Wait... Are you meant to finish a game?

tl;dr: Every two months a free patch is going to come out that will break your game if you don't buy another 17-21$ DLC

I'd LOVE to give this game a positive score.
But once common sense came out the development team added new "features" that pretty much made the game unplayable unless you shell out more money for the dlc to unlock essential features.


All the dlc that adds features (Did I say add? I mean unlock, all the dlc buttons are in the base game, just greyed out) add up to a staggering 95$ (Canadian).
Don't get me wrong, some of these dlc are actually good, Conquest of Paradise, Art of war, and El dorado for example, as they only locked out non-essential features(mostly)


But almost everything since Common Sense is litteral cancer.

Paradox breaking the game and charging money to fix it. Great game but the developers are greedy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s trying to squeeze as much money out of you as they can.

Ah, the good old DLC simulator 2016.

I did not buy this game as it was just released, but far later. For a reasonable price i could get EU4 with the following DLCs: Women in History, Wealth of Nations, Res Puplica, Conquest of paradise, Art of war. These DLCs makes a game with a lot of strategic options, and a fun gameplay when you play the game in version 1.11.4. Thanks to steams "Beta" tab in the properties of the game it is possible to play this version and disregard everything Paradox has made since. In ironman mode in the game it is still possible to get the achivements that existed at the time 1.11.4 was released.

By reverting the game to the old version i have played many hours and never needed to rush to finish the games i was playing. It has been fun, and slightly educational. If you play this game, you will learn something about history in the period 1444-1821, and you will learn a lot of geography while having fun.

And this game is fun for anyone who can appreciate the management of a nation. The strategic choises you make regarding allies, expansion, religion, technology and the tactical deployment of your armies have such huge impact on your game, that you get to understand the importance of almost every desicion you make.

For me, i quikly startet playing in Ironman mode. This means that the game saves often, and you cannot revert any decisions you make. You have to live with the consequences of your actions. This has given a lot of retrys, but when you start a game, hunting an achivement, and you succeed, the feeling is simply great. Especially if it was a hard one.

I have found this game very fun and very rewarding, and i like the ironmode idear: Bear the consequences of your actions. And this applies to the consequences you couldn't have predicted as well :) It is a usefull lesson thats apllicable to real life as well.

Let me start off by saying I love the ♥♥♥♥ out of this game. The amount of time me and other players have spent playing this game is a testament to how great it is, with many players that I have played multiplayer with currently sitting on 2-3k hours.

In the beggining major patches were very spaced apart, but they were rich in fun and meaningful content, and so was all the DLC. However as Europa progressed Paradox has started releasing patches and DLC with a much higher frequency but a much lower quality. New major game mechanics are added in what feels like a monthly basis, which would be great if they weren't absolute garbage.

I mean let's be honest, everyone hates the States/Territories system, the Sailor system is nearly arbitrary, the new intrigue system is alright but changing it had no real effect on the game, nobody knows what Revanchism is, and the list goes on an on. If they kept releasing amazing DLC like the Art of War I would bend over with my credit card in between my cheeks, but unfortunately thats not the case.

At this point I think Paradox has given up on the game, and is flooding the market with DLC to make as much profit as possible. The patches clearly lack effort and desire to please those who still enjoy this game, and it makes me sad to leave a negative review on something thats kept me entertained for as long as this has.

This is a negative review, because I hate what Europa has become, however it used to be a great game. I can only currently enjoy it by playing multiplayer, which makes some of the patches bearable because the competition is inherently fun, or by rolling back to an older version of the game.

If Grand Strategy is your cup of tea, then I would storngly suggest waiting untill this is on sale, then buying it alongside some of the major DLC, and rolling back to around patch 1.14 or so. But I cannot reccomend buying this game at full price, or playing on patch 1.17 .

The dlc is too expensive, europa dlcversalis

Paradox:
Leave. It. Alone. It's a finished game, stop ruining it with updates and DLC.

This is one of those games that you just can't stop playing once you get into it. Fair warning, there is a decent learning curve for beginners (one of my friends never put the time in to learn how to play because it was a bit overwhelming at first glance). Once you get the hang of the basic gameplay you will most likely learn to love the game. I especially recommend this game to those who love history as this game is all about historical events and it gives you the ability to rewrite history according to your will. One of the best parts about the game is how every single playthrough is different. The A.I., for all the hate it gets, does seem to do a good job in my opinion of being unpredictable. It's pretty much impossible for two playthroughs to be exactly the same based on the scope of the game (how many countries there are) and the adaptiveness of the A.I. Something that I think goes overlooked when discussing this game is the sheer amount of options the player gets when playing. For example, when starting a game, you get to choose any counrty that you want! It seems like a small thing, but how many games really give you that sort of option. Usually I feel like games restrict the creativity of the player, but EU4 really allows the player to do basically whatever they want. To top it all off, the modding community is great and even though it's been out for years now, they are still updating the game and you can easily find a multiplayer game to join if you want. Overall, one of my top 5 games of all time! I can't recommend EU4 enough.

Despite recent attempts by Paradox to squeeze as much money as possible out of their fans, I still can't help but recommend the game. It's just too great to be bogged down by a terrible DLC policy. If you aren't willing to drop $100 on a game (which is totally understandable), I would wait for a big sale where the game + all DLC will probably be around $50, which I believe to be a fair price.