World War 2 just might be the most overdone conflict in the history of video games. Every genre seems to have a mountain of games set in this time period, whether they're trying to meticulously simulate things just as they really were or putting some strange twist on the facts to come up with a new version of reality.

The only thing more cliché is talking about how overdone World War 2 games are in a review for one.

The popularity of that time period isn't surprising, though. It's an era filled with amazing stories and heroic deeds, good guys and bad guys, brilliant minds showing their talents on the battlefield, at the negotiating table and in the laboratory.

There are so many people, places and events to focus in on that video games never seem to have trouble finding a single slice of the action to focus in on. Other games try to simulate the entire conflict on a global scale, though many fail miserably due to the countless little intricacies involved.

Hearts of Iron 3, a grand World War 2 strategy game, is developer Paradox Interactive's latest take on their long running series. It's a title with many flaws, though it comes much closer to perfection than most.

Hearts of Iron 3 is about as close as you're ever going to get to strapping on the combat boots of a Head of State trying to lead his country through World War 2.

And in this game, that's just as tough of a job as it sounds. You're put in charge of everything you can imagine that has to do with waging war, and I spent several hours perusing the manual and separately downloadable but free strategy guide just to even begin to understand the inner workings of what was happening on screen.

There's a lot of wonderfully simulated depth and complexity to the game, but only those with the patience to figure it all out are going to appreciate it. This isn't a game for the faint of heart or mind.

Hearts of Iron 3 doesn't limit you to just the countries that played a major part in the war, and you're free to pick from several different starting scenarios playing as any country that existed in 1936.

Obvious choices like the US or Germany seem to make for the largest amount of straightforward fun, as they've got piles of money, manpower and materials for you to conquer the world with. Smaller countries provide greater challenges by forcing you to decide where it is that you're going to fall behind, as you don't have the capabilities to keep up in every area.

You'll be managing everything from your economy, military production and research to forming headquarters, building a command structure, moving divisions around and deciding where to defend and attack.

It's all quite overwhelming at first, and the game's inexcusably awful tutorial (tastelessly conducted by Adolf Hitler, no less) barely gives players the basics, let alone the strategic mindset you'll need to succeed.

Diplomacy is another major thing you'll need to keep your eye on, but the game's sometimes brainless artificial intelligence seems to make and break trade deals on a whim, preventing the negotiating from ever feeling real or meaningful.

Much of the game feels ruined by the bad AI, actually. At the heart of the game is a complex and beautiful formula that turns out one of the most realistic feeling renditions of World War 2 and the geopolitical atmosphere of the 1930's – 1940's that I've ever seen, yet it feels like I'm playing poker with those dogs from the painting.

My opponents are complete morons that have absolutely no hope of grasping or taking advantage of the minutiae and complexity that makes the simulation behind Hearts of Iron 3 so good.

That, in turn, makes the entire game feel pointless. Why have such a detailed system when I have opponents that can't use any of it against me?

It almost feels like cheating to use the nuances of the system in the way that they were intended, simply because the AI will never be able to effectively fight back against them, nor will it be able to leverage those same tricks against me.

My absolute biggest disappointment in this title is that not once, ever, did my opponents feel like they were outsmarting me, outmaneuvering me, or doing anything other than exactly what you'd expect a computer controlled opponent to predictably do. It's like watching someone unerringly follow a flowchart over and over.

For a game that is (for most people, anyway) almost entirely single player, it makes me wonder what in the world Paradox was thinking when they paid so little attention to smartening up their bots.

Like so many PC games today, I fear that Hearts of Iron 3 isn't going to be fixed until the game's community does something about it.

There are already plenty of mods out that fix many niggling little oddities, and a patch (which you should be sure to get if you pick the game up) from Paradox managed to fix a laundry list of crashes, performance issues and other quirks.

It all reeks of the game not being finished before it was released, and nothing irks me more than publishers booting games that aren't done out the door. Sure, things are better now that there's a patch, but gamers shouldn't be sitting around waiting for a patch so they can finally play the game they just dropped forty bucks on.

Despite my harsh words, I think there's a lot of hope for Hearts of Iron 3. Even with its flaws, there really isn't any other game out there that does such a great job of simulating every little thing about World War 2.

Once I learned the game's wrinkles and how to deal with them, I still had some fun with it. The multiplayer seems like it'd be great, though I won't get to find out until my friends and I have much greater amounts of free time to devote to the lengthy matches.

Strategy fans and old school grognards will appreciate Hearts of Iron 3 and likely get a fair amount of enjoyment out of it.

Mainstream gamers should probably look elsewhere, as you're going to need a mountain of patience to deal with the game's grand scale, and the grand flaws that come with it.

Title: Hearts of Iron 3
Price: $39.99
Platform: PC
ESRB Rating: E10+ Everyone 10+
Score: 6.5 out of 10