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Hearts Of Iron: Anthology (PC) |
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By
Paradox Entertainment
Average Customer Rating:  
List Price: £19.99
Our Price: £5.99
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Binding: Video Game
Brand: Paradox Entertainment
EAN: 7350003643807
Label: Paradox Entertainment
Manufacturer: Paradox Entertainment
Platform: Windows XP
Publisher: Paradox Entertainment
Release Date: 2007-08-31
Studio: Paradox Entertainment |
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Product Description
Includes:
Hearts Of Iron
Hearts Of Iron II
Hearts Of Iron: Doomsday
Now In Retail: Boosterpack Armageddon
Unique Life Size Medal
Large Strategy Map
The map spans the entire world and allows players to play as one of over 175 countries throughout the course of World War II. Doomsday adds even more to the award-winning gameplay by introducing a nail-biting What if scenario that brings the player through WWII and into WWIII. Never before released in retail, Armageddon allows players to venture even further into fantasy scenarios, or to instead play the game as history unfolds. The product includes: Hearts of Iron, Hearts of Iron II,Hearts of Iron II: Doomsday,and the new-to-retail Booster Pack: Armageddon.
Command any frontline during World War II as one of more than 175 playable countries
Four major campaigns let you play through the full course of the war, plus 15 battle scenarios including D-Day, Operation Barbarossa and The Ardennes Offensive
A vast and innovative technology tree that includes more than 350 different technologies to research
More than 12,500 historical military and political leaders, each brought to life with authentic portraits and schemes to further their own agendas
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good game, 2009-06-13
good game but no great improvemnet on last one.
more of the same, buy it if you want more but leave it youre looking for something new.
HOI2 is superb, 2010-06-28
You dont need any of the other games in this compendium lets face it. The reason you want this compwendium is becuase you can get Hearts of Iron 2 plus Doomsday and Armageddon expansion packs for a very cheap price. And HOI2 Arma ranks, in my opinion, as the best game of this ilk. Out of the box it looks dated but add some of the many mods around such as SKIF icon updated alongthe lines of the WW2 Osprey book illustrations, Bebro sprites and GIP user interface screen graphics and you are well on the way to having a superb high level strategy game.
To try to explain what makes it so good you can run a whole WW2 war from the early 1900s all the way into the 1960s Cold War and beyond. Youncan take control of any country in the world and manage battles over the whole globe almost in real time (time passes by the hour). Battles take days sometimes weeks. You have to manage you supplies, your home front, war machine, army divisions, research, supply your armies, arrange trade exchanges and carry out large and small fleet maneouvers. Its a massive game but its amangeable with very good AI control of such things as trade and convoys you can concentrate on the important things such as stopping the German Beast.
There are some great scenarios such as the Battle of the Bulge and El Alamein to get you started and they cover pretty much every major engagement of the war. But then you can run comaiangs starting from all the important moments in the war spanning several years that will take you months to complete in real time.
Theres always something to do, you can add AI mods to change the game to make it more or less historical, and with Doomsday and Armageddon you have extra expansion into the Cold War and undetermined future.
OK so the graphicsal sprites are quite low res for a game these days, its not a 3d map, and the UI is a bit of a pain as it doesnt make good use of the mouse - that all doesnt matter. Playing this game is a rare priviledge these days as you get completely immersed in the game you forget time. Its that good.
There is a newer version of the game called HOI3 out but that is far far more complex to the point of banality so I cannot recoomend that one, this one was just right, the decvelopers lost their way on the later game. There is also an excellent alternative that I didnt even know about tille last week and that is Making History Gold Edition which is defititely on par with HOI2 and probably actually even slightly better. There is also a new Making History 2 game out but that has loads of bugs so dont touch that just yet.
Excellent - the scope is amazing, 2010-08-06
The game is simply mind boggling in its ambition to do nothing less but to allow the simulation of the world in the late 30s, early 40s. Diplomacy, intelligence, research, production, all are included and intelligent trade-off's need to be made in order to do the most with the limited ressources available. Allowing the player to do that with a hanful of nations, for which good historical research exists would of course be well within scope of what gaming was prior tothe HoI series, but doing this for over a hundred entities, i.e. all the countries in existence in 1936 and a good many of those that were likely to emerge from the war to follow, is unbelievable.
The only reason the game falls short of a full five stars in its out of the box version is the multitude of player designed add-ons and extensions, which help make it even more realistic, playable, and enjoyable (especially in areas such as the technology trees, technology teams and their skillsets available to different countries, more realistic battles (i.e. taking longer, with morale and organisation value altered, more correct starting forces, etc.).
Finally, as opposed to the later Hearts of Iron 3, which is fairly poor in the respect of historical determinism (pretty much all the game plays are highly ahistorical), HoI2 strikes an excellent balance between leading to predictable conflicts, while still allowing a human player to modify the outcome, if they decide to play their cards differently.
The Doomsday extension also allows the option to import games played in Victoria as a new starting point in 1936, enabling even more creativity and variability in the gameplay.
Given the price, buying this bundle makes a lot of sense. You will likely only need the HoI1 and HoI2Arm out of it, as the vanilla 2 and 2DD are simply earlier versions of the same game. There are differences for sure but Armageddon is the most polished version. For the ultimate experience, you will be best served with a further add-on, called 'Arsenal of Democracy', sadly this seems not to be available via Amazon just yet. That final addition improves the intelligence aspect somewhat, separates trade from diplomacy and allows users to modify the game more heavily (including maps), something previously not possible. It also adds to the time span, including everything up to and including Suez in 1956.
HoI Anthology, 2009-03-02
The game is pretty addictive and most of the bugs have been patched.
To learn to master the game takes much time and couple of first playtimes can be a litlle messy.
9/10
Fighting the Third Reich Big style, 2009-02-20
Bought this for my Dad's birthday since he's a bit of a WWII nut, and he loves it, having tried it myself, some of the things on it are pretty crazy, Armageddon's messing with all the state's is pure genious.
The previous customer review isn't all that true anymore, since all the bugs have been worked out in the updates, but then it was put up in May. But then it's from someone who already has the game.
The fact that the game is in a similar vein to the total war games grand strategy play, is a great thing in my dads eyes, though not being able to fight the battles in the field was a bit of A bummer for him but then he doesn't do terrbly well when fighting real-time battles.
Overall we both think this was a great purchase and will be recommending it to others.
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