My number one complaint about cult classics, like this series of games, is truly that this game can do no wrong. The entire PC gaming industry is just turning into a blind market that's frankly not even growing to even bother trying to compete with consoles who are indeed growing.
Paradox Interactive can literally do no wrong in the eyes of their fanbase. They recreate the same exact thing but this time the multisampling goes to 8 instead of 4, oh em geeomgomg!!! And you can save on the cloud!!!
Wait, cloud? You mean the steam cloud that monitors everything you do while logged into steam on the basis of it downloading things for you which 80% of the time doesn't work for this game, and when it does work you have to keep starting and then exiting the game over and over again? Gee, how many points should I take away for that? See now if I was being paid by gamespot to write this review I wouldn't take away any points at all; I wouldn't have even mentioned it.
That aside this game is just another glorified game of risk. Even the map looks exactly the same as risk. You have money, supplies for your army and navy, colonies, etc. But there is nothing at all for me to review here. I can't even review the engine because it's the same exact engine they used for CK2, and they paid someone to make that engine for them because whenever they tried to do it in the past; it always turned out to unfixably buggy.
So when we keep in mind, what did Paradox do with this game exactly? They made a few buttons in photoshop, a few fresh graphics for the soldiers, a couple new songs they paid someone for ... but that's literally it. The graphics designer is the only one who did anything, the team (who is not paradox) that did the engine just reprogrammed it and took a couple things out so it wouldn't play exactly like CK2.
There are two major reasons to buy a game like this from a developer like that. First is the famous "After Action Reports" (AAR for short) which you don't need to buy to see because you can do that for free on YouTube by just watching "Let's Play" videos. So that leaves mods, which you probably won't be able to install properly anymore as previously discussed. So ... why play or buy this game?
Good Question.
4/10