It's on sale right now, thinking about picking it up.
It's basically Marxism: the Game and one of my favourites of the genre. Something like reforming 1836 near-medieval Russia into the industrial Soviet Union is a huge task with so many strategic elements going into it, and you're planning those out twenty years in advance while holding off European armies and scrambling for colonial resources. The game has been steadily improving over time and mods are starting to proliferate for it.
At full price on day one it was worth it. Definitely get it on sale.
Just expect a learning curve for balancing developmental priorities. It's easy to start with a country like Russia or the US where you have ample resources and can stay isolated to build up your construction industry/universities over time, but being expansionist like in other Paradox games requires a huge logistical effort.
hit up fitgirl and get the repack and give it a try first.
she does update it semi frequently so you might not even have to spend a cent
unless you are like me and brain poisoned and need the constant stream of updates for modding purposes
I didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to. The way wars work was a huge con, and also how diplomacy varies between useless to barebones.
The economic side of it is fun, albeit the price maximums and minimums are weird as heck.
Just bought it last weekend (full price) and would definitely recommend!
Have played it immediately after work everyday this week lol
It's really good for about 10-20 hours, which is waaaaay too short for a grand strategy game. After that, every country feels too similar. There's a real problem with lack of flavor, because there are not enough unique events, mechanics, art, etc. Also, the war system was quite bad on release, but I hear it got better. All that being said, its really fun to play with your industries and trade, and it all works well and is decently intuitive. It's probably worth it on a decent sale (or pirated).
I enjoyed the economic side of things once you worked out the jank (which was really bad at launch, stuff like AI nations being incapable of making steamships), but eventually it kind of felt like you'd solved it and were just playing an idle game from then on. Some other aspects (politics and wars) were hugely reliant on RNG so I wasn't as big a fan of those parts. In spite of those criticisms I generally had a pretty good time.
Seconding the suggestion to pirate it first to see if you like it.
Absolute brilliance and a game I like to play when I have a lot of me time to dump into whatever I want. Really scratches the itch of managing spreadsheets of information. No sarcasm here. I've been playing Paradox games for 14 years and I have loved every second of it.
