Okay, imagine this. Its 1936. Europe is on the verge of another big war. Hitler had already renounced some treaty from the great war. Let's say, as Soviet, what would you do? In real life, they made a treaty with the Germans, although at later dates yep, Germans invaded them anyway.

You wouldn't let these wars happen, do you? Or, you just want to wage wars everywhere? Well, in this game, it's up to you.

So, what is it?

HOI4, as the player base called it, is a war strategy game. You will have to manage armies, navies, and air force, while making alliances or war with other nations around the world. Basically, you will be acting as a leader of a country in WW2 timeframe.

The first time I installed this game is because I got recommended of the soundtrack of the game (one of the DLC's soundtrack) called Katyusha. That thing is a banger and made me want to play the game. I mean, I never play "war-themed" game before, except for Crusader Kings 2, but that is more focused on building dynasty. Also, I was interested in learning details of the WW2 scenario, so yep, I quickly downloaded it. And it has Linux native version too (thanks Paradox!)

When you first started the game, you can choose between two starting dates. One is at 1936, and one is at 1939 just before Germany invades Poland. In terms of country selection, you could select anything, ranging from the UK to Brazil.

Some country got their own special focus tree, either from base game, DLC (yep, Paradox habits right there) or even from mod. Speaking of mods, there is lots of mod available from Steam Workshop, and some of them had crazy ideas. For example, Kaiserreich, where the mod simulates "What if the Germans won the WW1" and etc.

Each country have their own national focus. You could ban another ideologies on your country, so they do not plan a coup (looking at you Yugoslavia).

Replayability level of this game is on the another level. Because you could play any country in that timeframe, and every time you play it, the outcome will be different. "What if X win the war" is the main objective of this game. I mean, come on, historically-accurate gameplay is boring, right?

You've probably ever think what would happen if the Germans won in the WW2. Or, even crazier, what would happen if the Wilhelm II of Germany came back to the throne and restore the old German Empire?

You could be the leader of Hungary and restore the old Austro-Hungarian monarchy. You could be King Edward VIII, marry that American girl, and take the throne for yourself. Heck, even you could create a not-so-democratic American Junta led by Douglas MacArthur.

Things that sucks

From historical perspective, this game gloss over the war on Asia. There is a reason why Chinese government banned this game due to the inaccuracy of depicting China in that era. And that's true. In HOI4, they're treated like separate entity.

As with all Paradox games, you have to learn it by yourself or by watching YouTube videos. Yep, there is a tutorial, but, it's inadequate at tutoring you. It's basically just introducing you to "here is diplomacy screen, you could improve your relations with other country" and didn't tell the details of what can it do.

The learning curve of this game is steep. You have to learn how to micromanage divisions of your army, navy, and air forces, while at the same time choosing the right political decision so you don't get annihilated (I'm looking at you, Poland). This is definitely not a game or people who just want to spend their day. It'll take ages to learn this game. Heck, even me, after about 6 months of intense playing, I still can't figure out how navy works in this game.

However, failure is the best teacher in this game, and I always found new things and skills to improve. But, at the same time, failure is expensive. Five years in the game can easily take five hours or more. Losing a game after five hours really sucks, I mean, you get a good amount of experience, but you still have to restart from the beginning, especially if you play Ironman difficulty, where you can't reload your older saves.

The game also gloss over the genocides stuff.

Running this game in a potato laptop is good enough. I can't play with low settings smoothly. But the problem is, the longer a save goes, the more it lags. By mid 1944, the game is unplayable for me, because other country kept spamming new divisions that my poor CPU can't handle.

Why lagging? Well, think about this. You simulate each hour of every day, going from 1936 to 1945 and beyond. A year can take an hour or two of real time, depending on how fast you are simulating, and how many stops you make. As each hour in game ticks by, the game played as a turn, and while you are usually making large moves, the hours still are calculated independently. At first, it seems the game runs quickly, but when you get bogged down in a war, the hours appear to take longer to pass, and it slows down the overall time it takes to play a single year in the game, even at the highest rate of speed.

There is mod, especially this one called FPS Map that reduce lag, but that's the only thing you can do. I mean, old players said that the game has been improved a lot since its launch in 2016, as most game-breaking bugs have been fixed.

The control of the games, especially navies and air forces, is very clunky. Not user-friendly. Also, there is no simple explanation to design a division despite it is being the integral part of the game.

Conclusion

I learned a lot of things from this game. Especially about military. Now I know things like Artillery, Anti-Air, Anti-Tanks, Recon Planes etc. Now I know that changing ideologies of a country requires coup (or hiring political advisor that have tendency to that specific ideology).

This game is addicting. You will want to play the game every now & then. I mean, at some point you'll become a history nerd if you play this game. You will sank hours of your life staring at a map of the world, trying to paint the world in your country's color.

Definitely a good game. I recommend it! As a last message, here's a summary from random dude I found on internet:

Hearts of iron 4 is a great game or a horrible game. It's one of those things where you either love it or you hate it, you sink 1 hour into it or 1000 hours into it. The game is complicated when your beginning and is difficult to fully grasp. But the satisfaction when you understand what your doing and learn about every niche little thing is amazing.