Also keep in mind Steam doesn’t have Victoria either.
Nor does it have Crusader Kings.
Just in the sense that major previous Paradox titles have been distributed into the major box retailers in the US and this time that does not appear to be the case. There is an interview with the Paradox CEO where he does say that they expect 60% of their unit sales to be digital this year (compared to 40% last year) and where he also mentions how many games they have sold via Steam, so maybe this is just a business decision on Paradox’s part not to bother with box retail (at least in the US) anymore. While most people are fine with digital, there are still people who want to buy games in a box so that decision does have its potential sales impact.
Should be at Steam and in stores in the US.
Thanks for the clarification, Johan. As of right now only two US retailers (Amazon and Newegg) list the game at all and both are online retailers. Both actually list a later release date (8/22) as well, something that hasn’t really been denied on the official boards. I’m not sure who is distributing the physical game in the US for Paradox, but so far they have not convinced anyone else to even mention they will be carrying it.
Steam doesn’t always bother making it’s plans clear until late, so that’s not really a surprise. Though someone did point out that Steam doesn’t carry Victoria or Crusader Kings, so its not as if they carry the full Paradox catalogue.
Between the AAR and reading on the official boards, my interest in the game has increased enough that I will probably check out the likely pre-release demo to see what it has to offer. What they are doing this time seems a lot more logical then I found the first Victoria to be, even if it’s still not my favorite historical era.
I’m probably suffering from the pre-release hype again as well. ;-)
My interest in this title has lessened dramatically after hearing about the first impressions from the reviewer of out of eight. It looks like another title that’s going to take a good 6 months worth of patches before it starts to shine.
What’s the purpose of the “first impressions” on a grand strategy title? Especially when he was (perhaps understandably) clueless. As in, he’s running a government type that can’t build factories, then complains he can’t build factories (and as was pointed out to him in the thread).
I’m not saying the guy’s an idiot, I’m just saying that a first impression (he wrote the post without unpausing the game for the first time, according to his followup on the V2 forum) is rather ludicrous. As I posted on that thread, my “First Impression” of a Civ game would be running around with a club looking for huts, which is hardly representative of what the gameplay is actually like.
Perhaps he’s right and the game is terrible, but I fail to find any relevance to what he posted. I mean, give me an impression after a few hours, at least! Play a couple games as a few different countries, that’s the kind of impression I’d like to hear about!
This is his response to someone mentioning that many of the things he lists aren’t accurate:
Really?
It’s hard to judge a grand strategy game with first impressions of a beta version. I was actually quite relieved that he hadn’t run into any game breaking or fun destroying bugs. His main complaint (I think it was his only complaint too) was that too much of the functions were now automated, and that it left you with little to do in the time period that he played within. Considering many of the major themes of this game (liberal revolution, great wars, socialism, fascism, etc.) come to head at least 20 years or so into the game, that doesn’t sound unusual. I love EU3, and yet between wars i put on warp speed alot of the time. I believe that the more you put into paradox games, the more you’ll get out. If you play passively and choose a Government that does not intervene in the economy (like he seemed to), i’m not surprised that not much happens. If you read the beta AAR’s that are on the forum, they seem to be doing alot of interesting things.
I wonder if Tom is playing this game early; his writings on the EU3 stuff and EU:Rome were pretty valuable, I thought, and I was disappointed when he decided not to write about HOI3. If he has early access to the game that would be great.
Or Troy for that matter.
Apparently there will be a demo but they haven’t said if it will be released before the game or not. However, Paradox does almost always release a demo ahead of time so there’s a chance it will come out this week (game release is Friday).
On the Paradox forums, King (lead dev of Victoria) has been saying that the day-0 patch version of 1.1 should be stable both singleplayer and multiplayer. MP stability has been what they’ve been working on since going gold and they believe they’ve got the last of the desyncs. I’m not sure how many others here play Paradox games in MP, but for me it’s huge, if true. I typically have to wait until at least the 1.2 patch before I can play a MP game.
The things he stated that they still need to work on post-release are continuing to tweak the economic AI and making the AI players better/more challenging in general.
Lots of very frank conversation in this thread here.
Demo should be out tomorrow tomorrow (10th of August) at 9am PST (18.00 CET).
Does anyone know if there will be a way to import your EU3 save games into Vicky 2? I heard a rumor about this, but I haven’t seen anything officially confirmed.
There was some talk about being able to import from EU3 to Vic2 to HOI3 early on, but that is not a feature being supported at release from what I understand. So no.
Huh. Then I’ll pass until they include it in a patch/expansion. Add me to the chorus of “Paradox games aren’t playable until after a few patches.” ;)
There was talk about a Vicky2->HOI3 converter, but they’ve abandoned plans for that. I don’t think there ever was one planned for EU3->Vicky2.
There’s always a possibility of a fan project doing it, it definitely would be an epic game to go from 1399 to 1948.
I’m still on the fence about the game, so I’m looking forward to some demo time. One thing I’ve noticed, even on the supposedly release version AAR’s that are popping up now, is that the US Civil War keeps firing in 1849. Those are the kinds of details that really break a historical game for me. So I’m hoping that’s just coincidental to the AAR’s.
Don’t get your hopes up… the game will never follow exact dates.
I don’t expect it to. But I’m just pointing out that in three AARs the ACW has fired in 1849 in two and close to that date in another (where it may have fired in 1849 as well but the AAR doesn’t talk about it and the only indication is a world map from 1852 showing a CSA). And one of those AARs is using the release version of the game, not a beta. That seems odd to me and I hope its not indicative of the game wanting to fire that event early all the time.