Destiny of the World

Deep game, long review. Apologies in advance. This game is a dream for me. I actually found it by Google-searching for games that were similar to Hearts of Iron or Axis and Allies. Although I'm not stuck solely on World War Two, I am stuck on strategy games. I have 1000s of hours logged on Hearts of Iron, all four editions, and I've also won numerous board game tournaments playing A&A in person at conventions across the country. So, for me, a game that depicts World War Two with quite a bit of detail, and is turn based, and does not have an arbitrary dice-based combat system is something of a holy grail. Pros: -It's a pretty good effort for a low budget game even in Early Access in June 2022. The interface is clunky in places, but superior to the typical mess independent game makers create. -It’s stable, I only crashed once due to video resolution, and the devs helped immediately. -The turn-based execution is ingeniously executed. Instead of one side moving everything then the next guy doing the same, you set orders and all sides move at the same time. This adds outguessing and surprises. -The AI is decent. This is a huge factor in these games. I frequently found myself cursing when the enemy fleets and invasion forces got behind my fast-moving armies, screwing things up. -There is a lot of focus on supply issues, and that helps make your operations follow a logical sequence. You don’t just zip across the ocean when the other guy’s navy is asleep and take him out. You will end up cut off with divisions withering away while your convoys are sunk to the bottom. -The game has a feel that makes you want to strategize at a higher than tactical level. While playing Italy, I actually delayed my invasion of Greece because I wanted to drive the British ships and troops out of Egypt and Cyprus first before I gave them the ports and bases in Greece. I also found that port strikes with tactical bombers were effective enough that I would rather rebase my air recross the map and work on a corral of ships in a harbor rather than attempting to invade with naval bombardment. That saved ships that would have been lost when the enemy sallied forth to stop me. There is a degree of strategy going on besides just the production and economic side. -Tactically, you really feel like you're making important choices when you encircle the enemy with your mechanized armor and then crush them with your infantry. You don't just throw everything at the line and hope for the best. If you play something like axis and allies or risk, you aren't making any tactical decisions. You're essentially pushing all your armies into a space and figuring you've got enough to win. If you're playing something which is actually an RTS like HOI4, tactics are generally ignored in favor of outbuilding an enemy and just watching your superior army sweep them all aside. Cons: -One small thing about the interface threw me off for several hours when I first started. Selecting a province brings up a list box of the different units in that space. In general, you left click the province then right click to direct units to attack or move. For a long time, I was clicking in that list box to select different units and then trying to right click to direct that unit to do something else other than whatever the first item in the box was doing. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that you MUST progressively left click the province itself in order for it to select a unit. The listbox does nothing. -Air and land battles pop up a box showing the action, but sea battles don’t. I’d like to know what happened to my ships. Convoy sinking can be skipped. -I wish air attacks that didn’t take a province stayed active. I kept having to reorder bombing missions over and over again. -I'm not sure why troops become tired and disorganized after moving, but not after fighting... seems like it should be the other way around. -I'm an unusual player in that I enjoy playing Italy, France, Japan and other countries that are not the solid standbys that everyone usually plays such as Germany. Playing Italy in DOTW, I managed to take all of France and Yugoslavia and Hungary and plenty of other places as well. Unfortunately, after 19 hours of play, when I took Paris all of France was given to Germany. This happened even though Germany had yet to take a single province in France. This ended the fun for that play-thru. It could be easily fixed by either adding an option to drop the Vichy event, or having the “early Italy” option turn it off, or having the event only trigger if Germany takes Paris. -No Modding: I've done a lot of modding, and I examined the files. I didn't see an easy way to get rid of the Vichy event in the files. I'm sure that there will be other issues like this as I go through and play other nations in unexpected ways. -DOTW is too full of large numbers. For example, your battleship might have 20,000 hps, and you will be told by the system about each 1395 damage it takes from each shell on the deck. This doesn’t hurt, but when provinces frequently have 294 factories or 170 or 39 it becomes a problem. You have to decide how to commit these factories in myopic detail. I would honestly prefer a given province only produced one thing at a time and that the factory count was divided by 10. I don't think much realism or balance or fun will be lost if every province with 129 factories was changed to 13, for example. Another speed up on the micromanagement would be to default unused production to making cash or supplies. Gary Grisby’s World at War did that, generating supplies by default. -One bug I found was I couldn’t get my ships to repair, even if I placed them in their home naval base for literally months. Not one percentage point of strength was recovered. -There is currently no way to play a minor, and no way to start other than at 1939 in open warfare with locked sides. -The save game format is binary, which doesn’t allow for much, and the database is largely unknown. It would be nice to have an XML file format and db for modding. Mods and modders have kept HOI4 alive for years. Despite some complaints, I find the game fun to play as it is now, and I’m sure I’ll get a lot more out of it. It’s better than A&A or Making History, and might come to rival HOI4 eventually.

