Europa Universalis: Rome - Gold Edition
Europa Universalis: Rome - Gold Edition
Game
Game2025
Europa Universalis V
Developer Paradox Tinto
Europa Universalis V is a grand strategy game developed by Paradox Tinto and published by Paradox Interactive. It is the sequel to the 2013 game Europa Universalis IV. It was announced on 8 May 2025 and released on 4 November 2025. It received generally favorable reviews from critics. From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
414 reactions from 4 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Mastodon, Lemmy) · newest Nov 5, 2026 · last updated Nov 5, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
46
Mixed
161 positive · 191 negative
95% range 41–51%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 161 | 191 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 18 | 3 | 30 |
| Mastodon * | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| Lemmy * | 0 | 0 | 5 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Mixed
11,396 of 16,855 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
50% recommend · 134 yes, 132 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 266 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Mixed (19,900 of 29,928 positive).
Some reviewers find the game undercooked and buggy at launch. [1][2][3] Others criticize the AI and lack of nation-specific content. [4][5][6]
Liked
Representative posts
- [1]
Paradox does it again with another undercooked title on release. It could have used another half year to a year in the oven before release but nevertheless it has released. Ultimately, I do not recommend buying this game on release. Here is why: The AI is bad. It cannot handle the capacity it has been given. As a player you are unchallenged by the AI around 95% of the game because the AI will not expand very much …
- [2]
Paradox has dumped a steaming pile straight onto the players heads. Don't make the same mistake I did and don't give Paradox your money. Unless they get financially burned (we live in an era where companies chase money above all else), they'll absolutely do this again. The game might be playable in a year. Maybe two. After some very intensive patching. Right now, Paradox doesn't even seem to have a vision - patches …
- [16]
It is a masterpiece, John Paradox. Complete, comprehensive. It captures the Map-Excel experience. Jokes aside, I think it's a strong 8/10. A lot of fun and surely thousands of hours ahead of me. Still definitely some improvements to be made to AI, balance and other elements, but I already don't think of coming back to EU4.
- [10]
Experience: 56 hours on the public build + 338 hours on the "press build" EU5 is in many ways broken, janky, and sometimes frustratingly so. But, despite all that; EU5 really is the platonic ideal of a grand strategy game, it is the GSGest GSG I have ever played. In the same way that dwarf fortress is a buggy, janky 10/10 game, EU5 is a buggy, janky 10/10 game.
- [7]
I absolutely love this game EU5 is ambitious, interconnected, and alive. It takes the best of EU4, MEIOU, Victoria 2, CK2, and CK3, layering those elements atop the Imperator: Rome framework to create the deepest and most flexible Paradox experience yet. Every choice, whether political, economic, cultural, or military, ripples through your nation’s fabric. It abandons abstract mana and static modifiers in favor of …
Summarised from 34 of the 327 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 11, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
Players who liked Europa Universalis V talk about deep and interconnected systems; those who didn't talk about aI is poor and unchallenging. Which matters more to you?
Critics, per Wikipedia
Europa Universalis V received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. OpenCritic determined that 100% of critics recommended the game. IGN praised its unprecedented depth of simulation and its detailed population and terrain systems, but noted balance and tuning issues at launch. Rock Paper Shotgun also praised its depth, but said that its "overwhelming" complexity makes it less accessible than other Paradox titles.
From the “Reception” section of Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Critic context only — not part of the audience score.
