Europa Universalis 5 Review
A new bar for complexity in the historical grand strategy genre that sometimes buckles under the weight of its ambition.
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What is it? A mad, grandiose historical strategy simulator.Release date: November 4, 2025Expect to pay: $60Developer: Paradox TintoPublisher: Paradox InteractiveReviewed on: Radeon RX 6800 XT, Ryzen 9 5900, 32GB RAMSteam Deck: UnknownLink: Official site
Many games claim to be multi-layered simulations. Few properly achieve that, happy to focus on just one area while abstracting away others. But the grand strategy genre is always about expanding the view, incorporating into its wargame roots systems of politics, economics and culture. Europa Universalis 5 widens the frame again, adding a new wrinkle: People. It's nothing less than an attempt at simulating the world for centuries with a fidelity beyond anything else in the genre.
You play as the controlling force behind a country over 500 years of history, 1337 to 1836, using the same mechanical simulation to present both the late medieval and the entirety of the early modern period.
Political systems start with decentralized vassal feudalism, steppe hordes, and administrative empires but end with constitutional states and enlightenment monarchs. Wars begin dominated by knights and peasant levies but end with cannons and musket-firing line infantry.
It simulates all the people on Earth at the time. Their culture, religion, migration, production, trade, and even participation in political systems. There are a truly shocking array of things on screen at any time, and dozens of map modes to show the ones that aren't visible right now but that you might need.
Any given window is rich with text and statistics, studded with buttons and symbols—some of which you won't even realize serve a crucial function until you've been playing for 12 hours. It has so many interacting systems that the developers have gone to considerable pains to include optional automation for nearly all of them.
I expect it's enough to make even the most hardened genre veterans realize they'll have to stop, take a moment, and start learning new things again. I certainly did, and I'm glad I spent over a hundred hours wading through the bugs and performance problems in the review build of EU5, because after all those hours
Source: PC Gamer
