izigame.me

Ok so I reviewed Leviathan and that was pretty fun so it's time to review this. And unlike Leviathan, this is pretty damn good.
I'll go through the countries one by one and then I'll go through the overall changes made in the free update and the overall quality of the DLC.
Gotland - Extremely fun. Being a pirate republic, plundering the Baltics is awesome. Somehow the monarchy path, basically trying to become Denmark, was some of the most fun I've ever had in a single-player war.
Teutonic Order - 2 paths, crusading vs. secular prussian path, both are incredibly satisfying and rewarding, definitely worth playing.
Riga - Paradox attempted to make this nation fun to play and *stay* as a OPM. Were they successful? No, not really. But I think they still did a good job with the mission tree and I honestly don't think I could've done any better if I were in their position.
Denmark - Trying to keep the Kalmar Union together whilst dealing with expansion into the Baltics, the Hansa, and the British Isles (if you are good enough) is really challenging but incredibly fun.
Sweden - Probably made a lil too easy, but hey, it's more fun because of it
Now some overall changes that I really appreciate. The creation of the 'Balten' culture in Riga was something I never knew I wanted but I really needed. The new Grand Veche Republic for Novgorod is pretty cool. Ducal Prussia being a Polish vassal is something I've wanted for a very long time. Finally, and this is the most important thing for me, I was worried that Paradox creating very expansive and possibly overpowered mission trees in the Teutons and Livonians concerned me in regards to AI. But I've ran a few AI Games and both of the Orders most of the time fall very quickly to their neighbours, as was historical. Not that I don't appreciate these countries or like to see them grow, but I think I speak for many when I say I wouldn't like to see the Teutons go into Russia or conquer all of Germany every single time.
Then there's the bad. Not much to say here, but there are a few things. The changes to Poland made them a little too overpowered, and I now see more often them not own all of Russia by 1600, which is unfortunate. I know Paradox has stated that they don't want to add any more provinces for performance reasons but a few more provinces in Lapland or the Baltics would've been extremely appreciated in order to create modern borders. We have colonial cultures (portuguese turns into brazillian, castilian turns into mexican or platinean, english turns into american) but with the rise of colonial missions for scandinavian nations, I would've thought that they would've added something similar to scandinavian cultures, but no.
Finally, the re-balances. Lots of good things to say here -
- Economic and Quantity nerfed heavily, with a much needed boost to Espionage (although still not worth it imo).
- More government reforms is always appreciated.
- No more slacken recruitment abuse is very positive.
- More estate privileges is really nice.
- Removing the dev cost from the ideas and putting it into expand infrastructure is something I love, it makes playing tall easier for smaller nations and harder for bigger nations, something I think should be the case.
As for a conclusion, Paradox has learnt much from Leviathan. I have found absolutely no bugs so far, I've had a full day of fun playing as these updated nations, and for the first time in a very long time, I feel like this DLC was actually worth my money, and I bought this for full price. Would recommend 200%.