Rating: 
Summary: Took a while for me to like
Review: At first I approached the game with a fast and furious mindset. To become the richest and most powerful country (like the USA) asap. I was severely penalized for this. By speeding up the time clock to reach a particular goal, I missed all the little decisions that needed to be made to achieve this. Falling behind in land and naval technology is not fun. Not hard to understand why. So only after I slowed the game down to the lowest level did i see its full potential.
And like another reviewer stated, it is possible to win without fighting a major war(s). But you have to raise forces to defend key positions on the map from rebels and pesty pirate fleets. Who your friends are become evident after a while. You can ally yourself with them in their conquest or sit on the sidelines growing stronger. It can get messy if you don't take enough things into consideration.
At this time Im 5000+ points ahead of the next country. Continuous stream of ally praposals. Leading in the tech race across the board. The largest land mass. Military all over the place. Huge annual income. You get the picture.
I recommend for any history and LARGE scale military fan.
Rating: 
Summary: Europa Crashiversalis
Review: I love the game, when it works. The game crashes on me whenever I'm within 10 years of the end. It's not a memory or speed problem, I have more than enough of both in my Sony Vaio. And, the crashes continued even after I downloaded the 1.6 patch. The most annoying part is that my e-mails to the company for technical support have gone unanswered for what is now close to two weeks; I haven't even received confirmation e-mails in response. Very poor service, to say the least. I wouldn't recommend it at this point.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Game
Review: This game is one of the best for open ended playing and replaying I've seen. It's a great challenge to command one of many nations in the game. You can be a great diplomatic leader and bring great prosperous times to your nation or be a great war commander and bring provinces of others into your ever growing empire. Or be both and bring the entire world under your flag through force or cunning. Graphics aren't the best but this game doesn't need good graphics to be good. The sound is suprisingly authentic for the time span and good to listen to. This game has awesome gameplay and good interface, some of the history information might seem daunting to people wanting to dive into commanding a nation but the game tries to give acurate detail of what is going on at the time your playing in the game. Over all this is a great game, and deserves a good look if your deciding between games.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing is Perfect...
Review: This is probably the game I have played the most of all games I have owned. While it doesn't rely on flashy graphics or fierce combat it lets you emerse yourself in the real world. Which for people who'd rather be a god, or not interest in history may be a turn off. The soundtrack, historical detail, and ability to watch the world change over time are very immersing and fulfilling. Though the game is not for everyone those who want a simple, easy to pick up game may be turned off, as well as those looking for a click fest.
Rating:
Summary: Fun intro to European history
Review: I have played this game extensively since purchasing it last Spring. The historical accuracy is both its greatest strength and weakness. It is a strength because you are immersed in something like the world of the 15th century and beyond. You can follow even obscure states through 300 years of their history. But the weakness of historical accuracy is that the game forces you into the groove of actual history. It does this using several more or less hidden factors. First, innumerable historically based, programmed events will give you unique opportunities or shock your country out of tranquility with little regard to what you have done to merit them. Second, your territories have cultures that are entirely inflexible, as does your government. If you hold territories that have cultures different from those of your government you will never have peace, no matter how many centuries you have held them. This gives you a strong incentive to steer clear of them in the first place. Finally, your government belongs to one of five technology groups, all with different rates of technological development. If you are in a slow (i.e., non-European) group, you will eventually be overwhelmed by European conquerors. The game is fun and replayable. But the more or less determined outcomes for individual states makes playing anything but a medium to large European power either boring or frustrating. The game also lacks any tactical aspect. On the whole, much better than anything else in strategy, and in tactics and resource management very poor compared to offerings like Medieval Total War or Age of Kings.
Rating:
Summary: overrated
Review: if you are looking for the best- try medieval:total war or hearts of iron instead.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for the casual gamer
Review: I can apreciate the work that went into creating a game with this degree of complexity, and I really wanted very much to love this game. However, I have to give it 2 stars for an overall rating of how fun it is to play. I get the impression from the on-line discussion boards that in order to do well at this game, you need to devote yourself to it on a more-or-less full-time basis for months, if not years. If you don't have the time to make that kind of committment to make to a computer game, you might find this rough going. I found the overall design to be satisfactory, and I like the way you can easily group, ungroup, regroup, and maneuver your armies. It would be nice to be able to exert more control over what your armies are doing once they engage in combat (the only combat control you can exercise is to choose to flee; the resolution of battles occurs automatically, without your control), but that is minor point for me. You can also exercise considerable control over many aspects of your society, such as your tolerance for other religions, the degree to which you want to specialize in land or naval power, whether you want to be innovative or closed-minded, and so on. There is a lot here to like. However, there are two big issues that reduce the fun (and the replayability) for me. The first is the constant problem of revolutions. As another reviewer pointed out, you should plan to spend hours of real time endlessly shuttling your armies around trying to stamp out one revolution after the next. This is astoundingly tedious after awhile. The second is the fact that you are completely locked in to the real history of your country. If you are playing China, and China historically suffered a huge government scandal in 1699, when 1699 rolls around you are screwed no matter how you've played so far. It occured to me that the point of the game is not really to expand your empire, but to try your hand at re-playing actual historyy. This does have its interesting moments, but it zaps the replayability to 0. Do I really want to play Spain again and go through all the exact same historically driven events over agin? Not really. This locked-in history also really limits the number of countries that you can expect to play enjoyably. Yes, it's often said that there are 200 countries, and you can play any of them. However, the historical inevitability built into the game limits the fun factor for most. Few countries are even able to explore the world beyond their known lands, because you need special exploring units to all you to venture into new map zones, and the historically colonial countries just have a built-in edge in the number of explorers they receive. You can play the Inca empire if you'd like to spend several hours staring at the same 20 provinces, with no way to explore beyond them. Overall, I have to say that I don't really consider this to be a "game." It is more like a very detailed history sim. Judging from the positive reviews here and the on-line message boards, there are plenty of people out there who love this, and I can see how that might be possible for someone who has lots and lots and lots of time to spend learning it, and who does not mind the built-in history. I would have preferred something a little less pre-ordained and labor intensive.
Rating:
Summary: Not Bad!
Review: You gotta like this game if you have played Europa Universalis I. It isn't much different but still interesting and time passing game. Only drawback is that there no real enhacements for the game, example you find difficulty to find a provision on the map.
Rating:
Summary: Dangerously Addictive
Review: When you play the game on and on and on and on.. the musics start to repeat itself and gets boring.. all my co-workers actually loved the musics when they heard it for the first time but after months of continious play i had to put on a headphone.
The best game i have ever played so far...looking forward for EU3 and hopefully the crusades against the Turks will slow down a little..
Rating:
Summary: FANTASTIC
Review: This game was great. I have been playing it for almost a year and I'm still not board with it. I really like history and this has a lot tied in with it. The goal is to have the highest score by 1819 and many things go into that score. You get scored for winning battles,winning wars,having a strong economy,and for succesful diplomatic negotiating. The game is slow for people who like fast action games but is great for people who want an fun game and a small education to go with it. There are not a lot of graphics and the world screen is like a Risk board. You don't have control once you attack someone but you decide where to attack next.
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