Europa Universalis 5 (EU5) Review – The Most Complex Grand Strategy Game I Have Ever Played
- Genre: Grand-Strategy | Historical
- Developer: Paradox Tinto
- Publisher: Paradox Interactive
- Price: $59.99 | 59,99€ | £49.99
- Release Date: 4 November , 2025
- Reviewer: Nuno Marques (PC)
- Target Audience: Grand-Strategy players, History buffs, and Paradox Games fans.
- Final Score: 8.7/10
Europa Universalis V (EU5) immediately showed me just how challenging it is. Even as someone who’s played many complicated strategy games, I found it incredibly complex and overwhelming. Let’s start by setting the stage: the game begins in the chaotic mid-14th century.
Europa Universalis V differs from its previous version by starting much earlier in history – in 1337, over a century before 1444. This puts you right in the middle of the late Middle Ages, just before two huge events: the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, and the Black Death. The Black Death begins in 1346 and devastates Europe, Africa, and Asia, wiping out a massive portion of the world’s population. These events significantly impact your gameplay, presenting tough early challenges that are well-designed. The Black Death, in particular, is incredibly harsh, potentially undoing any economic progress and forcing you to rebuild your nation’s economy from scratch.
The way population works has been completely overhauled. Now, you’ll need to consider different groups of people – nobles, clergy, laborers, merchants, slaves, and others – each with their own skills, happiness, and what they need to survive. Unlike previous games, people actually have to be in a location to work there, which makes the economy much more detailed and complex. Managing everything – population, goods, and prices – to build a successful economy is a real challenge. But for players willing to learn the ropes, this system offers a lot of depth and potential.
Europa Universalis V adds a new Estate system that puts population management at the heart of the game. You’ll now oversee four main groups – Nobles, Clergy, Burghers, and Peasants – each with their own goals and needs, mirroring the traditional social pyramid. Importantly, your own Crown is also treated as one of these groups. Almost everything you do as a ruler will affect how these Estates feel, and losing their support can create serious problems.
The different social classes, or Estates, are a core part of the game, and their happiness and development are always displayed on the screen. The rights and benefits you give or take away from these groups directly determine who really controls the country. If you pass laws that favor merchants and townspeople, they’ll become more powerful. If you try to reduce the power of the nobility, their support will likely waver. This is a significant departure from Europa Universalis IV, and because it’s linked to the population system, it means that politics and the economy are closely connected – which is realistic. However, it also creates a constant challenge, requiring you to carefully manage these groups. Trust me, keeping these powerful groups happy isn’t easy—history shows us that those in power don’t like it when you try to change things.
While Estates adds a lot to the gameplay, I think the biggest change is how it makes players think about the game. In past Europa Universalis IV games, you played as the general idea of a nation, making decisions as a group. Now, by making you the Crown – one of the Estates – it immediately feels different. Your goals as the Crown often conflict with the other Estates. I quickly realized I was playing a game focused more on my ruler and their position, rather than on the country itself, like Spain or England. This is historically accurate, as this period was about rulers gaining more power, and I find that challenge really engaging, even if it’s tough.
A core part of the game involves how much control your character has over the country. This control is determined by where your capital city is located and how well-connected other regions are to it. The level of control directly impacts how much tax revenue and soldiers you can raise from each region. At the beginning of the game, areas close to your capital are usually very well-controlled, but this quickly drops off as you move further away, making it difficult to manage a large country. This is a realistic and engaging feature – running a big empire is challenging, and keeping all your provinces productive requires effort. This control system is particularly important before starting a war. Expanding your empire through conquest isn’t as easy or profitable unless you can first establish and secure control over the newly conquered lands.
The game’s control system is excellent and adds interesting strategic depth, but the way new regions are integrated after conquest feels flawed. You have to assign a governor to a newly conquered province for 10 to 20 years before you start benefiting from it, which is simply too long – especially for areas near your capital. Ideally, integration should begin immediately upon capturing a major city or province, handled by existing local leaders. I appreciate the game’s increased economic focus and attempt to discourage rapid expansion, but this current system feels unnecessarily restrictive. It’s disappointing, given how much detail and realism went into the rest of the game.
