When I first bought this game, it was because of how much hype paradox games get in strategy video game circles. I figured why not try to the WW2 one, because I have a ton of medieval and fantasy strategy games already.
The first two times I tried to play it, I was overwhelmed, confused, and quit within an hour.
Almost a year later, a friend brought it up, repeatedly, while we were playing board games. I was again intrigued.
This time, I just dove into a confused mess of a campaign, lost horrendously, but gained some context for the game. I then watched through a series of "how to play" videos on youtube, all while interspersing bits and pieces of failed starts to campaigns.
After about 20 hours of playing around, and about 5 hours of tutorial videos, and looking a few particularly confusing things up, I felt like I was ready to actually give a full campaign a try.
I promptly lost three attempts at a soviet game, where I wanted Trotsky to win the Russian Civil War. I was hooked on the "what if" scenarios I could create in the game.
Back to the drawing board, I played as the French, and had a glorious campaign that I marathon played over the course of like 3 days. roughly 15-20 hours later, I had won World War 2, conquered Germany, with Communist France!
For strategy fans, there is a lot to like in this game. However, it has a steep STEEP learning curve. You have to plan to invest time into understanding the mechanics and the intricacies, and there are so many ways you can unknowingly be shooting yourself in the foot.
This game rewards players who are willing to take a deep dive, play around, fail, look things up, fail again, and truly learn the game. It makes next to no effort to hold your hand, the tutorial is garbage, and the wiki I found unhelpful. But the fan sources and experience are great.
The more you put into this game, the more planning, the more research, the more it gives back. Most of my successes started with me going "huh, I wonder how this will work" and trying it out, of course many of these experiments ended in failure, but the game rewards finding your own strategies and plans.
It is a fantastic experience for players who want to plan out dozens of choices and moves in advance, and slowly watch those plans come to fruition, all while moving your country and army around to adapt to the situations around you.
This game is not for everyone, or even I would argue, most gamers. However, for gamers who can break through the wall of confusion and crunchy mechanics, there is a real gem here.
The only other thing I wanted to add is that the ending to the game is horrendously anti-climatic. There really isn't an end, the World War ends, you split up territory, then the game keeps going... This was a shock once I finally powered through to a win. But it means, once you have achieved what ever goals you set for yourself, usually surviving or winning WW2, just exit to menu and flip through the victory point charts.
