Victoria 3

Addicting? Yes. Fun? No. Not really. Victoria 3 is a love-hate affair.

(Note: Most of my "playtime" is the game being left running in my taskbar, because the game's got a decent load time and I didn't feel like waiting)

Most of your time in Vic3 will be spent doing absolutely nothing, except staring at the screen.

You're going to crank the game speed up to max, queue up some construction, maybe start a legislative action, and then... wait. And wait. And wait.

What this game's missing that Europa Universalis has more of is, a way for you to *create the conditions* for something in-game to happen.

For example, I was playing as Columbia District (Vancouver), so a British Colony. I wanted to declare independence at one point, but the UK allied with USA. What can you do about that? Nothing.

That alliance will stand for the entire game. No random events mess with it. The CPU will rarely change alliances themselves. You have no tools to help them hate each other etc. There's some variability between runs; UK won't ally with USA every game. But once they do, it's sealed.

There's a lot of economic complexity to the game. That is a feature, not a bug, and it adds to both the addictiveness and the frustration. Guarantee at some point in your game, you'll throw your hands up and think, "WHY AM I LOSING MONEY NOW?"

The game only tells you the budget effects of your actions in a few scenarios. For the rest, you're on your own.

And yet, for all its complexity, the standard "economic build" for all countries is roughly the same: Build up Wood/Fabric to afford Construction Sectors with Wood. Then work on Iron and Tools, so you can switch those sectors to Iron and construct things faster -- basically that loop: Build the stuff to let you construct more, then construct more, then build up more stuff to let you construct more etc.

If you're a parent, or someone with limited time to play, I would steer clear of this. You need to be able to study to "succeed" here.

And honestly the reward for "success" in Victoria 3 is basically nothing, either. It feels very abrupt and unsatisfactory when the game ends.

I really want to enjoy Victoria 3 but there's just so little to actually do. Most of the moment to moment gameplay is watching a progress bar occasionally tick-up while you play whack-a-mole with events which represent your only real interaction points outside of clicking a policy here and there, or setting your production priorities.

The supply chain game gets vastly more interesting in the mid-late game, but there is so little to do as a minor power for most of the game it just registers as dull.

Do not play the tutorial to learn the game. It forces you to complete arbitrary objectives that like randomly starting a war without giving you a reason to do so, or telling you lower the cost of fabric without letting you know that in order to do so you'll need to build up your construction sector beforehand so you don't end up staring at the screen for ages waiting for the fabric producing buildings to finish construction because you start off with such few construction points. Go watch a youtube guide instead.

I love Hearts of Iron IV, Europa Universalis IV, and Crusader Kings III is great too. But this game just isn’t finished. They've been working on it for more than three years after launch, yet it still lacks depth. The economic simulator is fun to manage, and they’ve improved a lot of the UI since launch, but trade is broken. it simply doesn’t work.

Trade is an essential part of the game; it's like the equivalent of combat in HOI4. And speaking of combat, it’s extremely boring and unbalanced. Naval combat is as basic as it gets.

I don’t understand how Paradox has been making games for decades, with so many titles to draw ideas and lessons from—and yet they didn’t seem to learn anything.

At least I’m looking forward to EU5. That dev team actually listens to the community. I would like to come back to Vic3 when the game is finnished, but if i need to spend 150 dollars to buy all the dlc only to have a playable game, i think that is absolutely wild.

Honestly i cannot recommend this game at all, it has been close to 3 years since its been released and i bought it on day one, i absolutely love these types of games but Victoria 3 still has major problems.

1. Warfare doesnt work, while this isnt a major focus in this period there are so many cases where its just beyond broken, having naval supremacy and starving out another nations supply of guns does litteraly nothing to impact the army, leading to cases where you are at war for years on end unable to break a nonsensical stalemate, frontlines still dont work, supply hubs stop working

2. Growing your population can only be done one way, and "major" demographical shifts are impossible, if i as greece form the megali idea and form byzantium i am forced to go multiculturalism or face constant turmoil and revolution, even if i put the ottomans or a turkish rump state as my protectorate i cant do a population exchange or anything of the sort.

