Victoria II is a grand strategy game played during the colonial era of the 19th century, where the player takes control of a country, guiding it through industrialisation, political reforms, military conquest, and colonization.
Experience an in-depth political simulation where every action you take will have
various consequences all over the world. The population will react to your decisions
based on their political awareness, social class, as well as their willingness to accept or revolt against their government.
Victoria 2
Carefully guide your nation from the era of absolute monarchies in the early 19th century, through expansion and colonization, to finally become a truly great power by the dawn of the 20th century.
If you would judge Victoria 2 by its predecessor that would be your first of many mistakes you would presume about this game. Every review that you would read about its predecessor would be put together of 80% of flaws about the game and 20% about the good in the game. Now I can say that the situation is completely opposite, maybe with even better odds for the good. Victoria II dumps most of the bugs, fussy micromanagement, and headache-inducing complexity that earned the original game a lot of criticism. Instead we got a game with great stability, and with the mechanics of the game done in such a way leaving behind all the boring and distracting pop-ups and flickers. One of the biggest weaknesses about its predecessors was the lack of a good tutorial or any tutorial for that matter. The game is now full with tutorials about every little thing that concerns the game, and is explained very thoroughly making you learn about the game, but only in theory. In praxis playing this game is a totally different story. If you have read all of that you needed in the tutorial, that should help you in some measure, but getting to know the game especially for the newcomers in the genre will be a challenge in the beginning of the game. Only after a couple of hours of experimentation will you find out everything you need to know about the game, but after that when things heat up, you will be trapped in the game without realizing it. Many that played Paradox Games products like Europa Universalis III Complete and Hearts of Iron will find similarities with this game, but it is also unique in its own way. This is a geopolitical simulation writ large, where you take control of the state of your choosing at the dawn of the Victorian era in 1836 and guide it in real time for a century. As there is only one mode to the game, Grand Campaign option, the only goal to the game is to finish it. How, with what means, and how long it will last, that is all up to you… I must mention that the game supports online multiplayer option, so for the fans that are loyal to the genre, they will find enough action against other advisers. When you start the game you will decide between hundreds of nations, spread on thousands of provinces, and depending on the information about the a certain country that the developer had from that time, you will find different unique scenes concerning only that country. There are also menu lists that cover every aspect of Victorian society, including population, religion, trade, taxation, diplomacy, warfare, and the many technological advancements of the era. In some point of the game you will have to start looking out for the people, that is you will be trying to save your skin from them, preventing any potential riots and civil wars. Depending on the development of the country in every aspect, political, economic, etc…but most importantly the inner economic situation in means of collecting taxes and tariffs, you will have to balance all of that in the same time to maintain peace in your land. But even if you can find some micromanagement in the game, there isn’t as nearly as it was before. The game interface is also a blessing in the game, as it will make the gameplay much easier. The entire core features of your nation are accessed via eight buttons on an information bar at the top left of the screen. So if you want to tweak diplomacy, adjust tax rates, order technological improvements, or field an army, all you do is click a single button to access the requisite menus, and then, you can have at it. You will see that getting to know the game is an experience for itself. Every part of the game requires special attention, especially the population part. Population is the biggest concept to wrap your head around. The game comes with classes and a dozen or so occupations that all need to be carefully managed. You will definitely have trouble through the game with the people, depending on the country you select, because you know what they say, the bigger they get the harder they fall… There are a couple of nice objectives you can accomplish in the game, like you select Finland as your starting country, then you expend your territory on the neighboring countries, like Sweden, Norway and Denmark, creating the Scandinavia. There are many similar examples and it is up to you to find out what are they and how many they are.
