Played my first game as Italy, was relatively successful but made some rookie mistakes that led to me not being the first to reach Paris. I had managed to take over most of Africa and had gotten the Balkans too.
Decided to restart as Russia and have promptly stomped on everything. I was planning to play a defensive/friendly game with Germany, even avoided the anti-fascist goal tree. Invaded Japan as soon as they declared on China, stomped them pretty easily throughout Korea and invaded their homeland from the north through the small peninsula I owned. It was just a short hop and I got 4 divisions over which were enough to take the northern port on the main island and hold it until reinforcements arrived.
Unfortunately just before Japan capitulated they joined the Axis. I had a NAP with Germany until mid 1940 but I was fighting the rest of the Axis and when the NAP was up they declared as well. Luckily by this point I'd forced Italy to capitulate with the help of Britain and France wiping out Italy main and me wiping out the Balkans and Hungary. With the Japanese factories and Eastern Europe under my belt I managed to out produce Germany in everything apart from in the air which I just ignored, I think I was down to 30~ fighters at the end.
Pushed to the French border and up through half of Denmark by the time the UK somehow got the capitulation from them. Managed to nab all of Germany, Northern and Southern Italy (the central part got puppeted I think), a bit of Morocco, Sardinia, Sicily and a port in the Balkans. I took the northernmost island of Japan but that was all I got from them as they were liberated as democratic in the next peace turn.
Just mosying around now, easily the most powerful nation in the world, the better part of Asia is Comintern, only Poland and Hungary (both smaller than originally) are not aligned. Greece and Romania are Comintern, Yugoslavia is Allies. I smashed Turkey as they joined the Axis as I rolled into Berlin (the fools) and took most of that. China and Communist China are both in the Comintern, going to be interesting to see what happens there!
All in all I think the game seems to be too easy but I guess I started with the equivalent of baguette in EU4 and am playing on normal.