3. the optimization of the game is so bad, it becomes so slow and time consuming for so little gain later in the game.

4. so many nations i want to play are unplayable unless i do dumb unrealistic strategies the united states of central america is still under a stupid RNG mechanic for collapsing where you can spend years in-game trying to stabilize the nation, only for one state to break away causing unrest in the remaining states, dooming you to re-conquest and hoping your neighbors dont deciede to join for a random obligation.

5. Recource distribution is so bad in certian parts of the world, like there are absolutely no sulphur in the entire southern half of africa, wich becomes a big problem if youre trying to play as the boer states

I really enjoy the game, however the game currently freezes with the last windows update (24H2) this dosen't crash the game so it completly soft-lockes you out of your computer neading a complete restart, meaning that rigth now its unplayable.

The issue has been reported and its in their known bug list, I just hope they solve it soon.
I'll delete this when it is solved.

A very poor sequel to Victoria 2. A game that relies far too much on random rolls of the dice to hamper and sabotage the player's ability to simply play the game. Choices should have consequences for the player, yes, but if you are not only punished for attempting to make them or outright denied the ability to make them at all, then you have failed to create a game in this genre. Historical determinism tends to overrule player autonomy in this this game even within a mode described as a "sandbox", whereas in Victoria 2, its progenitor, so long as you can plan for and overcome obstacles, the world is your oyster. You aren't even allowed in the restaurant in Victoria 3, let alone near the oyster. It is an unsatisfactory product all around, created to profit off of half-baked DLC; whether it is the lack of developer control in favor of modern profiteering orthodoxy or lack of developer experience substituted in favor of profiteering, I honestly don't know, and frankly I don't care. This is a bad game as of now, and the developers should be shamed every step of the way for it. Instead, they are given far too much benefit of the doubt by a battered fanbase that has fallen head-over-heels with the high of creating a cloistered community of player guides where they think they rule as fiefdoms. It is pathetic and sad that the idea of a good game has been abandoned in favor of this utterly shit state of affairs. Can't have shit in Detroit.

The game has many flaws, but is inherently fun. It's also, at least until Gilded Age comes out, the only of its kind.

As of May 2025, war sucks, diplomacy needs a fix and migration mechanics are still flawed. Yet, it is one of my most played games. I'd recommend this to anyone who just wants to sit back, chill and look at number go up. If you have any other intentions, probably not for you.

Game spites itself at every turn, looks good but plays like a child born on a landmine.

Game is a collection of non-choices since there are obvious paths the game wants you to follow; liberalising is the only "correct" path and thus almost all laws have an end goal for you to reach which makes all playthroughs the same. Every nation also researches the same things and will end up in the same spot; the only difference is the natural resources it has access to. All cultures are the same and require the same goods.

The warfare is a joke; the only reason I lost wars was either because I was fully stomped by a bigger nation or because of the frontlines splitting in stupid ways that force your armies to walk the length of Europe to continue on the frontline; they often take so long the enemy has already pushed the line back again. The front will also split illogically and you can end up with 1 frontline suddenly spliting up in 3 and thus you require 3 armies to man them all. If you miss it you're suddenly losing half your nations because they broke through a front that is tiny compared to the massive front you defended just a moment ago, it doesn't make sense. Warfare is also boiled down to one army rofflestomping the other; there are no interesting strategies to do; just some naval invasions I guess but they aren't worth it.

Next up economy; the economy is decent but it's just building buildings you lack and constantly tweaking how the factories operate. The government somehow needs to decide how every building operates and the effect happens instantly; you change the factory to use the train system? No need to wait for depots being build or something like that; no it works instantly. The private construction sector which can construct buildings automatically is dumb as box of rocks with a few pebbles missing; it will destroy your economy and since you haven't planned for these buildings it can tank your weapon production during war time. You can also not disable this because Paradox seemingly removed the option to do so in the game rules.

Paradox won't address these issues and will just create another DLC that creates more problems for base game players.

