Over 70,000 players for the first time, but still stress: Hearts of Iron 4 enrages fans with By Blood Alone and leaves us perplexed in the DLC test.
With over 70,000 players per day Hearts of Iron 4 is by far Paradox Interactive”s biggest Steam success (other games like Stellaris or Crusader Kings 3 don”t make it past 20,000). But the fans are currently running up a storm against the game: the new DLC By Blood Alone is to blame. What happened?
Currently, By Blood Alone has just 45 percent positive user reviews on Steam – more than half of the buyers who are speaking out here (over 1,200 people, after all) are dissatisfied. In their posts, they report serious bugs, balance errors and mechanics that don”t work.
Our GlobalESportNews review already appeared last week for the release, but did not mention these problems with a word. There is a simple explanation for this: they simply did not occur in the version made available to us. In the pre-release version, air superiority, close air support and the revised peace conferences worked much more reliably than in the launch state, which is why we assume an update error on the part of Paradox.
Table of Contents
Ethiopia is the highlight
At this point, as usual, there should be a biting commentary on the fact that Paradox has still not managed to give one of the most important nations of the Second World War its own national focus in its complex global strategy game, even after eight major DLCs and six years: Italy. With By Blood Alone, however, the HoI 4 community will have to look around for a new running gag, because: Mussolini ante portas!
For most HoI-4 players, new national focuses are the most important thing about every new DLC, because it is precisely new alternative historical paths that can massively influence the course of the game and sometimes offer very exciting challenges. By Blood Alone offers an incredible amount of both. In total, three nations receive completely revised national focuses, namely Italy, Switzerland and Ethiopia.
The latter is actually my personal highlight in this DLC, as the fight against imperialist Italy is one of the most exciting and demanding challenges in Hearts of Iron 4. So demanding, in fact, that it almost requires exploits to fight a successful defensive battle. Paradox needs to do some tweaking here – on the exploits, not Ethiopia.
Ethiopia also offers exciting paths away from the strategic challenge from the first minute of the game, such as the creation of the democratic African Union or we liberate the black continent from the yoke of colonialism and imperialism under the red banner of world revolution. Even though the focus tree falls short of Italy”s in scope, Ethiopia remains my personal DLC favourite.
As never before, the focal points of the three DLC nations are interrelated. Thus, the progress of the war or the lack thereof in Ethiopia determines which paths are open to us as Italy. And here the wait was really worth it, because Paradox delivers just about everything you could wish for as an Italy fan or HoI 4 player.
If the war goes positively, we can go down historical paths and ensure that Italy”s, let”s call it mixed, historical military history is not repeated, or we can exploit the Abyssinian fiasco to defy the Duce and proclaim Italian socialism, which comes in flavours of moderate democratic and communist. Overall, the Italian focuses are similar in scope to the revised Russia from the last DLC, but the Italian one knows how to convince more and exudes a very special charm.
All”s well on the boat
As Thanos knew, everything must always be in perfect balance, and so it is with the balance of power in Hearts of Iron 4. As you might guess, you must balance two opposing centres of power. If you succeed, nice buffs and bonuses await you, balanced with debuffs and mali.
If you give too much power to one party, the bonuses will be larger, but you will also receive much larger deductions on other aspects of your economy, research and/or military. Some national priorities also require you to shift the balance of power in certain favour.
It”s a ship, a tank – no a plane!
Those who remember the review of the last DLC No Step Back may know that I am a great fan of micromanagement when it comes to designing my own tanks and ships and unleashing them on my virtual enemies. Accordingly, I was delighted when a designer for aircraft was also announced. Unfortunately, this designer is comparatively slim compared to the designers for the navy and the tank weapon.
Although you can still decide whether you prefer to equip your fighter with machine guns or automatic cannons and whether the new aircraft may even have radar, in the long run there is a lack of variety. The few components to explore compared to the tank designer and the resulting lack of variety make it feel like a half-finished copy of the two known systems.
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, I had no problems with the aircraft designer in the test version. All upgrades worked, sometimes even too well. Thus, with my close air support aircraft with a combat value of 29, I was not only able to completely destroy the enemy infrastructure, but was also able to cause massive damage to the enemy land forces. In the war of liberation against Italy, my Ethiopian air force then ultimately shot down 17,000 Italian aircraft and lost only 3,000 of its own.
Distinguished Veterans Awards
Another new feature in By Blood Alone is the awards system. This will appeal above all to the role-players among us who like to give their units special names such as the 13th Royal Bavarian Division “Franz Josef I, Emperor of Austria and Apostolic King of Hungary” or the 38th Leib-Husaren Division “Queen Viktoria of Prussia” and have accompanied these divisions on their advance through Europe or elsewhere and followed them with interest.
Mended a major point of criticism
One of the biggest criticisms of Hearts of Iron 4 is, or rather was, the peace conference system. What a lot I”ve cursed and ranted about the AI in games when, after a war has ended, it has turned Europe into the ultimate patchwork quilt and suddenly the US claims a small strip in Hesse as its territory or Brazil makes it home on the Costa del Sol.
Paradox has responded to the criticism and integrated a revised system in By Blood Alone. Now we can claim the resources of inferior nations as ours, or we can annex their fleet, either to compensate for the lack of one of our own, or to make up for our losses.
Another game-changing feature is the economic embargoes, although I see the real benefit here in multiplayer games rather than the single-player experience. With an embargo, we can close our commodity market to other nations with which we are not at war. For example, as Turkey, we can deny the Third Reich access to our tungsten and thus massively influence their heavy tank production. For many players, however, this mechanic currently works just as poorly as the peace conferences.
Test without rating
Our impressions of the game from the pre-release version were positive throughout, but we cannot ignore the technical errors that are now apparently occurring after release.
Therefore, we refrain from giving a rating until Paradox delivers patches and explicitly advise against buying By Blood Alone at this point in time.
Editor”s verdict
I had an incredible amount of fun with the pre-release version and spent dozens of hours with Ethiopia and the Pope. It”s still incredibly satisfying to paint the world map in my colour and watch my Royal Bavarian divisions advance through Europe or unite the world”s proletariat. However, the fact that the release version suffers from such unbelievably massive bug problems makes me of necessity refrain from giving it a rating at this point in time.
Paradox delivers the best national focuses in a long time, all three nations confront us with exciting challenges and the new peace conference system, at least in theory, fixes one of the biggest flaws of the previous game mechanics. We can only hope that Paradox reigns quickly and gets a grip on the game mechanics with the promised patches. By Blood Alone is – if it works – a real treasure trove for the role-players among the Hearts of Iron fans and promises many enjoyable hours.
