stevep
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Post by stevep on May 7, 2024 9:44:44 GMT
I’ve started playing a quite good game called Suzerain, a story/decision based political sim. Ultra impressive world building, a good cast of characters and very decent depth. You take the role of new President Anton Rayne of Sordland, a medium sized country in the depths of a recession and emerging from dictatorial rule. They have made a DLC which offers a chance to play a different country. Highly recommended. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzerain_(video_game)
Looks interesting. Hope you manage to steer your country through the dangers both external and internal.
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Post by simon darkshade on May 7, 2024 10:57:49 GMT
There is a limited range of both, at this time, but there is some decent scope for success and failure. Broadly speaking, it seems you can take a Democratic/Reformist approach, an Autocratic one or a Dictatorship.
The largest issue with it for me, and this is in the spirit of constructive criticism, is that it goes a bit down the path of Paradox Studios style abstraction - you get a vague line shape for economic performance and abstract figures for Government Budget and Personal Finances. The strength of the military (not a real in game factor per se) is measured in numbers (“400.000 men”) and ‘armies’. I’d prefer GDP and actual budgets in the national currency; and divisions/squadrons/actual ship types respectively. It isn’t a major factor or distractor thus far, as gameplay is more in the style of a Choose Your Own Adventure scenario/gamebook, but in my view, wouldn’t take that much to implement, nor necessarily detract from the game style or nature. They do bandy stats about the place, such as reference to unemployment rates, infant mortality, literacy rates and the like, but miss the opportunity to incorporate them *within* the game. Overall, though, this is more of a missed opportunity than a problem.
(My liking for such is informed by previous experiences with forum based nation playing sims, where my mates and I really pushed the envelope in terms of rigour, statistical backing, realism and depth; they later developed into semi and fully automated systems, and the ‘chief programmer’ is working on it as a game engine in its own right. I’d love to see that type of approach married with the creativity and writing of Suzerain.)
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Post by simon darkshade on May 9, 2024 8:28:34 GMT
After one full playthrough, my overall opinion is: good, for the reasons above, but not great, also for the reasons above.
There are some nicely difficult challenges of getting reforms through Congress and the Supreme Court, with the other major challenge of the second half of the game being avoiding war with a much larger and more powerful neighbouring country. However, the latter is fairly easy if the player elects to join the analogues of NATO or the Warsaw Pact; that prevents war unless the player starts one, which causes a global thermonuclear war. Furthermore, the challenges of the second half of the game occur on the ‘downward slope’ of tension; quite a lot seems to be relatively anti-climactic. The process of being re-elected for a second term isn’t as hard as it could be, but that might just be a consequence of the fairly sensible path I took.
There was some use of stats through the whole game, and in the ending screen, but they never really had much meaning or weight to them, nor did they seems to be connected. Getting this element out in ‘front of house’ would make for a richer game in my view. Whilst there are many endings, there didn’t seem to be a score system outside of Steam achievements.
The politics of 1953-1957 Sordland, in a different world, seemed to tack too much towards 2020s America - among other examples, we had women’s rights and feminism using the language of ‘patriarchy’ rather than first wave feminism; one policy described ‘environmental sustainability’ being a substantive issue; creationism vs evolution showed up as a major issue of educational policy; and there was opposition to vaccination against polio. This broke some of the immersion created by the excellent world building of the completely original alternate world setting. However, it didn’t do so to an egregious extent.
Suzerain is worth a look, and the ongoing release of DLCs is in its favour; with a tad more rigour and a few changes of how it used stats, it could be great.
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Post by Otto Kretschmer on May 9, 2024 12:36:31 GMT
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has recently been wnnounced.
Hurray!
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