Rating: 
Summary: THE NEW MEANING OF THE WORD "DUNG"!
Review: This game gives the word "DUNG" a new meaning, very sloppy programming, out of the box this game was horrible, five patches later, almost six now, it's till horrible. The AI has no AI at all worth playing against. Unless you like slaughtering the whole board that is and playing an ahistorical game all the way around. I took a minor like Brazil and crushed the Germans and Italians, BRAZIL!! woopee a real major power overwhelms the world in WWII and single handedly destroys the Axis powers with little or no help at all from the so-called computer allies who's greatest endeavor was sending a division at a time to be crushed by the 20 to 40 divisions guarding the coastlines of France. Pathetic game. I agree with another poster, save your money and get a quality game from Battlefront.com "Strategic Command", you can bet it will at least be challenging and not a "toddlers toy" like HOI.
Rating:
Summary: Worthless garbage!
Review: Paradox took a great concept and ruined it completely. Their obsession with real-time gaming made what was a promising idea into a mess. There are simply too many things to manage and the flow of the game is ruined by having to think about issues like technology and resources; why can't the computer look after these, I only want to plan a war! And then the combat interface is a joke: imagine sending an army to invade a territory while losing the territory you invaded from being itself occupied by an enemy force - ridiculous! It couldn't happen in real life but it does in HoI. My advice: save your money and buy Strategic Command.
Rating: 
Summary: Geat Game
Review: In response to Michael L. Starzec's review
Michael I belive that you are wrong. It is very much possible to defeat Germany in this game. As Nationalist China you can also defeat Japan granted it is difficult it can be done. And don't be doing any Ethiopa bashing, I have before on the hardest level of the game soundly defeated Italy with Ethiopia in East Africa if you would like to know how, I would be more than happy to explain. MY ONLY COMPLAINT is that the Game is to easy. I believe this game is ment for multiplayer games they are much more difficult and fun to play. I suggest you try some.
Rating: 
Summary: Poorly conceived concept on a great game
Review: If you loved EU2, your instinct would be to love a game that uses the same historical accuracy, but puts in WW2. In EU2, you could take control of any number of obscure countries and see if you could make them the envy of the world by 1820. The same framework is set on this historical period, but is not well thought out.1. EU2 ran from 1415-1820. This game runs from 1936-1948, a much too short time period to really change history. For example, I took over Poland in 1936 and thanks to history, I knew Hitler was coming. I beefed up the military, made peace with USSR so I would not have to fight a two front war, slaved over fortifications, allied with UK and France and even got the Czechs on my side. While we prevented Hitler from taking Czechs, Germany blew right through Poland. I repeated the scenario with different strategies, to no avail. The same issue occurred with taking over Nationalist China against Japan. Thus, 3 years to prepare for war is not enough. 2. Since you can't change history with the minor powers, you are left to play with the larger powers. Of course, since you are forced into that course of action, it makes it less fun. 3. Dumb decisions by the computer. Playing Italy one game, I noted Poland avoided an invasion while Hitler declared war on the USSR with allies Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria. The purged Russian army slices through Bulgaria and all the way into Germany. I chose not to join the Axis and just watched, dumbfounded as Germany, despite being savagely beaten by the USSR, still declares war on Poland in 9/1/39??? Why? On the flip side, England and France just sit by as the USSR annexes all of Germany leaving Poland and Italy the only states west of the Rhine that are non-communist. 4. The manual is horrible: I don't know how to obtain resources other than randomly offering deals into the marketplace, you have no idea why you industrial capacity is 0 when it is running full power, you can't seem to change governments at all, thus making history static. The manual is so poor, you might as well recycle it. If the game ran from 1920-1950, then the game might be the equal of EU2. It is almost as if they forgot everything that made EU2 a really engaging game or, as my cynical side warns me, as there was an EU1 that was not as good as EU2, the makers of this game will suddenly improve HOI into HOI2, allowing them to have to sell two games.
