Folks, I’ve got some bad news. Victoria 3 is not a game where you play the clone of the clone of Posh Spice. I was all geared up for some science fiction-tinged Spice Girls shenanigans, but I was left bitterly disappointed. However, I’d already installed it, so I decided to check it out and see what kind of game it actually is. Turns out that Victoria 3 is a grand strategy game, just like its Paradox stablemates Crusader Kings and Hearts of Iron.
Trying to classify Victoria 3 is pretty damn important. Unlike, say, the Total War series, Paradox’s grand strategy titles are differentiated by a lot more than their time periods. Hearts of Iron its WW2 military ticker on its sleeve, while Crusader Kings (my personal fave) is secretly an RPG, just one that happens to cast you as the ruler of a country, rather than a random wandering murderer. Figure that out and you grasped the appeal of the game, especially for people who may lack interest in - or be downright put off by - the historical era it covers.