Ulasan

• gamedeal user

  Mar 12, 2023

  By Blood Alone is a mixed DLC. It improves the quality of life in some game aspects, while also being a hindrance in others. All pros and cons are my own opinion. Pros: - Italy now has a proper and expansive focus tree. There is enough content to last until the end of the game. Defending against the Italians as Ethiopia is a fun challenge, but certainly requires some skill. - The air designer allows for players to make some very powerful planes, so air is even more important in this update. - The updated UI for air deployment is a great QOL change. - Pdx is actually updating the game pretty consistently after the DLC release, mainly for bug fixes or small content updates to older nations. - Balance of Power is unique and allows for the player to better optimize their country build. - The new peace deal system is more expansive and allows for more customizations of the world. War reparations, taking navies, and resource rights are all great additions. Cons: - While the new content is new, most players will rarely ever play Ethiopia or Switzerland often. These nations are more gimmick countries than countries you would play in a serious/competitive campaign. In every “historical” MP game played, these nations are always banned or changed to never have a focus tree/be unplayable. In alt-hist lobbies, no one ever picks these two nations. I understand that Pdx creates DLCs based on region, but only one of these three nations will ever get played more than a few times. Ethiopia and Switzerland should not have more content/better focus trees than nations who actually fought in WW2. - Many bugs have been fixed, but the release to this DLC has seen an unprecedented amount of new bugs/glitches. HOI4 can be easily exploited, but this DLC did not do any favors. Many exploits have not been fixed, such as the teleportation exploit (where divisions can instantly teleport to another tile) and tank conversion exploit (which allows players to convert tanks and trick the game into producing an unrealistic amount of tanks). - I find that the AI on most nations are more incompetent than ever. The worst examples are Germany and Japan. Every AI Germany feels underpowered and they almost never get close to capping the U.S.S.R. Japan is even worse. In the dozens, if not hundreds of campaigns I have played during this DLC, I almost never see Japan cap China (I can think about 5 times they capped them). This is a problem that originates from the supply changes in No Step Back, but the new BBA DLC does not do them any favors. Overall, I find the AI, regardless of whether they are my enemies or allies, always feel incompetent. - The introduction of Irregular Infantry is a good idea on paper, but I never find myself using them outside Ethiopia because they have no industry and the Cithet consumes less infantry equipment and supply. It is the only viable option. With Italy, you have the industry to have an actual army, so there is little reason why to use the Blackshirts. The Swiss Militia is historical, but it isn’t a fun gameplay mechanic. If a person is playing as democratic Switzerland, they are most likely going to remain neutral throughout the war, so there is no reason to even bother with the Militia. I also despise how the Blackshirts can’t be disbanded unless you take a specific focus in Italy’s tree. This is especially annoying when you puppet Italy and request their forces and some of the divisions are Blackshirts. You can’t change the template or switch the division type. You just send them off to Greenland, never to be seen again. - The new peace deal system is terrible for the AI. Even with the various updates, the AI almost always creates bordergore (ugly borders following a peace deal), creates an absurd amount of puppets, and will fight tooth and nail for territories they do not deserve. This is best seen in the peace deal in the Pacific theater: Japan has just capped to the U.S and China is still alive. Because China has been fighting Japan for 5+ years, they have most of the war score. Even though the U.S was the one who fought the Imperial Navy and successfully completed Operation Downfall, China is often the nation that puppets most part of Japan. The U.S will often annex one or two states and then create an American Japanese puppet. You will often find Japan split amongst four different Japans: Chinese Japan, American Japan, America, and the original Japan because the AI forgot to take all of the provinces. This kind of bordergore is more prevalent if Africa is ever decolonized and even though a bit better, still horrendous in Europe after the Axis caps. War score needs to be restructured and the AI still has a long way to go until it is consistently good with peace deals. This is why most players play with a mod that allows the player to have all the war score, so they can create the borders. These are some of the highlights, but this DLC has been fine overall. I think Pdx has done a pretty good job, but it is definitely not the best DLC. As of writing, I would rate this DLC a 6.5/10. If you are looking to spend some money on HOI4 DLC, you are better off spending $5/month for all DLCs or getting a different DLC. This DLC should not cost $20.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 2, 2022

  Pros: - Italy has a rework, which was long overdue - New ethiopian & swiss tree too i guess - you can design planes - new peace deal options - field officers lead divisions & now form a pool of potential new generals (= RP) - see the combat history of each divisision (= RP) - Assign medals to divisions for certain combat actions, granting a combat bonus Cons: - plane designer is very unbalanced - ethiopian and swiss trees are unbalanced and not thought out very well - italian civil war triggers WAY too fast, losing 1 non-core state can trigger it, crippling your entire build-up - AI can't properly handle embargoes - border gore is guaranteed even more now - the entire DLC is essentially untested, as happened with almost every other DLC paradox released for HOI4 Verdict: This DLC will need a lot of balance- and AI fixes before you can consider this even close to good. If you want a good italy tree, go play LVN, which still does it better than this DLC. This was hyped up to be No Step Back 2.0 in quality, it fell waaaaaaaaay short of that. Maybe this DLC will improve after some patches but i'd recommend just waiting until that happens. I had high hopes after No Step Back, sadly I am left immensely disappointed and am now forced to return to touching grass or other gross stuff like a social life (which by comparison causes me less frustration). Score: 4/10
• gamedeal user

  Apr 29, 2023

  A really good expansion pack, with the exception of the Italian Civil War mechanic, which is so bad it ruins the entire pack and makes it not worth it. You can have Washington DC surrounded, Moscow captured, and London flying the Italian flag and then lose a town in rural Italy and bam, the whole run and hours of your time are wasted.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 7, 2022