All this makes Victoria 3 a game about clicking a tech, waiting for it, changing all the production setups; constructing new buildings, waiting for politics to implement the "good" laws and rofflestomping the nations that you can and hope the nations that you can't to not declare war on you. It's a shallow game and the only fun I had with it was installing a mod that removed 99 percent of all the population which forced me think outside of the box.

Don't recommend buying this game. It has poorly thought out systems that clash with each other, boring and tedious busywork to pad out the "gameplay" and the DLCs are wrecking this mess even more. Avoid.

Negatives:
ui is bad, its really annoying when you have to go through multiple pages, hover over 20 pages of information to get to what you want to find, switching general commands when you have a large army is tiresome. the entire UI is cumbersome and in my opinion ugly.
Economy, not gonna talk about trade since a update and DLC might change it but the ai is incapable of matching a players economy their entire government construction is often devoted to building armies then deleting them because they cant afford those armies. Construction buildings is one of the worst systems ever put into a paradox game and annoys me to no end.
Politics, there is only one good system of laws and almost everything else is either A a hurdle to be changed asap to get to good laws or weak LARP options. creating a free trade capitalist utopia is the strongest option, differences in countries is solely in how hard it is to get to that optimum law configuration

Positives
when i zoom into the map after building railroads i can see chew chew trains move

overall 10/10 will watch trains again (will update when i remember more negatives)

A lot of work put in but still a failure...and get rid of these absolutely annoying events that pop up every f-ing 30 sec. they do not replace the lack of gameplay

Frankly, I mainly just play the US, with the added content of Hail Columbia, this game is a decent W

I had to get a refund because it crashed my PC when I opened the game. If you think your laptop or PC is weaker then don't get this game or you will spend ages just watching it constantly crash. Save yourself the pain and don't get the game if your laptop or PC is weak.

Absolute dogshit
I’m taking my time to make a bad review about this to warn potential buyers of this. I bought this game thinking “well, if it’s at least ¼ as good as Victoria 2, it’s going to be worth it because that game is truly fun, or at least a nice economic sim, like an EU4 with more economic depth”, turns out it’s really fucking bad.
This game is an example of everything wrong about Paradox, and i’m going to order it with what i consider to be the most annoying to the least annoying:
-Vanilla game is empty of content: Paradox idea with every game is to make a DLC for a piece of content and sell it to you, which is a good way to milk your userbase but in this case the game is so empty that it’s not even worth to play or pay the DLC.
-*Inflexible gameplay and almost all the time the same outcome (i’m going to talk about this later)
-Trash military mechanics: Why they just didn’t copy the one of EU4? That is simple, good, rewarding for the player and easy to understand at first glance without wasting time to investigate about the mechanics. The military mechanics is one of the worst things in this game
-Bad UI: I have at least 3 ways to execute a certain action, to make a simple example, to play with the military i have like 3 different places where i can do the same thing (mobilize, change bonuses). Also, the UI unlike other games of Paradox like CK3, Victoria 2 and EU4, it’s not straightforward and just a bad design, it’s like the devs never played Victoria 2 or another Paradox game when you see exactly how things should be placed in an interface.
Diplomatic and Political system: Luck based and nothing more, you just have to see a youtube gameplay to understand what i mean, let’s say i want to pass a new law? It is just a dice roll (literally) with a % change and a couple of random events where you can decide to take a hit of -% or increase the % odds.
-A good economy always look the same. (rigid gameplay and the same outcome everytime).
-Bad performance late game, but i could live with that if the game was good.
-Incredible short gameplay time. You can only play from 1836 to 1936.
-No alternative scenario (like EU4), only one date

