EU is back and in a vicious new era!
Now let me get started by explaining how the game plays for those who have never played an EU game. Its like Risk, but on steriods and 10x better.
Ok moving on to the meat, whats good whats bad.
The good news is the good stuff out numbers the bad, kinda like the Selecuid Empire against Macedonia (play the game... you'll know what I mean).
**The Good**
First its important to note that the game has taken Paradox's other game Crusader King's concept of characters and implanted it into the EU franchise. What this means is no longer is your king some faceless name with a minimal discription based around three major traits, but now they have a series of character perks and flaws, which evolve as the game plays out. You'll constantly be getting events where characters within your noble court (or the aristocricy of a Republic) are forced to make choices which lead to rivalries and friends.
Whats great about this new system is you'll wan't to keep track of it. Personaly you have no true tie to a leader in the sence that its your character... or even your dinesty. Rather having to many rivals (and ambitius ones in powerful places) will lead to the new and wonderful Civil War system. This is where your characters are forced to chose sides, Rebel or Normal. A rebel faction will be spwaned with the enemy on the other side and the loyalists on one side. Each time you conqure a province it emidetly becomes yours again (but same goes for them), so there is no Sueing for peace... its total conquest or total defeat. Nobles with lots of money will actualy spend their money to help your raise troops during a civil war (if they are on your side... if they are on the rebel side well look out for that troop boost).
Overall the game retains all the good of EU3 but sadly it has a few flaws.
**The Bad**
EUR is still a bit buggy, even I crash from time to time in the select a nation menu. The upside is Paradox is very good at putting out patches and the program has a patch downloader when you launch so keeping up on patches is effortless.
To continue the downs colonization can be rather annoying in EUR. Your provinces have to have a 50% civilization rating, and the unclaimed barbarian province next to it has to have a 1 barbarian power (nothing higher)... this is great and easy to do if you're playing a civilized nation but look out if another nation who meets the same requirement also borders the province the AI will snap it up within miliseconds. I think Paradox needs to go in and slow down the AIs respons time because its not humanly possible to pause the game fast enough before the AI can do anything.
Other than those two flaws the game shines as an achevment in EUs progressive evolution. As always Paradox is generaly right on with their historical facts and maps and hopefuly future expantions follow shortly to add new layers of content and time periods.