Ahh, a good, old-fashioned, turn-based strategy game; a thing too seldom seen in this day and age. Alas, this game may not quite fit the bill.

Contrary to the early reviews I found, the game runs well and stable on my computer. The interface is manageable and relatively easy to get the hang of. But, after two play-throughs I have come to the following conclusions.

Much as a good strategy game needs an economic model this one is too time-consuming to the overall game. You spend all your time making sure your people are fed, you produce enough raw materials for manufacturing, researching new techs and occasionally building a few military units. I realize that in order to accomplish any military goals one has to short-change some other aspect of your economy (which is somewhat realistic) there are no in-game incentives to do so. One finds himself five years into the game and still building economic base and getting no where in no particular hurry.

I tried to get some military operations done and could not quite get a handle on what worked and what did not. I was playing Germany and could not find any mechanism to coerce my neighbors to cede territory and finally attacked the Czechs. Although the Czechs had no allies, I was immediately set upon by Poland, the USSR, France, and who knows who else as I was now at war with a whole laundry list of nations to which I found myself. Needless to say, things did not go well from there.

So, I played again (actually I went back to a prior save) and played out looking for better opportunities. I researched the entire text tree, build a large army, and stayed out of trouble just to see. I came in sixth, I think. I always had trouble feeding every one. I had an instance where I suddenly found myself out of money and short on resources; the source of the dilemma was not immediately apparent. I think I just over-spent on infrastructure.

Then I played it through again and carefully build my economy. I did not worry about warfare overly much. I researched everything (finished all by 1942-3 give or take). I spent several years building an army and still only have the sixth largest among all the nations. I did manage to come in second overall, though, which is probably about the best I could expect. I still could not do anything militarily. Strange.

The game is a good model of mid-twentieth century economics, all-in-all. But, as another reviewer has stated, the diplomatic model is dismal. The technologies that one researches seem to have little effect other than to unlock better units (both military and economic). Knowing certain tactics, for instance, do not seem to - in themselves - impart any advantage to a nation using them. Battles occur but it is just my xxx attack points versus his xxx defense points. As long as the units are supplied that is about it. Using a main battle tank against cavalry imparts no noticeable advantage other than the increased combat values. Bottom line, NO FORCE MULTIPLIERS. Without said multipliers a nation of Germany's size has no hope in taking on most of the free world at all. They did. Therefore there is something missing in this game.

Bottom line: This game is reasonably well done in a technical standpoint. The game model could be ported to many different periods or locales. But for WWII and from a historical viewpoint it fails miserably as it nearly insurmountably difficult to do all one has to in order to create conditions that allow one to initiate the conflagration we are all familiar with. It is a sandbox. Fun to get into and play around but pointless in its purported goals.

As a huge fan of Hearts of Iron 2, Arsenal of Democracy and Darkest Hour, I thought I would try out the Making History series since both 1 (Gold) and 2 were on sale recently. I have played MH1 long enough to see it has some potential but having allies march across your territory to grab land that should be yours makes no sense. I enjoy playing Germany but don't want a patchwork of ally territory within my lands (Italy). Amusingly, I even had China land in Europe just shortly after I entered into an alliance with Japan...wtf? Also, pressing "End Turn" gets annoying when I'm used to setting AOD and DH to fast speed.

Making History 2 is even more complex (unnecessarily) than MH1 and any of the HOI2 games, AOD or DH. Different types of factories, research buildings and manufactured goods take away from what should be a war-game and makes MH2 an unenjoyable trade/economic simulator. Another gripe is that the game ends with a set number of turns that can't be altered...1945/1946 is the max year.

I CAN'T recommend this game as it has no redeeming qualities over the other WW2 strategy games. It is the same reason HOI3 was somewhat of a flop, adding mind numbing complexity decreases the fun factor exponentially! This game has substandard graphics and animations as well. In summary, it is more work than play.

First good things: Well it is TBS, which is very rare today. Global scale. Risk style game-play. Things i don't like: Couldn't force to run game from any other DIR than default installation path. Game has nothing to do with history. Risk game-play is both advantage and disadvantage. Too much micromanagement for risk-style game. It can get really sluggish. Isometric view is really, really annoying. No balance between powers. To sum up. If you want to waste couple hours on relatively simple (I don't want use word primitive) TBS then go ahead. If you want to play real TBS game then pick (e.g.) Gary Grisby's Pacific War or War in Russia.

I really like this game a lot, but I have to admit that there are some caveats. First off, this is a classic-style TBS game of absolutely huge (worldwide) scope and extremely high detail, which is great for those who like that, but if you prefer the "click-fest" of the RTS you won't care for it as much. Unfortunately there are some elements of the game that just really aren't "complete" yet, such as the mod-editor, the ability to upgrade city buildings, some badly-needed improvements to the population model, and a few other things, but fortunately the developers have not abandoned it upon release and many of those improvements should be coming soon. It is at least extremely light on bugs, which in a game of this scope is a VERY impressive achievement.

For those of you who miss the "good old days" of really good TBS games, this is a game you should check out. Just keep in mind that the game-play may take you a few weeks to finish a single game unless you have a LOT of free time on your hands.

Can't get into this turn based game... there's too much to it, and the time to play is too great for the amount of work and attention required. If you're a HOI player and enjoy Real Time Strategy, this game may seem too much to you.

