Hearts of Iron

Hearts of Iron is a grand strategy game about World War II in which the player takes control of one of dozens of participating countries and manages its politics, economy, research, and military campaign on a map divided into thousands of provinces. The Swedish studio Paradox Entertainment built on its previous Europa Universalis series, bringing a similar real-time-with-pause system to the years 1936 to 1948, where the player must simultaneously handle diplomacy, industrial buildup, developing new units, and moving armies, aircraft, and ships around the world. The player can lead any of the participating countries, from great powers like Germany or the Soviet Union to small neutral states trying to stay out of the war or at least squeeze the most benefit out of it for themselves.

The game was released in 2002 for Windows PCs and became the first entry in a series that later grew with numerous sequels and expansions, helping to define the entire genre of grand strategy games built on real time with the option to pause. Compared to later entries, Hearts of Iron offers a simpler diplomatic and economic system, a less elaborate technology tree, and a plainer, less clear interface, yet it already contains the basic framework that later entries would build on - the choice of doctrines, technology development split into categories, and the need to balance production between infantry, armor, navy, and air force. This first, more technically raw version shows how the complex simulation of World War II was still being born, before Paradox gradually made it more accessible to a wider audience in later entries and fine-tuned both its balance and the clarity of its controls.

Why play it: Suitable for players who love deep strategic simulations and want to see the roots of the Hearts of Iron series in its rawest, least polished form, even at the cost of a plainer interface and a simpler diplomatic system than in later entries.