The only catch is that it's difficult to step up from these scenarios to the full-fledged campaigns, as there isn't a middle ground. When you're fighting the Platinean War, for example, supplies are regularly delivered from the US and Germany, so you don't have to worry about gathering the resources needed to build armies. Sometimes you can even ignore whole aspects of the game. Many feature two-sided hostilities, and most involve accomplishing a single objective. These smaller scenarios also serve as extended tutorials. Production is pretty intimidating at first, but most operations can be handled from this single menu screen. You can even take part in the fictional Platinean War between German puppet Argentina and American puppet Brazil, for instance, or in a full-scale "what if" German invasion of Czechoslovakia. Some of these battles are standard WWII fare, like the D-Day landing and Operation Barbarossa, but others are off the beaten path. While Hearts of Iron II centers on four sprawling campaigns, you can select a limited conflict with set adversaries if you're not in the mood to set the entire world ablaze between 19. You can at least focus your warmongering now. Three or four scenarios must be played to completion before you'll be able to get an idea of what works for you. Tweaking the message frequency so you reach some level of satisfaction with the alerts shown is almost a game in itself. Whether you choose to wade through everything or turn off a number of categories, you will almost certainly miss a dire announcement or two. Although you can adjust the number and type of these notices, there isn't a happy medium. Even after you get used to it-yet again, because Paradox has used a variation of this clunky interface in all of its historical strategy games-you can't help but grumble that there has to be a better way to keep players in the know. The United Kingdom announces the death of its foreign minister. The Netherlands suggests a trade agreement with us. Colombia is remaining neutral in the war between Peru and Ecuador. Canada has barely influenced the foreign policy of the United States. Mengkukuo has joined Japan in the war on Sinkiang. Even after you think you understand the core concepts, you start a game and get snowed under by a blizzard of pop-up information boxes. The learning curve is more like a learning cliff. Only information overload remains a problem.
HEARTS OF IRON II MANUAL
The manual is far better than the confusing, useless tome packed with the first Hearts of Iron, and the six tutorials offer up details on primary aspects of play like warfare and production.
Still, concessions to playability make Hearts of Iron II more accessible than the usual Paradox release. If you're looking for the second coming of Axis & Allies, keep looking. As in Paradox's other games of historical grand strategy, time spent waging war on the battlefield pales in comparison with time spent planning and building.
So not only do you send tanks streaming across borders, but you also build the economic infrastructure necessary to keep bullets flying and stomachs full, set up trade deals, and send out diplomats to handle a list of assignments from proposing nonaggression pacts to sponsoring coup attempts. You oversee the affairs of an entire nation in the World War II era, with all that such a weighty responsibility entails, in real-time single-player or multiplayer campaigns. This is still not a game for the faint of heart. New support options both simplify attacks on enemy provinces and make such offensive operations more realistic. If not for lingering issues with the steep learning curve, the barrage of information boxes, and a couple of bugs, this would undeniably be Paradox's finest hour. Although the game follows its predecessor so closely that you may still want to play with mouse in one hand and textbook in the other, many refinements and additions make the intimidating interface and extraordinary depth almost user-friendly. However, the new Hearts of Iron II shows that Paradox has learned from its mistakes. The resulting release was decidedly problematic, with a modern setting shoehorned into a design built for the era of muskets and pantaloons, artificial-intelligence holes the size of the Bismarck, and loads of bugs.
HEARTS OF IRON II SERIES
But moving the strategic themes and historical depth of the Europa Universalis series to World War II was such a surefire idea that developer Paradox Interactive forgot the actual game. If there were a hall of fame for great game concepts, Hearts of Iron would be a first-ballot inductee.
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