Sorry China - you'll just have to deal with the generic national focus tree Paradox cursed you with. Hearts of Iron IV, with all its expansions, is great at delivering cool and intriguing beginnings but fails to offer satisfying conclusions.Unfortunately, this isn't the case. It makes it hard to be immersed and engaged in the long term. It pop-up mostly because alliances and peace conferences get wonky. This happens regardless of whether the game is running historical or not. The problem is that it takes a conscientious effort to ignore the weirdness that tends to pop up after 1943. I will never forget the campaign where Bulgaria realized the ambition to be the Prussia of the Balkans and kept the waves of the red Army, which already capitulated the Germans, at bay for around 2 years. The three new trees and the domestic ideas that come along with them keep gamers on their toes and can create some weird and interesting results, especially when setting the entire game to run a-historical. I was very engaged in the campaigns I played with Battle for the Bosporus, especially the long ones that featured various versions of Turkey. Players can also choose to try and do a little better than the country did historically and maybe even turn the tide against Germany and Italy with Allied help. There’s, of course, a way to try and re-create the Byzantine Empire, boosting military and tech enough to make the new entity a powerful mid-sized power. Greece also gets a wide-ranging rework that opens up multiple progression paths. The option to restore Ottoman rule is also very well designed but it takes time and careful decisions to create a truly powerful empire that will antagonize all other major powers. But Turkey also has a lot of potential for expansion and can be an interesting addition to any of the big three alliances. Gamers will have to deal with internal problems and the death of Ataturk. The most complex tree in the expansion is reserved for Turkey, which is ironically one of the mid-sized powers that did little on the battlefield in World War II. A relatively historical path is a safe choice for a first campaign but there are plenty of other options to explore. It offers plenty of time to become familiar with the new internal faction concept and the variety of new decisions that Paradox introduces. The paths that it can take through World War II are not too outlandish. Players who have not played Hearts of Iron IV for some time would do well to first try out Bulgaria. To make the Balkan region more dynamic there are also tweaks to the way Romania and Yugoslavia behave, depending on how the situation evolved during World War II. There are new focus trees (ways to decide the strategy that each government should take) for Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey. It’s s neat little package that creates cool moments but sometimes makes it harder to overlook some core problems of this strategy experience. The Battle for the Bosporus country pack introduces new content for three countries but does not fundamentally alter any of the main mechanics. It’s almost always engaging to try to, even when the game throws curveballs or delivers impressively weird outcomes. It’s not always easy to achieve these kinds of alternate historical outcomes. These are the kinds of questions that become potential playthrough paths in the most recent expansion for Hearts of Iron IV, the grand strategy title from Paradox. Can Turkey abandon its careful neutrality during World War II to restore Ottoman rule and gain back territories lost during the ‘20s? Can the Greek Republic redefine itself as a strong democracy and then become the protector of the Balkans against both the Axis and the Comintern? Is there any chance to make Bulgaria a powerhouse ally of the Axis that has the power to gobble up Romania and Hungary?
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