It is pretty impressive that you can pick any country and any date and just jump right in. You spin a date counter like Doc Brown setting the destination for a DeLorean and then, presto, you’ve got a world map, waiting for you to click on the country of your choice. It’s the history of the world laid open, ready for you to step in anywhere you want. All this flexibility isn’t quite as wide-open as you’d expect. The emphasis is on the “Europa” more than the “Universalis”. The Far East, Africa, and Asia tend to be tedious exercises in setting the game at high speed and watching Europe prosper. And don’t even think about playing anyone in the Americas. Never have warring Meso-Americans had it so dull.

Since it has multiplayer support, you can easily jump into a game and save it to return later. Ha ha, just kidding. Good luck finding people to hunker down with you for the five hours of variable-speed spreadsheet gameplay it takes to get any sort of meaningful multiplayer interaction going. But it’s there if you’re crazy enough to try.

But as a single player game, there’s nothing quite like Europa Universalis III. Not even Europa Universalis II offers this much replayable wide-open history. It’s a brave new world from Paradox Interactive, different enough to piss off the grognards, friendly enough to lure in the rest of us, and still grand enough to suck us into our own private Bohemian rhapsody, or Prussia rhapsody, or Brunswick rhapsody, or Auvergne rhapsody, or what have you. The world’s the limit. Now go mess it all up. - Tom Chick.