Europa Universalis V (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
Starting up 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 intimidating. Let’s begin our review by traveling back to the chaotic mid-14th century.
Europa Universalis V starts much earlier than previous games, beginning in 1337 – over a hundred years before 1444. This places you right in the heart of the Middle Ages, just before two huge historical events: the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, and the devastating Black Death. The Black Death arrives in 1346 and wipes out a massive portion of the world’s population – between a third and half. These events significantly impact your gameplay, presenting tough early challenges that are well-integrated into the game. The Black Death, in particular, is incredibly harsh, potentially undoing any economic progress and forcing you to completely rebuild your nation’s economy.
The way population works has been completely overhauled. Now, you’ll need to consider different groups of people – like nobles, clergy, workers, merchants, and slaves – each with their own skills, happiness, and what they need to survive. Unlike previous games, people actually have to be in a place to work there. This makes the economy much more detailed and complex. There are a lot of things to keep track of – population numbers, the goods they produce, and prices – to build a successful economy. It’s a deep system, but those who take the time to learn it will be rewarded.
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 concerns, mirroring the traditional social hierarchy. Importantly, your own power as the ruler is also considered one of these groups. Nearly every decision you make will affect how these groups view your rule, and losing their support can create serious problems.
The various Estates (groups like merchants, clergy, and nobles) are crucial to the game, and their happiness and development are always displayed on the screen. The rights and benefits you grant or take away from these groups directly determine who really controls the country. Support laws that favor the merchants, and they’ll become more powerful. Try to limit the privileges of the nobility, and their loyalty will likely waver. This is a significant departure from previous games like Europa Universalis IV, and because it affects how the population functions, it makes politics and economics closely connected – which is realistic. However, it also means you’ll constantly face new challenges and problems to solve. Managing these Estates is tough – history shows us that powerful groups 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 for everyone. Now, as the Crown – one of the Estates – you’re immediately separate from that unified national spirit. Your goals often clash with those of other Estates. I quickly realized I was focusing more on my character, or the King specifically, rather than on the nation of, for example, Castile or England. This is historically accurate, as this period was about rulers gaining more power. I find this new challenge really engaging, even though it’s quite difficult.
A core part of the game revolves around how much control you have over your country, which is determined by the location of your capital and how well-connected your provinces are to it. This control level directly affects how much tax revenue and manpower you get from each province. At the beginning, provinces near your capital are usually very well-controlled, but that control quickly drops off as you move further away, making distant parts of your country difficult to manage. This is a good and realistic feature – running a large empire is challenging, and ensuring all your provinces contribute resources 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.
As a big fan of the series, I’m really impressed with how deep the control system is in Europa Universalis V – it adds a lot of interesting strategic choices. However, I’m a bit disappointed with how the integration system works. Basically, after you conquer a region, you have to station a member of your government there to integrate it, and it takes way too long – anywhere from 10 to 20 years just for a province! You get absolutely no income from that land during all that time. It doesn’t feel right, especially if you conquer something close to your capital. I think it should happen much faster, almost automatically after taking a major city, and be handled by the existing local government. I get that the game is trying to focus more on economics and discourage constant expansion, but this system feels a little too punishing and random. It’s frustrating because so much work clearly went into making Europa Universalis V a really immersive and detailed experience.
I’d like to explain the new market system, a big change from Europa Universalis IV, but I’m still learning it myself. Basically, it’s a dynamic system driven by supply and demand, constantly changing based on what people need – and those needs are affected by how and where people move, as we talked about before. You can automate this part, and I recommend doing so when you first start playing. I’ll explain automation in more detail later. Despite all the work that went into creating this complex economy and population system, Europa Universalis V isn’t perfect. One major issue is that everything happens too quickly. I haven’t found any evidence that the market changes take time to register, but the constant, immediate shifts are just too much to manage. Because of this, I feel like I’m missing out on a key part of the game if I have to automate it. However, if I don’t automate, I find myself pausing the game constantly – about 90% of the time – just to make small adjustments.
Okay, so I’ve been diving deep into Europa Universalis V, and honestly, it’s less about conquering the world with armies and more about managing an entire nation’s economy and society. It’s incredibly complex – seriously, I don’t think I’ll even begin to fully understand it all for a long, long time. Every little decision I make, every setting I adjust, can have huge consequences later on. Before I even get to the wars and battles, I want to say I absolutely love how they’ve built the economic and societal systems. It’s a beast of a system, for sure, but the fact that it tries to realistically simulate the challenges of the time just… clicks with my brain. I know I might never fully ‘get’ how everything connects, but I’m having a total blast figuring it out!
I’ve spent the most time playing the Crusader Kings and Hearts of Iron games from Paradox. I’m not really interested in the military aspects of these games, though. Crusader Kings III is all about the political intrigue, which feels a lot like Game of Thrones, and Hearts of Iron IV lets you rewrite history in a really creative and enjoyable way. From what I’ve seen, Europa Universalis V seems to be continuing that trend, and I’m happy about that. As many readers know, I prefer the strategic side of things. If I can’t directly control units on the battlefield, the military systems generally don’t grab my attention.