I bought this game early on. I had very high hopes. I accepted it was in beta. The developer said late beta. I told him no it's still in early beta; about .58 (he said .98). Right now it's at about ,65 beta. I wrote often to the developer and they quickly responded. However saying that this game is in a release quality state is simply a lie. Bugs are everywhere. I have units drop from 88% organization to 12% in one victorious, in supply, battle. That eliminates them from fighting at strength for more than a game year. I have had sea units in home ports say they were out of supply when my country had surplus supply. Note these are fleets that have never left port. The Soviets attacked my NEUTRAL US fleet in 1941 because German submarines were nearby. And so many more errors. Oh it's not suppose to happen but yes there are bugs that allow for the US to be an Axis power. Germany always loses the the Soviets because the Soviet movement, infantry quality, and supply lines are ridiculously overestimated. As the US you can be in Tokyo on December 12th 1941 because the game ignores your fleet and transports just hanging off the coast. Even better, since you know where Nagumo's fleet will be, say Hi with submarines and a huge air armada and sink everything in it. In one or two years, this could be a good game. Right now, buy something else.

Feels like budget hearts of iron and thats not a bad thing.

a very good game mechanically - it's HOI with all of the extraneous knob-fiddling taken out an a great combat model inserted. but the game offers no way to skip unit or AI movement or at least speed up the animation, meaning most of your time is spent watching transports transit the ocean and cross africa vs. anything interesting. if dev can implement build basic QOL features it will be a buy

I really like it. If you like WW2 grand strategy games you will like it too. It takes some of the best features of other games (Strategic Command, Warplan, Hearts of Iron etc), improves on bits that benefit from being tweaked and brings its own ideas as well. It is surprisingly detailed, but not in an annoying, micromanagement way. Turns play out smoothly and quickly. PS. Don't be deterred by the graphics, they actually work really well.

Great game for an independent dev and you won't have to sell your soul to Paradox with HOI. He has been and believe will keep making QoL and other updates. Dev is active/responsive in the community forum.

I originally gave this game a negative review because I thought that it was too difficult to sort through the extensive information with too many mouse clicks. But I discovered that for many situations, I was simply missing the correct button to back out of a screen. In other words, I made the game a hundred times more difficult with excessive mouse clicks than it needed to be. I'm glad that I can recommend this game since it really is unique and fun to play. Pros: 1. Supply system in the game is much better than in many WW2 games and requires advanced planning to implement. 2. Game screen map is actually a plus once you understand the game. Initially, you may think it's too simplistic but it actually accomplishes a lot. 3. Game manual and actual video tutorial. How often do you see that anymore. 4. Depth and more depth. I love deep games and this is one of them. Cons: Only con that I can find is that there probably could be a couple of improvements to navigation on the informational screens but they actually turn out to more minor compared to the rest of the game. Excellent job, Fiddyware Game Developer(s).

Incredible game. A true WW2 Grand Strategy game. I love world in flames the Board game as it names all units and ships and you have to decide the big questions early to have a chance to plan with enough time to build everything you need to fulfil the plans. This game does it so much better with all important supply and research added in. But this is not a UGOIGO its simultaneous. An absolute masterpiece!

A great game that is fun. Easy to learn but with a good depth of production system that will require good planning to sustain a long campaign. Has good video tutorials to get you started and a detail manual to help you understand the mechanics. Support is good and quick to respond to questions or concerns. The game has many options and comes with a unit editor if you want to change the starting force.

I bought this game thinking it was going to be a beer and pretzels take on WW2, but was pleasantly surprised to find a deep strategic/tactical game instead. One or two others have described it as turn based Hearts of Iron, and that's a fair comparison. So far (as Germany) I have taken Poland in 2-3 weeks, then turned to France and the Low Countries which fell fairly easily, with Paris finally defended by just one lonely French Division. I started to wonder if the AI was almost brain dead. So I then did a cheeky invasion of the UK, landing at Dover, (unopposed by the Royal Navy??), and got ashore after defeating the lone defending Division. Next turn I attacked Portsmouth from Dover and another landing by 2 more divisions - however I was pleased to see that the Portsmouth attack was defeated, not only that but my troops at Dover were pushed back into the sea by a massive British counterattack. So I look forward to being challenged by the AI some more, especially when I invade the Soviet Union. Negatives - Well, the production side is a bit tedious really, too much micromanagement for my taste. In summary, a good wargame for those that enjoy this type of game. It also comes with a detailed manual which helps explain a lot.