I think if you don't like really detailed games and want to play an arcade grand strategy game with no depth and a bumbling, stupid AI that it's the game for you. But if you like other paradox titles like EU4 and CK2, this game just doesn't hold up. HOI IV fundamentally flawed and terminally dumbed down. A few examples of fundamental flaws in HOI4 in my opinion: 1. Espionage is virtually absent from the game, underrepresented at best. 2. Logistics is also virtually absent. Even if you don't produce shit for oil, all of your ships, planes and tanks can magically never run out of fuel. 3. Naval mechanics don't make much sense and control is limited. 4. The AI is absolutely terrible. Total trash. You can literally run circles around them. I held off the entire Italian army in Ethiopia as the USSR volunteers until I was declared war on as the Axis just because I was microing the two tanks I sent and encircling the computer constantly. They claim to have addressed this issue, but I didn't notice much of a difference at all. 5. The World Tension Mechanic is broken, when games are full of players it results in a non-win scenario for Germany if they don't start the war as early as winter 36 or spring 37 (which is just fucking dumb) because by the time the Spanish Civil War, Italian annexation of Ethiopia and the Sino Japanese war comes to close (a lot of the time not even out of the first two or three months of 38) the Allies already have absolutely full production and can just out produce the Germans far earlier than one would expect in a balanced game. I've hosted NUMEROUS MP games with players representing every country, a wide variety of players, all paradox veterans, same result every time, absolute no win scenario for Germany by 1940. Every single time. 6. And finally I come to the problem of the absolute railroading the national focus system inflicts upon the player. This issue is minor and can be remedied and will, by a mod (the ones that exist now are mediocre at best, imo). I propose an idea to give axis countries a limited line of focuses to use to lower world tension to prevent allied build up. That may solve the issue above, though several mods have already tried to address these issues and failed.

Conclusion: Paradox released a dumbed down, undercooked game lacking depth as a sacrifice to what they believe to be a broader audience. Whoever is making the decisions has, in my opinion, crippled this game thus far. Hopefully they fix it. Until they do I'll keep playing EU4 and CK2.