Victoria 3 just feels as if a group of developers played Victoria 2, loved it, and tried making a sequel while absolutely not understanding at all what made Victoria 2 such a great game.

There is no capitalism in this game; every country functions as a command economy (capitalist pops do not build factories or railroads on their own, you as the state builds everything). There is no organic trade between pops and national markets; you the player has to set up each trade route yourself. There are little to no events for major historical events like the American Civil War, American-Mexican War, the revolutions of 1848, the Berlin Conference, Meiji Restoration, etc. There is no organic production; in Victoria 2 if a factory needed X but there wasn't enough X produced or on the international market the factory could not function but in Victoria 3 goods are still produced in some void and it simply raises the price in your national market. There is no international market whatsoever for pops to buy and sell. There is no westernization process and virtually no flavor events; rather you're Germany or an African nation it plays the exact same. There are no ideological rebel groups (communists, reactionaries, fascists, revolutionary liberals, etc.) instead there are simply "radicals". Ideologies get sidelined by "interest groups" that make less sense and are less interesting.

The map is ugly, the warfare is boring, literacy is worthless, the game is just uninteresting and disappointing. This isn't a Victoria game, this is just a poor knock off. A kind of shiny mimic that fails in every sense to capture what made Victoria 2 so great. Go buy the Victoria 2 complete edition and maybe install the HPM mod, don't get this game.

Victoria 3 just feels as if a group of developers played Victoria 2, loved it, and tried making a sequel while [b]absolutely not understanding at all what made Victoria 2 such a great game.[/b] There is no capitalism in this game; every country functions as a command economy (capitalist pops do not build factories or railroads on their own, you as the state builds everything). There is no organic trade between pops and national markets; you the player has to set up each trade route yourself. There are little to no events for major historical events like the American Civil War, American-Mexican War, the revolutions of 1848, the Berlin Conference, Meiji Restoration, etc. There is no organic production; in Victoria 2 if a factory needed X but there wasn't enough X produced or on the international market the factory could not function but in Victoria 3 goods are still produced in some void and it simply raises the price in your national market. There is no international market whatsoever for pops to buy and sell. There is no westernization process and virtually no flavor events; rather you're Germany or an African nation it plays the exact same. There are no ideological rebel groups (communists, reactionaries, fascists, revolutionary liberals, etc.) instead there are simply "radicals". Ideologies get sidelined by "interest groups" that make less sense and are less interesting. The map is ugly, the warfare is boring, literacy is worthless, the game is just uninteresting and disappointing. This isn't a Victoria game, this is just a poor knock off. A kind of shiny mimic that fails in every sense to capture what made Victoria 2 so great. Go buy the Victoria 2 complete edition and maybe install the HPM mod, don't get this game.