Rating: 
Summary: Complex, maddening, irritating..... and enormously fun
Review: Choose one of, say, 120 nations -- from the UK down to Zanzibar -- and one of 5 points in history. Throw in a complex world economic market, multilateral geopolitics, antsy minorities, griping aristos, and a shortage of machine parts.... and settle down to many hours thoughtful strategy gaming.Upgrade 1.03 is completely stable (easy upgrades from the website); and there is a booming, active user forum comparing strategies, tactics, and advice (including more in-depth economic analysis than Alan Greenspan offers in real life). Finally, the game is eminently moddable -- indeed, the gamemakers encourage it actively. If you are looking for cutsey Sims, don't look here. And don't look to finish a game quickly. But for history, economics, and geopolitical fiddling.... a great game.
Rating: 
Summary: I Love this game
Review: Despite a few of the bad comments on here, I went ahead and bought the game anyway since I'm a big fan of these historically accurate wide scale games. It took about a week to get used to the game but after that the game became easy. But its weird, even though I did conquer Europe with several different countries, I always lost the game because this game is all about prestige, in that regard this game is hard. But just dont get into many wars and choose your politics carefully and you should win this game.
On the bad side I don't know if its the game or my new computer, but the game kept kicking me off
Rating: 
Summary: incomprehensible
Review: Do not by this game unless you are a genius! As a veteran of 3 generations of Civilisation and Railroad Tycoon and many other strategy games I found this game completely incomprehensible.
For such a complex game to have no tutorial is unforgiveable. The manual is useless: inaccurate, incomplete and states the obvious at length without telling you the real things you need to know to actually do things. Most of the time things that the manual says you can do you cannot do for a reason that is kept secret.
Example 1: The manual tells you to move a division onto a transport in an adjacent sea zone but when you do this nothing happens. The game does not tell you why it is ignoring you. Eventually, by trial and error, you discover that it takes 2 transports to ship one division. There is no excuse for basic information like this not to be in the manual and in the on screen help.
Example 2. At the start of the Civil War the USA has high unemployment and NO manpower available. This is very odd in itself but as there is no way to increase manpower the Confederacy - whose army outnumbers the USA by 2.5:1 - wins every time.
My advice to Paradox: take one programmer off of making the game more and more complicated and put him/her on making the game playable.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Game
Review: Have you ever wondered what it would be like to rule a nation during the cultured Victorian era? I know I have, and now thanks to Paradox entertainment we all have our chance. Running a nation is no easy business, but with many options available to you, why not give it a go? Ruling from the mid 19th century to early 20th century, it is possible to establish a colonial empire, gain land in the civilized continent of Europe, mayhap to save the decaying Ottoman empire? This has to be one of the most fun games out there, and I think it will exceed even the acclaimed Europa Universalis series. It is INDEED a good purchase if you are a fan of strategy games or history. It is also an excellent learning tool as if teaches 19th century history in an amusing game setting. J.
Rating:
Summary: More Work Than Play
Review: I don't recommend this game. Victoria, though the name might sound really appealing to strategy game fans like me, it's built on an entirely similar interface as the Europa Universalis series. There's going to be little new stuff as well as innovation and change in this game. Though I haven't brought and played Victoria yet, I have read its reviews at www.gamespot.com and the reviews given to Victoria ain't good. You can go read it for yourself if you want. It says that there are many irritating bugs yet to be fixed and that there's lots of micro-management involved in Victoria. I mean, there's more work than play in this game and you may end up being left frustrated than entertained when you play Victoria. I own Europa Universalis 2 and Hearts Of Iron, both by Strategy First and playing this two similar games leaves me annoyed sometimes. Sure, the colourful maps are really attractive and gives one strategy fan a sense of power, but with a pathetic gameplay, it really is just like a waste of money. There's so much action involved when you don't need one, such as multiple battles going on at the same time; and so little action when you get bored and need one, such as handling the boring task of doing research, as in the Hearts Of Iron game. The graphics are also silly. For example, when you attack an enemy unit at a foreign land, there's practically no pleasing action or effects that you can see. Just two units coming towards each other and firing guns at each other in an upright position. Overall, I say don't waste your money on Victoria cause you'll be paying for more stress in your life. Take the money elsewhere and save up for a powerful gaming computer and if you already have one, go get much better strategy games like Microsoft's Age Of Mythology, Rise Of Nations or C&C: Generals.
