Sigma Theory: Global Cold War
Sigma Theory is a good niche product that was incorrectly exposed to the public. Yes indeed, it is a turn-based strategy game about spies, but it is far from Phantom Doctrine or any other action-packed tactical title. Jeez, in the very old “Spy vs Spy” game was much more direct action! Sigma Theory is text-based. It is a board game by the set of rules and overall dynamics. Think of Battlestar Galactica, think of Monopoly. In the realm of video games, think of The Witcher Adventure Game or maybe Plague Inc: Evolved , in a way.
– Real player with 94.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Economy Sandbox Games.
This game is a dream come true for me. I’ve always been a fan of the spy genre (video games, tabletop games, tv shows, movies, board games, card games), I think Sid Meyers Cover Action is one of the best espionage games ever made; with Invisible Inc and Phantom Doctrine coming in at close second; totally different games but they mange to make you feel like you’re a real intelligence officer on the job. Now there is a new spy game in town and I have to say this game is the type of spy game I’ve been looking for, for years! Ever since I played Streets of Chaos (it’s a game where you run a criminal origination. You send out gang members to do crime all over a fictional city) and another hidden gem called Black Closet (in the game you’re like the president of boarding school, and you send out your team to investigate students; to avoid scandals from destroying the school). I thought to myself, both of these games have great micromanagement mechanics and they’re not very graphic heavy, it would be great to have a spy game that played a lot like those 2 games, and now that game is here!
– Real player with 55.0 hrs in game
Power & Revolution 2019 Edition
The Game Works, For a While, Then it Just Doesn’t
I’ve been playing the game for a couple of months, and I have also been making a few mods. Recently, I’ve noticed that the game now freezes around June of 2020. I’ve only been playing mods recently, but I don’t think that’s an excuse for this. I think I’ll simply stop playing until this issue is fixed. It’s just not fun anymore when the game irredeemably freezes on me every ten minutes
UPDATE
This Game is STILL Broken!!!
I’m really getting sick of the broken state of this game. I mostly play mods, but they either glitch to the point of being broken to not even loading correctly. I cannot create custom characters or groups because if I do, they won’t render in the game anyway. Or if they do, they’ll have the wrong voice. A male character with a female voice and visa versa. Another issue I’m having is that I’ll play a game for one day, and the next day, the space research section completely disappears!!! If I change a nation’s regime type, say for example, make Somalia a Federal Republic with a Presidential government type, it’ll show up in mod creation and in mod editing, but if I try to play this mod, it’ll still be an Authoritarian Military regime in the new game menu! I downloaded the game’s recent update, and it worked for one day! I DO NOT recommend this game due to these very frustrating glitches! I’m losing faith in this company’s ability to fix this game.
– Real player with 727.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Economy Political Games.
If this game went for U$D 20 and it was the studio’s first foray into the genre, it’d be acceptable. Not good, but understandably troubled.
For a $50 DLC (That was released as a standalone) by a studio that has been making this very same game for years, it’s unacceptable.
It is not buggy: It is a writhing, cynical mess of broken mechanics that push against one another to see which will break your game first. The developers don’t care as long as their 17 cultists buy their game anew. I am in the Power and Revolutions Discord server. The crowd has a powerful blend of cultist vibe and “Pol Pot just needed more time” delirium.
– Real player with 201.0 hrs in game
Power & Revolution
I wanted to and tried to like this game and I found much to like. Firstly it is probably my favourite genre (modern geo-politics) and there is alot unique and cool about it. That said there is just too many things that are either tedious, too ill-explained (even with the GodsNspy addon) or just don’t work like they should either by design or not. Lastly there are some things that just should be available to everyone and not as DLC. The modding tool paid DLC is inadequete considering it cost money. Furthermore, given the inept explanitions of game mechanics, the GodNspy addon should also be part of the package, aswell as offer more information.
– Real player with 243.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Economy Political Games.
This is a very difficult game to evaluate. First - it’s very deep and complex. They aren’t kidding when they say “Geo-Political Simulator”. It goes much deeper into politics and economic simulation than even paradox games. This game will only be of interest to you if you’re interested in politics, and know at least a little bit about macroeconomics. This isn’t Tropico, Democracy or Hearts of Iron. All of those games are great, but they simply don’t compare to this by sheer depth.
This game doesn’t pussy-foot around, it treats you like an adult. There are hundreds of different laws and taxes you can change, thosuands of characters you can interact with, and enough graphs to satisfy even the stingiest statistics professor. You can play as any nation in the world (besides a handful of micronations like the Vatican), as opposition political parties, or even as an illegal groupр, such as the Kurds in Syria or the rebels in Donbass (although the meat of the game is when you play as a head of state). Your actions affect not just your popularity and budget, but also many macroeconomic factors. Factors such as inflation, unemployment and crime are all inter-related, and you’ll often times find yourself trying to reach a happy compromise. There really isn’t any other game like this. This is due to the fact that Eversim is a company that creates simulation games for intl' organizations and their mindset is very clear with even their consumer-level products, such as P&R.
