Europa Universalis V

Every patch somehow feels like it breaks the game even more. Instead of fixing the core systems to have a solid base with everything working, and then add new content on top of it, it feels like they keep trying to balance things on top of broken mechanics (which will never work because things are not working as designed) It has been almost 8 months since launch, and the game still feels just as broken as it was on day one, but Paradox seems more focused on pushing out DLC to squeeze more money out of players (which is ironic because the DLC came out broken too) I will not even get into how the game pushes you toward playing with a vassal swarm, when countries in that era were supposed to centralize power under a single crown rather than feudalize into autonomous vassals. It feels like the game forces you to play tall by severely punishing you for playing wide. For the price of the game I would expect AAA quality, not a broken mess for more than half a year.

remove Johan, make EU great again

Definitely getting a lot better with each passing update. its a good game now.

Countries with 10k population hire 10k mercs and every single war ends up becoming a world war. You fight for 4-5 years with tiny countries and you get only 2 provinces because that's all they have.

NOT RECOMMENDED — Three Major Patches Later, EU5 Still Feels Like an Unpaid QA Job for players Europa Universalis V is ambitious, but ambition means nothing when the mechanics are poorly tested, badly balanced, and frequently work against the player for no logical reason. The scripted wars and “Situations” are a perfect example. Try participating in the Italian Wars or the Wars of Religion. If your side starts losing, you may discover that you cannot negotiate a separate peace or meaningfully leave the conflict. An ally can betray you, switch sides, and attack you while the game leaves you trapped inside its rigid rules. These are not rare cosmetic bugs—they can destroy an entire campaign. Did anyone in QA actually play these Situations from beginning to end? The Swiss Confederation is another disappointment. It should offer a unique political path toward unification, built around diplomacy, internal reform, cantonal politics, and the gradual centralization of the Confederation. Instead, the practical solution is to conquer everyone. Why create a special Swiss system if it provides no satisfying way to form Switzerland through that system? The economy is a complete mess. It is opaque, unstable, excessively complicated, and often unrewarding. Trade automation behaves unpredictably, income fluctuates without clear explanations, and investments can take so long to produce meaningful returns that economic development feels pointless. Complexity is not depth when the player cannot reliably understand the consequences of their decisions. Military balance is equally absurd. Professional armies can be annihilated by outdated units and levies, making technological and institutional progress feel meaningless. Meanwhile, Bohemia can suddenly field around 200,000 soldiers and endlessly run around its own territory. This is not believable military simulation. It is broken recruitment, manpower, logistics, and AI behaviour pretending to be historical depth. QA department—hello? The wider historical simulation is not convincing either. The Ottomans frequently fail against or simply avoid Egypt. Major powers do not rise and fall naturally; they expand in strange directions or remain passive when history, geography, and strategic logic should push them toward obvious objectives. Forming Russia is another example of confusing difficulty with tediousness. You need an enormous number of locations, many populated by foreign cultures, and then must wait an absurd amount of time to core and integrate them. This is not an interesting challenge. It is administrative waiting disguised as gameplay. Religion also lacks meaningful variety. Outside Catholicism and Orthodoxy, many Christian denominations feel mechanically interchangeable. A religious transformation should fundamentally change the politics and identity of a country. Here, it often feels like selecting a slightly different collection of modifiers. Europa Universalis IV was exciting at launch. It immediately created memorable campaigns and made me want to start another one. Europa Universalis V launched as an unfinished, frustrating mess—and after three major patches, it still feels unfinished. Paradox has more development experience, more resources, more community feedback, and better development tools than ever before. Modern automation and AI-assisted tools should make iteration and testing faster, not become an excuse for releasing untested systems. Yet players are still being used as unpaid testers while the developers repeatedly rebuild fundamental mechanics after release. EU5 does not need another impressive roadmap or promotional feature video. It needs a clear design direction, competent balancing, serious end-to-end testing, and developers who actually play complete campaigns using the systems they release.

Tremendous disappointment. Even allowing for paradox's habit of releasing incomplete games this one just doesn't work. Like Cities Skylines II, a more in depth simulation is great in theory but you should make sure it actually works before you sell it. I would return this game if it hadn't taken me a few dozen hours to realize it was broken and unlikely to get better any time soon.

Somehow managed to run Bohemia's (richest country in Europe) economy into the ground by... *checks notes*, mining too much gold, iron and silver. Do like a furry and do NOT forget about inflation, it'll ruin you.

How can you update the game and make it WORSE???

Europa Universalis 5 — Сырая каша вместо стратегии Интерфейс и визуальный стиль Первое, что бросается в глаза — интерфейс стал неудобнее, чем в EU4. Карта перегружена, шрифты мелкие, а иконки нечитаемые. Вместо чёткой и понятной системы провинций теперь какая-то мешанина из локаций, где не сразу разберёшь, что откуда берётся. Визуально игра напоминает скорее мобильную стратегию-однодневку, а не флагманскую ПК-игру от Paradox. Механики: сложность ради сложности Разработчики, видимо, решили, что чем больше ползунков и скрытых параметров — тем лучше. Экономика превратилась в табличный симулятор, где вместо осмысленных решений приходится возиться с десятками микроменеджмент-параметров. Сословия, торговля, дипломатия — всё усложнили настолько, что играть без трёх мониторов с вики-страницами просто невозможно. Баланс и историчность Историчность, которой гордилась серия, здесь принесена в жертву «песочнице». Уже через 50 лет карта Европы превращается в хаос: Бранденбург колонизирует Африку, Османы захватывают Скандинавию, а Франция разваливается от случайного события. Никакой логики, никакого уважения к историческому контексту. Производительность и баги На релизе игра тормозит даже на мощных системах. Постоянные вылеты, рассинхрон в мультиплеере, баги с отображением границ. Paradox в своём репертуаре — выпустили сырой продукт, который будут допиливать патчами и DLC ещё лет пять. DLC-политика Фундаментальные механики нарезаны на будущие дополнения. Уже сейчас видно, что без условного «EU5: Rights of Man 2» игра ощущается неполной. Paradox продолжает доить аудиторию, и EU5 — очередное тому подтверждение. Вердикт Покупать на релизе — выбрасывать деньги. Подождите год-два, десяток патчей и пару крупных DLC со скидкой 75%. Или просто продолжайте играть в EU4 с модами — там хотя бы понятно, что происходит на экране. Оценка: 4/10, и то авансом.

They just don't have the vision for this game. A simulation that isn't simulating anything. Economy/trade/colonies are broken. Updates aren't helping.