Every now and then I get the urge to play a strategy game. Not your typical strategy game, such as Starcraft or Age of Empires, or even a game like Total War.

No, I get the urge to play a massive, globe-spanning, in-depth, Grand Strategy game.

Recently, I picked Hearts of Iron III, developed by Paradox Interactive. I had never played a HoI game, but had played many other Paradox games and each was the top of it's genre. I put in Hearts of Iron 3, and had no clue what to do. Nothing made sense to me. After hours of playing, I still don't get it 100%. I know that it will take me months to understand everything, if I ever do at all.

So readers, if you haven't lost interest already, what game made you scratch your head and say, "What the shit is going on"? What game overwhelmed you to the point of becoming intimidated. Hearts of Iron wins out for me, with Supreme Ruler 2020 (another PI developed game) in close second. 

X2, I think... I dunno if I know what was going on (well plotwise I did), or if I sucked, or if it was a bad game, I wanted my gigantic ship but was always not making enough money :(:( :D

I was overwhelmed in a different way in some missions of Earth Defense Force 2017.

"Oh that is an enormous wave of enemies. Time for a cutscene and level end! Man, must be eighty or a hundred of them, and they're all the size of schoolbuses. ...

...

Cut... cutscene? Now? Oh God

OH GOD"

Oh crap, I forget that game (well, it's actually X3 for me). It had my brain in pretzels as well.

that game too. Only I quit playing it enough before I had enough time to judge it. I played X2 forever and ever, and went nowhere :D

I have a similar story.

So I was playing Civilization 3 back in the day. I, being the huge nerd that I was, named all of my cities after Lord of the Rings cities. One by one, the fell, as I was at war with basically every country. In the end I had only one city left, and had only a handful of Spearmen to defend against Musketmen. Needless to say, I felt screwed. Luckily, Japan came and saved my ass. I always knew there was a reason I loved Asian people, other than the fact that I love their women and food.

Europa Universalis for moi

I had trouble with it at first, but it all became clear eventually. I just used cheat codes until I felt confident enough to play the game without them.

P.S. Let it be known that Europa Universalis 3 is one of my favorite games of all time.

most sim games tend to be like that (other than the Sims)