Rating: 
Summary: boring
Review: I love strategy games.
I still play CIV2, Master of Orion2, CTP2.
And remember others fondly.
This isn't one of them.This one is just a lame game. It's slow. Game play is close to non-existent.
conquest is not fun, but tedious.
Marching a group of your soldiers from one of your towns to another and a significant percentage of them will die.
Same with sailing your ships. If you had 3 ships and sailed them from England to Germany, how many would you reasonably expect to make this short voyage? How many if you controlled all the coastal regions in northern europe? If you think all your ships should typically manage to sail for an entire day without sinking, your vision does not agree with this game.
As I said, it's a very lame game.
Save your money for CIV3 or Arcanum.
Rating:
Summary: boring
Review: I love strategy games.
I still play CIV2, Master of Orion2, CTP2.
And remember others fondly.
This isn't one of them. This one is just a lame game. It's slow. Game play is close to non-existent.
conquest is not fun, but tedious.
Marching a group of your soldiers from one of your towns to another and a significant percentage of them will die.
Same with sailing your ships. If you had 3 ships and sailed them from England to Germany, how many would you reasonably expect to make this short voyage? How many if you controlled all the coastal regions in northern europe? If you think all your ships should typically manage to sail for an entire day without sinking, your vision does not agree with this game.
As I said, it's a very lame game.
Save your money for CIV3 or Arcanum.
Rating: 
Summary: deep, perverse and compelling
Review: I love this game for its deep alt historical gameplay. I've had the Turks conquer India and half of Germany, I've had France carved up into pizza for all Europe to enjoy, I've had the English Civil War come a century early. so cool. the good stuff, noted by many many other reviewers, is all true. the bad stuff:
a)this is a tough game to learn, and i believe you need experience with board strat games to really crack the nut.
b) and the box lies on the specs you need to play the game. even with patches etc., i am unable to finish any campaign game i start unless i want to buy more hardware. the silver lining
since i can't finish any game i start, i now have my life back. i found this game very, very compelling.
Rating: 
Summary: Europa Universalis is complex in a very good way
Review: I've been waiting for this game to come out for months after reading about it in various video gaming magazines. And now that it's come out, I'm not disappointed in the slightest. The scope of this game is truly large...what I like is the ability to manage everything that a ruler has to: diplomacy, economics, and the military, among other things. This doesn't make the game unwieldy, however, which is a great achievement. In the diplomacy aspect alone, EU shines. One can set up military alliances, royal marriages, and even trade embargoes. The state religion you propose can also affect your relationships with other nations and even people within your own country. No other game to date comes close to this amount of strategic complexity...it's not *just* about conquering, it's about co-habitation, too. The only area I wish they'd spent more time with is with the spelling and grammar. There are a lot of silly little spelling errors ("War of Independance") and phrases like "They was..." and "You is..." It's a small complaint, but one nonetheless. Overall, EU is the type of game that's complicated, but in a good way. Players have lots of options to explore and lots of fun to be had.
Rating:
Summary: Very good ... not great ... not yet anyway
Review: I've only basically played for 2 days so far, but i do like what i've seen ... to a degree. The emphasis on trade, diplomacy and religion is great. Its not just another explore and conquer game which is awesome. Although after a while you get bored and lapse into starting wars ... and doing so will get you punished by the AI... in a hurry. The manual is horrible. The grammar and spelling in the game itself is horrible, you can tell these programmers failed English in school. I've just downloaded the 1.09 patch and hopefully it will improve somethings. But, all in all very fun game. Very easy to spend hours upon hours playing in one sitting ... which i did yesterday( i think i played 15 hours straight... lol) I would very much recommend it for anyone who likes strategy games and especially loosely based historical strategy games.
Rating:
Summary: This Is How It Should Be Done
Review: If Civilization series were the best strategy games you have ever played, Europa Universalis would definitely glue you to your seat for many hours. To say that it is equally good would be an injustice because it is in a class of its own. It is an example that small software companies can produce some extraordinary works sometimes. And, undoubtedly, this game can become the one to beat in its category for months to come. If Europa Universalis has a flaw, it is because of its depth. Thanks to the skin-deep plots and gameplays that offered by most of the other real-time strategy games, most of the gamers, I believe, have adapted to the typical way to victory -- building huge army and upgrading to new technologies as soon as possible. This is not going to work as an efficient way of beating the game in this case. So many times, when I thought that with the number of the armies that I had, I could conquer a neighboring province with ease, however, it turned out that either domestic unrest or the mightier enemy force combined allies would crush my ambition. At last, I came to the realization that I am dealing with a game that emphasizes on more than just military supremacy. And, there comes the beauty of diplomacy when I started to look deeper into this game. I have always loved games with historical backgrounds but no others have provided more than Europa Universalis. The diplomacy element in this game has worked magics. It does not only add more strategic depth and replay value but a whole lot of "real-life" feels. Let us be rational. The best way to climb to the top is not to do it with just blunt aggression but also with some wits and tricks. At last, we have a game that would not require us to kill all others to win at the end. A civilized game that is. No other games integrates historical elements more tightly than Europa Universalis, either. What is said in our history textbooks would happen in the game. We would play the man/woman behind the emperors like Elizabeth and Louis XIII. Puppeteer is the word, if you like. It is as if we have gone back in time and tried to rewrite the history already knowing all the major events and having to plot along and gain the most advantages out of them. Another beauty found in this game would be its flexibility in decision making. To colonize or to just merely trade? To use aggression on the locals or to make peace? Almost nothing would restrict us from making the decision we really want to make. To be an ultra-aggressive imperialist or rich-seeking trader, the choice is always ours. A review would not give a picture of all the extraordinary elements in this game. It is just like a beautiful movie. You just have to see it for yourself. To me, the diplomatic part of this game alone would have already lured me into hours of playing. With other elements like nationalism, religions, and military operations, I deeply believe Europa Universalis is equipped with all the tools to make it to the top. If it does not, that is because it is not published by Microsoft.
