Hearts of Iron IV

Game
    Review

Hearts of Iron IV (2016) is a strategy game that recreates the Risk board game with a broader scope and grander scale. Along with managing your country's military, you build a cabinet, manage politics, and build up infrastructure to help maintain your capabilities. It stands out for the depth and realism of these interactions, and the freedom you have to shape your own 20^th-century theatre of war.

Set in the midst of the Second World War, you can choose to play any country - from one of the larger powers to a smaller territory just trying to survive. In addition to deploying troops to battles across the world, you build up a government, create factories and industries to support your people and the economy, and manage your relationships with other nations.

Play involves managing these multiple systems while also ensuring military victory. You choose which troops to deploy to different environments, form strategies based on your knowledge of your opponents, and adapt them as the front line of combat evolves. There are over 11,000 different regions, each with its own environments and challenges. You need to carefully manage your supply lines and movements, with logistical challenges and overall management being essential to success. The sheer amount of things you need to do can seem overwhelming at first, but it's this depth that makes it so engaging to play and so rewarding to excel at.

The result is a game that offers a complex challenge to master, with many moving parts and interplay between different systems, making for a deeply strategic and nuanced war simulation where every decision is critical.

Our examiner, Ben Kendall, first checked Hearts of Iron IV 5 weeks ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 5 weeks ago.