A huge experience that cannot exist on any other platform

Dec 28, 2013 22:46 GMT  ·  By

Europa Universalis IV from Paradox Interactive is the game launched on the PC this year that I cannot envision ever playing on a home console or on a Steam-powered device regardless of how powerful or easy to control they become.

The grand strategy experience from the people who have also created Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, and Victoria allows anyone to choose one nation in the world in 1492 and then guide it towards glory or ruin during the coming hundreds of years.

A player needs to deal with a variety of issues – military, economical, diplomatic, and technological, and the game simulates everything from battles to the flow of trade and the way various events shaped the fate of the world.

The title offers rivers of data that gamers can examine to determine how to act and plenty of map modes to sort through in order to get a better understanding of the world.

It’s an intricate experience that can capture the imagination of a player for tens of hours, and I have plenty of incredible stories to share about the time I spent with France, Sweden, or the Ottoman Empire, scheming, building plans, or reacting to the unknown.

It’s also a type of game that would never be at home on home consoles regardless of the increase in computing power that Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft will manage to implement.

The user interface, while streamlined and informative, cannot be tamed by a controller and there’s no way of replicating the way a mouse is used to navigate between characters.

Europa Universalis IV is in many ways a niche game, which can never aspire to sell as well as a Halo or Uncharted, but one of the strengths of the PC is the variety of things it can deliver for gamers looking for a complex and challenging experience.