It’s not the best Paradox’s game and apart from the setting, it doesn’t fulfill any fantasy that other games fulfill. I certainly had a better time playing Field of Glory Empires. But it’s still a solid game, and unlike other Paradox games it’s fully playable without any DLCs.
War will be so different, so hands off, in Vicky 3 that I don’t see that any prior game makes for a very good measure of what this one will be like.
Is that after all of the updates? At launch it was the maybe the most disappointed I’ve ever been with a Paradox game, I just couldn’t find anything fun in it. After they overhauled it pretty heavily and moved the pop dynamics and things closer to a Victoria-style simulation I found quite a bit of enjoyment with it. Sure, trade always sucked and regional content never got fleshed out in a bunch of places and the mission system is probably my least favorite Paradox has done, but I’ve got 150+ hours of enjoyment out of it now and Imperator Invictus means there are sections of the world that I’ve never touched that should actually be enjoyable now.
Still Victoria 2 playing as a lot of nations! Vicky has always had war as a side thing for most countries and is probably the only Paradox series where one could have an entertaining playthrough without ever getting into a real war. Vicky 3 looks to continue that and the changes to war emphasize that moving your troops around isn’t the point of this game. The building/production system being entirely overhauled may prove to be a more impactful change than the war changes.
And having the war not demanding constant interaction should let you not feel annoyed at having to switch contexts often. Not sure it’s a bit too much hands off, but we’ll see.
Today’s Dev Diary shows off the Living Map with lots of gifs now that they broke the seal on gameplay footage!
This is a feature I’m really happy to see as these games can end up feeling a bit sterile when the appearance of the map is so static. Especially so in a game like Victoria that’s about an era of such dramatic change to the structure of settlements and the environment in general.
It’s all just fluff but I do enjoy that stuff and it’s one nice thing about Paradox having larger budgets these days. Imperator has their best map to date (I think it’s superior to CK3) but it’s looking like Vicky 3 is going to take the crown.
Aesthetics do matter, and I must say after playing so many low-budget games, with crude graphics, it will be nice to play AAA budget game, like Vicky 3.
I’m really liking the static artwork from that trailer.
I kind of shuddered when I read the title, but it seems like it won’t get in the way too much. It feels like they are really putting a lot of thought into this. I guess they don’t want people to be scared away by the reputation and complexity.
Ooo, the Player Objective thing sounds interesting too. Going to be interesting to see the details on that next week. Seems like maybe an extension of achievement hunting that might not require Ironman, setting specific goals for a playthrough? If so, that would help a couple of my friends who struggle with sandbox style games where you need to direct yourself.
I’m hoping whatever it turns out to be it helps with the issue where you’ve got a number of long-term plans in motion and then you step away from the game for a day or you get pulled into an unexpected war and you end up losing track of what you were trying to accomplish.
Player Objectives!
I was envisioning something you didn’t pick before you even started the game, but I think that’s okay. This has been a long time coming for Paradox games for people who don’t like the wide open sandbox. Let’s you pick an essentially campaign-length objective and helps guide you to completing it with an associated achievement at the end.
As someone who does appreciate achievements in Paradox games to give ideas for new things to try in playthroughs I appreciate that these are generally broader(and can work for any country) than a lot of the very specific achievement requirements. Also probably worth trying each one to potentially pick up on things and strategies I didn’t know about.
I really like this system, a would like to see it grafted onto Stellaris.
That seems quite well thought out and implemented. Very curious to see how it plays out. Quite excited about all this.
This all sounds terrific, but WHEN IS THE GAME COMING OUT!?
I just can’t bring myself to read the DDs until I know when I can play it.
Pretty confident it’ll be this year. If I had to make a wild and uneducated guess… September-October?
They’ve committed to this year, haven’t they?
Yep, and they avoided announcing any time frame for long enough that they must be pretty confident they’ll be launching this year. Due to PDXCON timing I’m guessing an October launch, but I guess they could have to push later and still get it out before the holidays.
Our long national July nightmare is over. Weekly dev diaries are back! I don’t there is too much new or groundbreaking here, but clearly they are aiming for character traits to at least sometimes be impactful rather than always just be minor modifiers.
Today’s Twitter Teaser was a coded message. Already been decoded with this response:
I’m still thinking we’re looking at an October release.