Victoria 3 Review

Victoria 3 is the kind of game that sucks me in and doesn’t let me go, whether I’m trying to turn Hawaii into an anarcho-communist utopia or make Afghanistan the centerpiece of the global economy by monopolizing the opium trade. The scope and depth of its simulation is remarkable. I would need to double the length of this review just to explain the enormity of it in full. And that’s only outdone by the fact that it actually runs well. I wish there was a fair bit less overall jank and weird AI behavior taking me out of the illusion, and the warfare system feels very work-in-progress. But that hasn’t stopped me from playing it until the sun comes up more than a couple times in the last few weeks. It’s a great first step, with an even more promising tomorrow.