I’d like to explain the new market system, a significant change from Europa Universalis IV, but I’m still learning the details myself. Essentially, it’s a dynamic system driven by supply and demand, constantly changing based on what people need – and that need is directly affected by how and where populations move, as we’ve already talked about. You can automate this system, and I recommend doing so when you first start playing. We’ll cover automation in more detail later. However, despite the effort to create such a complex economic and population model, Europa Universalis V isn’t perfect. One major issue is how quickly everything happens. I haven’t found any evidence that market changes take time to register, but the constant, immediate shifts are just too much to manage. I feel like I’m missing out on an interesting part of the game because I’m forced to automate it. While you could try to manage it manually, it would require pausing the game almost constantly just to adjust values.
These paragraphs highlight how Europa Universalis V really focuses on the economic and social side of the historical period it represents. It’s incredibly complex and realistic, and I suspect it will take me many hours to fully understand. Every decision, even small adjustments, can have significant consequences later on. Before I explore the military aspects, I want to emphasize how much I appreciate the depth of the economic and societal systems, even though they are incredibly intricate. I love that the game tries to realistically simulate the challenges of the time, and I’m thoroughly enjoying the process of learning it, even if I don’t expect to master it completely.
I’ve spent the most time playing the Crusader Kings and Hearts of Iron games from Paradox Interactive. I’m not really drawn to their military aspects, though. I enjoy Crusader Kings 3 for its complex medieval politics, which feels a lot like Game of Thrones, and Hearts of Iron 4 for the fun of rewriting history. Based on what I’ve seen of Europa Universalis V, it doesn’t seem like that will change, and that’s great with me. As many readers know, I prefer strategy and directing my forces directly, so if a game doesn’t let me do that, the military features won’t hold my attention for long.
What I find particularly interesting about Europa Universalis V’s military system is how realistically it’s simulated and how it’s tied to population and the economy. In EU5, your initial troops, called levies, are recruited from the local population of each province, which directly reduces your workforce and impacts your economy. If these troops are lost in battle or to disease, they don’t return to their jobs after the war, creating a lasting economic consequence. This means warfare isn’t just about having a larger army; it’s a major strategic consideration. Starting a war without enough money and a stable economy can quickly lead to disaster. The game also limits how quickly you can integrate conquered provinces, further discouraging reckless military expansion.
It’s hard to say how this game’s military system stacks up against the latest version of Europa Universalis IV, but it definitely borrows a lot from the popular Hearts of Iron IV. The new system lets you give your armies broad strategic goals, which cuts down on tedious micromanagement. Instead of manually splitting troops to attack multiple cities, you can simply order a ‘carpet siege,’ and the game’s AI will handle the details. You can assign armies different types of missions, from aggressive attacks and sieges to more defensive tasks like patrolling areas. I’ve been playing as Castile, and it seems to work really well.
My main issue with the game’s army system is how raising levies works. You can only call up troops after declaring war, which doesn’t make much sense. Preparing for war often requires secrecy and a quick start, especially if you’re facing a stronger opponent. It would be great to be able to have levies ready to go as soon as war is declared. I realize this restriction might be for balance, but instead of preventing early levy raising, the developers could warn other countries if I start moving troops around. This could even add new strategies, like forcing a neighbor to mobilize their army, which would hurt their economy. Just a thought!
Let’s quickly cover diplomacy and colonization. Both systems are relatively simple to use. Diplomacy works as you’d expect, with various actions and their success depending on several factors. Colonization is a neat feature, and if you choose a seafaring nation like Portugal or Castile, you can start exploring and establishing colonies very early in the game. This involves sending expeditions to discover new lands, then slowly building and supplying those colonies with people and resources. These colonies will then send goods back to your home markets, utilizing the same economic and population systems we’ve already talked about. Just to give you a sense of scale, Europa Universalis V features over 20,000 locations!