  The purpose of this DLC was to fix broken peace conferences and they managed to absolutely destroy them even more.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 19, 2022

  Hearts of Iron IV: By Bugs Alone
• gamedeal user

  Oct 27, 2022

  im so sorry i asked for new peace conferences
• gamedeal user

  Oct 10, 2022

  I have over a thousand hours across vanilla HOI4 and various mods. I love the game, and like to think I'm a reasonable player and at this stage I feel like I've learnt most of the game systems pretty well. But this new peace conference system? It scares me. It ends up in absurd amounts of border-gore, and it's fair to say that this was already a major problem with peace conferences in this game. If Kaiserreich has a system to avoid said gore, keeping nations roughly intact (while giving you annexation options at a penalty), why can't the vanilla game implement similar? It seems, instead, that they're even worse. I've played through a single game as France, so I can't comment on the new focus trees, of which only Italy would be interesting to me anyway. Focus trees are also the most "meh" part of any expansion, I find, since there are often superior options available via. mods and it's relatively easy to do. I will say that a single playthrough is also not generally enough to learn all the intricacies of a new expansion in this game, but there was a major glaring fault. The AI doesn't know how to use the new aircraft designer. It seems - fighting against Germany - extremely easy to make an overpowered fighter plane that gives you complete dominance of the skies while suffering almost no losses. 400 planes vs. 4000, and they were losing 20 a day. I had some 40 aces in my pool. You can then stack absurd amounts of ground attack on your bombers, basically wrecking your way through the front line with uncontested air superiority. Fun? Kinda. It would be if the AI could respond, or if that was a reward for a hard fought battle to get air superiority. But it felt like the air war was almost taken out of the game. Some of the expansion launches have been rough, but generally with time they've added depth and made the game better. I think this one needs a full rework, honestly. There's not a lot to recommend here in its current state. It actively makes the game worse.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 30, 2022

  >Start game as Ethiopia >Hold out against Italy for 3+ years >Italy joins Germany >Germany declares war on me >I take focus to sue for peace with Italy >Italy accepts >Germany is not included in the focus scripting >Still at war with Germany >Germany calls Italy back into war with me 3 months later >?????? Paradox, how does this shit still happen? Does literally anyone play test their DLC? They have a Ethiopian war system that rewards Ethiopia the longer it stays in war against Italy with increasing maluses for Italy, but by the time you reach the end, Italy has already joined Germany and thus broken the focus that is supposed to end the war. If this is intended that you get dragged into the global world war, then why is the focus still available? And why does Italy accept peace? These silly inconsistencies and bugs are ALWAYS present with paradox DLC. And this is when playing the most main stream scenario one could think of, Ethiopia holds against Italy until the Ethiopian war system reaches the final stage. I ask again, did ANYONE play test this before release? Did anyone play Ethiopia? EDIT: Holy christ, the border gore. My first world war 2 conclusion resulted in a 'German Republic" in the West, a "Soviet occupation zone" of one province, a "East Germany" (also a soviet puppet?), and the German Reich with one province. Yes, with Hitler and all. Fascist Hungary also continued to exist in one single province. The Italian civil war that happens caused the new Italian state to become a puppet of mine, but the war conclusion then created another TWO Italian puppet states between the UK, and my ally the Soviets. Mongolia laid a claim on the Libyan province of Cyrenica. Wat? Honestly at this point, just hard code 10 different world war 2 outcomes, put them on a scale of 1-10, and pick the most appropriate one depending on the contributions of the allies and player.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 28, 2022

  "We will charge them for new content and they will thank us for it!" -Mussolini
• gamedeal user

  Sep 28, 2022

  I would like to preface my little rant here with the mention that I have *never* left a non-joking review before, let alone a negative one. I just feel that this DLC is one of the worst paradox has released in it's latest generation of games. I have played EU4, Vic2, CK2 and 3, and Stellaris, and own the dlc for all of them except ck2. And I still believe this dlc is an utter joke and unworthy of your time, let alone money. Switzerland fash tree is horrible, completely boring and unplayable tree, you cannot join the axis until roughly 1941, and I was doing everything as soon as I could. You also cannot make your own division templates and are stuck with horrible pre-assigned ones. The fash Switzerland is an actually insulting spit in your face. But that pales in comparison to the new peace deals. Whoever at paradox decided that letting puppets participate in peace deals with their own war score should be fired immediately. I was playing as historical Japan, with a-historical ai. Russia went with the 2nd civil war, and I got lucky (i thought) where they even became my puppet. After struggling through the China war (manchu declared independence war halfway through), I got into the peace deal, excited to try the new features. I was taking the coastline, and planned on turning the rest into a puppet, before, along comes my puppet, Russia, and liberates roughly 80% of China to the CC clique, forcing me to burn my remaining score on turning roughly 5 of the remaining states into my puppet. I was so enraged by the utter waste of time how insulted I felt, that even though I was on non-ironman, and could fix it in 5 seconds using console commands, I came here to write this rant instead. The new features, embargoes, new peace deal options, are part of the update, not the DLC. But, there is nowhere on Steam that I can vent about these features other than here. The new air designer and combat is meh, I honestly prefer the older versions of hoi4 without the plane, tank and ship designers and other things added since La Resistance, but I do not know whether I am in the minority there, but I just cannot bring myself to enjoy the "complexity" that Paradox likes to add to perfectly fine mechanics. I overall do not enjoy this update and dlc, and do not recommend it. Rant over