Collapse: A Political Simulator
The game is getting ridiculously hard with the new updates and the game balance is very poor (there are no proper tutorials on a game with such complex mechanism). Old bugs are unresolved and there are now lots of new bugs (such as the automatic override of your old save when you start a new one unless you exit the game and restart it from Steam, which would wipe out the save that you spent 10+ hours to play). Also, the game made no mentions about the conditions of the new crisis event ‘Mining Strike’ and my approval rating suddenly slides into the bottom after that event. Not to mention that the game was already very hard before these new updates, it is just unplayable after all these new updates that made the game mechanism even harder and more complicated. Bugs like ‘Russian requirement’ event freezing and Prime Ministerial maximum operability is only 75 made this game even worse. This game wasn’t ready to be released and need a total overhaul and rework
– Real player with 164.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Political Sim PvE Games.
The game is brutally hard I have spent over 90 hours trying to understand the game mechanics. even in sandbox mode the game is hard and since the last few updates the game in my opinion isn’t worth it at this moment. maybe in the next update i will reconsider. Also the game needs to have better english translation it is very hard to understand what you are doing in the game.
– Real player with 90.9 hrs in game
Fit For a King
Fit For a King is a relatively short game but is definitely an enjoyable experience. The whole game is centred around the summit that you will be throwing and your main goal is to outspend your rival.
Like the trailer says, you can pretty much do anything, from executing a foreign ambassador to marrying a literal piece of sh- ahem refuse.
At times it can seem a bit aimless and it can be hard to find the clues to get things you need but otherwise is quite fun and definitely worth a play.
– Real player with 15.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Political Sim Exploration Games.
The game has a weak and slow start, don’t let this dissuade you. The controls are dated and supposed to feel like a mid to late 80’s crpg, but are way more straight forward and easy to understand then those ever were back then without 200 page manuals. Once you can get a good grasp of the controls the game opens up and the gameplay starts. For the most part it’s a puzzle game with some loot hunting in it. The humor is pretty good and the mix of both serious and silly just strikes that perfect balance. It’s only really down fall and biggest selling point is that it’s short and sweet and complete. It left me wanting more, which is rare for most game these days. It made me want to give ultima another shot or some other Crpgs. I guess some minor things that made me sad was that while there was a ton of lines for the NPCs I wish there was more , and by extension more tasks or quests. (Spoiler) Another minor thing was that it’s never explained in game that some walls can be walked through as a sort of secret entrance.
– Real player with 8.3 hrs in game
China: Mao’s legacy
I would definitely recommend this game probably the best Kremlin Games has out insofar as the whole political dynamics are concerned (you are able to fully shape your country' s policies and the factions are much more ‘real’). The economy however could have been dealt with better and have a proper blend between it and Ostaglie (placing individual buildings alongside the investment).
Alike Ostaglie, relations with individual western European Countries are generalised as NATO and it would be better to not have done it in this way so we can see how the worldwide socialist movement is doing at the time, which in turn, could affect individual countries rather than having it all generalised as ‘NATO’. This would have been much better as China often had more interaction with Western Europe (with the initial funding of left-wing guerrilla groups then to investments) as the WPO did (which mainly tilted towards its own bloc, which China interreacted less with whereas the game sometimes focuses too much on Chinese-Soviet or Chinese-Middle Eastern Relations, whilst relevant it mises opportunities with Western Europe) as well as making the international playing field (which takes up a large bulk of the game) more active, especially seeing how the Years of Lead, the Spanish Transition, the German RAF and the French Maoists pan out with China still being a beacon of Maoism. Or it could show how China has been integrating more with the west and encouraging the growth of the EEC or NATO (if not becoming a member then associating maybe if you take a hard anti-Soviet line).
– Real player with 131.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Political Sim Simulation Games.
I write this as a gamer who has played Kremlingames previous simulations, Crisis in the Kremlin, and Ostalgie: The Berlin Wall. As such, I can’t write this from the perspective of a person who will be exposed to this type of gameplay and Kremlingames' unique idiosyncrasies for the first time. I can only write subjectively from the viewpoint of someone who has played both games already.
First impression: it uses the same map as Ostalgie, with some haphazard modification to add Malaysia, Indonesia, Rhodesia, and the USA to the nations you can interact with. It’s better than the huge scrolling map of Crisis in the Kremlin, so I suppose I can’t complain too much. Go with what works.
– Real player with 76.8 hrs in game
Ostalgie: The Berlin Wall
It’s hard to really describe what makes this game so much fun.
Is it the ability to save the Warsaw Pact? Maybe, but that’s not quite it.
Is it the possibility of reforming the Eastern Bloc? Hm, perhaps…oh, no, got it!
It’s the ability to do both those things, while building an excessive number of TV towers and imagining that you’re broadcasting the amazing in-game soundtrack to every citizen of Europe, constantly, at 100 decibels, forever.
Seriously though, this is one of the best ‘small’ games I’ve played in a while now. It’s fairly short, spanning three ingame years, and although you can go longer, not much really happens after 1992, but what happens in those years is enthralling.
– Real player with 258.0 hrs in game
Reminds me of the old-school Paradox Interactive games. You want tooltips? Clear explanations of what is what? Too bad. Stare at a statistics screen for a while, you’ll figure it out.
There is a neat game here, but good luck surviving for even a year. It is very hard.
edit: Okay, I have played enough I can write a little more.
Did you play Crisis in the Kremlin? It was about leading the USSR through the time of political turmoil and reform when there were many factors that would eventually bring the country to its collapse into many autonomous states. In the game you had a lot of freedom to pursue your goal. You could become a liberal reformer, play as a hardline-communist or somewhere in-between with many other variations. However, you were the main actor. You could decide how you would play. The only real condition of the game was “don’t let the USSR collapse outright.”
– Real player with 250.2 hrs in game
Crisis in the Kremlin
Well I’m a Chinese and it’s my first time to write a comment on steam, so if I say something wrong or something you don’t like please forgive me.
For me I want to recommend you to use Romanov or Gromyko. Actually all 4 characters in 1985 have chance to win including Gorbachev, yesterday I play as him and it’s not impossible to save the country but use him will have two problems. One is reformer look like too strong to resist in the CPSU, other one is you cannot extract resources in Africa because you need to make conservative and Stalinism majority to open the mutual-aid in foreign policy part, but you can’t legalize Stalinism when you play as Gorbachev. For Grishin, a conservative, well I think is no problem to use him but I’m Deng supporter. And maybe it’s not a good news that Gromyko died in 1988 though he is really, really good man. So personally I choose Romanov. Year 1985 or 1986 is a better choice because you can change the country more easier.
– Real player with 266.2 hrs in game
It’s incredible really for a game to be so vague in how the mechanics work, so rough in design, so lacking in proper translation (seriously, the translation is a real problem here), and yet, I’d still definitely recommend it to any modern history buff or, of course, any aspiring Red with a taste for revisionism, and what Red doesn’t like a bit of Revisionism? I know I do.
Graphics: Nothing too much to mention here, they’re largely functional, and while many of the event pictures are nice Soviet posters or photographs, beyond that it’s very much just a text adventure with a red border. Not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination, but don’t expect a 3D sprite of Yeltsin to go stumbling across the top of the screen in his signature drunken fashion. (Hm, suddenly I feel a real sense of loss)
– Real player with 264.5 hrs in game