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Gameplay:
The game takes place from 1936 until 1947, and offers you the choice of playing as one of the eight more or less major countries involved in that time's events - UK, USA, Germany, USSR, Italy, China, Japan and Australia. You can select the timeline when you want the game to start, either from 1936, 1939 or 1941. Hearts of Iron is played on a map that is somewhat similar to the one from the game of Risk. The entire globe is divided into countries, and countries are divided into regions. Each region has a certain industrial capacity, infrastructure bonus as well as various defense capabilities (land fortifications, coastal fortifications and AA batteries). Each of the above influence: (in the following order) the amount of resources produced by this region, the speed of transportation of your units through this region and finally defense bonuses provided by the region. You can always upgrade any of the above capabilities - but at a cost of a time, during which industries located in this region won't bring you any resources. There are various types of troops to be chosen from - infantry, artillery, armor, navy, airplanes and more, each with their special attack and defense bonuses. Now, unlike Risk, the game is completely real-time, without opponents having to take turns. Time is measured in hours, with the basic time interval being one hour. The troops you command each have different deployment times, so you'd have to coordinate them in order to have a successful attack – fortunately you can always select the date and time when you want them to move to a new region. You can change time compression, in order to control battles better or if you're not engaged in combat, for it to pass faster in order for current peaceful tasks (improving industries or researching new technologies) to go faster.
Speaking of technology research, Hearts of Iron offers the most comprehensive World War II technology tree ever seen in a game. All technologies are divided into different categories, which affect different types of troops. There are different categories for infantry, armored divisions, artillery, navy, aerial divisions and much more, up to nuclear technology. Each researched technology influences the other - for example in order to research and later on build 30mm light tanks you must have researched the light tank prototype, as well as 30mm artillery piece and everything that leads to them. As well you can research different land, air and naval combat doctrines, where you often have to choose if you want to go with defensive or offensive ones, with one making the other unavailable for research anymore as you can't use both of them at the same time. What is really good, however, is that at every stage you're able to see where the technology you're about to research will lead you, as well as requisites for each of the new technologies you may research. That gives you a hint of where you are currently going by researching this or that technology, unlike all other games where you're not sure what you could get to next by researching a certain technology (Hello Age of Empires!). Each of the newly researched technologies gives you either a new type of unit to choose from, a chance to upgrade your current units or special attack, defense or organization bonuses to your troops (more on that later).
As well, the game makes excellent use of diplomacy, that I'm not sure I have ever seen in any other games. You see, every month you get one diplomacy point, and when they accumulate you are able to use them on different diplomatic options (obviously, for different options you need different amount of points), in exchange for deduction of those points. Some of the options might include influencing a nation towards your doctrine (more on that later), staging a government coup by a group that is closer to your doctrine, making alliance, getting military access through a country's lands, as well as annexing a country or installing a puppet regime once you have conquered a certain country, or getting another country to join your alliance. There are three major doctrines in the game - Democracy (Allies), Fascism (Germany and Japan) or Communism (UUSR), and a lot of countries that are still undecided on where they want to go, which is a perfect representation of the world's political division back in the day. So one way to use the diplomacy would be, while playing as the UK, for example, would be to influence Italy towards Democracy, staging a coup in order to change the government closer to that doctrine, and finally allying with Italy - which in its turn could change the war events for the better for Allies. For an attacking country like Germany, it's normal to annex or install puppet regimes in conquered countries, and then get a formal approval of using their surviving troops in your interests. The main goal of the game, is for your doctrine to be the most dominant, by controlling and/or allying with more other countries than the other doctrines.
Furthermore, when engaged in combat each unit has its own attack and defense stats, which can be upgraded when better technology is researched. For example, when you research the bazooka, your infantry troops get +1 in their anti-armor attack stats. Your divisions have command leaders, each with his own rank (which affects the ability of the leader to command multiple divisions - for example a simple Mj. General can command only one division effectively, while a field Marshall can command up to 12, without losing any effectiveness) and skill, with the skill progressing after each battle according to experience gained. You may also choose to promote the combat leaders to the next rank in order for them to command more divisions allocated to them successfully, at the expense of one skill point, as well as replace them for better ones, taking them from your recruiting poll. By the way all the combat leaders are actual figures that were involved in WW2, for many of them there's even an actual archive photo included. Sometimes when a famous commander is controlling one of your units, its effectiveness will increase because of that. As well weather, terrain and day conditions take their toll on effectiveness of your troops; for example cold weather, snowfall or nighttime make attacking harder for your troops, while at the same time mountainous and wooded regions are much easier to defend.