Rating:
Summary: Sophisticated Real Strategy Game
Review: I hesitated to buy Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun owing to some of the negative reviews it received here. It is my pleasure to report that those criticisms are largely unfounded. Some people have problems when a game is buggy, crashes, etc. As the owner of a computer software company, it has been my experience that it is not the game that is a problem but the PC on which the user is trying to run it. New games and other software take advantage of technological advances in the hardware to do things that older machines can't do. If your PC crashes, look at its capabilities before you level criticism at the game. Some people enjoy what are usually called Real Time Strategy games. My observation is that such games are anything but strategic in character. They are all 'build a village' games that actually emphasize tactics and have no real strategy to them. They rely upon flashy graphics and sometimes arcade features to attract users, in the same manner that the film industry now substitutes special effects for a good plotline, often resulting is visually attractive pablum. Victoria is a real strategy game. It requires forethought and planning, and doing so not only in a small scale tactical environment but also seeing the big picture well in advance and adjusting how you run a country accordingly. Small strategic mistakes can have longterm consequences. This game is well thought out and presented. It has three scenarios: the American Civil War, World War I and the Grand Campaign. The latter gives a player the chance to manage a country throughout the Age of Imperialism, building not only that nation internally but forging 'a place in the sun,' as Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany put it, founding and developing colonies around the globe in competition with the other imperialist nations. If you want a mindless shoot-'em-up, play something else. If you want a game that challenges you to think, buy this one!
Rating: 
Summary: A shot too far
Review: I hope you know the former games, which earned Paradox rewards - Europa Universalis or Heart of Iron. If not, it will be a hard time getting into this game. The manual is incomplete and near useless, a tuorial is not available. The game itself is meant to be a strategic game based on historical developments in the 19th century. You can play nearly any country existing at that time and are supposed to shape its march into the 20th century. Politics, diplomacy, economics, warfare (on division/corps level) - all there. The interface once learned is pretty good, various statistics help keeping overview, the map is scalable. So far, so well. But be awae of the things that made me rate a 2 instead of the 5 the game earns according to its fans:
- There are way too many flaws in the economic model on top of the fact of its poor (for beginners: non existent) explanation of the interdependencies.
- The warfare AI is incompetent, incongruent and incapable
- History recreation and a free strategy game did not blend well - the one approach always harms the other one
- You may indefinitely (enough troops given) invade other countries by sea. Yep - that's right- from Prussia to China directly, no limit on troop numbers, no stations required on the way. With sailing transport ships in 1836 (game start)
- And - as with each Paradox game - the game you got shipped is not the one you will play. The number of bugs and flaws forced Paradox to ship at least 3 to 5 patches out, before the game has a sufficient grade of completeness. And you are supposed to test them until a dedicated fan community together with Paradox finally manages to set the game to a purchase state (one year after first sales) In a nutshell - you do not buy a game. The challenge is to master the inexplained (failed manual), not to master the game AI. The fun is to micromanage your economy and to watch strange computer moves in various computer controlled nations, not to play the game. So you buy a huge, impressive and well thought through ... sandbox. If you like model trains and spendhours on setting up train environments on many square meters, you will love the game. If you like strategy and challenge - keep your hands off. Thorsten
Rating:
Summary: Incredible, Deep Strategy Game
Review: Ignore some of the bad reviews you see here. It's obvious from reading them that out of all the bad reviews, only one of the people who wrote them (so far) has actually played the game. However, if you're looking for a simple strategy game, Victoria might not be for you. It doesn't seem so at first glance, but it's a very deep and complex game. For those who enjoy deeper games, this just makes it more rewarding to play. I bought this game when it first came out and now, months later, I still play it daily. One of the complaints I've come across a few times is the number of patches that Paradox usually makes to their games. Why is such continued support a bad thing? Years after the games come out, Paradox still updates the games for free. In the past, this has not only included bug fixes, but new music, new scenarios, and other new content to the game. It's just one more reason that Paradox games are worth their cost. The economic simulation Victoria provides is much deeper than the simple one given in EU2, and much better because of it. With supply and demand economics built in, you can manage a large number of different types of factories to build products to sell, and develop the infrastructure to boost production and your economy. This game is far superior to Hearts of Iron, and I believe it to be better even than the original Europa Universalis II.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible, Deep Strategy Game
Review: Ignore some of the bad reviews you see here. It's obvious from reading them that out of all the bad reviews, only one of the people who wrote them (so far) has actually played the game. If you're looking for a simple strategy game, Victoria might not be for you. It doesn't seem so at first glance, but it's a very deep and complex game. This just makes it more rewarding to play. I bought this game when it first came out and now, months later, I still play it daily. One of the complaints I've come across a few times is the number of patches that Paradox usually makes to their games. Why is such continued support a bad thing? Years after the games come out, Paradox still updates the games for free. In the past, this has not only included bug fixes, but new music, new scenarios, and other new content to the game. It's just one more reason that Paradox games are worth their cost. The economic simulation Victoria provides is much deeper than the simple one given in EU2, and much better because of it. This game is far superior to Hearts of Iron, and I believe it to be better even than the original Europa Universalis II.
Rating:
Summary: DEVELOPERS OWN WORDS
Review: Just and update to let you all that are thinking of purchasing this game. One of the Developers himself Johan came into the forums and stated they would not make anymore games simular to VICTORIA because it did not sell. The over complex gameplay, the lack of tutorial or indepth manual and patches that have still not fixed some of the main problems of this game have pretty much put this one in the direction of the bargain bins early. If you want to play it, just wait a few more months, it will be $20 or less, I've seen it for $15 on ebay and no one even bid on it. When you have a developer come into the forums and say the game was a bad design, it's bad.
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