– Real player with 167.8 hrs in game
Citystate II
Don’t buy.
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Unfinished game
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Bugs
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The “realistic economics” in this game leaves a lot to be desired and calling it realistic is laughable.
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The dev has been MIA since early October (within weeks of release).
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Developer is either a huckster or lacks any sense of professionalism.
The misrepresentation that you are buying a finished game on the store page and the fact that the developer just disappeared makes me feel as if I’ve been had. The excuse on discord by some person who is not the dev is that he has a family and he takes long breaks. Make of that what you will, but I will not buy another product from this developer.
– Real player with 65.1 hrs in game
You simply can’t play more extreme ideologies anymore (Left & Right) which Is kinda where alot of the fun came from. Everything needs to be balanced. It’s okay but at some point you’ll run into bugs that remove zones not just buildings and tank everything. Tbh it gets boring after it happens a few times. Oh and after many hrs my political leaning instantly went from 47-53 to 100-0 to the left which sent everyone into a riot and the whole city was destroyed. That right there is a game breaking bug. I’d honestly say buy the first one. I’m not hating btw, I actually really wanted to like it.
– Real player with 25.3 hrs in game
Government Simulator
Okay, so I decided to write up my general thoughts of this game and why I don’t necessarily believe it’s a bad game, but a game that has potential and needs a lot of work to get to a point where it can be considered realistic and fun to play.
Economy
I enjoy the main concept behind the economy; managing your taxes and spending to meet every growing demand of the nation. However, there seems to be a great deal of rebalancing of the economics that needs to go on before this side can be considered final.
– Real player with 17.9 hrs in game
Sooo.. Now I finally played this wonderful game (I was hyped since the announcement). It is very similiar to Democracy 3. Actually there are so many negative reviews.. I understand why, but not every review is justified in my opinion, because this game isn’t for the popular mass, it’s genre is a niche. I play games like these a lot, even if there are just a few (Democracy 3, Political Simulator, …).
I like how the game looks and feels. It feels very professional and it shows a bunch of statistics. The animations and graphs have very smooth animations and overall the game feels very great.
– Real player with 13.3 hrs in game
Masters of the World - Geopolitical Simulator 3
I highly recommend this game for anyone who is a political geek.
The game is extremely in-depth. It goes from well-known laws like freedom of speech/demonstration/religion to tiny aspects you’d never see in a geopolitical simulator; blood toxicity level, driving age, maximum age for school, and speed limits on trunk roads, city roads, and highways. It also has a very realistic atmosphere to it. Setting aside the fact the map and characters look like 90s era games, it gives the game a feel no other geopolitical simulator has given me; realism. It goes from setting meetings with political figures and world leaders, to having small talk and influencing well-known figures in your country to vote for you or support your bill publicly. When a law doesn’t pass through, a reform can be made. Adding laws into this reform that is bipartisan will increase the chances of it being passed. More features include asking nations for authorization to build a pipeline through their territory, building pipelines for oil or gas, detailed trade agreements that allow you to set the price, quantity, and duration of the agreement (Example: Russia’s Natural Gas Agreement with China that will last for 20 years), the game also allows the construction of various buildings or transportations like oil and gas pipelines, high-speed trains, nuclear power plants, oil rigs, gas and oil fields, and even increasing the number of hospitals, homes, schools, or solar fields. The game also has a very complicated economic system. I have been having trouble with it, but I did have some success as Jordan earlier. Continuing on, the game is very recent. It isn’t like SuperPower 2 where it was created just before the NATO expansion or the break-up of Serbia and Montenegro, but it was released in 2013, meaning it has the world’s youngest country, South Sudan. The game features terrorist groups in every country, ranging from the Mafia to Total Jihad groups (Al-Quaeda). You have the options to infiltrate the groups if they live in your territory, to funding them with weapons, money, and 2 semi-trucks with rockets and explosives if they are in other countries to help them take down that country’s government. But if you do this, you have the chance to be caught red-handed. And this will transfer into the news, and Parliment will impeach you. I suffered that while playing as Russia and funding New Zealand terrorists. The game offers so much detail to their options, like adding more medical staff and adding more police staff. You can also investigate politicians and well-known citizens to reveal a scandal to use against them, to spying on heads-of-state or countries to find evidence that will gain the approval of the United Nations Security Council and allow military action against the country. Which brings me to the Organizations of the game.