If you are a die hard WWII Grognard, you may enjoy this game.

This game is very dissapointing. After very good Making History Gold, this looks like half made pre beta version of the full game. Lots of people have technical issues with it (including me). Developers have patched it several times from time of its release but it is still not enough. It seems it has problem with handling pc resouces, and therefore it runs slowly even on the high end machines although not everyone has this problem. Gameplay has changed a bit with a few additions. Previous Making History was a fun game with easier mechanics compared to Hearts of Iron and it is still a better choice than this one. A shame really because there is a lot of unused potentional.

Making History II: The War of the World is one of the biggest disappointments for me in the last 2-3 years. The game has HUGE potential, looks decent for a GEO political game, however the game is simply not complete, it have very little in the form of tutorials and the AI detail and complexity is useless.

Maybe once they finish the game it will be worthwhile, as it is now though it still have a long way to go, waiting for the latest patch, hope to see and improvement.

Regretably poor.AI is no challenge - I started 1933 scenario as Poland on normal difficulty and by mid 1935 had conquered Baltic States,Danzig Germany and almost all of Russia without really trying.

Good points - quite pretty with some nice ideas. Would probably be fine in mutiplayer but I don't play that.Good encyclopedia which makes up in part for useless game manual.

Badpoints - AI is hopeless even on hardest level, tech tree too easy to advance.

Play for a little light fun if you are a WW11 strategy fanatic like me and I hope they may make a good game of it eventually as they are doing regular updates.

Muzzylane is making fuzzygames. This game has great potential but at this point is unplayable, unbalanced and still as good as beta.

Playing as US i have very tech researched by 1939 and am mass producing nuclear weapons and ICBM platforms. Many bugs and serious balance problems as well as a very limited AI.

I'll start by saying this game is not a bad one by any stretch of the imagination, but I need to give a fair warning: In its present state, the game is clearly not finished, with no tutorial (apparently there is one promised in a patch due shortly) and several features that appear to not do anything. For example, in your country screen there is a tab labelled "government programs." I'm assuming this means social programs and the like, however I can't for the life of me figure out how to establish these programs, and am just going to have to assume that this feature has not been implemented. The diplomatic system also feels somewhat broken - every now and then something odd happens - like Bulgaria declaring war on Mexico, and Germany and the USSR seem to like to declare war on everything and everyone in their vicinity, which had some bizarre results such as three-way wars. Since it has only just been released and it's by an indie developer, i'll give it some leniency - bear in mind however, that the title at present feels very much like a beta and really could have used a few more weeks of spit and polish. If, several weeks or months into the future, you are reading this, don't be put off by the above - from my understanding, the developer is committed to supporting the game with several patches post-release. Understand however that if these are not out yet, you may wish to hold off on your purchase - nontheless I have managed a full day worth of enjoyable gameplay out of this, and very probably several more to come, even in its unfinished state.

I'm going to make comparisons to the Hearts of Iron series here, as many of the people interested in this style of grand strategy will be familiar with it (as the only other contemporary game that to my knowledge does the same thing within the time period). However, there are quite a few notable differences that make it stand out in its own field. I believe that highlighting these differences allows a player familiar with the HOI series to understand that this is a fundamentally different game and worthy of consideration by HOI fans.

Firstly, the similarities - MHII is a grand strategy game, encompassing the entire world, set roughly in the period of WW2. You can pick any country in existence at this time, and control its military, diplomatic, technological and production capabilities.

The similarities for the most part end there though - MHII is turn based (each turn comprises a week), and places greater emphasis on economic management over military micromanaging (as an example - this game lets you start in 1933, just after Hitler attained power. If you play historically, you're going to be spending half of the game at peace). When I realised this game was turn based, I cringed, as I can't really abide by hugely complex turn based games and their 5 minute waits between turns - I readily admit that i'm probably too impatient for that, especially since I often play with limited time at my disposal. However, the turns in MHII are simultaneous (meaning all the AI players move at the same time). This means that the delay is actually not very long at all and quite tolerable.

In comparison to the HOI series, each province has its population, ethnicity, culture, and religion modelled. This is kinda fluff I guess, but I found it very cool - but as a result of this ethnicity modelling, you have the ability to release any nationality as a puppet or independent state once conquered to your territory - you're even allowed to choose the ideology (democratic/communist/fascist/authoritarian) of such a state, and there has obviously been a lot of work done in this area, because for every ideology, there is a seperate national flag. I'm not sure if all of these are based in reality (just how large was the Kazakh fascist movement or Samoan communist party anyway?) but many certainly are recognisably historical and those that may not be still look quite feasible. A wonderful sideeffect of this is when the AI brings nations into its ideological fold - it greatly adds to immersion by witnessing these nations change their flags - fighting against a fascist Czechoslovakia really felt a lot more believable than it does in HOI. This level of detail extends right down to the sprites used for aircraft - you'll see airforce roundels painted on your planes and those of your enemies. As I noted, this is fluff, but this level of detail deserves praise, in my opinion, because it would be all-too-easy to make every nation feel generic.

I'll be blunt, however, apart from details like this, the graphics aren't exactly fantastic.The sprites look okay, but the map can at best be described as functional. But we don't play games like these for the graphics, do we?

I haven't got any major gripes with the interface, except for one thing - there's no return to main menu option in-game. If you pull up the game menu, the only option available is