Hearts of Iron 4

It’s 1940. World War II, it would seem, has well and truly begun. France and Britain are in full-scale war with the Axis powers of Germany and Italy. Yugoslavia has fallen, and Poland is soon to be next, be it either by German or Soviet hands. However, on the western front, France has held its borders tight, not relinquishing one inch of the Rhine. And Italy is suffering constant naval invasions from the British, while RAF reigns free over Rome.

This should be good news. Unfortunately, I’m playing as Italy. As you can probably guess, I blew it.

Hearts of Iron has always been a strange one for me when it comes to Paradox Interactive’s library of grand strategy games. On any other series, be it Europa Universalis or Victoria or Crusader Kings, I can handle myself, and make a good carving out of the land for my nation. In Hearts of Iron, I have a knack for losing the war, badly; ‘France curb stomping Germany and Russia in 1939 by itself’ badly. But despite that, I’ve never felt like the game is badly designed, or scripted to make you suffer as much as possible.

Hearts of Iron IV seeks to further streamline the gameplay of the game, turning what was once by far the hardest series Paradox made into something that is possible for newcomers to make real progress with, right from the get-go. I may have failed as Italy (as mentioned above, and it’s the tutorial nation) but I’d have been destroyed outright in the last entry by now, whereas I am surviving alongside my allies in this latest entry. Key to this is the restructuring of a lot of how you run your nation and its military, such as how your units are organized. You group them into different armies, each run by a commander of your choice (a pool from which famous commanders such as Montgomery, Patton and Rommel can be chosen depending on your nation) and then give them orders. From there, the commander will carry out your instructions to the best of their abilities. The system is incredibly intuitive and works very well, offloading the extreme task of manually controlling hundreds of divisions in your military, and especially if you are controlling one of the Great Powers, such as the USSR or Germany.

The look and design of the game is very nice too. Paradox has always had a knack for making the idea of staring at a world map for ages far more appealing that it has any right to be, and here is no different. I do admit however that I miss the stylized fonts used to represent each faction in the previous instalment. (For example, the Axis would have a gothic look, while the Comintern would have Russian styled letters) Still, everything is very easy to interpret and understand, helped massively by the new strategic naval and airborne maps, which alongside the active alerts of what is happening in each theatre of war (such as naval invasions and enemy air superiority) help you conduct operations much easier than before. Some may lament the loss of precise control over what your bombers hit, but I welcome the much simpler control of these units.

One concern that I have is the national focus tree. For the seven major nations in the war, they each have a unique ‘research tree’ of ideas that shape how they will proceed through the decade of World War Two, be that by following history, or taking a few alternate choices. For example, Italy can choose to align with Germany as it did, or it can choose to stand alone and try to rebuild the Roman Empire alone. France could fight with the Allies, or avoid banning Communism and join the Soviets to trap Germany in an early two-front war. My disappointment is the low number of countries that have their own ‘trees’ available. Aside from Poland, which gets it’s own as free DLC, all of the other nations have the same focuses available, making them slightly less interesting to play. I don’t doubt that some will be added as DLC over time, but I would have liked a few more countries to receive the treatment at launch, such as China or Spain, two nations which have separate factions that could have their own branching choices. Maybe Nationalist Spain joins the Axis and forces France to fight on two fronts? Perhaps China joins the Comintern early, pitting Russia and Japan against one another well before Operation Barbarossa?

But despite that wish for expansion upon certain nations, Hearts of Iron only has small, fleeting concerns otherwise. And even if you only stick to the major countries, you’ll be playing for a long time to come. Paradox games are rarely just picked up and put down so freely, nor are they games you play for a few hours then never again. And if grand strategy has even been of interest to you, then Hearts of Iron IV can be a great way to jump right in… as long you don’t mind jumping into the fire.