Reactions
60 of 414 · most liked firstIf you completely disregard performance being poor as its likely the first thing to get improved; Initially the game will feel overwhelming, deep and you see immense potential. You'll notice during your first campaign you get bored around 1600 because the mechanics are starting to feel repetitive and you feel as your actions have no impact. You will notice yourself automating features because for each click, your clicks have less and less relative impact. You get bored, start declaring wars…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Paradox does it again with another undercooked title on release. It could have used another half year to a year in the oven before release but nevertheless it has released. Ultimately, I do not recommend buying this game on release. Here is why: The AI is bad. It cannot handle the capacity it has been given. As a player you are unchallenged by the AI around 95% of the game because the AI will not expand very much and not take advantage of weak neighbours like a player can. The AI also…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Veteran Europa Universalis player here (5000+ hrs) : I have never left a negative review for a game in this series before- but after the most recent update to EUV I feel I have to speak up. I really really really want to like this game. . . but it just isn't fun. Here's where the game breaks down for me: Historical Flavor: A lot of players have commented that there isn't a noticeable difference in playthrough experience between starting nations. Notably absent from EUV at the moment is a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Underwhelmed and worst of all bored EU5 made a very bold choice in bringing back the start date to 1337, considering that EU4 really hit it's stride in the 1500s and most players wouldn't play more than 150 years. This could be fine if the extra 100 years is filled with interesting content to keep the player engaged, but unfortunately this has not panned out. You'll find that the late medieval period has little going on, and worst of all the addition of hourly ticks in a 500 year game makes…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Paradox has dumped a steaming pile straight onto the players heads. Don't make the same mistake I did and don't give Paradox your money. Unless they get financially burned (we live in an era where companies chase money above all else), they'll absolutely do this again. The game might be playable in a year. Maybe two. After some very intensive patching. Right now, Paradox doesn't even seem to have a vision - patches radically rewrite core mechanics every other week. There's zero point in…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Don't worry guys. If we just wait five years and spend $200, the game will be how it should be at launch
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Soooo I'm sure ill get crucified for writing this, but I think the game is too complex. And before you sharpen your pitchforks, lets me explain. The Game isn't Europa Universalis 5, It's Europa Victoria Kings X. The main issue I'm having is that the game lacks the focus all other paradox games I played so far have. So you had Crusader Kings (2/3) which focused on very small-scale-conflicts on a county level with strong diplomacy, family-trees, characters a.s.o. but pretty basic warfare and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It’s a nice simulator, but not a good game I’m a big fan of Paradox titles. I’ve been playing all of them since the first Europa Universalis came in 2001. I’ve 4400 hours in EU4 and god knows how many hours in EU2 and EU3 (I’ve played them before Steam). Paradox titles were my core games for the last 24 years basically, so I’ve been looking forward to EU5. After spending 60+ hours uniting Anatolia as Ottomans I’ve come to realize that it’s a very nice historical simulator, but not a good…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →We're basically beta testing for Paradox. Unfinished product, subpar in almost every way to EUIV (6k hours in EUIV): - no mission trees - almost no nation-specific content *that's meaningful* (historic artist wiki pages that take 3X yearly income to get for joke benefits is not "content") - trade is infinitely more complex and yet more broken (you basically have to automate) - AI is USELESS past opening 50 years, total pushover, can't scale economy or wage war effectively - naval…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Paradox needs to learn that Players are not testers and they actually need to pay and hire testers so they don't release games broken with stupid mistakes and proceed to update it further with even worse bugs.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It is a masterpiece, John Paradox. Complete, comprehensive. It captures the Map-Excel experience. Jokes aside, I think it's a strong 8/10. A lot of fun and surely thousands of hours ahead of me. Still definitely some improvements to be made to AI, balance and other elements, but I already don't think of coming back to EU4.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If your game is not ready, mark it early access. I will get a discount for buying unfinished product or decide to wait and buy when its finished. You sell me an unfinished beta and call it release - you get negative review.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I absolutely love this game EU5 is ambitious, interconnected, and alive. It takes the best of EU4, MEIOU, Victoria 2, CK2, and CK3, layering those elements atop the Imperator: Rome framework to create the deepest and most flexible Paradox experience yet. Every choice, whether political, economic, cultural, or military, ripples through your nation’s fabric. It abandons abstract mana and static modifiers in favor of living systems: people, infrastructure, politics, and trade. It’s undoubtedly…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →My fun game about growing an empire that was EU4 has been choked to death with a million tiny inconsequential decisions to make in place of engaging gameplay. In EU4 I decided on military and diplomatic strategies. In EU5 I decide on who my 4th cousin 5 times removed marries, and which slightly different kind of education my 16 children will receive. None of these things matter and will ever impact the game, but I have to do them anyway. If I didn't, I'd just be sitting and staring at the time…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →900 hours... man i really gave it a try Every update is basically 1 step forward, 2 steps back The developers have no idea what direction they want to take the game. Sticking to their vision for a "sandbox" sounds cool in theory, untill you realize its all just sand. The game is also horribly paced, unfortunately thats just how an economy built around exponential growth goes, once you are past the first 100-150 years, all balance gets thrown out the window. These are just a few of the many…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I never write reviews, but I've been playing Paradox/grand strategy games for over a decade and wanted to say thank you. Haven't had any crashes, the systems are mind-boggingly confusing and in-depth, I rarely know what I'm doing and I'm having the time of my life. I'm in my 30s with a kid and this is the first time I've wanted to take a week off just to play a game in years.