And you can't demand air support for a specific part of the front where battle is at a critical point. Nice idea, actually, but you don't get any feedback at all without clicking through three screens. Air combat, which was ok in HOI3, is now degraded to assigning randomly put together squadrons (size doesn't matter) to a region (like for instance "Northern France", thats how big these regions are!) and wait for your enemies to be shot down. The game plays as boring as this review reads. Before that you cant do anything to react to changing situations. Once you activate your plan, you have to wait till it's completed (or failed).
![hearts of iron 4 steam sale history hearts of iron 4 steam sale history](https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/9948323/a696326ecaa7f5a2c7888b9a2631178accaf8911.png)
You command them by drawing lines on a map, a so called battle plan. Building your army, for instance, is nothing but assigning divisions to a commander. HOI4 however offers no such degree of complexity. HOI 3 was demanding, true, but it was rewarding as well, once you found your way through the complexity.
![hearts of iron 4 steam sale history hearts of iron 4 steam sale history](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/530760/ss_a9a455b34d61d5c0661ed746c4dd4cee95e6bf69.jpg)
The simple truth is: You can't turn a game like HoI into a game that suits the needs of the average casual player. For HOI-veterans it's just too simplified, for the average newcomer it's still too demanding and unstructured. Why? It looks better, sure, but that's about it. For HOI-veterans Everything that made HOI3 the truly great game it is was abandoned in HOI4. Everything that made HOI3 the truly great game it is was abandoned in HOI4.