I've really tried to like this game. But it's just so buggy, YEARS after release. Issues that have existed and have been known for over 2 years still destabilize the game. Fun examples include:
- Battles, instead of resolving, just go unresolved over and over again, leading a war that should have been a cakewalk instead turning into a stalemate
- Vassals are a waste of time - having vassals, by the end of the game, is just a way to spend your time fighting revolt after revolt because your vassals are incapable of taking care of themselves. Late game, don't even bother annexing land with the intention of releasing a vassal if you do have vassals, as the endless loop of vassal revolts will surely prevent you from actually releasing this vassal.
- Slowdown is intense late game, more than even HOI4. Much of this seems to be just odd game mechanics - armies of 0 soldiers forming as you move into new areas, new ships not automatically joining navies, etc. Things that I have control of, sure, but is annoying to manually do, and the AI certainly doesn't bother with.
The biggest problem isn't even the glitches, truth be told. Its just not fun. Its not historical. There's just no point.
Take colonization, for example - in Victoria 2, you would colonize a piece of land with other great powers, and either go to war or settle along straight lines, much like the Berlin Conference dictated. Victoria 3, you just... have bordergore. You can try drafting a treaty... but its unlikely to work in any meaningful way, and the AI most certainly won't bother. Not to mention all of the independent, untouched West African nations, and the uncolonized mess that will inevitably be Idaho. War, if you can afford the infamy hit, might correct the issue, but for some corrections you end up spending more diplomatic moves than its worth for a war that will inevitably take years to peace Britain out of without invading the Home Isles.
Speaking of Diplomatic Plays, this concept is terrible, only being able to take wargoals set out in the beginning, removing the fluidity that Victoria 2 (and real world wars) had in its aims. Warfare is just... not fun either, having to just manage frontlines instead. This gets particularly annoying when hitting a point where the frontline splits, meaning splitting your army to cover two different front lines.
At some point, the game just becomes a menu simulator, a constant repetition of selecting research, building industry, changing production methods (not only when you unlock the technology, but also when you conquer new land), upgrading your armies... rinse, repeat. It just isn't fun. If you want to have something more engaging, get an office job which requires you to spend hours on end staring an a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet - at the very least, you get paid to deal with that buggy software.
Overall, I have lost hope this game will ever truly be good like its predecessor. It just isn't fun to play, and when you finally get in a stride the gameplay just becomes weighed down by enough bugs to kill any semblance of joy you might get out of it. Its a shame, because there's a solid foundation here, but rather than trying to fix the core issues of the game the devs seem more interested in developing new, bloated features that are just as half-baked and broken as the rest of the game.