The absolute worst thing about this game, is that if can describe it in one phrase it would be
“just a clicker game where you see numbers go up or down without much human interaction”, i could leave the game for 2 hours, come back and the game will be more or less the same. I can’t do that in games like EU4, CK2 or CK3 because they demand human interaction with the game, otherwise it’s game over, but unlike those games here i just doesn’t matter what nation you are playing, nor your internal politics, because it’s more or less the same outcome always, another way to describe the game is that it could be played fully on autopilot, then why play at all? Let me give you an example:
In EU4 from Paradox, you can play as Switzerland and be a colonial empire, but how you may ask if Switzerland doesn’t even have a port? In EU4 you could play as Ulm and take over Europe, or play as Sligo (irish one province nation) and move to America and become a global power by just moving there and colonizing. What i try to say with this is that, in this examples you have the freedom to establish your own goals and desires and make what you really want and perhaps it’s really hard to do that but there is always the possibility to make your own journey, but not in Victoria 3, the outcome of the games barely change, they are almost all the time exactly the same, you don’t have that freedom and flexibility here. WHY PLAY A GAME WHERE NO MATTER WHAT NATION I PLAY, THE DECISIONS YOU HAVE TO MAKE AND THE OUTCOME IS ALMOST THE SAME?
The only compliment i can make about the game is that it’s comfortable and nice the way to make a new building, it’s straightforward and well done.
To be honest, just play Victoria 2 or another game, don’t waste time on this because it has so much done wrong that’s not possible to fix nor they will and i know Paradox, i play their games since Hearts of Iron 2 from 2005, they always do the same shit, release an empty game and then charge you for little pieces of content for $11 USD (on average, depends of the DLC, some of that is cheap, others are really expensive), as of today, EU4 (another Paradox game) has 32 DLC, but no amount of DLC can save a game that’s so badly done, this game is just an AUTOPILOT CLICKER GAME. Avoid.

Very complex. I’ve been looking for games with a more in depth political and economic system and this is perfect for that. I love paradox games and this has the most in depth economy system I’ve seen from them but the hardest to learn. Never played Vic 2 so I don’t understand the hate.

Give it a try if you’re a nerd who loves map games

Not as fun as Victoria 2 and really laggy for no good reason

After 1.8, this game is crack cocaine to me. The pop system is great. This is the most immersive paradox game. This game makes other paradox games feel like stacking modifiers.

I love this game and i feel much of the hate is unjustified, although there are many features that need in this game that need to be added or changed

some examples:
1. limited wars: There should be a way to limit some wars to a smaller area. there is no reason for france to naval invade england because of some dispute over a small colony in africa

2. Many countries in this game need more flavor added. Paradox has been working on this, but it is needed badly. one region that needs it is south africa. i would love to see more mechanics around minority rule

3. The war system: I actually dont hate it as much as other people. I like the more hands off approach to wars, but i would like a little bit more control over my armies

Here are 3 things i love about this game as well

1. I love how the economy works in this game, i love working to make certain industries profitable and my brain feels good seeing my GDP go up

2. The game is relaxing a good way to spend a few hours. I am often suprised at how many hours have gone by while i play the game.

3. This time period sees quick technological progress and going from wagons roads to having airplanes is always fun

With over 1300 hours play time. I would say this is Best game for economy simulator.
Still need more features such as trading, world war 1 dynamics and fixing late game lag when using more trade routes.

Hoping the expansion pass 2 would bring enjoyable trading to this game.

I made my nation the number one economy by building art centers and basically selling NFTs

Exploiting the masses

Favourite stocks simulator with some map attached to it

The game can be boring at first sight but in reality it's a very good game.
I recommend at first to play a big power in order to have more fun and understand all mechanics :)

Another paradox game, just don't buy if your pc is a potato as it will reenact Hiroshima

my playtime is from 2 >12 hour sessions, so it's not unengaging. the sessions were also more than a year apart, so i was basically going in without any knowledge about the systems, which meant a lot of the playtime was spent idling or waiting on very slow change. Didn't help that i picked a different small isolationist monarchy both times... It's hard to grasp what things are going on at times, but i suppose that is just a lack of experience with the game.

TLDR: Honestly not worth anyone's time.

The game has it's ups. First time through the game can be a blast, I reckon. The first time you manage to get the economy rolling and see the green line go up, and up, and up as you build more things, you feel so powerful; especially when you add the enormous amounts of military and naval buildings to the mix, and just general conquest.

