Information overload - Victoria 3 Quick Review

Nobody does grand strategy quite like publisher Paradox Interactive and its game dev branch, Paradox Development Studio. These are the minds behind a number of beloved series, such as the medieval drama engine of Crusader Kings, the colonialism simulator known as Europa Universalis, and one of the most in-depth World War II strategy offerings ever in Hearts of Iron.

And then there’s Victoria, a series that gives players control over a nation of the world during one of the most complex moments of global growth and change in history: the Victorian era. Victoria II was released over a decade ago, so hardcore Paradox fans have been demanding a follow-up for a long time now. Was it worth the wait?

THE STORY

As with most Paradox games (and most grand strategy titles in general), there is no real single set story for Victoria 3. Instead, the game focuses on a specific time period: the hundred years spanning from 1836 to 1936. Players are given control of a single country of their choice, and there is no specific goal nor path to victory. You can choose whether you want your nation to become an economic powerhouse, a war-crazed land of conquerors, or a socialist utopia—among dozens of other options, all based on the choices you make.

PLATFORMS

Victoria 3 is only available on PC, though notably it runs on Mac and Linux-based PCs in addition to Windows. It is also currently only available via Steam.

TIME PLAYED

Thus far I’ve sunk ten hours into Victoria 3, which would be a pretty considerable dent in most games but feels like barely scratching the surface of the surface here. I was able to complete one of the more heavily tutorialized “Learn the Game” campaigns, and I messed around with a few other scenarios, using countries around the world to test out different play styles.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Global scope. Some Paradox games, like its Crusader Kings titles, tend to begin with a small focus on one part of the world (usually Europe) and slowly expand outward via paid expansion packs. For Victoria 3, the entire world map is open from the start, and you can rule from anywhere you want. There are over three hundred possible countries at the start, with more that can be formed or split off from existing countries as a game progresses. While the game still urges players toward Europe in its tutorials, you can choose to play as Bolivia, the Japanese Shogunate, Burundi, or dozens of other less commonly explored countries. You can also swap countries in the middle of a game, so if Belgium gets a little boring, feel free to spice things up.

• Relatively easy access to information. I would never call Victoria 3 a particularly easy-to-grasp game, but credit where it’s due: It makes sure that players can find and figure out how to manipulate basically any stat that might be important, from the cost of importing iron from Russia to how much generals in the army are paid. Between this title and 2020’s Crusader Kings III, it’s clear that Paradox has done a lot of work trying to figure out how to make its complex world sims more approachable without dumbing them down. Victoria 3 makes frequent and clever use of alerts to point less confident players (like me!) towards important issues about their country that they may want to address.

• A fascinating historical moment. Though it may not have the high drama and political intrigue of Crusader Kings (more on that below), Victoria 3 really sold me on just how incredible the hundred years it covers was in terms of serving as a major transition moment for...well, virtually every country around the world. With constant huge advancements in technology, education, and political theory—concepts like socialism, capitalism, anarchism, and communism either barely existed or didn’t really come into popular usage until this time period—new ideas are always popping up for players to contend with in Victoria 3.

Should your country become a bastion of freedom and embrace the growing movement of human rights? Or do you want to create a global empire that crushes the world with your economic strength? Who should be allowed to vote? Should there even be voting? Victoria 3 provides a big sandbox where you can toy around with all of these ideas and see how things play out depending on your choices.

WHAT SUCKS

• Learning curve. Again, this won’t be a shocker to anyone who’s familiar with Paradox Interactive’s games, but Victoria 3 is dense. It is absolutely packed with different directions to go in, technologies to learn, laws to pass, levers to push and pull in a desperate attempt to manipulate your nation’s development in the direction you want. The game provides some guidance, but the only real way to get a handle on it will involve playing hundreds of hours...and probably watching about that many hours in YouTube tutorial videos as well.

• Lack of perspective. Part of what made Crusader Kings II and Crusader Kings III such surprise hits is that they are, at heart, games about drama. When I play Crusader Kings, I feel like I’m stepping into the shoes of some medieval duke who needs to scheme, backstab, and watch his own back to keep climbing up the social hierarchy—and then, later on, into the shoes of that duke’s children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so on.

Victoria 3, by comparison, has you playing as a nameless, faceless, invisible force that seemingly magically controls the direction (or intended direction) of the country. When you make decisions about what laws to support or how to reform the government after an election, it impacts how happy different factions within the country are, but there’s no sense of who those factions are pleased or displeased with. This isn’t a game-breaking issue, and it’s also obviously par for the course with strategy games, but I can’t help but feel like it makes proceedings a little sterile compared to Paradox’s best-known series.

• Slow pace. While Victoria 3 covers a smaller stretch of time compared to many of Paradox’s other titles—just one hundred years, versus almost four hundred years in Europa Universalis IV and over five hundred years in Crusader Kings III—that time frame also moves at a crawl by comparison. The game recommends playing at a speed of “3,” the middle of five options, but in my time with the game, there is not nearly enough happening to make it worth running things that slowly. It took me nearly four hours of play time just to make it through a decade before I finally gave up and pushed things to max speed. Even there, Victoria 3 can feel like a slog during slower periods.

SHOULD YOU PLAY IT?

In some ways this question feels kind of silly, because I think if you’re a Paradox fan, you’ve probably already got this loaded up now and are just glancing at this review between games. So let me speak to less hardcore fans or perhaps those who’ve never even played a Paradox game before. If you’re new to or curious about grand strategy, I think your best bet is to try Crusader Kings III first, especially if you can pick it up cheap during a Steam sale. Victoria 3 is a worthwhile strategy title with lots to enjoy and an absurd, frankly intimidating level of depth, but it’s less immediately welcoming (and much slower) than Paradox’s best games. Maybe return to this one in a year or two, when it’s had some patches and add-ons to really sand some of the edges off the experience.

💬 You can choose to rule over any country in the world through the 19th and early 20th centuries and choose what direction they go in. Who are you picking? Let me know in the comments!