There's probably much more that I could say to describe the gameplay, but I don't think words would be able to describe the game completely - and in a reasonable amount of lines. Even though the game sounds really complicated... Well, it is, but fortunately there's no huge amount of micromanagement to do. Once you set your industries in motion and allocate enough points for everything, the main focus of the game becomes research of new technologies in order to give your troops the winning edge, and combat, as in essence Hearts of Iron is a real-time wargame, slightly "dumbed down" for people that feel lost in real wargames - like me. As well, there's fortunately a very detailed tutorial, which combined with the manual will give you all the necessary knowledge to become the next Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin or Hitler. As you fight all over the globe, you are given messages that inform you when your armies have arrived at a certain region, are involved in a fight, won a fight or lost one or when some new technology research is complete (and you can manually select which types of messages you'd like to see). After you get the hang of the game completely, it becomes fun - and very addictive. You will learn how to use best strategies, like for example encircling a large enemy army with a sufficient force by occupying all adjacent regions and then attacking it from all sides, which leaves them no escape route and forcing them to surrender. There are also events that happen in the game world without your involvement unless you are one of the parties involved (then you are given the option to either execute the event or skip it) - like for example Annexation of Austria by Germany in 1939, Annexation of Ethiopia by Italy, or Pearl Harbor. That brings a certain element of surprise into the game, as things beyond your control might happen. Multiple countries to choose from, entire globe to fight on, challenging enemy AI that tries its best to take advantage of the situation and different levels of difficulty will guarantee hundreds of hours of gameplay. As well the bundled level editor will give you a chance to create your own scenarios or modify the existing ones.
However with all that said, there are still some bugs in the game - even though I've patched the game to v1.01 before playing (and which has fixed an awful lot of bugs), I've encountered at least three different bugs in the game: at once instance after saving the game and loading it, I've lost all infantry units that belonged to my allies - and were controlled by me, while being located in a third (but also allied) country; also sometimes after you give an order to a unit to attack a certain region and later on change it to a different time of attack, the first time to attack you've given will be used for some reason; as well sometimes when ordering an air unit to bomb a certain enemy region, you're presented with a nice "can't find game" message inside the attack type selection box... Thankfully there aren't many bugs left, and with the first patch being out one day before the game's street release date, hopefully those problems will be resolved as promptly. Another small issue is the game manual itself - at times it seems to miss some points, and you have to go on your own and "reinvent the wheel". Once again however, Paradox was quick to release an online corrected manual, which really makes things easier for you. Kudos go twice in a row to Paradox, and I just hope more game developers would take example of them.
Graphics:
Graphically speaking, the game isn't on top of the line - the game map is pretty much like in Risk, but here you can choose different view modes, such as political, geographical or weather, to give you just a few. For what it is however, it's well made. You can also zoom in and out at any time, in order to see a more strategically appropriate view of the game area. The interface panels are nicely crafted. Your units are all animated and every country uses different models for ground, air and navy units, as well as the owning country's flag next to it. There's probably not much more to say about the graphics, except that they probably wouldn't be any better no matter how Paradox, or anyone else for that matter, would try to make them to - there's no way to make a game with so much complexity and scale look any better, without getting the screen garbled with too much unnecessary stuff. There are already some miniature mountains and forests that can be seen in the geographical map mode, and storm clouds seen in weather map mode. I honestly can't think of anything else that could be added.
Sound:
The entire music selection of the game is classical/easy listening. No matter that I'm not too keen of classical music (for which you'd probably have to blame my Mum making me listen to it, while saying that "It's good for you" and dragging me to classical music concerts against my will throughout my entire youth), I'd have to agree that this is the best music selection for this type of game. It features a two hour and something soundtrack by many renowned composers, such as Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Strauss and Grieg among others. The music really gets you even more into the game's atmosphere and due to its variety it almost never becomes tiring or boring. On the other side I wish that there were more, and more varied sounds - the existing ones are well done, but there just isn't a big variety of them. I'd love to hear some more variety for all of the actions I make in the game, and possibly some voiceovers for major messages and background sounds. However it's not happening, and it's probably just me that is so spoiled by RTS games that is asking for too much from a wargame.
Multiplayer:
There is a multiplayer mode included, where you can compete against other players versus either Internet if you've got other player's IP, LAN or Valkyrienet, the game's matchmaking server. Unfortunately Valkyrienet wasn't working when I tried to access it, but regular LAN multiplayer was very fun and the connection was stable as I tried to play against a mate of mine. And the game is really a lot of fun in it. However the inability to change the game time in multiplayer does take its toll on the game.
Conclusion:
Hearts of Iron is a very compelling and comprehensive blend of wargaming and RTS games. It has the most comprehensive technology research tree that I've ever seen implemented in a game, and is played on a bigger scale than any other strategy game out there. Its uniqueness draws mostly from its authenticity and variety of gameplay options given. It will for sure provide hundreds of hours of fun, as with all the sides available to choose from it has an almost endless replayability value. The map editor and multiplayer mode are a very welcome addition. If you're willing to overlook some occasional glitches (that will probably be fixed really soon), slightly incomplete manual and somewhat mediocre graphics, go get it. Actually let me rephrase it, if you're a wargame/WW2 strategy buff - go get it. Now, go go go private!
