Darkest Hour: A Hearts of Iron Game - 日本語レビュー44件・全言語レビュー2,067件・評価・同時接続数

I played many hours and many campaigns in HoI ages ago and enjoyed it. I hoped to enjoy DH: HoIG as well, but really couldn't. Why? 1. The advantage of HoI was that you could do alternate history, changing the course of events, etc. DH pretty much forces you into a very pre-determined course. I tried playing as Yugoslavia, 1936 and in spite of beefing up an army, fortifying borders, doing my best to stay out of the coming war, having excellent relations with Germany, Italy, etc, come 1941, scripted ultimatum by Germany, your choices are "become a puppet" - game over or "be invaded" - game over. Tried playing as the Soviets, HoI gave you a choice "do Stalin's purges, lose a third of your generals" or "don't do purges, see your dissent skyrocket". DH gives you no choice, purges just happen, you lose a third of your generals AND your dissent skyrockets (weird actually, since the purges had a rather opposite effect, putting everyone in line with the dictator's commands). So, basically the player has very little freedom of action, outside of the developers vision of how a scenario should play out. This, to me, defeats the purpose of a sandbox grand strategy game... 2. Bias or unbalance. I got a distinct feeling the game was very pro-Germany biased. I tried a 1933 Soviet scenario and tried to play a "nice Stalin" one that helps and liberates, rather than opresses. Got involved in the Spanish civil war, took over the troops, helped Republicans get a clean win. And the thanks for my effort? Minimal relations increase, no alliance, a puny 1% dissent decrease (but for changing a minister I ger a 2% dessent increase), no military experience, basically nothing. Got involved with the Chinese in fighting off the Japanese invasion, by inviting Commie China into an alliance. Automatically Nationalist China also becomes an ally. I soundly beat the ♥♥♥♥, annex Chinese territory which automatically transfers to (should at least ask me which China I wanna give it to) Nationalist China. Japan asks for peace giving all Chinese territory back and Korea and Pacific islands too. I accept, Nationalist China becomes huge, but both Chinas immediately break off the alliance with me and go into negative relations. I immediately liberate Korea, but my belligerence goes up. I get no option to liberate Pacific islands and am forced to give them to Korea if I don't want rebellions. I don't give any ultimatums or invade Finland, but they still hate my guts and try to assasinate my ministers. And French and British keep trying to assasinate my ministers. I don't accept Hitler's pact to divide Poland, but he still invades it, just instead of getting half of it, he gets all of it. My belligerence is still in its 70s just for helping liberate China without keeping a single province to myself, while German one after invading the entire Europe is in its 50s. I fortify my western border with bunkers, behind rivers, upgrade all my troops to latest level, research nothing but land tactics, beefing up my ground forces to latest standard of warfare, got 1941 tanks in 1939, good and skilled generals in command. No good. When the Nazi decides to invade, he's got at least 100 divisions more than me and in spite having lower organisational rating, still cuts through my lines like a hot knife through butter. Oh, and Lend-Lease. US sent over 20,000 tanks and airplanes to the Soviets. What does DH game give me? Not a single tank or plane, but 50 units of roads instead. 3. Airforce is entirely useless. When the Nazi invades, I got complete air dominance (his planes are likely over Britain). I pound an advancing column with my entire airforce of 4 Tactical bomber groups, 4 close-air-support groups and 12 fighter squadrons all in their latest 1941 upgrades. And all I kill is 400 enemy men out of 100,000, practically don't even scratch them. No organisational disruption. No advancement slow down. Nothing. All money spent on (expensive) airforce is completely wasted. 4. Diplomacy. Pretty useless. Any alliances, non-aggression pacts, demanding territory, outside of scripted ones are practically impossible to achieve. 5. Intelligence. Pretty useless. Chances for any actions are so low and so expensive, that the money is utterly wasted on them and coups, sabotages, etc are practically impossible or if they happen they're definitely not worth the money in the minimal effect they have. I suppose the only way to have a chance is to invest everything in a thousand infantry divisions with artillery attachments and all the money into research boosts so you get blueprints for stuff every time. All the other features are useless and a waste of time. I'm a stubborn person, so I tried same scenarios several times, trying to make some optimal decisions to enable me to gain the upper hand, but the game just keeps blocking any progress I make by its punishing mechanics, limiting diplomacy and disruptive random events. Maybe I should just play as Germany and steamroll everyone. Verdict: Forced. Unbalanced. Biased. Frustrating. Unrewarding. Punishing. Irrational.

