Complexity is not depth. People say that this game is somehow a return to form for Paradox and that it resembles their older releases, but that couldn't be further from truth. It's nothing like Victoria II or Europa Universalis III. This is just an official version of MEIOU, complete with bad performance and insanely bloated game mechanics.

The UI sucks. It's one giant clusterfuck, nothing is where you'd expect it to be. It's somehow worse than UI in Paradox games from two decades ago, full of nested screens, and the information you're looking for is never easy to find.

The gameplay pacing is horrendous. People like to talk about how it's necessary to build up your country in EU V before you can do anything as if that's a good thing. It might have been a good thing if the game ran fast and I could breeze through the first few decades, but that's just not the case. The reason internal management works in Victoria II is because the game is short. Having to stop to do things like build factories and set national foci acts as a welcome break from warfare. Not so much in EU V. Thing change very, very slowly in this game. Want to change your national values? Go ahead, play for 100 years (1 month takes a full minute) and MAYBE you'll manage to do it. Passive value modifiers make this a way bigger hassle than it needs to be. EU III handled this better just by allowing you to move in a certain direction every couple of years and also decide through events.

Playing Victoria II modded I always enjoyed seeing "railroaded" events and situations take place and what kind of outcome would play out. It made the game interesting, it made the game world feel alive and I had fun watching the divergences from real-world history. The people behind New Nations Mod really did some amazing work on the game. They made it complete. The forks of NNM is why it's still fun to play today.