Rating:
Summary: It is not EU2, so don't buy it
Review: After playing EU2, I was very excited about this game. As a graduate with a history and political science major in college, I was extremely impressed with the historical accuracy of EU2 which engaged the player in the historical milieu of Europe from 1450 through 1820. The problem with this game is that unless you want to play a major power, you have no chance of having any fun. I tried playing Poland, South Africa and Ethiopia. With Poland, I worked with the idea of at least holding off Germany with a decent defensive war. Unfortunately, starting in 1936 gave me three years to try to undo all the Polish military shortfalls. Even with the 20/20 hindsight of history, I could not stop the Germans juggernaut. Likewise, good luck if you play Ethopia. If you are required to play the major powers to have any chance of success, it completely undoes the fun of EU2, in which you could play any country and with some skill and luck, make a reasonable show of skill and change the course of history, which is why you are playing this game. In EU2, I was able to make the declining power, Venice, into a Mediterranean power, defeating Turkey. Likewise, I was able to change history completely when Poland eliminated Russia, allied with Austria and survived to fight Napoleon or when Brittany decline to accede to be part of France or a lackey of England. In this game, the short time span makes it impossible to do anything with the minor powers. Thus, it essentially allows you to fiddle with Nazi Germany to see if it can defeat Russia early and stop the Allies in the West: Whoopee!! I get to make the genocidal maniacs succeed, how fun! This is a game with a ton of possibilties that is limited by a too short time frame. If it started in 1918, then there might be a chance to make the game fun playing unusual minor powers. As it stands, just pray you survive the Nazi onslaught if you decide to play the Allies. Very disappointing.
Rating: 
Summary: Solid, if complex, strategy game
Review: Hearts of Iron is a fun but quite complex game of global strategy that takes place during the WW II era. It can begin as early as 1936 and can end as late as 1948. The player can play any country in the world during that era, from the major axis or allied powers to the the smallest nations. The game is primarily one of military strategy, including numerous land, naval, and air units; but other factors (making use of strategic resources, running convoys, trading for needed materials on the international market, developing new technology, and managing diplomacy) are also important aspects of the game. Combine two parts Europa Universalis II (a previous effort by the same company) to one part part classic WW II tabletop wargames, add a dash of Civ 3, and you've got Hearts of Iron. I bought this game with some hesitation because I had very mixed feelings about EU2, the game's most obvious direct predecessor. While sometimes fun to play for short periods, the problem of revolts in EU2 killed the game for me and made it unplayable in the long term. HOI overcomes this limitation; it still includes a social unrest factor, but it manifests as lost production and reduced performance of your military units, and possibly the overthrow of your government, but without the endless proliferation of rebel armies. Some reviewers have complained about the complexity of the tech tree in HOI, but this is actually one of my favorite aspects of the game. It is not possible to research everything (at least, not until you become quite good at the game), so you really need to think about your long-term tech goals and choose wisely from among all the choices. I think this is one of the most sucessful aspects of the game. The maneuvering of the miliatry units is straightforward. The game's AI has few surprises, but it does an adquate job of making you work for your territorial advances and it will take advantage if you leave holes in your defenses. The biggest limitation of the game is the relatively poor documentation, considering the high degree of complexity. There are many, many things that you have to figure out and control, and they are not explained very well, if at all. Fortunately, Paradox Games has some very good message boards that answer most questions. Be prepared to spend some time reading the boards to try to help you figure out the game's often mysterious behavior. For example, why your industrial capacity keeps going up and down, or how you go about loading your atomic bombs onto delivery vehicles, or how you trade your excess coal for the steel you need on the world market. You often have very little understanding of the mechanics of how the different choices you make affect what happens in the game. Maybe this is good, because it prevents players from trying to "min-max" the numbers. But it can also sometimes be frustrating, because you see your strategic resources changing or your troops doing worse in combat than you think that they should be, and you don't know what is happening to cause it. Overall, a very solid and fun global strategy game, with a very high degree of complexity and micromanagement of units and resources and often-mysterious game mechanics.
Rating:
Summary: The "new" greatest strategy game of all time.
Review: Take what was previously the greatest strategy game of all time (PANZER GENERAL II), Axis & Allies (too simple), and The Operational Art of War (too complex)and roll them into the "new" greatest strategy game of all time. If I was Goldie Locks this one would be JUST RIGHT. Hearts of Iron is simply fantastic. The game as it is issued was quite "buggy", but 99.9% of that is fixed in the v1.04update that is available for free online. For moders I would rate it a 7 as far as ease of modification (not totaly simple but not too complex).
Rating:
Summary: The best WWII sim yet
Review: This is an amazingly comprehensive and detailed WWII sim. The game picks up where Axis and Allies left off. This is a detailed stratagy game, not a shoot-em-up graphics game. Anyone who enjoyed old fashioned book case games will love this.
Rating:
Summary: frustrating
Review: TOOO many gliches and inconsistantancies to be anything but frustrating. Freeze downs on movement of any factor to the others is not consistant with any software like this..just shows despite the "packaging" which is impressive that little effort was put into the battle sequences...an awful lot of program blow offs and aborts are present which shows lack of debugging..rush it to market and let the user beware
Rating:
Summary: Hearts of Iron
Review: A simply fantastic game. The only reason it doesn't have five stars are some problems that should be fixed in the next patch, due out any time now. The play is immersive and addictive and the replayability is excellent. If you like history, WWII, and anything military you will love this game.
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