A great game if you take the time to get into it
I downloaded the game and when I tried it I checked out the tutorials but they seemed so complex I couldn't really absorb anything they were trying to communicate to me. (By the way I've never played any Europa Universalis games before this or any similar games besides Age of Empires, Empire Earth, and the Total War games, which mind you aren't much like this game at all.)
After attempting to try the demo over and over for a little bit every day I gave up and said, 'This game really isn't worth an 8. It's kinda sucky.'
I then got into other games like Warcraft and World in Conflict and one day decided to try the demo again. After making a last attempt I finally saw the light. I realized the enormous depth and strategy in this game. The game wasn't all about building giant armies and rushing to see who could defeat the others the fastest, I've never tried it yet but I bet you could play a lot of the game without any fighting at all.
I then played the demo over and over again, it restricted me from saving so I got frustrated everytime I had to quit, then start a new game all over again. I had no money but I wanted the game anyway so I got some money off my sister and ran to EB Games to get it. I was surprised to find that it was only $25 CAN. I traded in a game I never play and got EU3 for almost 8 bucks. Now I play it all day as if I were living in the Renaissance (Spelled Right?)
If you see this game too complex and can't get into it, please try a little harder, even if you try once a week for a few months.
Though the game isn't great visually, i'm appreciative of that because my computer can't run games with good graphics or high amounts of objects.
The strategy is very deep though it misses minor elements (unless I just haven't figured out how to do them) like telling allies to attack someone and things like that.
The opportunity to be nearly anyone on the globe is really quite amazing. You can choose to be French or English, of course, or if you wanna try a little more east you can choose Russia. You can even be Japan, China or Korea. Or if you're really bold the Inca, Aztec, Huron, Iroquois...etc in America. Though you must expect the penalties that must be taken with each race. For example: if you're the Inca you can't explore out of your country in South America. Sounds terrible right? Well if you think about it that was how history was. They never took much interest in conquering the world.
The diplomacy in the game is also quite in-depth, especially compared to other games. On Medieval 2: Total War there are a handful of nations you can pick from in Europe. As soon as you begin the game all nations are striving to build big militaries and conquer out from their land and make their country half the size of Europe, so it's possible that in the end there will be two gigantic countries in all of Europe battling it out.
On EU3 many countries don't even have a desire to fight unless you ally with them and make war with another country. Some of them expand a little but here's where it's interesting. They're programmed to expand the same way, or similar, to how they did in actual history. Which is why there are the restrictions on some nations. What would you do if you were being Spain and were establishing colonies in eastern America when suddenly a Japanese navy comes and starts hacking up your ships and making it's own colonies, taking over present-day US. Well you won't see that sort of stuff in this game. While there's only something like 15-20 factions on Medieval 2: Total War there are many more on this game. I haven't counted them but when you look at the national log you can scroll down a very long list of countries. It's very cool.
Writing this review and reminding myself how amazing this game is just makes me want to play it some more. So I'd best be going now, sorry I babbled on for such a long time about stuff you probably thought was irrelivent but I just thought you should see the game from the perspective of someone who loves to play it instead of people telling you all the technical stuff about it.