EU5 Review: Is Europa Universalis 5 Worth Buying in 2025?

Europa Universalis 5 has finally arrived, and the grand strategy community is buzzing with one question: is it worth the investment? After extensive playtime across multiple campaigns, we're ready to give you our comprehensive verdict on whether EU5 deserves a spot in your game library.

The Living Population System

Let's start with what might be EU5's most revolutionary feature: the population system. Unlike EU4, where provinces were essentially static resource generators, every nation in EU5 has a dynamic, living population that grows, shrinks, and moves based on your decisions and world events.

Population growth is driven by multiple factors: migration patterns, food availability, prosperity levels, and job opportunities. Conversely, populations decline through warfare, disease, famine, and economic collapse. This creates a genuine sense of consequence that EU4 never achieved. Wage a brutal war? Watch your population suffer. Build a prosperous economy? See your cities swell with migrants seeking opportunity.

The class system adds another layer of depth. Your population is divided into commoners, burgers, clergy, and nobility—each with their own needs, desires, and contributions to your realm. Commoners work the fields and fill your levy armies. Burgers drive trade and urban development. Clergy provide legitimacy and education. Nobility serve as your officer corps and administrative backbone. Balancing these classes becomes a core gameplay loop that feels genuinely engaging.

Estates That Actually Matter

If you played EU4, you'll remember estates as a somewhat passive background mechanic—click buttons every few years, manage some loyalty bars, and otherwise ignore them. EU5 completely reimagines this system into something that genuinely impacts your gameplay.

Estates in EU5 are active participants in your realm. They construct buildings, propose and pass laws, and compete fiercely for influence over your government. The church might push for religious laws while merchants demand trade protections. Nobles seek military privileges while peasant estates agitate for land reform.

Most importantly, estates can either empower or undermine your crown authority. A strong monarchy means keeping estates in check while extracting their cooperation. Let them grow too powerful, and you'll find your own authority challenged at every turn. This dynamic creates genuine political gameplay that was largely absent from EU4.

A Revolutionary Economy

EU4's trade system, while innovative for its time, felt increasingly artificial with its static trade nodes and fixed end nodes. EU5 tears this up and replaces it with something far more organic and satisfying.

Resources in EU5 have real consequences. Food feeds your population—and your armies. Industrial goods fuel urbanization. Luxury goods drive trade profits. Every resource matters, and shortages have genuine impact. A grain shortage means famines and population decline. A weapons shortage means undersupplied armies.

Markets are dynamic entities that can grow, collapse, or be created through player action. You can trade specific goods with other nations, creating complex economic relationships that mirror historical reality. Need iron for your growing military? You'll need to either develop domestic production or negotiate trade agreements with iron-producing neighbors.

Gone are the days of steering trade through predetermined nodes toward Genoa or the English Channel. Instead, you're building genuine trade networks based on geography, relationships, and economic realities.

Automation For New Players

One of EU4's greatest barriers to entry was its complexity. New players faced dozens of interconnected systems with minimal guidance. EU5 addresses this brilliantly through strategic automation options.

Don't want to micromanage taxes while learning military mechanics? Hand off tax collection to an AI administrator. Overwhelmed by trade routes? Automate trade management while you focus on diplomacy. Finding estate politics too complex? Let the game handle estate negotiations while you learn the basics.

This automation isn't a crutch—it's a learning tool. As you grow more comfortable with each system, you can gradually take manual control. This approach makes EU5 significantly more accessible to newcomers without sacrificing depth for veterans who want to optimize every aspect of their realm.

The Technology Overhaul

Here's where we offer some honest criticism alongside praise. EU5 replaces the idea system with a massive technology tree, and the results are mixed but largely positive.

The tech tree offers genuine strategic choices. Different cultures, religions, and nations have access to unique technologies that create distinct playstyles. Playing as Japan feels fundamentally different from playing as France, not just in starting position but in available developmental paths.

However, we'd love to see more national flavor in future updates. The mission trees that made nations like Brandenburg or Byzantium so memorable in EU4 are currently absent. Paradox has indicated these will return in future content, but for now, the unique national experiences are somewhat less pronounced than EU4 veterans might expect.

That said, the core technology system provides enough variety to keep campaigns feeling fresh, and the foundation is clearly there for expansion.

The Verdict: Should You Buy EU5?

Yes. Unequivocally, yes.

EU5 represents perhaps the strongest Paradox launch in the company's history. Where previous titles like EU4 and CK3 launched with solid foundations but limited content, EU5 arrives feature-complete with systems that already exceed what EU4 offered after years of development.

The population system alone justifies the purchase. Add the dynamic economy, meaningful estates, strategic automation, and improved diplomacy, and you have a game that respects both your time and intelligence. The world feels genuinely alive in a way EU4 never achieved—populations move, economies shift, and nations rise and fall based on dynamic factors rather than scripted events.

Is it perfect? No. The reduced national flavor compared to fully-developed EU4 is noticeable, and some systems could use refinement. But these are the kinds of issues that will be addressed through patches and expansions. The core experience is already exceptional.

For EU4 veterans: EU5 is better than EU4 in its current state. The new systems add genuine depth without overwhelming complexity. Your thousands of hours in EU4 have prepared you well, but EU5 offers enough new mechanics to feel fresh and exciting.

For newcomers: There has never been a better time to enter the Europa Universalis franchise. The automation features make the learning curve manageable, and you'll be playing the definitive version from day one rather than needing dozens of DLCs to get the "complete" experience.

Ready to Start Your Campaign?

If we've convinced you that EU5 is worth your investment, you can support EU5.guide by purchasing the game through the "Buy EU5" button in our navigation menu. It's an easy way to support the continued development of these guides while getting your copy of the game.

Once you've got the game, we recommend checking out our Getting Started Guide to learn the fundamentals, followed by our Why Castile is the Perfect Beginner Nation article to find your first campaign. And when you're ready to dive deep, our comprehensive Country Guides will help you master any nation you choose.

Welcome to Europa Universalis 5. Your empire awaits.