Diplomacy got trashed by Gamespy

[Nostromo]

It's like someone tried to make the worst Diplomacy PC game possible, and succeeded.

Read more about it here:

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/diplomacy-2005/665958p1.html

[Kassiopeia]

Wow. I was afraid it would be bad, but this bad? No private in-game chatting? A horribly messy multiplayer requiring forum registration in a game that is supposed to be the MP game? What were they thinking?

[CerberusIV]

That sounds bad. I'm glad I held off buying the game now.

I take it the Gamespy review was of the released version, not a late pre-release copy? (not that there is likely to be much difference)

If Paradox fix it I might think again next year. But messing up the basic concept of the players talking to each other with confidentiality is a really obvious mistake.

[Nikolai]

I said so when the game was announced, they should have kept to something they knew... This is the first Paradox game since I found them in early 2001 that I haven't bought...

[Kassiopeia]

I just hope this won't impact the company as a whole, and that they'll keep releasing great games. I'm jonesing for a Victoria 2 or a Europa Universalis 3, in fact.

[Grumbold]

I'm disappointed to be proved right on this one. I thought it was going to be the AI that let down the project as it is something Paradox always struggle with, but to have the basic multiplayer features issued in such a flawed state too is a real let down.

Being cynical, Doomsday sounds like a quick expansion hoping to restore the coffers a bit. I hope it works for them, but I think the HoI 1+2 main selling point is the huge 1936-48 campaign scope, not its smaller scenarios. Unless it adds more genuine features to that, I can't see sales being significant.

[Nostromo]

I bought EU 1 and 2 and almost bought HOI. I was really excited about it, but then read the reviews and decided against it. Based on the reviews, Victoria and Crusader kings look like mediocre games and Diplomacy, another game I was excited about, is crap. I'll probably get HOI 2 one of these days.

[Dauphin]

EU1 + 2 were the only games I played, mainly because the quality seemed to be going downhill after EU2.

Hopefully an EU3 in the near future can restore an upward trend. (of course its seems to be impossible to go downhill from Diplomacy if the review is taken as a fair reflection).

[Sandman]

The question has to be, why are the EU games so much better than the rest of Paradox's output?

[Nikolai]

CK is one of Paradox's best, although npt nearly as polished as the EU series. More like a EU1.5 in polishness perhaps. Remember, Eu1 was a great game, but unstable and unpolished as hell...

[Colon™]

Never quite understood what the point was in releasing a diplomacy game. What was there to add besides some neat graphics anyway?

[Sandman]

My opinion of CK

[Nostromo]

To be fair, HOI 2 looks like a good game.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Sandman
The question has to be, why are the EU games so much better than the rest of Paradox's output?

Heres a guess (and ive only played EU2) cause in the middle ages running a dynasty involved lots of family garbage, and local estate management, after the age of revolutions running a state involved considerable management of the economy (even in economically liberal states) and of a complex political system. During early modern the economy was closer to running itself, from the states POV, the people and nobility were relatively passive, as compared to the nobility in the earlier period, and the people in the later, and statecraft was much more a question of war and diplomacy. To the large number of gamers who prefer to micromanage war and diplomacy, if anything, and what politics and economics included but abstract, early modern is the ideal period to cover.

[uglyduck]

Originally posted by Sandman
The question has to be, why are the EU games so much better than the rest of Paradox's output?

Because EU was Johans "Dream Game" that he always wanted to write.... the incentive to keep going when faced with adversity and to polish it as much as possible (hence all the work put into the many patches) was aways there!