Hello everyone it’s your guy Tophattem_dawg and I’m here with a new recurring segment called HATDAWG REVIEWS, It’s pretty self explanatory it’s just me reviewing stuff, could be games, movies, shows, ANIME??? really anything, it will be posted in the corresponding communities so stay tuned if you find my opinion really valuable for whatever reason.
I have decided to start off this series nice and easy with a game that I’m sure no one has any strong opinions on (wink wink nudge nudge), and more specifically on how much i hated playing it, because yes, while you might have heard that i dont like it you certainly have not heard that I’ve played it, and for around 100 hours at that (around the time of the no step back DLC and i haven’t played ever since, luckily).
So why did Ihate this so much? Well i have some reasons, for instance it was absurdly complicated and the tutorial was so bad it needed its own separate tutorial. I’m usually a pretty big fan of uncompromising, no hands held game design such as Mina the Hollower and Silksong but in my personal opinion it only really works when the game has a set ending and goal so you at least have a north star in what you’re supposed to do. HOI4 while having lose conditions is practically a sandbox game with how freeform it is, making the decision of choosing to make the game this intentionally incomprehensible is absurd, it’s like if creative mode in Minecraft required a masters degree to place blocks. I am not sure whether or not this is more of a testament to my stupidity or how bad the general UI and other stuff is but in the 100 hours that I played I have not been able to understand about half of the mechanics to any operable degree, and the most impressive thing I’ve been able to achieve was take over South America as communist Argentina or Brazil before promptly being steamrolled by the United States empire of no fun allowed. I’ve obviously tried YouTube tutorials but they’re basically as comprehensible as the game’s built in tutorial, so not at all, I am sure I would have an easier time remaking the game from scratch than actually understanding most of its mechanics.
Unfortunately beyond just how badly the game teaches you literally anything that you need to know ever its also somehow not that fun? Yes i know it seems odd that I stuck around for a 100 hours on a game i didn’t even find fun, it was a different time okay? Anyways larping as a general or world leader or just any person in a position of power is obviously pretty fun and I liked turning the little countries I could red to live out my pinko commie fantasies, but especially with me barely knowing how to do anything I’d either just lose in the same spot again and again on any country i tried or just never get myself off the ground ever (Barbarossa always kicks my ass when I try the Soviet Union, endless woes upon those digital fascist bastards in Germany). And frankly just looking at the same old map all the time can get really old.
Probably the biggest issue with the game objectively speaking that will make the game unbearable for any of you fine folks that might somehow enjoy the sort of experience that I’ve described is Paradox Interactive’s rather warped and even somehow paradoxical (Ha!) view of history. Obviously they’re rather liberal, you could already tell this from the fact they’re Swedish, but oddly they somehow seem to side with Nazi’s more than the Soviet Union historically speaking? Maybe I’m engaging with their project in bad faith but it is rather curious how when you play the USSR it’s all Holodomor and purges but if you boot up the German’s side you won’t get a single mention of any of their atrocities (most specifically the big one, the Holocaust). I understand why you wouldn’t want to put historical atrocities in your video game even if it is about the second world war but why play it selectively like this? Japan doesn’t get any mentions of particularly heinous atrocities committed in China either, it’s all just very odd. And obviously while discussing meta criticism we can’t neglect to mention Paradox Interactive’s almost comically predatory commercial practices, basically turning every content update into a paid DLC, and with the rate they pump out DLC that’s frankly just mediocre from what I hear of even fans of the game, are essentially infinitely wringing out money out of their audience, therefore why I had to play it via some underhanded means (a gamer’s gotta game alright?)
In conclusion HOI4 is a game that’s miserable to play unless you were made in a lab by Albert Einstein with genetic material from Nikola Tesla and are ready to sit down and learn mechanics from YouTube videos like it’s a runback of the SATs, it has terrible somehow Nazi apologetic politics and despite all that is also somehow addictive to the point of being able to wring money out of you with the efficiency of a MMO with lootboxes. So with all that into consideration l shall give it a 2/10, because despite all my rage i can say that it is probably an experience that some of you more big brained masochistic folk would enjoy, just make sure to not fall into the trap of giving Paradox your money.
With all that said I’d like to thank everyone here for reading through my for sure longest curated collection of ramblings and i wish you all a wonderful rest of your day
Paradox games have this issue where instead of improving or streamlining things with updates, they add new DLC that just adds more and more bloat to the game, eventually making it inscrutable to people who haven’t been playing since the beginning and have been following all the changes.
And HOI4 in particular is bad because the Nazi fans of the game have complained nonstop the entire time that the Nazis are too “underpowered” so they get a buff pretty much every update, resulting in them being the easiest country to win the game with by far at this point, like half the player base exclusively plays them, which should be a sign of how fucked the game is at this point.
“Everyone already knows Nazi Germany was evil, but not enough people know that the Soviet Union was just as evil and oppressive. (In fact, the Soviet Union likely ended up doing more evil since they were allowed to exist for almost 80 years.) To counter Russian propaganda glorifying the USSR and whitewashing their own atrocities it’s important to promote a more balanced and realistic portrayal of the conflict”
-The Nordic liberal whose spirit I just channeled
Barbarossa always kicks my ass when I try the Soviet Union, endless woes upon those digital fascist bastards in Germany
Skill issue lol.
but oddly they somehow seem to side with Nazi’s more than the Soviet Union historically speaking? Maybe I’m engaging with their project in bad faith but it is rather curious how when you play the USSR it’s all Holodomor and purges but if you boot up the German’s side you won’t get a single mention of any of their atrocities (most specifically the big one, the Holocaust).