The first time playing as any historical nation from the time, you also quickly find yourself being sucked into the power fantasy of being that nation during this historical period.

However all that comes to a screeching halt, when you realise, that you are playing the same nation over and over again, just with a different name and coat of paint. The game is just extremely poorly diversified, that playing one nation doesn't distinguish it from playing any other, apart from some geographical changes, which are negligible at best.

Combat can also be extremely tedious and non-engaging. I get that the point is making sure the frontlines have a proper supplyline, but generally it doesn't feel very impactful. Another thing they've never quite managed to fix is armies teleporting all the way across the world, just because their frontline disappeared, and they then end up going back to their barracks.

Overall the game is just very poorly executed. The game just feels like a chore at some point. Sure seeing your economy growing is fun, but having to build another building sector followed by another wood-/iron-/steelmill, just to continue the cycle endlessly to meet demands just becomes a drag after 40-80 years of doing that.

Adding that it feels like there's only one specific way to play with regards to economy and politics just adds to the repetitive nature of the game.

I'd say skip this game, and just play any other of Paradoxs' grand strategy titles.

I fail to understand the purpose of reworking the combat/war mechanics. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I do not feel like it was a common complaint among grand strategy players that the combat mechanics were "too complicated". In spite of this, Paradox deemed it fit to simplify war and combat in the most dramatic (derogatory) way possible. Now, instead of actually controlling armies and their movement, you can just fiddle around with "fronts"---the boarders of which, I might add, seem to be arbitrarily decided. In one war, my army teleported instantaneously form West Africa to the USA, and in doing so broke the momentum that I was building at that moment. This is just one example of the completely unusable army mechanics. Gone are the days of winning wars in spite of your strategic advantage. Furthermore, the way that armies are assigned to generals makes no intuitive sense; there will be one battle under one general containing 10 of (lets says 100 units in the army total) and another that contains 80. I could go on and on about the terrible nature of combat, but honestly, I just cannot bring myself to put such effort into such a thing. Economy building is hard, and largely unrewarding, but I admit that this is probably due to my own inabilities. Please paradox when you make EU5 don't include this dumb combat system, do something normal. Make it complicated, but make it learnable. Don't make it what we have here, which is simple, so simple in fact that it is *unlearnable* by virtue of having been dumbed down so much that it doesn't have any tangible and learnable nature left in it. This has become a bit of a rant hasn't it. Anyway, meh game 5/10.

Play as France to rival England.
Shoot up Gdp
Shoot up population
Slowly grow states
Learn about power blocs
try to form a power bloc
can only be a trade alliance because i didnt pay 60 more dollars for the dlc.
Frances dreams crushed forever
10/10

economy sim with minor diplomacy features

Insanely disappointed wish it was better.

Just the worst sort of economic/social simulator. I don't imagine the developers new what they were making. They really pulled the woke rug from right under you. The combat system is a joke, the tech tree feels incomplete, and there is no real freedom of liberty in the players desired end-goal. Aside from all that, the UI is cluttered and tedious to access.

Like the game but I would say it needs more states and journals for it to be better.

I suggest the Japanese Shogunate for new players. Fantastic game!

Incredibly passive experience that practically plays itself. The minimal choices you have will all railroad you down taking the only viable option for the game at scale, which is "Hyper-Liberalize, Hyper-Industrialize, bully Qing for War Rep $$$". Unlike Vic2 which offers much more depth (and a proper combat system), you can just let the game autoplay till the very end and unless you're an African or Polynesian tribe, you will survive just because the AI refuses to make any plays.
Good for the autoclicker/playing at work crowd, but if you want real depth or any kind of micro, you are much better off looking towards Vic2 or a different Paradox offering.

An incredible game!!! It is amazing how much can be done even when playing with very small nations like Belgium. Between managing industries, trade, the domestic economy and prices, introducing technological innovations, the nation's political landscape, and diplomacy, there is so much to do without ever having to start a war!