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →this game would be a great game if eu4 didnt exist. johan took four games and threw them together like a some weird concoction, that's not bad in itself but it quite literally a situation where in about 3 to 4 years they will mesh well together you can snowball harder in eu5 than you can in eu4 (lol!) ai has no idea what it is doing, suicides into you, can not keep up with the everchanging economy and your nation being an outlier and even if paradox say in two weeks "the ai won't walk…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Experience: 56 hours on the public build + 338 hours on the "press build" EU5 is in many ways broken, janky, and sometimes frustratingly so. But, despite all that; EU5 really is the platonic ideal of a grand strategy game, it is the GSGest GSG I have ever played. In the same way that dwarf fortress is a buggy, janky 10/10 game, EU5 is a buggy, janky 10/10 game.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Big Paradox fan with over 10,000+ between their games. 1.1.0 came out recently to address some of the issues with launch and, to be frank, they did not cook hard enough. The game has so much potential, and I definitely will be returning to it to give it more tries as it gets updated, but the honest truth that its current state (3 months after *full* release, 1.1.0, and already starting to hype up the first DLC) is still far below what I would expect from an early access/open-beta release. The…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I have played well over 600 hours into this game and I think I have finally come to the conclusion on why I never play past 1500. This game was meant to be a nation building sim, but the devs instead turned it into an economic sim. The economy part of the game is so convuluted that after making over 100 ducats a month its easier to just automate it. It doesn't feel like playing a nation, it feels like playing as a corporation managing balance sheets. The fundemental focus of the game was on…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Not worth it at the moment. Despite the version number being 1.1.10 the game is quite clearly not out of Beta. The game is moving in the right direction and in the developer diaries they are constantly announcing good changes. The problem is that these changes are so good and common sense that is it a wonder they are taking this long to be implemented.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Another Paradox launch another broken game that exists to shove DLC down your throat. As of writing this review there have been no major changes to any of the complaints leveraged towards this game. What I will now do is make a list of pros and cons about this game, with a TLDR at the bottom as this is quite a long list. Pros: - Very impressive potential. On Paper this game sounds incredible, with a promising economy system, pop management and time period, the game shows it has the foundations…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Start game. Gold coin red small number. Click buttons. Gold coin green big number. Happy.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Paradox just hire a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ QA team and get your ♥♥♥♥ together. You only please your shareholders instead of the gamers. Money horny leeches.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Recommended only if you accept being part of the long Paradox development cycle. I want to be fair to Paradox: Europa Universalis V is not a lazy game. It is not empty. It is not without care. The work is visible. The ambition is visible. The historical appetite is visible. Population, economy, state-building, map scale, slower pacing, alternate history, logistics, diplomacy, internal politics — all of it points toward the kind of grand strategy game I want to exist. That is why this review…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It took me an hour before I dared to press the unpause button. Then I got smacked. Love it, would unpause again.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I went into EU5 expecting the usual Paradox ritual: open the game, stare at 500 buttons, contemplate life choices. But surprise! This time the game politely pats you on the shoulder and says, “Relax, just don’t click the skull icons for now.” EU5 is still gloriously complex: the kind of complex where you zoom in, see six different menus blinking at you, and whisper to yourself, “I’ll deal with that next campaign.” And the miracle is: that actually works. On normal difficulty you can wing it,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Wait a year / two years. There currently isn't much point in investing a large amount of time learning the game as systems are constantly being reworked or completely overhauled every few weeks / months. Going from one patch to another can feel like a completely different game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Stop releasing half-baked games at ridiculous prices before you get a reputation like EA or Ubisoft's
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really wanted to love this game but I find it tedious and clunky. Moving from eu4 to eu5 is like going to your favourite restaurant, ordering your favourite meal and being served the wrong order, a kid’s size portion and finding that it is undercooked. Perhaps I’m just old and jaded now but I’m bored of paying for the privilege of being a paradox beta tester. Regular crashes and patches that hammer rather than tweak play styles is the current state of play. With eu4 you had mission trees and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is so wildly ambitious that it shouldn’t function in our world, yet somehow it does. It's alien technology. An atlas in video game form, it simulates all 400 million people alive on Earth in 1337, from the 1,085 settlers in Greenland to the 92 million people of China, following them hour by hour over 500 years of history while remaining fun and performant. It’s the foundation of a genuine masterpiece, complete with the Black Death rendered as an early game boss. If you’ve enjoyed…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game has potential to become PDX's best grand strategy. Sadly, at release, it is still really far from that and I can't really recommend buying it in its current state. The game seems to be wide as an ocean, but if you focus on any mechanic, it quickly breaks, revealing the depth of a puddle. The vast majority of the world has zero unique content. You will play almost exactly the same in Africa, HRE, SEA, with maybe one or two different buttons to press. But maybe you're looking…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Playing this game gives the impression that the developers fundamentally don’t understand why people play their games. They seem to think that expanding the game sideways to such an absurd degree — where the most logical solution is automating half the processes just to avoid drowning in micromanagement. For anyone thinking about buying it: the answer is simple — absolutely not. The game is boring and annoying in most aspects, and even if you eventually start enjoying it, Paradox already has…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Start the game, select Florence Don't do the tutorial Spend 2 hours reading everything without unpausing the game Still don't understand anything My population Starve The black death kill 50% of my population 10/10 game, would die again.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Really wanna like this game, given the hours I've put into this, yet I have not, in a single playthrough, played further than 1650. At that point, everything worth doing has long been done. I can see this being the absolute best of all Paradox's games up to this point, but this is nothing more than a glorified Beta test. And I can almost garruentee you, that for this game to be "More playable" in the future, it'll requere at least twice the games price, in dlcs. Fix your rotten culture,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Unfortunately, this game promises far more than it can deliver. It wants to be this vast economic simulator, a military engine, a political theater all mixed up. It attempts to achieve this grand scale of accomplishment and because of its broad scope, ends up achieving none of it; feeling hollow, confusing, and arbitrary.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Europa Universalis V – A Disappointing Launch from a Long-Time Fan This is a long but experience-based review, written after hundreds of hours of playtime. It focuses almost entirely on negatives, not because the game has no positives, but because the problems are severe enough to push even a long-time fan away. This is written for Paradox, in the hope that these issues will be addressed—not to attack the game, but to see it become better. I am a 1300+ hours EU4 player, with extensive…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →already making dlc for a game that barely works probably why the stock value is down %30 keep it up guys
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →bad and not getting better. Devs dropping DLC before core mechanics work lol
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I was fully prepared to dislike EU5, but I can't. This is a good game and sets the standard not just for future games, but retrospectively for past ones. Paradox has been dropping the ball for a long time with half-baked, bare-bones releases that barely function and have zero depth, expecting you to buy three years of DLC before the game gets good. EU5 doesn't seem to be that. This game comes across as a passion project from the Paradox of old. The Paradox of EU3, CK2, and Victoria 2. And it…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I haven't played this game a lot - yet - as you can see, however I've watched tens of hours of gameplay, tutorials, mechanics, etc. on YouTube and I can confidently say that this game is the greatest Paradox grand strategy ever - in spite of all the flaws. Yes, the UI is kinda bad, tldr - it's not as bad as people say, it's just quirky. Although people tend to make it sound much worse than it actually is - the game is totally playable and the interface doesn't restrict the player in any…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Unnecessarily complicated. It feels like the developers made the game artificially complex just to make it feel like a grand strategy game. Instead of adding meaningful depth, they buried everything under endless menus and submenus. There are simply too many buttons hidden behind too many layers. Half the time you don't even know certain features exist because they're so difficult to find. I don't feel like I'm playing a strategy game. I feel like I'm solving a puzzle just trying to locate…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If my lost time and money can mean anything, let it mean that no one else buys this game. On realease I expected this game to do what EU4 (the previous game) acheived on release: - A functional Holy Roman Empire - no. instead there was a gaping void in central Europe. - A simple yet functional exploration system -no. it was seriously bugged. - An emotional connection to my realm/kingdom/empire - no. a pocket calculator has more charisma. - A visual interface that was usable and not too…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game feels...wrong. Please listen in that I don't mean it's bad, I just struggle to enjoy it. As a longtime fan of PDX and specifically the Europa Universalis series I don't enjoy giving a negative review. If my opinion changes I will change this to a recommendation in future. Below is a slightly longer breakdown of my current viewpoint. The most pressing issue for me right now is the pacing and core gameplay loop. It is oftentimes focused on exponential economic growth instead of…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →EU5 is basically EU4 without the fun combined with Victoria 3 without the depth. Unlimited things to do, but no things to do.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It became extremely boring in 1.2.x I still don't understand what the developers want from the game. I remember the project's main theme was "Be ambitious," but now the game has completely devolved into a piece of incoherence. Expansion beyond one's own cultural group has been virtually completely destroyed. Spreading one's religion is also practically impossible. Vassals have become useless stumps. The whole system of nationalization is built on culture, but you almost can't expand your…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →What started out as unpolished clay has so far with updates been turned into a shiny turd. The UI is maddening in all respects to navigate and game mechanics are a mix of crashes, incomprehensible economics and rebellion whack a mole. There is no fun or joy for the player to be had. Its just repetitive micromanagement as the automation mechanic is plain awful at most things. Most nations lack substance and the deluge of characters are pointless and only serve to tax processing power. Perhaps…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →EU4 but everything is better, there is so much to do at all times. The population mechanic is great, mana is gone and replaced with multiple interwoven systems that feel great. The only mechanic I feel is missing right now is an army/navy builder like EU4, but the devs did say that they will add it soon. UI needs a bit more work, but I learned to navigate it in my first few days of playing. Runs well, no crashes (my PC is in-between minimum and recommend specs).
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →CK 3, CK 2, Victoria 2, Victoria 3, EU 4 and Imperator... All in one game. Oh, and it can use multiple CPU cores
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I want to like it, there seems to be the core of a good game there, but the whole thing is ruined by how obtuse, unclear, and generally obnoxious every aspect of the game is. Why did my income suddenly drop massively? No idea and the graph that shows it did tells me nothing. Do I have a way to control my income and keep it consistent? Nope! Do I get to adjust sliders every few ingame months to try and balance it? Fun! How do I change rivals once I've set them? It took me thirty…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is a game that fundamentally does not respect your time. I am saying this as someone who has over a 1000 hours in EU4, Vic3, CK3, and CK2 each (so 5k total). All grand strategy games will naturally have slower sections, but this game takes ages to complete even the most basic tasks. I have waited 15-30 minutes for my first buildings to complete. I play all other Paradox games on max speed without issue, though usually need to tick those down to 4 speed, so I can process events. There is…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Its just like I wanted it to be. Slow, complex and huge where I can calmly spend hour watching the screen as numbers tick up and down. Heaven for me. It has been 10 hours in real life and only 30 years in game. Precious. Update after finishing my first campaign, not restarting once. 93 hours from not knowing how to play to finishing in 8th place as the 4th great power of the world... and let me tell you.... this game, can be the perfect game, if they manage to squash all the bugs and glitches…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →TLDR: This game is deeply flawed with a litany of problems, but it's also probably my favorite GSG ever made. It will become a great game. A lot of people probably won't like this game either. When you buy a Paradox base game, you are really buying into a platform that will be expanded by DLC. I know a lot of people hate this practice, but that business model is what allows Paradox games to be the most detailed and immersive strategy games bar none. This game was by all accounts way too…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →EU5 is not a sequel to EU4 in any meaningful sense of the word. The two games cover *almost* the same time period, but they are as different-mechanically-as night and day. EU4 was a classic, 4X grand-strategy game with enough abstraction for casual play but enough intuitiveness to still feel high-stakes and competitive. EU5, by contrast, is something more akin to an "everything simulator" as I'd call it. The game itself is highly ambitious, attempting to seamlessly incorporate virtually every…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I think its the biggest and most demanding excel spreadsheet to date. I spent all this hours staring at menus without unpausing, and Im still not ready to do so.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Paradox didn’t break the tradition. Classic Paradox: release first, patch later! And after a bunch of patches it still feels ridiculous...
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Greatest potential of all Paradox games. Many system still needs improvment and polishing but im pretty sure eventually it will be THE grand strategy that will defingn genre for years to come.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Love saving and reforming the byzantine empire entirely from top to bottom only to have my empire randomly explode due to being "complacent" because the game arbitrarily decided that france, hungary, naples and the mamluks are not powerful enough rivals for a country with a third of their population and half their economy. Whoever came up with this mechanic needs to be fired out of a cannon
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →EU5 is essentially an early access title being released with a AAA price tag which is especially egregious given that it is just the vector for delivering more $20 DLCs throughout it’s lifetime. Personally, If you were to buy the game I would wait 6 months to a year post launch for it to be on sale and hopefully most bugs and issues are ironed out by then as I wouldn't pay full price for the game in it's current state on release.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →63 hours at the time of writing this review. Gameplay from the initial date to approximately 1620. I have arond 3.500 hours in EU4, and just cant imagine myself putting similar effort toward this game. Is EU5 at launch better than EU4 at the end of its lifetime? Quick answer - no. EU5 is a much more complex game than EU4, but playing it feels empty. * Nothing happens. From the initial date, to until 1600, no changes occurred on the map. England did not conquer the British Isles, Italy is…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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