There have been many releases from Paradox Interactive to keep its games going and going… and going. The issue with that, though, is that while some of the downloadable content has been free, there have also been many paid pieces that have left a lot to be desired. Some are indeed great, and worthy of the coinage spent, but others are quite lacking. After checking out the admirable effort that is Hearts of Iron IV, it is time for Cubed3 to analyse one of the packs released for it. However, does Death or Dishonor manage to avoid previous pitfalls?
Given the nature of Hearts of Iron IV being a historical game, it limits the direction DLC can go. There can't be things that did not actually happen, such as an alien invasion or laser guns, so this limits what exactly can even be implemented.
Predictably, what the team does for this expansion is allow the player to work through what could be called 'Major Minor' nations – Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia – and bring these up to the full experience that the original nations had. What this means, then, is that these nations have specific new national focuses, as well as artwork, and so on. These include little touches, such as new troop voices for the various armies.
It is fun having some new nations and some new options politically, such as allying with the 'wrong' nations. One obvious issue, though, is these nations are all small and, short of some clever gameplay, start at severe disadvantages against the larger powers.
Going off this problem, a major negative that sticks out is that these pretty much have to be played from the 1936 scenario (compared to the 1939 that others can start from) as the situation will be too developed to change anything. Again, locked in by the realism constraints, essentially half of the game cannot be played due to the situations being too far gone for these smaller nations.