We’ve gone over the main features of Europa Universalis V, so let’s talk about how complex the game is and how that interacts with its automation features. I usually like games with a lot of depth, but I believe that complexity needs to be well-implemented. The systems should be logical and easy to understand – ideally, they should work as you’d expect based on real-world principles – and the game needs a great tutorial and user interface to support that. Europa Universalis V both succeeds and falls short in these areas, and I’ll start by explaining what I mean with the tutorial.
The game’s tutorial isn’t very helpful – it felt like being quickly shown the ropes by someone too busy to explain things properly. While that’s realistic, it doesn’t make learning the game easy for newcomers. I’ve played other games from this developer, so the interface wasn’t a problem for me, but I can see how someone with no prior experience would be overwhelmed. The interface isn’t bad overall and generally displays the information you need, but it has a few small issues. Some buttons don’t look clickable, and others do unexpected things when you click them. The most frustrating example is when assigning commanders – two buttons layered on top of each other control different actions, which is confusing. These are small details, but they’re worth pointing out.
Two features are sure to help players manage the game’s complexity:
Europa Universalis V offers incredibly detailed maps for almost any situation – and they’re really important for making good choices. My biggest frustration is that the game often makes you switch away from the map when you’re trying to build something. For example, if I wanted to check a location’s population before building there, I kept having to flip back and forth between the map and the game’s interface. This can get really confusing when you’re managing a lot of different places. Otherwise, the maps are fantastic!
Players have a lot of control over how much of the game they want to automate. If you’d rather not manage things like the economy, diplomacy, or even warfare and exploration, you can let the game handle it for you. This allows you to concentrate on the aspects you enjoy most – you could even play as a leader who only makes high-level decisions, leaving the details to your advisors.
Before wrapping up this review, let’s talk about how the game looks, sounds, and runs. Thankfully, there’s not much to criticize. The game is visually stunning – the map is incredibly detailed, and seeing cities and armies move really brings the world to life. It genuinely feels like you’re watching history unfold. The sound design is solid – not exceptional, but perfectly enjoyable. It’s not going to rival epic soundtracks like Age of Mythology, but that’s okay. Performance-wise, I didn’t experience any crashes or major issues. However, the game doesn’t always run smoothly. It occasionally stutters, especially when loading things or at certain times in the game. While it’s not constant, it happens often enough to be a bit frustrating. It’s hard to say whether this is due to my computer or the game’s optimization, but it’s something to be aware of (you can check my system specs above).
Final Verdict and Score
8.5/10
It’s almost impossible to fully review Europa Universalis V – it’s just too huge, detailed, and captivating. I could easily write endlessly about all its features, both good and bad. But after playing for a couple of weeks, I want to share some final thoughts.
Paradox has created something truly impressive with Europa Universalis V. It successfully combines the best features and mechanics from all their previous games. While the gameplay is strong, EU5 could benefit from more detailed tutorials, particularly for complex systems like the economy. Currently, too much is automated, which prevents players from fully engaging with and understanding a key part of the game.
Europa Universalis V is everything you’d hope for in a grand strategy game: huge in scope, impressively detailed, and wonderfully complex. What’s really exciting is that it wasn’t afraid to try new things, even though the previous game was already successful, and those changes are really paying off.
After I finish reviewing a game, what really tells me it’s worth playing is whether I still want to play it, even after I’ve stopped making videos or writing about it. And in this case, the answer is a definite yes!
I’m giving Europa Universalis V a ‘yes’ not because I believe it’s a flawless game that will revolutionize the grand strategy genre like its predecessor, Europa Universalis IV, did. Instead, I’m impressed by its depth and how it appeals to my interest in history. It offers a lot of freedom to experiment with historical scenarios in a way that’s different from more rigidly realistic war games. Plus, I find myself wanting to revisit the game and explore how different choices can change the course of a nation’s development.
I hope you found this review helpful! I’d love to hear your thoughts, and whether or not you’re planning to get Europa Universalis V.
Game Score Breakdown
- Core Gameplay & Mechanics: 9/10
- Content: 9.5/10
- Graphics & Artstyle: 8/10
- Sound & Music: 7/10
- Technical Performance: 7/10
- Replayability & Value: 10/10
- Monetization & Business Mode: 7/10
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2025-11-01 20:46