Did Victoria 3 deserve the bad Steam reviews?

The royal eye can twitch: is Victoria 3 really a disappointment?

With only 66 percent positive Steam ratings, Victoria 3 stands when we record this podcast. This isn’t a total disaster, but it’s still a good way short of the 82 points we gave the Paradox strategy game in the GameStar test.

In the GameStar podcast, Micha discusses with Maurice and Steinwallen where the complaints about Victoria 3 come from and how good the game really is.

The two have namely quite different perspectives: While Steinwallen on Youtube and Twitch also played other Paradox heavyweights like Europa Universalis 4 is our in-house Twitch-Fürst Maurice only dived into the Paradox offering with Crusader Kings 3.

All episodes and formats in our podcast overview

And Vict oria 3 is a very different game from Crusader Kings 3, that’s for sure. While the medieval simulator keeps spitting out new, bizarre stories with its characters and events, Victoria 3 relies heavily on dry numbers, values and tables.

But that’s not all: Victoria 3 impresses above all with the sophisticated interactions between politics and business. We have never experienced the upheavals of the 19th and early 20th centuries in such detail in any strategy game. Oh what: in no other game at all.

At the same time, the mechanics still crunch in many places. If we were angry – and we just are – we would say that whenever we put the magnifying glass on Victoria 3, we discover something that doesn’t quite add up or is missing.

It starts with the indirect military system – about which Micha and Steinwallen have different opinions, by the way – and continues to different economic systems that don’t play any differently at all.

What then makes us keep starting a new game in Victoria 3 – with Texas, with Japan, with Mecklenburg? And what does Paradox need to work on to advance this game in general?

We discuss it in the podcast!

Here is the Paradox roadmap, which we are also discussing: