Europa Universalis IV: Lions of the North Review (|BHQ| ~ MC King~ (wobarch))
Why you should buy „lions of the north“
Lions of the north is IMOP the best immersion pack yet, a very needed free update and a great development in EU4 history – to understand that, I need to explain a bit.
After great DLCs that added new core mechanics and went into depth like „rights of man“ EU4 DLCs still got mayor reworks and new core mechanics, but the depth of these of these were limited/under expectations, while also lots of new bugs and balancing issues appeared that we‘re not handled good. The to this point worst (and still worst) Immersion pack „Golden Century“ was released. After lots of complains by the community they took a longer break between DLCs and released „Emperor“ in 2020 almost 2 years after the last DLC (before they released a very nice free patch with free content) what was the biggest DLC after years. It was full of good flavor and great ideas in different aspects of the game, BUT had big problems regarding its bugs and simply had needed more time to get it all glued together well. The reviews were mixed because of that, also it took a while to get patches and still after a year many bugs and problems were the same.
While emperor was releasing the DEV studio already was on the move to went to a new place (Paradox Tinto, now in spain) and with that big opportunity came also some problems regarding the quality of the DLCs, as they did not really felt to be tested enough. Next DLC „Leviathan“ got the worse DLC Reviews on Steam ever – BUT not because its content was of low quality/inspiration or because it did not add good content BUT because just a few devs did work on that separately it did just not came as a whole „DLC“feeling but more like lots of good ideas put together not that great. But biggest Problem was all the bugs and missing stuff the DLC had on release day. Just 1 day later they released a hotfix that solved not all, but a lot of the biggest „mistakes“ you could see. This was just a bad decision to not delay the release or just release the hotfix together with the DLC.
Also the amount of new „dead“ tags and provinces added in this patch (mainly in north america) slowed down the game enormously.
Lots of people saw EU4 dead at this point, but this would have been a big mistake as it is still one of the best (if not the best) game in the genre and has still tons of room for improvement and depth of new flavor)
This very bad steam reviews made them (hopefully) rethink their approach, so they concentrated on lots of bugfixes and balancing. And they did good!
The released patches containing long waiting fixes dating back years ago and improved the game stability back. Also the community was heard more than ever before – lots of suggestions came into place and the Devs answered lots of comments and ideas.
The Company really hired good new Devs that part of came from the community (modding for example). You can see that, as they added the great mission tree from the mod “flavor universalis” for luebeck for free for everyone!
They ofc needed to make money, so they worked on a new immersion pack „origins“ – origins received good reviews. This was not because the flavor was really deep, but because it was released together with a great free bug fixing patch. The idea of smaller limitations was good a that time to get back the trust „that they can release a stable, working DLC“ with the community. Origins had limited content and contained mostly mission trees (some new innovative ideas, but not to crazy – the innovative mali tree sounded better than it actually was) but was working. Here still of nations did not receive any new content or mission trees. The DLC was not really packed with flavor (jewish for example was a nice idea, but got almost no possibilities to play)
But now finally „Lions of the north“
Regarding the content of the DLC itself:
As you can read in the descritiption it adds missions to almost every of the nations surrounding the east sea. And its more than its maybe sound. For example: Gotland got not 1, but 3 new Missiontrees, depending on what path you choose in the beginning.
Also the “mission” trees got nothing in common anymore with the boring conquer missiontrees you found mainly in the first DLCs after introduction of the mission tree mechanic. Yes, there are conquer missions, but there are also so much more flavorful missions that also contain events and different options how to solve a specific situation. For example before you could easily be stuck in the mission tree when some hard coded condition was not done and you just had 2-3 branches. Now you got way more possibilities and also way more branches to go after at different times. Also the missiontrees seem to last way longer into the game to make stuff still interesting.
Compared to origins and the other latest DLCs they also added dozents of new events to the countries - finally! The countries just feel better.
The government reforms also really make a difference when playing. This leads my to the point why you should buy this DLC even if you don’t want to play in the east-sea region:
The DLC comes with a great big patch with additions to existing DLCs (rule Britannia, leviathan etc.) with lots of free additions for the base game, and so many balancing and bug fixes (they also took a break before that and released the biggest bugfixing/balancing patch ever), that are not only concentrated around the region of this DLC but the whole game. So this patch also changes stuff in asia etc. So thank you paradox tinto for keeping the whole game into your eyes.
Also they added dozens of new government reforms to let older players have way more possibilities, they added new aspects of faith for Anglican and protestant etc etc. etc. just look at the patchnotes, they are an understatement. Great!
If you want to support this new approach, listening to the community, rebalancing old mechanics, adding stuff to before bland features, and adding more variety – please buy this.
OFC some downs are here: There seems to be a fear with new mechanics for the base game or even country specific outside government reforms/missions and origins did not bring any of these. Lions of the North limited. Trust yourself again in that regard please, so the countries feel more unique just by the look on them.
Also no mission tree for island oder Holstein (Holstein really should have got one in this area), the other opms next to them are also going out empty handed. But well. Also no norse possibility in the base game (an simple event just for the player to have the option would have been enough for the whole playerbase) – but besides that:
EU4 is finally back on his track. They said, that there will probably just 2 big immersion packs left, but there is still way more room in this game. Don’t abandon it to early, it has still so much potential.
EDIT: YOU CAN ALSO PLAY NORSE!