Making History: The Second World War

I have spent a lot of hours with grand strategy games that punish you for blinking, so when I say Making History: The Second World War is genuinely accessible, I mean it as a compliment earned through design choices rather than dumbing-down. This is the fourth entry from Factus Games in a long-running turn-based series, and it lands in a comfortable middle ground: more depth than a board game conversion, less paralysis than the Paradox catalogue. You pick any nation from a roster of 280 distinct nationalities, set your starting scenario somewhere in the buildup to the war, and then manage the industrial, military, diplomatic, and research levers that determine whether your corner of the 1930s survives the decade. The economic loop is where the game earns its hours. Cities and territories feed a resource chain covering production, trade, debt, and inflation, and getting that balance right before the shooting starts is genuinely satisfying. Logistics and naval supply matter too - tanker routes and collier ships are not decorative; run out of fuel and your armored push stalls. Research trees unlock the expected progression from early-war biplanes to jet aircraft and nuclear capability, and racing rivals to those tech tiers shapes your strategic options meaningfully. The covert side is a quiet highlight: you can funnel budget into destabilizing a neighbor's minority factions, spark a revolution from the inside, and then gift military units to the rebel group. That kind of cold-war-in-miniature toolkit is rarer than it should be in the genre. The AI is the game's honest weakness. Diplomatic behavior can veer into the absurd, alliances fracture without clear cause, and historical plausibility tends to dissolve by the mid-game turns. Fans of the series seem split on whether this is a bug or a feature - alternate history chaos has its own entertainment value - but if you are specifically chasing tight historical simulation, the AI will frustrate you regularly. Map coverage also has gaps in certain regions, most notably parts of Southeast Asia, which veteran players flag as a persistent limitation. The in-game tutorial mode covers the basics, though the player-made guides on Steam are still the faster path to understanding the economy's finer points. For newcomers to grand strategy, this is actually a reasonable entry point. The UI is cleaner than genre heavyweights, automation options reduce the micromanagement burden mid-campaign, and the Steam Workshop adds meaningful replay value with over a hundred community scenarios - alternate timelines, extended start dates, regional focus mods - that quietly extend the game's lifespan past what the base package offers. Multiplayer PvP is supported online, which adds a completely different pressure to the industrial planning phase when a human opponent is running the opposing economy. The macOS compatibility caveat is real: versions above Catalina are not supported, so Mac buyers should confirm their OS before purchasing.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

Be the first to comment on Making History: The Second World War.