Gamers Are Thrilled About New HoI 4's DLC. Gotterdammerung Earns High Ratings and Boosts Game's Popularity
Hearts of Iron 4: Götterdämmerung is now available. The release wasn't without its problems, but the DLC was received much better than many of Paradox's recent titles.
Hearts of Iron 4 received the "German" expansion Götterdämmerung. The second-war strategy of Paradox Interactive has finally received an expansion that rebuilds mechanics related to Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Belgium, adding new solutions. Traditionally, the base game also received a new update to accompany the release of the DLC.
The release of Götterdämmerung attracted a large group of players. At its peak, 72 thousand Steam users played Hearts of Iron 4 simultaneously (according to SteamDB). It's not a historical record of the game, but it also didn't miss it by much. Furthermore, the SteamDB charts suggest that it might occur today, and it's probably going to happen over the weekend.
Perhaps more importantly, the expansion has gained a lot of praise from players on Steam. Out of over five hundred user reviews, 86% are positive, despite (one might say: obligatory) complaints about the "too high" price of the DLC for Paradox's game in the context of the content offered.
There are also comments about the technical shortcomings of the DLC. Some buyers even go so far as to say that Götterdämmerung looks more like an "undeveloped mod" than an official expansion.
Nonetheless, there is also a lot of praise. Players indicate that this is probably the richest DLC to HoI 4 in terms of content. Fans appreciated the redesigned "focus" trees, including the main attraction: Austria and Germany's alternative history. The developers revealed details before the release in a series of extensive posts. As a result, in the end, Götterdämmerung fared much better at launch than many Paradox DLC games in recent years.
A separate – and perhaps inevitable – issue is the problem of portraying Nazi Germany. In principle, we could have expected that the launch of the "German" expansion would reignite the discussion on this subject, but the content from the German YouTuber and historian Stephen Bliemel further intensified the debate. He pointed out, among other things, the portrayal of Heinrich Himmler in a more "active" way compared to the base game.
