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World War II Grand Strategy--to secure peace, prepare for war... You are the supreme ruler of a country of your choosing during World War II. Guide your nation through warfare and diplomacy, and take part in the battles that changed history.

Hearts of Iron 2 is a difficult, but highly addictive, real-time strategy game. But this isn't an Age of Empires or Warcraft RTS game, it is more like civilization but without the turns--just a fluid, continuous time system--like 1 second our time is about 1 hour game time. This game has some minor flaws that could be fixed but other than that this is a crowning achievement of how RTS games should be made.

The graphics in this game are not anything great but they are useful and serve the purpose of displaying all the information you need to know. But sometimes the game displays to much info and when you try to customize the settings you may end up missing vital info, though this is rare, it is still a problem. The map itself is wonderful, with many (dozens if not hundreds) of properties or regions. Each one of these can be controlled and they provide things like industry, minerals and some even have special resources. Controlling a lot of them is not the key to victory, holding the strategic ones is.

The combat in this game is based off of unit strength, organization and other factors. For example if you have a lot of units but they have very poor organization they could lose to a couple of units with high organization. Also war in this game is not taken lightly, when you declare war not only does the dissent in your country rise but other countries relations with you generally sour and overall it has a bad effect on your economy. This makes you think a lot before sending your troops into battle, as it is costly for both you and your nation. Sometimes the games events can seem sort of scripted, like how Japan is always struggling for resources, but overall it is a fun and exciting game, with hours of replay due to the fact that you can play as different nations and each has a different style of play (goals, units, etc.).

The sound in this game is okay, but nothing special; it suits the needs of the game and keeps your ears from growing board. The sound is used for alerts for messages and the sound of combat which is nothing special, it contains a pretty good musical score. Other than that the sound is virtually non-existent and you are better off turning on your Zen or other mp3 player and listening to your own music.

This game is for the strategy nut and I don't think it will appeal to gamers wanting instant results to their actions, but more to gamers willing to wait and see what long-term impact their strategies will have. If you are one of those gamers than you should get this game, and even if you are not this is still a fine example of why RTS games are both engaging and enjoyable.

WW II simulation, war time strategy. goes past WW II and into the cold war.
Almost to indepth, slows the game play.
If you are looking for technical and indepth game play this is it.

This is indisputably the best WW2 game ever (although i have not had a chance to buy the most recent one) but if you are looking for hard core historical accuracy and hours of endless game-play.........this is it.

HISTORICAL EVENTS- the game is great because it plays simulated historical events at certain points with notifications the cause good and bad effects(such as extra manpower when the Reinland is reoccupied). This is excellant although if you are an expert historian....you will be kinda irked that the dates are not pin point accurate but does strike the general time. Finally, the events do not always follow history :(. I played at one time as Germany, and when the Munich Agreement occurred.....somehow Czechoslovakia ended up allying with the Axis without me gaining the Sudetenland. WTF!!!! all in all though it usually gets it right
Politics and Diplomacy- Politics in the game are very descriptive but also very hands-off. i.e. you can't hold elections in democracies and control tax and political parties which takes some of the realism out of it. Besides that though.....you can make the Germans communists, the Russians democrats, the Americans facists, etc. which messes up historical gameplay quite quickly (by the way, most of the South American countries go through military coups during this time, don't be alarmed if their govn't start falling one after another).
As for diplomacy- it is also cut and dry in the sense that there are limited actions you can take and limited outcomes. If you are thinking of starting a coup in another country.....DON'T!!!!!!! I tried several times to when i first started, it is a large expenditure of money for absolutey nothing!!! BTW, it has fixed a bug that many games do not in that, countries don't declare war on you for no reason.....if they hate you they will, but do not expect your allies to betray you over nothing.

MILITARY UNITS- the military units are quite historically accurate which i adore. All tanks are not called tanks- you have sherman, tigers, panthers, m1crusaders, etc. The leaders are also accurate and lead to some interesting game play (you could send Rommel to fight the russians while ordering Heinrich Himmel to fight in Africa.)

well i'd write more but i don't think i could convince you anymore.....BEST GAME EVER!!!!!!. I NEVER write reviews but i had to this time.

Now THIS is a REAL strategy game! I had it for about a week and cannot stop playing it. I'm constantly thinking of new stratgeies to try and I believe it does a very good job of historical accuracy. Is there a learning curve? Yep! But, unlike some, I did not find it as difficult. Is it perfect? No, of course not, but it's very close. This is a thinker's game. The manual is OK but with so much detail it would almost be impossible to cover everything. What shocks me is that even with all the detail it's so playable. Really a nice piece of work. Paradox did an excellent job. There is a BIG community for this games, lots of forums, which helps a lot. This is the best $[...] that I have spent this year.

This is the best and perhaps the only serious grand strategy game for people interested in the WW2 era. You can play many major nations on all sides and get to experiment with decisions that leads to alternative history. The scale is grand and the gameplay addictive. But overall one cannot escape the feeling that the game could have been much better.

The first problem is the graphics. While strategy games generally have no needs for fancy eye-candy, the resolution in this game is limited to the archaic 1024x768. Thus the players are forced to do a lot of scrolling. This is just a totally unnecessary chore that feels tedious very quickly.

The second issue is game balancing. While the Germans, British and American were reasonably well set, the Soviets statistics do not reflect the horrible consequences of Stalin's purge. The Chinese settings are even farther off, with the communists far better equipped to defeat the nationalists in 1936, the exact opposite of reality, in which the communists escaped total annihilation only through political trickery.

The third problem is the supply model, which allows good supply levels as long as your nation occupies a continuous path to the front. If your allies, on the other hand, control a block of territory in the middle, you are in serious trouble. This is so unrealistic and problematic that one is often forced to resort to contortionist tricks to avoid the situation, which unfortunately occur all too often during joint operations.

There are several other little bugs that the publisher never quite bothered to fix. Overall, due to this game's niche status, it has the feels of a community project instead of a real consumer product, which is too bad because it has so much potential.