I am a long time paradox player. I've sunk countless hours into HOI 1-3 and their derivatives. I have fond memories of the games and came back to Darkest Hour to see how it has held up. Not well. Now there are things the game does well. I quite like the decisions for example and prefer the expanded tech tree. The main problem with the game is how extremely railroaded you are. One of the nice things in the base game (and Arsenal of Democracy) is that you can actually make choices. In this game, most of the choices are made for you, which really diminishes the fun for me. For example, the US will almost always elect FDR in 1936 (I tried over a dozen times and he won in all of them). Now that is what happened historically, but what if I have badly bungled the US and dissent is 70%? He still wins all the time. Elections are pretty much guaranteed to go how they did historically. Which limits your ability to influence your country and actually is unrealistic, because it isn't responsive to change. If dissent is high the ruling party should lose, if the war is going poorly, the ruling party should struggle. But no, this happened historically so it shall happen here, even if the situation is different. But it gets worse. I tried a game as Nationalist China in 1933. 2/3 of my army is locked and cannot move until an event frees them. Fine, I can make do with the army I can move. Oh, a month into the game I get an event forcing me to declare war on Communist China before my troops have moved into position. Annoying but okay. After a month or two at war I finally have gotten the upper hand, my troops are in position, I'm marching on their capital... and I get an event ending the war and giving the Communists some provinces. I had no choice in that decision, I couldn't turn it down for extra dissent. Nope, forced into war and forced out of war without any say. It was at that point I quit the 'game'. I'm all for historical flavor, and a game like this should feel historically plausible. But I hate, hate, HATE the feeling of being railroaded and unable to make the actually important decisions. Furthermore, it's amusing that at game that forces history on you is biased in favor of the Germans. Last time I checked the history was they lost WW2. The other major issue is getting it to work on modern systems. I could get it to work, but don't try running it at a high resolution and be prepared to have to mess around getting it to run. TLDR: if you want a game that more or less force you to play 'historically' get this game, if you want a game where you can actually make decisions, get AoD instead.

The original Hearts of Iron II was a great game, but it took Paradox quite a few patches before they managed to make a game with some sense of balance and historical accuracy. Unfortunately, much of this balance has been stripped away in this mod. This results in absurd events which either block your ability to play a 1933 or 1936 campaign or result in events which are suicidal for AI played factions. As examples, I have played where Japan attacks the US in 1939 (and gets crushed) or Germany attacks Poland without the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact and ends up fighting the Russians and Western allies. Worse are the games where events occur which simply block progress, such as Germany failing to annex Austria or annex Czechoslovakia. 4 times in a row, playing as England or France, Germany has annexed Danzig and failed to invade Poland. In all cases, the effect is that there is no war and no point in playing further. I have deliberately let these scenarios run for years and nothing ever happens. I know I can force events by switching sides or modifying the code, but these events are far more common than not and demonstrate the game hasnt been tested properly or is unfinished. This is a shame because the new tech trees are interesting and the rest of the game seems to run well. I will be glad to re-review when these issues are addressed but for now I cant recommend this game. Actual time played is over 100 hours (~10 games); the steam number is wrong as usual. Update: Tried to play in spite of issues noted above and it just keeps getting worse. Every game Ive played so far (playing any country and assuming the war actually starts) ends with Germany steamrolling USSR; something has been seriously unbalanced. Most campaign games are nothing more than trying to suppress dissent from random events; one game with Germany had 8 "great war demonstrations" between 1936 and 1938 = 24% dissent. Thats an unplayable game. The player controllable events dont make sense, dont trigger or have no explanation of the conditions required to trigger them. Uninstalled.