Its fun, challenging and delivers on all the tell tale aspects of a Paradox game. Enjoy!

A bit rough to get in, but when you get it the game becomes very fun! The late game is a bit slow in the games I played, but still enjoyable.

WARFARE RANT:
I am someone who has played a couple hundred hours from Victoria II, i have always been somewhat negative from the warfare aspect from Victoria 3, and playing it definitely didn't changed it.

The universal aspect from all historical Paradox Interactive games of being able to control your units individually doesn't really exist. I don't think that it is an absolute positive (look at games such as Hearts Of Iron III, that game is a bastard of unnecessary micro or letting it to the faith of the AI), but on Victoria II it played as a crucial part on the momentum and the drastic changes of warfares that the game period covers. From the various skirmishes in places such as the Chaco, to fast and mobile warfare such as during the Franco-Prussian war to the bogged down trench warfare during the Great War. The amount of units that your nation grew up to, the technologies that changes the entirety of style of combat, and combined with really simple but interesting combat mechanics made for some really cool warfare experiences (specially in Multiplayer Lobbies), but in Victoria 3 you have...

A front line system that you can choose to your general a set of orders on how they interact with the front line. That reduces all that variability, mobility and specially player input, to become a front line trench warfare alike of combat, which is drastically different from Victoria II and historical Paradox Interactive.

The idea of simplifying and removing possibly unnecessary microing (specially as the game has a more complex and time demanding economy to track and follow) is an welcoming one. But removing almost all type of control, and so you would need to pray to the RNG gods that your defensive battles goes into a good defensive terrain instead of being in barren plains, and that somehow your battle stats roll good enough so your army has a fighting chance, or doesn't get demolished by an inferior, and all that being something out of your reach, is really frustrating. It boils down combat to simply whoever has the better stats and units to throw into the frontline, removing most underdog experiences that you have in Victoria II. Because having information of your enemy units doesn't matter that much, which isn't fun.

It is completely fine and acceptable to have the focus of the game more on diplomacy and economy then war and combat (as the devs had stated on the dev diaries), but the compromise that they arrived to made so disadvantages become absolutes. It isn't necessarily a "betrayal" of the fans ,but it wasn't a good choice either, specially when coming from a background of playing games such as Europa Universalis IV or the predecessor Victoria II.

EVERYTHING ELSE:
Removing the abysmal warfare changes, I liked the rest of the changes in general. Income is actually something to worry about and not simply putting tarrifs on 100 if you want to have money, wars causes a lot more of impact to economies as income isn't just a ledger anymore. Victoria 3 dives much more into the politics and how you do them, which is definitely an improvement from getting unrest so you could have reform from Victoria II.

Although diplomacy plays can be too much in some situations, but they added a lot more of life to the world, albeit it doesn't escape situations such as the entire french army getting into Colombia, but its an interesting change nevertheles and in my opinion a better approach then infamy was.

Bureaucracy actually existing and not being an incentive that you give for 2 years and you can pretty much forget about it for the rest of your game, and in actually existing it affects your nation into makes annexing not the most viable way of expanding your influence 10 out of 10 times like in Victoria II.

Being completely honest i don't have that big of a grasp into the economy, but trade seems a lot more real and interesting. It isn't perfect but Victoria II's economy wasn't that deep or incredible either.

CONCLUSION:
I feel like it could be more tolerable if i didn't played Victoria II and was a new Paradox player, the DLC monetization practice isn't great at all (it isn't *as bad* as other games, but we really shouldn't be comparing evils to justify one over another), but it really isn't fun having one of the main ways of interacting with the world be more dependent on your pre-estabilished state and the dices of our almighty lord then your direct interaction as the controller of the nation itself. It isn't the worst game ever and i don't think that the simplifying of warfare was inherently bad, but this approach wasn't great at all, which for me as a player of other Paradox games substantially ruins the other attempts made when compared to Victoria II.

