Darkest Hour: A Hearts of Iron Game reviewed on PC by Jakob Paulsen. Game supplied for review by Paradox Interactive

Seeing another game based on the Europa Engine and Paradox Interactive’s veteran strategy game Hearts of Iron 2 being released, speaks volumes about a strong and dedicated community. Just a few months ago different team released Iron Cross and you might be forgiven for thinking that Darkest Hour is just more from the same pot of soup. However, Darkest Hour is quite a different beast.

This time you get to control the fate of any country in the world from 1914 all the way to 1964. This means you get to fight through two world wars, which opens up for a lot of interesting alternate realities. Luckily the developer has made sure that World War 1 feels a lot different from World War 2 in terms of battles and capabilities. Having two highlights (war-wise that is) to look forward to really adds spice.

As in any Hearts of Iron game you control all aspects of your country. This time the developer has simplified matters a bit and pooled everything into more logical sections – intelligence, diplomacy, technology, economy and warfare. This opens up for a plethora of choices and given enough time you can tweak your country into something very different from reality – say a fascist Sweden or a democratic Italy.

Your total industrial capacity defines how many resources you can pour into say building new units or spying against your enemies. You can either develop your own provinces or acquire new one. The second option of course involves war, which is the very core of any Hearts of Iron game.

In that respect the Darkest Hour developer has achieved amazing things with the AI. Usually the computer controlled countries in a Hearts of Iron game have a very hit-or-miss behavior. Sometimes they react spot-on to a situation sometimes they seem as ignorant to reality as your average MP. But in Darkest Hour they have been given tons of battle plans they can choose from. This really influenced my game and especially made alliances much more meaningful.

In my two playthroughs as Germany, I found Austria-Hungary to be very helpful – much more helpful than any ally in other Hearts of Iron games. I decided to go non-historical both times and only declared war on France leaving Britain out of the equation. I put enough divisions on the very short border with France to deter the French from attacking leaving the rest of my army free to attack Russia and hopefully knock Russia out of the war fast. Both times Austria-Hungary helped out very nicely by putting troops on the German-French border and sending divisions to fight alongside my own on the Russian front. That part worked like a charm.

However, the AI was not wholly competent at fighting at all fronts and the Italian front crumbled. Luckily I was able to transfer armies from the Russian front just in time to save the situation and turn the Italian offensive into a riot taking over North Italy instead. However, this might just be a very realistic simulation of Germany being “shackled to a corpse” and the AI still came off as a much more enjoyable experience.

Darkest Hour has taken a feature from Hearts of Iron 3, which is known as decisions. Instead of events happening more or less randomly, you get the option to make a decision if you live up to certain requirements. For instance you can send Lenin to Russia and later impose a harsh peace treaty on the Soviets – which actually was tons of fun. The following Russian civil war was simulated with great detail and care. I used to hate the decisions in Hearts of Iron 3 because I felt there were way too few and that created a lull when you were not at war. In Darkest Hour the decisions are plentiful and very interesting.

On the negative side I was not happy at all with the simulation of air warfare in the early parts of the game. While I realize that especially in 1914 and 1915 planes were like harmless bugs flying over two fighting alley cats, the economic resources required to build and upgrade them is way out of proportion. On my second playthrough I skipped them altogether and went for the one thing that really matters: Building infantry divisions – and lots of them.

The naval battles seem very confusing as well. My fleet outside Petrograd was attacked by an Italian fleet and got badly mauled, I lost seven ships in less than a day and had no idea how they could support a fleet that far away from a home port (remember, Britain was neutral).

Land battles during World War 1 are quite different and are quite challenging. They tend to take a lot longer than battles during World War 2 and can easily last several weeks. Your divisions move way slower as well. Thus you have to do what the nations back then actually did – move the troops by rail (strategic redeployment). I did miss the statistics from Iron Cross, though, since knowing how many soldiers you and the enemy lose makes the fighting much more personal and gives you a reason to think about the consequences of war.

Hearts of Iron games tend to suffer from crashes and bugs due to the extreme complexity of the game engine, but Darkest Hour is a very stable game. I did, however, come across one bug where an event caused the game to crash over and over again. Hopefully the first patch will catch that one.

If you like Hearts of Iron 2 you have a great choice at the moment. Arsenal of Democracy is the basic package with every aspect of the original game being improved upon. Iron Cross is for the hardcore enthusiast with tons of details and high demands – however Iron Cross suffers from bugs and feels unfinished. Darkest Hour seems to be the best game in terms of AI and land combat, while having the best scope and giving the impression of being a very thoroughly developed game.