Rating:
Summary: Buy this game
Review: If you call yourself a wargaming fan of any type and you do not buy this game... YOU WILL MISS OUT ON SOMETHING GREAT!!! This game is awesome. I managed to get it a day before it was scheduled to be released and have been playing it since then. The political model is amazing and the economic and military models are not lacking much. Besides such it is able to be played on lower end computers. Needing only 200 Mhz processor, 180 Megs of hard drive space and 68 Megs of RAM, it is not like many of the newer games that require you to spend several thousand on hardware to be able to play them. BUY THIS GAME!!! YOU WILL NOT BE DISSAPOINTED!!! As for me I'm getting offline to play it some more.
Rating:
Summary: Wow! There is no other game like this out there!
Review: OK, I admit to being a history buff, and it's no wonder I love Europa Universalis. Become England, Spain, or Poland, or even Turkey if you like, and try your hand at rewriting European history. Can you maintain an English presence on the Continent? Who says you have to leave Manhattan to the Dutch? Want to prevent the rise of Russia? All these goals are possible, and more. Not just a wargame, EU places you in the tangled diplomacy of Europe from 1492-1792. You can conquer and annex another country, but not without a serious diplomatic blow. Grow strong, and other countries will unite to strike you down. The AI is fairly competitive, and the graphics nifty. Don't look for tactical control here: EU is a game of grand strategy. You must balance economy, colonization, technology, unique leaders, diplomacy, and religion to maintain your empire. Religion is a particularly important and interesting angle to this game: Your state religion affects your diplomacy directly. For instance, as England you may want to find a strong Continental ally to help you control France, otherwise superior French land forces will eventually push you out of Calais (England starts with Calais in the Grand Campaign, which spans 300 years). Spain is an obvious choice, but Spain is an ardent Catholic state. If your England is Protestant, Spain is virtually unattainable. You can keep England Catholic if you wish, but you must then contend with Protestant sympathizers in your provinces. Indeed, the religious propensities of a province are a powerful factor in your ability to control that province. You cannot just wage war indiscriminately in this game, gobbling up province and country without penalty. This is a good thing. If you manage to conquer, or build a large colonial empire, it will be through a combination of carrot and stick. Like colonies? The game allows you to roam the entire globe, colonizing and exploring where you will. Poland-Lithuania might colonize Bombay instead of England, and the first country to circumnavigate Africa gets a bonus. Portugal and Spain start out with an an early advantage, but Spain is surprisingly difficult to direct successfully into the 1700s. The game also poses interesting moral questions for the modern player. True to the times, slaves are the only commodity to be gained from many African territories. Will you forego your modern sensibilites and establish colonies based on slavery? These colonies might be necessary to get your ships to India, for instance, without serious attrition due to an extended sea voyage. Or as Spain, will you obliterate the Aztec and Inca empires? If you don't, others may. Can you see England as master of the valley of Zacatecas? One unfortunate historical reality is ignored in this game, no doubt to improve gameplay: disease does not destroy Native American peoples. Accordingly, one wonders at the need for African slaves. Overall, EU succeeds admirably. The manual is a bit esoteric, and clearly translated from a foreign language. Still, the gameplay is easy to manage, and the details come soon enough. Want to know why your soldiers are dying even though they are camped? Well, what is the supply capability of the province? Is it winter? This is a super game, period. Like history? Like epic strategy? Like European history? Tired of telling your sargeant to attack that hill? Buy Europa Universalis, and see if you can rewrite history!
Rating:
Summary: UNDECIDED I'll give you the honest truth...
Review: So you're thinking about buying EU?? O.K., first let me ask you, do you like strategy games?, micromanaging?, ancient war simulation?; do you like/know games like "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Risk" and/or "Stratego"?, if the answer is yes, and you have a little pacience to spare, BUY this game. If, on the other hand, you are a "Doom" fan, a "Street Fighter" nut or a "Mortal Kombat" buff, chances are you wont like this game.
This is NOT an action game, and I think the people who gave it less than 4 stars are people who didn't understand the concept of this game. I'm not saying that if you like action games you wont like EU, but in general, "action junkies" won't like this game since, news-flash, its a STRATEGY GAME. Of course its complex, its deep, its complicated and for me at least, as a strategy/historical game fan, THATS THE POINT...a strategy/conquest game is much more enjoyable when you have lots of options, variables, etc.
Having said that, the graphics are very decent, the music is a little monotonus, and the manual (its true...) sucks!. So why the FIVE stars? you're probably wondering...if you are a hard core strategy/historical/conquer-all/feel-like-a-king/build an empire kind of guy, you know that what really matters in these kinds of games is depth, flexibility, freedom to play as you want and make your own rules, and most of all, a genuine feeling of conquest, of being the ruler of a country, etc. So if you understand what I'm saying buy this game NOW, even better, buy EU-II, it'll be even better...(NOV 29th 2001)
If you didnt get anything I said, go buy another shoot-them-up, right-scrawling, thumb-numbing action game because this one is not for you. (If on the other hand you like strategy RUN to the nearest store, but dont take my word for it, look at how many great reviews EU has gotten...with a few action-holics/mindless exceptions.....lol ;-))
HAPPY CONQUERING!
Rating:
Summary: close, but no cigar
Review: The idea behind the game is certainly great. The simulation of the time (including the Gold Standard and Balance of Power in Europe) is excellent. Gameplay, however, is too difficult and intricate, making it less fun, in my opinion.
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