Hearts of Iron II

Hearts of Iron II is yet another grand strategy game from Paradox, and yet another chance to rewrite history from the catbird’s seat of national leader. It has all the meticulous research and attention to historical detail expected of Paradox, and is certainly a must-have for any fan of the genre.
To be fair, the original Hearts of Iron had all this too. The familiarity of the subject matter made it Paradox’s biggest seller, in spite of the cumbersome interface, peculiar production model, and abominable documentation. It was a good game, but not user friendly. Fortunately, the worst parts of the original Hearts have been given a near total overhaul in the sequel.
The underlying game is still the same. You still take command of a nation and gear it up for war. Hearts of Iron II marks the return of the domestic policy sliders from Europa Universalis II, allowing you to fine tune your country to make the most of the available bonuses. National production is still done through the allocation of “Industrial Capacity”—the number of factories and relevant resources. It’s much easier to find the information you need and the sliders are a lot less finicky this time out. The entire industrial system is a lot simpler to grapple with.
In fact, so many of the improvements are due to simplification. Upgrades of obsolete units and reinforcement of divisions are done through industrial capacity sliders now, so they are automated. All you need to control is the rate at which they happen by spending IC. This means no more clicking on buttons to get your units up to full strength, and a greater chance of fighting with depleted units.
The research and tech tree has been completely redone. Now the technology is divided into a more rational and traditional format. Research is now done by national research teams that specialize in certain areas of expertise, so progress up the tech tree is limited by research slots available and the talent you have on deck. The United States can call on Henry Ford, the Germans on the Krupps. There are penalties for researching too far ahead of the historical curve; an understandable nod to history but it has the effect of making every great power field a nearly identical force.
You spend most of your time fighting a war, so the barely improved diplomatic model isn’t noticeable. The combat model, on the other hand, is superior. You now order ships and planes to carry out certain missions in a geographical area, and they will continue to do so until the mission conditions are met. This means that the player only has to pay full time attention to the land war. And it is in the land war that chinks begin showing in the Hearts of Iron armor.
The combat model for land warfare is actually a major improvement. Units can support combat in neighboring provinces, and battles begin once the movement is decided, so it is much easier to keep a cohesive front together. In the Grand Campaign, the computer opponents have a tendency to fall asleep during prolonged play sessions, making supposedly formidable opponents paper tigers. The AI sometimes stops building troops altogether, and if it does build units, they are often the wrong type. Great Britain and the US, for example, need transport ships to break into Fortress Europe. They often don’t, or build them in too few numbers to be useful. This has the ancillary effect of making naval or air units much less important than they should be.
To be fair, the sleeping AI is nothing new for Paradox—it has been present since the first Europa Universalis game back in 2000. In a game where there is a lot to do or a variety of strategies, you might not even notice. Plus, in a game that took place over hundreds of years, you would be reloading frequently, thereby kick starting the snoozing enemies.
This game is entirely about fighting a war—if your enemies don’t fight it well, you notice immediately. The Soviet Union becomes the hollow structure that Hitler predicted it would be, crossing the Rhine is as easy as crossing the street, and America is just one big, unprotected landing area. There just isn’t enough going on to distract you from the sitzkrieg on your screen. Changing the difficulty level has no effect on making your opponent a smarter recruiter, either.
This is especially annoying because, otherwise, this is Paradox’s most accessible and user friendly game ever. The manual, written by a beta tester, is a model that other strategy game developers should study. The smaller scenarios allow newcomers to the series to practice diplomacy, tactics, and production. They also present more prepared opponents than the Grand Campaign does. The tutorials are short, but easy enough to get users up to speed. All of this effort to make Hearts II the ultimate World War II game is undermined by an obvious problem that the designers have known about for almost five years.
Given these upgrades to the usually steep Paradox learning curve, it would be tempting to simply reward this unique development team a gold medal for finally recognizing the vast world of gamers that are interested in grand strategy but turned off by layers of menus and irrelevant detail. This landmark game is still very good, and, if you can find enough players to control the great powers, rewarding in multi-player. But until Paradox can find a way to craft a computer opponent that knows how important the invasion of Normandy was, the single player sessions will be merely satisfying.

This article originally appeared in Computer Games Magazine #173