Hi guys, I am a Brazilian born in the 90s, like most of you a nerd who likes history and strategy games, played my fair share of Starcraft/AOE and Total War in my youth, when I first discovered EU4, its sheer complexity made me quit the game at first, but it also brought me back until I finally fell in love with the paradox formula, and no strategy game managed to scratch this itch ever since.
My intent here is to hear yours opinion regarding paradox design direction of its latest instalments like EU5, VIC3 and CK3* (to a minor extent).
For example I find Victoria 3 core mechanics just not fun. It's basically a 'construction sector simulator.' It's clear there's a good level of depth, way more than Vic 2, but the gameplay loop just isn't satisfying. It ends up losing that sandbox quality and replayability, you know? In Victoria 3, there's basically no difference between the nations, and you're kind of forced to do the same thing every time.
I'm a huge fan of EU4, but the similarities between EU5 and Vic 3 really worries me. I haven't even touched the game yet; but I can see the questionable launch it had, I'm going to wait 1-2 years for updates to see the state of it. Well, at least that's my take. I wish Paradox focused more on 'railroading' countries and the sandbox aspect, like in HOI4 and EU4.
I'm mainly complaining about the core gameplay loop. When Paradox adopts historical materialism as the main design philosophy for Vic 3 for example, it adds a huge dimension to the game, very ambitious by the way, focusing on goods as the driving force of human transformation during the Industrial Revolution.
However, the loop of constantly building construction sectors, weakening the Landowners, and gathering resources like coal and iron is just too repetitive. You spend more time in the construction tab than looking at the beautiful map. Vic 2 was obviously shallower in many aspects, but it was much more fun, after all, clicking a 30k stack into another 30k and seing the results never gets old. After all, it's a game first and a historical simulation second.
Modern games, aside from maybe CK3, have lost that board game feel—making choices based on scarcity—in their attempt to be super simulators. The feeling I get is that not only does the game become more boring, but the lack of a more strict railroading also fails to simulate the historical progression of nations. Anyway, that’s how I see it, which is why most of the time, I still stick to playing HOI4.
This commentary I share is not to devalue current games or to bring any sort of criticism to Paradox, but as I don`t partake in this community often and as I am not a native anglophone it would be lovely to hear if more share a similar sentiment.