– Real player with 385.6 hrs in game
Despite of a few bugs Geopolitical Simulator 3 is an exceptionally clever and entertaining game! Of course strategic gaming must be your thing in order to fully appreciate MOW. It has more body than for example Civilization (which in itself is also a good game). It is very interesting to see what influence your various decisions have in the field of domestic or foreign policy, financial health, economic growth or social aspects. Also the causal relations between investing/cutting in a particular sector, creating contracts, growth, unemployment, production, trade balance, budget deficit, privitization etc..etc.. is very realistic, interesting and entertaining. Fun to read the newspaper on which impact your various decisions have, how it is presented and how well it is received by public opinion. One of the things I have learned is that you certainly can’t satisfy all of the people and organizations in a country. And most of the time it is a real challenge just to keep your head above the water. But all the more satisfying it is when you do manage to create a contract, see that the invested tax payer dollars create economic growth an jobs etc..etc..
– Real player with 150.2 hrs in game
NIMBY Rails
For a game that is only £13.49, you can’t argue with the amount of packed content for price. After paying this fee, I expected the game to be sluggish, boring, and lacking of content (bought as I was bored looking for a new game) but boy was I wrong… 933 hours play time, 56,388km (35,037 miles) of track laid, 102 lines created, 358 trains purchased later, I was able to create approximately 85-90% of the entire UK rail network, and I’m still building it 6 months later!! It has simply been an IMMENSE project that has completely submerged me with my free time.
– Real player with 1075.0 hrs in game
This is a game for a very specific audience. In the real world, I’m a transportation planner, and I’m that audience.
It’s simple and so complex. Lines on a map. These are train lines. But it uses a real world map and if you know anything about building infrastructure, then you know you can’t just point a train line from point A to point B and call it a day. (Actually you can, in tunnels, but that gets very expensive! If you don’t start with sandbox mode, you’re not building any subways from the start.) Surface lines have to be bridged over streets (game does that automatically) and viaducted over large bodies of water.
– Real player with 549.9 hrs in game
Rogue State
This is by far one of the most enjoyable games I’ve played in a while. You’re the chosen leader of an intermediary government attempting to rebuild the country of Basenji after the overthrow of a monarch. As you rebuild your infastructure and balance relations between the various factions of your society, you must keep an eye out on foreign leaders looking to exploit your vulnerable country. On top of all this, your brother is constantly seeking an opportunity to plot a coup deta against you. You have to keep a healthy relationship with the armed forces and your cabinet if you plan to keep your power in office.
– Real player with 40.3 hrs in game
Rogue State is a government management role playing game set after an Arab Spring type event. Each year is divided into several turns. Given the topical nature of the game and limited but repayable scenario I recommend it for those who want to experience a fairly standard government game with unique flavor. The graphics and sound are functional and some of the touches, like having the U.S. ambassador answer the phone and meet you, are cute touches but one wonders if the time would have been better spent elsewhere.
– Real player with 35.4 hrs in game
Shogun’s Empire: Hex Commander
I enjoy the relative simplicity of this game. Basically comes down to how effectively you can utilize counters (spears vs cavalry, swords vs spears, guns against samurai, samurai against ashigaru, etc.) Gets repetitive after playing through several campaigns, so replay value is limited.
– Real player with 83.7 hrs in game
~~Cannot save games without cloud save. I cannot recommend a game that requires online saves and will not save locally.
Other than not being able to save games without cloud save this game is a nice light turn base.~~
I was mistaken, thanks to Homenetgames for responding. Once you start the game up again and select the region you have an in-progress game in it will let you continue where you left off.
I recommend this game if you’re interested in a casual turn based strategy. I think I’ll have many hours of enjoyment (usually while multitasking).
– Real player with 32.1 hrs in game
Urban Empire
Don’t buy this game. Avoid.
It’s not worth the asking price, whatsoever. If you must get it, I recommend you pay as little as possible.
Keep in mind, this is a political simulator masked as a city building game, with an incomplete feel. If this interests you, then keep reading. I wanted to like this game and played it over 100 hours, but I strongly dislike it.
Here is why I strongly dislike it:
- Entirely imbalanced game mechanics at all stages; early-, mid-, and late-game. At best, consider this game at midway Beta-level test development, requiring a significant rebalance, not ready for prime time. It’s abandoned by the development team, and therefore they’ll never fix its problems.
– Real player with 131.5 hrs in game
Wonder why so many people hate this game? There’s a long winding answer.
Urban Empires was origonally marketed as having the following game play niches.
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It it was a decent city-building strategy game.
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It had a political aspect: you would have to manipulate the political parties and make deals to pass key legislation.
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It would have a branching plot over multiple generations that would tell the story of both your family and the city.
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Your choices would effect how the story plays out.
– Real player with 64.1 hrs in game