Why I buy this one ?
- Play any World War II front of your choice--over 175 playable countries
- Four major campaigns letting you play the full course of the war as well as 15 battle scenarios including D-Day, Operation Barbarossa and The Ardennes Offensive
- Real Time gameplay with the capability to pause at any time
- Intuitive tutorial and manual for easy access to the gameplay features
- Co-operative multiplayer gameplay allowing up to 32 simultaneous players to share countries; play against each other through a LAN or over the Internet through the Valkyrienet matchmaking service

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What our customer's say!

"Deep grand strategy game but flawed.", This is the best and perhaps the only serious grand strategy game for people interested in the WW2 era. You can play many major nations on all sides and get to experiment with decisions that leads to alternative history. The scale is grand and the gameplay addictive. But overall one cannot escape the feeling that the game could have been much better.

The first problem is the graphics. While strategy games generally have no needs for fancy eye-candy, the resolution in this game is limited to the archaic 1024x768. Thus the players are forced to do a lot of scrolling. This is just a totally unnecessary chore that feels tedious very quickly.

The second issue is game balancing. While the Germans, British and American were reasonably well set, the Soviets statistics do not reflect the horrible consequences of Stalin's purge. The Chinese settings are even farther off, with the communists far better equipped to defeat the nationalists in 1936, the exact opposite of reality, in which the communists escaped total annihilation only through political trickery.

The third problem is the supply model, which allows good supply levels as long as your nation occupies a continuous path to the front. If your allies, on the other hand, control a block of territory in the middle, you are in serious trouble. This is so unrealistic and problematic that one is often forced to resort to contortionist tricks to avoid the situation, which unfortunately occur all too often during joint operations.

There are several other little bugs that the publisher never quite bothered to fix. Overall, due to this game's niche status, it has the feels of a community project instead of a real consumer product, which is too bad because it has so much potential.

"Great Game: Neither Hard or Easy", This game is by far one of the best war games out there. There are several nations a player can choose, and a wide range of technologies to help improve the capabilities of the nation one picks. Also, creating more troops and the managing of government adds a challenging aspect to the game. Strategy is crucial, and a wrong move can be devastating.

Still, the game is by no means hard. Sure, it is complicated at first, but the game becomes completely easy after taking all of the tutorial scenarios and playing a couple of easy short campaigns within the game (Such as the German invasion of Czechoslovakia and the Spanish Civil War).

Nonetheless, there are some "bad" aspects to the game, such as:

-Aside from the "main areas" of World War II, the rest of the world holds large chunks of land for their provinces (By which I mean, a small nation like Italy has various sections within its national borders, while a larger nation like Peru or Colombia hold over-sized provinces).

-The production time can at times become very long and boring, especially if there is no easy way to make things rush. Sure, don't get me wrong, there is an option to increase the game speed; but even at the maximum speed, which is the speed I always play in, the game is still very slow. There's not even a cheat to make the game go faster.

-Technologies are more favorable for the "main nations" of the time, whereas the other nations are practically forced to have a slower technological output without a chance to increase the amount of teams that can work at a technology--not even if you expand the nation you pick by conquering its neighbors, the technological team simply stays the same.


Lastly, even though this game is great, my recomendation is that you buy "Hearts of Iron II: Doomsday," which is a stand-alone X-pack and holds all the aspects of this game while also expanding the timeline and governmental actions (such as espionage) in the game.

"Not for me", There is much to like about this game but there are two things I don't like about this game and for me they are killers. The visuals are dull, boring, bland, and cartoonish in my opinion; I just don't like looking at the game. The second is unrealistic outcomes. Take for instance the Ardennes offensive. It is very easy for the Germans to take and hold Antwerp, and to win this scenario. IRL this would have been near impossible. Given the weather, the state of their forces, and their supply situation it would have been hard just to drive to Antwerp. So if I don't like looking at a game and all my research and planning may or may not lead to a realistic outcome... I don't want to play it.

"Hearts of Iron 2 review", Wonderfully complex and addictive game with good replay value (other countries do not behave the same under different levels of difficulty).

"Fantastic, Addictive Gameplay!", Hearts of Iron 2 is a strategy game which lets the player delve deep into World War 2 action through scenarios and directing a number of countries. Players who have checked out games from Paradox Entertainment before will realize the following characteristics in the game:
1. Historically accurate data and scenarios. Although in the end the player determines the outcome, historical developments occur together with their effects on countries. For example, if you play the Soviet Union or Germany, you will see the German quality vs. Soviet numbers. The German resources are not sufficient to produce as many infantry divisions as the Soviets, and the Soviet infantry and motorized divisions do never match the German level regardlessof their level of upgrade. In the beginning of the scenario which starts in 1936 and ends in 1947, US has the highest IC (Industrial Capacity) in the world whereas it has a relatively small army. Then, this IC is channelled for a massive buildup.
2. Addictive gameplay. You have research teams to direct your research effort, armies to control, provinces to improve (infrastructure, industrial capacity), and resources to trade. You should be prepared to spend hours going to and from the different interfaces that let you control your country and gear up for war.

One final word for those who played or remember "Storm Across Europe" from Amiga. Take all the best from that unforgettable game and add everything you might ever have hoped for in a WW2 game, there you have it: "Hearts of Iron 2".

