A hard one to rate, because it's got a much better onboarding process than its older sibling (i.e. working the economy no longer means wrestling with this screen), but the difference between treading water and seeing real success is understanding when the simplified menus are betraying you.
I've been playing the Vicky series long enough to have met some of my most long-lasting friends as a result, but this isn't the case for all the players who are picking up the shiny new Paradox game. You can generally stay afloat by playing the tutorial and clicking the options that have the biggest, greenest "predicted profit" numbers next to them - good! It's good that people who don't know how to sort through all the info can pick this up and play with their friends without immediately crashing and burning. However...
There's a lot being calculated here, and the big "predicted profit" numbers are only so useful unless you understand what they represent. I've heard many complaints from friends who have picked this up for the first time, clicked all the correct Big Green Buttons, only to assume that it was a bug when their attempts to cut costs by gutting the military result in an economic crisis. All the buttons and numbers that you'd need to understand the economic crisis are present, but I don't think the game does a good enough job of indicating where they are and when you'd use them. This (combined with the UI simplicity) deprives the unaware player of a great deal of gameplay depth, to the point where my friends picking up Vicky for the first time describe it as "a game you watch more than you play".
If you do know what you're looking at, though, and you like the idea of "building tall" rather than "building wide" with your empires, this game will really sink its hooks into you. Learning the intricacies of Vicky 3 means you'll spend a lot less time scrolling Twitter with the game on max speed and a lot more time engaged with the game's systems, poking through the data provided to determine how you'll meet your long-term goals. The feeling of satisfaction you get from a Victoria 3 game is not dissimilar from the fun you have playing Factorio or Satisfactory - knowing a complex system of supply chains like the back of your hand, continually tweaking it to become more efficient, to grow bigger, to provide a better standard of living for the people in your country.
I don't really have a neat way to put a little bow on this, but I wanted to throw this review out there so people understand that this is NOT Crusader Kings 3. It's one of those games where you have to get really familiar with it for everything to click if you're not madly in love with the setting, but it's also a pain in the ass to become familiar with everything here. Paradox have really put forth a solid, earnest attempt at cleaning this up so it resembles a game more than an Excel spreadsheet (the map is fucking gorgeous!) but there's really only so much you can do with a product like this. At some point, you either bounce right off of this, settle for clicking Big Green Buttons, or you sit down with a YouTube video or friend (or your knowledge from economics classes) and go "okay, so while it says you'll lose a lot of money by making this switch, you're producing a LOT more oil, which drives the price down, meaning other businesses that rely on it are more profitable, and since you've got worker cooperatives, those dividends go to the workers which (with graduated taxation) are taxable at a higher rate than ordinary wages, which mea--"
I've been playing the Vicky series long enough to have met some of my most long-lasting friends as a result, but this isn't the case for all the players who are picking up the shiny new Paradox game. You can generally stay afloat by playing the tutorial and clicking the options that have the biggest, greenest "predicted profit" numbers next to them - good! It's good that people who don't know how to sort through all the info can pick this up and play with their friends without immediately crashing and burning. However...
There's a lot being calculated here, and the big "predicted profit" numbers are only so useful unless you understand what they represent. I've heard many complaints from friends who have picked this up for the first time, clicked all the correct Big Green Buttons, only to assume that it was a bug when their attempts to cut costs by gutting the military result in an economic crisis. All the buttons and numbers that you'd need to understand the economic crisis are present, but I don't think the game does a good enough job of indicating where they are and when you'd use them. This (combined with the UI simplicity) deprives the unaware player of a great deal of gameplay depth, to the point where my friends picking up Vicky for the first time describe it as "a game you watch more than you play".
If you do know what you're looking at, though, and you like the idea of "building tall" rather than "building wide" with your empires, this game will really sink its hooks into you. Learning the intricacies of Vicky 3 means you'll spend a lot less time scrolling Twitter with the game on max speed and a lot more time engaged with the game's systems, poking through the data provided to determine how you'll meet your long-term goals. The feeling of satisfaction you get from a Victoria 3 game is not dissimilar from the fun you have playing Factorio or Satisfactory - knowing a complex system of supply chains like the back of your hand, continually tweaking it to become more efficient, to grow bigger, to provide a better standard of living for the people in your country.
I don't really have a neat way to put a little bow on this, but I wanted to throw this review out there so people understand that this is NOT Crusader Kings 3. It's one of those games where you have to get really familiar with it for everything to click if you're not madly in love with the setting, but it's also a pain in the ass to become familiar with everything here. Paradox have really put forth a solid, earnest attempt at cleaning this up so it resembles a game more than an Excel spreadsheet (the map is fucking gorgeous!) but there's really only so much you can do with a product like this. At some point, you either bounce right off of this, settle for clicking Big Green Buttons, or you sit down with a YouTube video or friend (or your knowledge from economics classes) and go "okay, so while it says you'll lose a lot of money by making this switch, you're producing a LOT more oil, which drives the price down, meaning other businesses that rely on it are more profitable, and since you've got worker cooperatives, those dividends go to the workers which (with graduated taxation) are taxable at a higher rate than ordinary wages, which mea--"
Reviewed on Jan 03, 2023