What I find particularly interesting about Europa Universalis V’s military system is how realistically it’s modeled and how it connects to the game’s population and economy. In EU5, your initial troops, called levies, are recruited directly from the people living in your provinces. This immediately affects your workforce and, consequently, your economy. If these troops are killed in battle or die from disease, they won’t return to their jobs after the war. This makes war a serious strategic issue – it’s not just about having the largest army. Starting a war without enough money and a healthy 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. A key feature is assigning broad strategic goals to your armies, 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 also give armies different mission types, from aggressive attacks and sieges to more defensive tasks like patrolling an area. So far, playing as Castile, I’ve found it works really well.
My main issue with the game’s army system is how raising levies works. You can only call up troops after you’ve declared war, which doesn’t make much sense. Preparing for war often requires secrecy and a quick start, especially if you’re weaker than your opponent. It would be great to be able to have levies ready to go as soon as war begins. I realize this might be a balancing choice, but instead of preventing early levy raising, maybe the developers could add a warning system to let other countries know if you’re moving troops around. That could even create new strategies, like forcing a neighbor to mobilize their army, which would hurt their economy. Just some thoughts!
Let’s quickly cover diplomacy and colonization. While I haven’t explored colonization in depth, both systems are quite user-friendly. Diplomacy works as you’d expect, with various actions influenced by different factors. Colonization is a neat feature, especially for naval powers like Portugal or Castile. You can earn enough money early on to start exploring and establishing colonies almost immediately. This involves sending expeditions to discover new lands, then slowly building colonies by moving people and providing them with supplies. These colonies will then send resources back to your home markets, utilizing the same economic and population systems we’ve already discussed. 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 complex games, but I believe that complexity needs to be well-implemented. The game’s systems should be logical and easy to understand – ideally, they should work similarly to how things work in real life – and it needs a great tutorial and user interface. 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 who didn’t have much time. While that’s realistic, it doesn’t make it easy for new players to learn the game. I’ve played other games from this developer, so the interface wasn’t a problem for me personally. However, I can see how someone new to the series would be overwhelmed. The interface isn’t bad, and it mostly presents information clearly, but there are a few frustrating design choices. Some buttons don’t look clickable, and others do unexpected things when you click them. The worst example is when assigning commanders: two buttons layered on top of each other – one for the commander’s picture, and one for the army – do completely different things. These are small issues, 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 just about any situation – and they’re really important for making smart choices. My only frustration is that the game sometimes hides the map when you’re trying to build something. For example, if I needed to check a location’s population while building, I kept having to switch back and forth between the map and the game’s interface. This can get really confusing when you’re managing a large empire, but otherwise, the maps are fantastic.
Players have full control over automation in the game. You can choose to automate any aspect you like – from managing the economy and diplomacy to handling warfare, exploration, and colonization. This lets you focus on the parts of the game you enjoy most. For example, you could play as a ruler 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 graphics are beautiful, with a detailed map and realistic movement of cities and armies – it really feels like you’re watching history unfold. The sound design is solid – not groundbreaking, but perfectly enjoyable. It doesn’t reach the heights of something like the Age of Mythology soundtrack, but that’s okay. Performance-wise, I haven’t experienced any crashes or major issues. However, the game doesn’t always run smoothly. There are occasional hiccups, like pop-ups appearing or slowdowns at the end of each in-game month. While not constant, these moments happen frequently enough to be a little frustrating. It’s hard to say how much of this is due to my computer versus the game’s optimization, but I did experience it (you can check my system specs above).
Final Verdict and Score
8.5/10
It’s nearly impossible to fully review Europa Universalis V – it’s just too massive, complicated, and captivating. I could easily write for days about all its features, what works well, and what doesn’t. But after playing for a couple of weeks, I want to share a few final thoughts.
Paradox has created something truly impressive with Europa Universalis V. It successfully brings together the best elements from all their previous games. While the gameplay is already strong, EU5 could benefit from more detailed tutorials, particularly for complex systems like the economy. Currently, too much automation hides a significant part of what makes the game enjoyable.
Europa Universalis V is exactly what you’d hope for in a grand strategy game: massive in scope, ambitious, and deeply complex. What’s really impressive is that it wasn’t afraid to try new things, even though it could have played it safe by sticking to the successful formula of Europa Universalis IV. And so far, those new ideas are working brilliantly.
After I finish reviewing a game, the biggest sign it’s truly good is whether I still want to play it, even if I don’t plan on making videos or writing about it anymore. And in this case, I absolutely do!
I’m giving Europa Universalis V a ‘yes’ not because it’s a flawless game that will revolutionize the grand strategy genre like its predecessor, Europa Universalis IV, did. Instead, I’m impressed by the depth and variety of features, which really appeals to my historical interests. It offers a lot of freedom to playfully explore ‘what if’ scenarios, something you don’t often find in more serious war games. Plus, I’m excited to keep playing and see how different choices and strategies affect each country’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 13:46