Read this reviews before You buy...

"the best ww2 strategy game...", i liked the original hearts of iron, although it crashed a lot. but this one is significantly better in many ways, and is a lot more stable as well. this is the unquestioned king of ww2 strategy games, there is no doubt. it is a brilliant game.

"Vast improvement over Hearts of Iron I!", I played and really like Hearts of Iron I, but hated how much time you had to spend micro-managing your economy, your colonies, and your armies. It was fun, but way too tedious.

Hearts of Iron II is still a little tedious, but they made it a lot more simple to control what you do with your economy, and armies. They also improved the tradeing you can do with other countries as well.

I find this new version to be a lot better, and a good and solid game to play.

"Great game for micromanagers", This game is a strategic micromanager's dream, but will be a nightmare for anyone interested in fast-paced action, instant payoffs or easy playability. You have to make decisions in this game, dozens and dozens of them in all sorts of arenas: economic production, technological research, diplomacy, supply consumption, and division-level military command of all your air, naval and land forces, to name the major ones. Some of the effects of these decisions don't develop for years (= hours of playing time), so you have to be patient and a real control freak to enjoy this game. If that's you, and you like open-ended simulations of World War II, then at 20 bucks or less, this game's worth every penny.

Changes from HOI1:

* The interface has been redesigned, making it easier to access certain types of information quickly. You still have to deal with countless message boxes, though, and some things, such as determining the composition, strength and organization of enemy units you are fighting with is a little trickier to deduce.

* The diplomacy model has been revamped, providing more and better options. Paradox scrapped the ambiguous triangle of diplomacy for numerical values that change as you perform various diplomatic actions. Also, international trade now makes sense, as you can negotiate specific deals with specific countries. In my opinion, the diplomacy changes are the best overall improvement.

* The tech tree has been completely redesigned, which has left me a little bewildered since I was thoroughly familiar with the old HOI tree. However, it has been largely simplified, which will make new users and old users happy once they become familiar with it.

* The global map can be broken up into Regions and Areas where you can assign specific units continuous missions. This is handy for ensuring continuous air defense fighter sweeps over your territory, for example.

* There are a host of new commands for military units, particularly naval and air divisions. Also, you can automate naval and air units to perform a continuous mission (such as Air Superiority or Naval Interdiction) in an area for a specified period of time.

* Most significant drawback (IMO): the graphics aren't quite as good as in the last HOI.

Overall, this game is superior to HOI1, mostly because of the vastly improved diplomatic and technological models.

"Gets old too quickly", I've been playing this game for a week now, and I already got bored of it. There's not really much to do, only this:

Make Operation Barbarossa succed playing Germany.

Take the Suez cannal as Germany.

Build a nuclear bomb and nuke your enemy (As any country)

That's it. You will find that the rest of the game consists of buiding units and fighting. There's no way to deal with your population, no social options, so the game consists 100% of fighting. Not fun when you play the 1936 scenario and have to wait three years for the war to start.

The incompetent AI makes everything worse. I never had to build the Atlantic Wall when I was playing Germany, because the allies never attempt to land in France, or in any other place. The only thing the americans do in the game is wipe the floor with your navy and bomb your units. They don't even bomb your industry. Not fun. The Italians get kicked out of N Africa and that's where it ends, because they never try to invade Italy and force it to surrender. It seems that the AI is not interested in fighting the war.

The same with the Soviets. No matter how much you suck at strategy, you will always win. It's strange but true. I'm a complete newbie at this, but all I did was attack them where they have the smallest number of units and without a challenge I reached Moscow in some months. They don't try to counter attack. I was looking a tough challenge, but increasing the difficulty only makes your units fight worse, even in Very Hard/Furious the Americans will never do a D-Day.

There's no espionage stuff either. Forget about using commandos or that sort of stuff.

The bottom line is, the only fun of this game is making the genocidal maniacs win (How fun!), which is ridicously easy, and, well... Not much else. It's a bit interesting to see some what-if scenarios too, like the Checz fighting, the Republicans winning the Spanish civil war and etc. You have the option to give control of territories to nations like the Wallonians, Croats, Slovaks, Serbians, almost every country in the world, which can be fun (when you are extremely bored).

I was interested at first at playing my country, Argentina, and try to make it intervene in the war. Not possible. Every country except the big ones (Germany, Japan, USA, England, France, etc) doesn't have any industrial capacity. Have fun trying to get your industry off the ground. Maybe this could be solved by allowing the mentioned countries to give industrial assistance to the smaller ones, i.e building their industry, but such thing is not possible.

Rainy day? Bored like hell? Go and buy it. Have 2 hours of fun resisting as Finland against the Soviet Union, making the Ardennes Offensive or Operation Sealion succed. There's not much else you can do with this game. Wait till the price drops a little or you'll feel dissapointed.

"Lots of play for your buck", HOI2 is a World War simulator. It's extremely deep and very, very complex. This game will require you to read the rulebook, play a few practice games, and it wouldn't hurt to have a general knowledge of WWII history and strategy. If you're looking for a tough strategy game with a lot of depth and great replayability, this is your game.