Seems better than the original version.

The most annoying aspect of the original version, that the computer players tried so hard, so often, to shoot the moon, and never break hearts or attempt to stop another computer player from shooting the moon, seems improved. The players now seem to break hearts early and often. Some players seem to still be overzealous about shooting the moon, but they don’t seem to succeed as often as they used to. I notice other computer players stopping other computer players now. There is still something I’m seeing far too often, though, that I find annoying about this game. Way more often than should happen, one of the computer players has a much lower score than the other two and the other two computer players seem to “protect” that player by playing in ways to deliberately take points in order to make the game more difficult in a way that normal human players should not. Great AI should not rely on any other information than what would be known to a normal player, and should not treat another computer player differently than the human player. As for options, I’m glad to see the custom game options, but I wish the shoot the moon feature was an option rather than still having to be there. I figure it is because trying to shoot the moon is such a large part of the computer players’ AI that removing it would make them non-competitive. Computer players often do not come out of “shoot the moon” mode even if another player has taken a heart.

Chris21718_hsv about Hearts! 2