Personally I think it’s because those succdems know their audience is composed of unironic nazis and monarchists who would yank their pizzle until the casing ripped over game mechanics that let them genocide jews, LGBTQ+ peoples, the disabled, and the Left.
Also because they want money and getting their game banned from a bunch of countries for putting the crime part into their war game would probably make them lose money.
And to be fair, they did a lot less holly-dork-more propaganda than the modding community did and mostly left it to like 1 or two focus thingies. Pretty blase imo, unless that changed since their Soviet DLC.
But back to your actual post, very enjoyable reading, hope you do more whenever the occasion strikes you!
That’s the funny thing: I remember how before the Soviet DLC the way you did the White Russian paths was to avoid the purges, so the counter revolution actually would happen through and unsuppressed fifth column. And that seemed like a great balance to me: yes, you purge some good generals/take other nerfs, but you needed to do it to avoid a worse second civil war.
Then after the Soviet DLC they drank the kool aid and turned it into the “paranoia” mechanic where Stalin just does shit for no reason at all.
i mean every alternative focus tree justifies Stalin’s purges with everyone from the ultra left to the monarchists working as a fifth column trying to trigger a civil war to overthrow the Soviet government, so it sorta does the same thing.
Skill issue lol.
Well that’s just uncalled for
Personally I think it’s because those succdems know their audience is composed of unironic nazis and monarchists who would yank their pizzle until the casing ripped over game mechanics that let them genocide jews, LGBTQ+ peoples, the disabled, and the Left. Also because they want money and getting their game banned from a bunch of countries for putting the crime part into their war game would probably make them lose money.
I obviously wasn’t suggesting that they make the Holocaust a focus tree or anything like that, I just feel that it’s lack of presence is more strengthening the Chud side of the community than weakening it, since you know a big thing was “we did not commit the Holocaust” yet they still hate all the people who were killed in the Holocaust and want to kill them again? Yet another paradox by Paradox games. I just wish it was one of those events where you would get some sort of negative modifier to really show that the Nazis were bad in this game about WW2 that seems to shy away from it for god knows what reason
Regarding the money I think the fact they somehow managed to finagle a WW2 game to a pegi 7 on the ratings shows with how much dignity and earnest they are willing to tackle the subject of world war 2, all to sell to 7 year olds I guess? Do you even know any 7 year olds that could play this game?
But back to your actual post, very enjoyable reading, hope you do more whenever the occasion strikes you!
Thank you :)
I just wish it was one of those events where you would get some sort of negative modifier to really show that the Nazis were bad in this game about WW2 that seems to shy away from it for god knows what reason
Sadly I think even if they made it one of those news paper pop-up events that just shows up out of nowhere and even cram in a bunch of debuffs I still think the nazi player base would celebrate and try to min-max their way to victory doing the “don’t siege Leningrad” meme larp to illustrate they’re better than Hitler and would’ve won ww2.
And now that I’m thinking about it, the devs are about as active as they can be in actively removing nazi genocide workshop stuff, so I think they’re trying to keep a firm line in the sand because their shitty fascist fan base would take an inch and go straight to aushwitz-berkinau with it if they even gave an iota of perceived permission to depict the Holocaust in game.
Is rather take my lumps as a Red dealing with historically illiterate dipshits making shit mods over letting the fascists have anything they’d crank their hog to.
Regarding the money I think the fact they somehow managed to finagle a WW2 game to a pegi 7 on the ratings shows with how much dignity and earnest they are willing to tackle the subject of world war 2, all to sell to 7 year olds I guess? Do you even know any 7 year olds that could play this game?
My joke answer is its for Germany. If everyone is 12, the Germans get to be 7 with how dogshite they behave lol.
Anticommunism? In my Nazi simulator?!
But seriously, nice writeup
thank you, my fan, I knew i could count on you
more is coming soon
As someone with over 400 hours in HOI4, I agree with your conclusion.
However, I have to asterisk that about 350 of those hours was spent playing KaiserReich, Red World and the Fallout Mod.
I prefer the colonialism simulator to the nazi simulator but this tracks
HOI4 is just a platform for mods at this point. Idk who plays the base game, beyond literal Nazis
Huh, so my sandbox comparison was pretty on point because that’s basically how a lot of people use Minecraft nowadays, though base Minecraft is significantly more tolerable than base HOI4
I fucking love paradox games. Thats it. Thats the post
Do not summarize my critique incorrectly phonk man
I can love both. Paradox games and phonk.
I bet you do, I bet you even listen to phonk edits while playing paradox games, you sicko
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I like eu stelly and vic, hoi and ck just dont scratch the itch for me
I play the other map game, Crusader Kings, with everything 🏴☠️ But this is a great review and writeup! Some even applies to that game.
in the 100 hours that I played I have not been able to understand about half of the mechanics to any operable degree
This is me in CK lmao