Was good. No longer works, keeps on "Not Responding"

Victoria 3 is an ambitious and rewarding strategy game, particularly for players who enjoy managing complex systems and making long-term plans also victorian era lover. Its historical context, deep mechanics, and focus on economic and social issues make it unique in the Paradox Interactive lineup. If you're a fan of grand strategy and enjoy detailed simulations, Victoria 3 is a game worth diving into.

Key Features:
Economic and Social Management: The game stands out for its deep economic and social systems. Players manage production, trade, and the flow of goods, while also dealing with the intricacies of population needs, class struggles, and ideologies. Balancing the interests of different social groups, such as capitalists, aristocrats, and laborers, adds a layer of complexity.

Political System: The political mechanics are another highlight. Players must navigate the ever-evolving political landscape, from elections to revolutions. Crafting policies, influencing ideologies, and managing relationships with other countries require strategic thinking.

Technology and Industry: The technological advancements and industrial growth system are a central aspect. As you progress, you unlock new technologies that improve production, military, and social systems. The industrialization of your country impacts both domestic and foreign affairs.

Diplomacy and Warfare: Victoria 3 offers a robust diplomacy system, where you interact with other nations, build alliances, and manage tensions. While warfare is not the central focus, it remains important. Managing your military and using it effectively is necessary for defending your interests and ur own country.

Glorified alpha-test with so many underdeveloped mechanics. Military action is a complete joke, international trade does not exist for a half of a game session, big chunk of gameplay is just waiting for some research to complete. Yet my biggest gripe with the game is that often times major events happen out of the blue: no saying on the matter, no chance to intervene, not even a pop-up or notification. And by "major events" I mean not stuff like "country X started investment project in country Y, who is by the way your rival", nooooooooo-o-o-o-o-o. By this I mean "snaps fingers oops, your Washington province belongs to US now, get f-ed, moron, should've assembled Canada faster".

Considering ever increasing graphic and simulation fidelity of more recent Paradox releases, this game will be in this sorry state for several more years. By this point it will have a plethora of feature-adding DLCs costing ten times the base game. But then there will be no point of buying because the financial commitment is too high, and without DLC packs base game is a barren wasteland of subpar gameplay and basic versions of what should be game-changing features. Did I mention that every story-focused DLC will be outclassed by a free mod, but you'll HAVE to buy it because something something advanced trains or powerblocks or some other game mechanic that's castrated in the base game?

This review is no longer about Victoria 3 specifically at this point. Stellaris, Hearts Of Iron 4, now this. New game installment of Europa Universalis is on the horizon. I kept spending money on disappointments. No more.

Don't bother unless you have a few hundred bucks you will not regret throwing in the digital shredder.

Great game a lot simpler than Victoria 2 and “lets you choose your path” but other than a guided story it’s really fun

Yeah sure it's good. Not that it doesn't have it's kinks to work out. Revolutions for instance are an abomination right now so if you want to do a lot of conquering plan on endless hanging revolutions that don't let you properly organize your army or your buildings and also tons of event spam you couldn't care less about. I just wish there was a murder all these people in their sleep button. The whole war system is buggy with armies teleporting across the globe away from your frontlines kinda thing. The game is still fun despite all this. Worthy successor to a great game with hopefully much more to come.

Overall in a good shape now. Warfare system still need fixing

I strongly suggest that you don't buy this game.

There's an interesting game buried here, but it's very inaccessible. The achievements show how few people who start playing it get very far.

It doesn't teach you how to play and the forum on Steam is too dead to be much help. There is a Paradox forum, that rejected my account without saying why, which given that I'm a paying customer, is disgusting and tantamount to theft.

I feel ripped off by Paradox Games. I'll certainly think twice before purchasing from them again.

there is much to improve in this game but overall solid game, one I personally love, my one recommendation is if you dont like spending money don't buy a paradox interactive game because there will be a LOT of dlcs as time goes on. (oh and dont be disappointed that war sucks it'll get fixed one day) (also diplomacy could be a bit more intricate but it works fine as is)

I will refrain from the topic of war because it is obviously one that will always be of great controversy - all I will say is that PDX had an opportunity to remove the inherent imbalance of player vs AI in conflict when you directly control armies, and they somehow failed at that.

