Hearts of Iron IV

Hearts of Iron IV from 2016 took a step back from the third entry's extreme granularity and offered a clearer national focus system, through which each country chooses its own historical or alternate path through World War II - whether that's Germany heading toward a different outcome of the conflict, or a small state trying to stay neutral. The foundation stayed the same as in previous entries in the series - research, production, diplomacy, and commanding armies, air forces, and navies in real time with pause - but the controls and interface are noticeably friendlier to newcomers than in the previous two entries.

It's precisely this accessibility, combined with open modding, that made the game the series' most successful and most played entry in the long run. The community has created hundreds of mods, from small historical additions to sprawling alternate universes like the already-mentioned Kaiserreich, and Paradox has spent years expanding the game with paid and free updates adding new national paths for more and more countries, which has grown the game's content many times over since release.

Thanks to this, Hearts of Iron IV still has an active online community many years after release, which can't be said of the older entries. The price of accessibility is less emphasis on logistics and micromanagement of individual divisions compared to the third entry, something part of the hardcore veterans still hold against the series today, even though later updates have partly brought back some of the missing elements.

Why play it: The best entry point into the whole series for anyone who wants a taste of grand strategy about World War II without the unnecessary austerity of the older controls.