Victoria 3 is not the amazing economic simulation that proponents of this game claim it to be. The game's economy essentially boils down to "have deficit -> build building" Can't build building? Click trade route! Great success! Line go up. Making more money -> build more construction -> build more buildings. Repeat. That's most of the game, especially in vanilla.

Politics are uninteresting and do not reflect the entire 100 year span of the game unless you play with Better Politics Mod, which is in my opinion an absolute requirement to make this game playable. I can't hold that against Vic 3 that much - after all it's predecessor (if only in name, because they are entirely different games) is unplayable by 2025 standards without mods. BPM offers a strong influx of flavor that you can truly interact with and is a game within itself, making this dry simulation at least somewhat interesting.

One of Vic 3's greatest failings is it's - not inability - but refusal to simulate the latter half of the game's timeframe properly. Before the game was even released, there was uproar about the lack of a great war system for example, conflicts of truly immense geopolitical consequence are not really present without player intervention and if by some miracle they do occur, the odds of the player even knowing a war is going on in the world that they're not involved in is unlikely, since the game has no interest in immersing you in anything other than the lines in your country going up. In 1936 the world feels the same as 1836. There are a few more goods and modifiers, by the way, the AI will be incapable of actually exploiting them for the most part, especially finished products, so feel free to dominate the world of automobiles and aeroplanes. A conflict in 1836 somehow feels the exact same as 1936. In vanilla, fascism as an ideology barely exists despite it's obvious rise post WWI OTL, maybe it's because the game doesn't think WWI seemed to happen between 1836 and 1936?

Wiz + the dev team's hubris got in the way of them listening to any criticism of this game and it continues to show. There's a reason Johan throws subtle backhands at the decisions made for this game as EU5 continues to develop. I'm not saying the game has no value. I enjoyed it for a time but that time is over, and it doesn't offer me any of the thousand+ hours of replayability I've gotten from older PDX titles.

Gave the game another chance since release.
Optimization is still abysmal. After 1870 you're starting to suffer. After 1900 it's unplayable.
The war system is still the least intuitive and most frustrating in any paradox game.
The economic system is still one of the best out there and got better since release. Though sometimes your capitalists make retarded decisions, which makes it very realistic in a way.
Politics got better but can still be annoying since when the game runs at 1 week every 2 minutes, it can feel like a law will take 3 hours IRL to be voted.
If you guys don't want to improve the war system, since it's necessary when you unlock new production methods to war dec and expand, you could change the trade mechanics when you have a significant ownership of resources building in a nation to improve trade volume (land or convoys) with the nation in which you own the buildings.
This could be seen as "priority trade with an investment partner". And I think this would be a major beneficial change to the game.
Also, though it might be unrealizable, but when having complete ownership of every resource building of a nation, giving the option to change production methods ? I guess it wouldn't serve the optimization problem right. Though it would be very useful.

I don't know where to begin. I really wanted to like this. I sunk 200 hours in because I was certain I'd figure out how to make it work. Every other Paradox game I've played, I've been able to figure out. I like playing economic games and the time period interests me. It feels like this game doesn't want you to succeed. The more I advance in time and along the tech tree, the less money I make. I am constantly being hit with revolutions and counter revolutions, always stronger than my nation. The warfare feels like an afterthought. The AI feels like I'm playing a game made 20 year ago. The strongest computer players gang up on you and defend nations that they should have no interest in defending. Why would Britain in the 1840s care what happens in a war with the United States and Mexico for example?. None of the nations feel unique. The random events are repetitive. The political situations and government institutions within countries are not at all accurate to their historical government structures, most certainly the case with the United States. I'm left playing a spreadsheet simulator with soulless gameplay. The only silver lining is I got this game at a discount and didn't waste any more of my money on the DLC. This feels like a scam. Do not waste your time or your money on this... I can't even call it a game. I don't understand how anyone could find this experience enjoyable.