The Political Process
The game is pretty fun, if you have a lot of free time. But it could be better if they added
A map of the the US House, State Senate, and State House districts
Allowed you to interact with your fellow legislators.
Allowed party leaders to call caucus meetings or meet with the members of their party in office. For example a Democratic could be able to meet and discuss key issues with the Democrats or Republicans in the State Legislature.
Allowed for Governor’s to pick Lt. Governor’s.
Allowed for impeachment.
– Real player with 1347.5 hrs in game
As someone who loves politics and cannot get enough political simulators, I’ve been waiting for this game literally my entire life. Now let me be clear, it’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s a little tedious and honestly most of its appeal isn’t in the gameplay itself, it’s in the little goals and stories you make up in your head. For example, I wanted to see if a Democrat could win a Senate seat in Tennessee, I couldn’t. Then I tried seeing if I could be a moderate Republican and win in Connecticut, I could. Now I’m the Senate Minority Leader as a Democratic Senator from Florida.
– Real player with 687.2 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
Read More: Best Political Sim Cold War Games.
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
Lawgivers
A simple political simulator focusing on a gameplay element that was missing in Democracy 3 and not well developed in Urban Empire.
To keep it short: The game is fun, but somewhat lacking in depth and can be rather random at times. Better to watch gameplay videos to see if it is for you, unless you really love politics and want a parliament simulator badly.
To be more elaborate: The game offers a variety of policies that are unlocked through research. Policy effects are very clearcut and not as complicated and multi-layered as in Democracy 3. Also they tend to be rather simple. For instance there is a policy to establish a pension system, but it is not explained what kind of system it is, nor is it possible to have different types of systems (Democracy 3 at least distinguished between private and public pension schemes).
– Real player with 27.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Political Sim Turn-Based Tactics Games.
Mixed leaning negative, with lots of caveats
Firstly, I love the presentation, the UI design, the idea of the sim. It is nice to see so many countries represented, with an actual democratic method of passing or repealing laws and legislation, via voting done by members of the chamber. It is a solid base for the game to (hopefully) improve with in time.
But, sadly, I feel the overtly positive points halt here.
While many countries are represented each one works exactly the same, even if their constitutions and ideology differs. Each will start with the same rules and a empty parliamentary chamber. It is like establishing the very first government. And then the system does not emulate the country you are supposed to be. Every country gets the chamber filled, and then the “lawgivers” themselves pick a PM/President. Not the majority holder. Not public vote. Not the popular vote or the most weighted votes as seen in real systems across the world. Only through pushing new rules and laws can you actually get around to emulating your chosen countries real system.
– Real player with 14.3 hrs in game
Democracy 3 Africa
Before I begin this review I would like to state three points:
1. I have never played any game from the Democracy series
2. I am a grad student studying African politics
3. I will continue to update this review as I play
While I very much appreciate that a game has attempted to include African political dynamics, this game falls short in many facets. My primary criticism is the game’s nearly exclusive focus on vertical as opposed to horizontal politics. I recognize that this game includes different segments of society depending on their occupation, ideology, rural vs urban, and other factors. What is lacking is ethnic fragmentation. To be more precise, most countries in Africa are far more ethnically complex than a simple “minorities” group can encapsulate and ethnicity or ethnolinguistic identity is generally the most salient political feature.
– Real player with 200.5 hrs in game
Disclaimer: I do NOT recommend buying this at full price.
All the criticism here is completely valid, this should have been a DLC, it’s not just “basically” Democracy 3 with a few policies added and a minor change in the layout - because that is exactly what it is.
However, it adds a few things to Democracy 3 that were, as far as I’m concerned, missing to the game (meaning again that this would have made for a nice DLC), like being able to adjust your country’s constitution, i.e. term lengths, term limits, freedom of the press, etc.
– Real player with 72.0 hrs in game
Democracy 3
pro’s
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in depth simulation
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easy to play somewhat hard to master (not to much of a difficulty curve)
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the ability to use loopholes so that policy’s pay for themselfs, but is punished by triggering a event.
con’s:
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populations stay fixed.
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the rate at which people seem to convert to other political ideals i quite fast. (not quite realistic how you can transfer the whole country to atheist in 2 years)
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population stays fixed and does not create problems. (if this would be too hard for starters please add an option to turn this on and off)
– Real player with 78.1 hrs in game
Even though I think the game should be played by anyone who enjoys simulation games, I found a lot of negative points that kind of ruined the experience of the game for me:
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The game feels super linear. There is an option for randomizing initial conditions that improves this, but if you don’t play with that, there’s basically a very narrow path of choices you need to take to ensure you’re not overthrown and win the game.
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There is no “just one more turn please”. You either win or lose, and when you do that’s it, it’s over.
– Real player with 41.8 hrs in game
Political Animals
I’m an ultimate newbie here, but here’s my experience with the game so far:
1. Customization - I’m very particular about details, so I really, really liked customizing every bit of the traits, skills, and weaknesses of my Lion and staff (my favorite so far is Eduardog the Preacher) and my platform. You also get to choose the length of the campaign, starting funds, and difficulty of your AI opponent. (Since it was my first game, I opted for the shortest campaign, the highest amount of funds and an easy but corrupt AI opponent.)
– Real player with 16.7 hrs in game
Enjoyable Experience!
Won my first campaign on Winter Island by a whisker! Didn’t quite figure out the scandals, but my Wolf of Baker Street had me covered with his deep pockets!
There’s a lot of information to absorb initially, the depth is kinda all there in your face right at the start.
It’s still manageable, the icons and neat UI help tremendously.
I like that there’s stuff to strategise right from the initial setup.
I was curious if certain character traits might synergise well, or be better suited to certain maps.
– Real player with 10.1 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
Democracy 2
I waited for this to go on sale 75% off (4,75).
I find it encredibly addictive and fun to play, though most of the time playing it goes with thinking about what to do, and how to solve the problems that come up.
Try to make the society you want, and you will fail. Try to make a society that works, and you will succeed.
If you’re not into politics, this is NOT the game for you.
Every game you start with a solid debt and a boatload of problems that you have to get rid off. Without pissing off too many voters. It’s a lot harder than it sounds.
– Real player with 22.4 hrs in game
Overall 5/10
Pros:
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The idea behind it is good, you get to play a government and using different policies you try to get reelected while improving a country.
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Some concepts behind it are solid, both in terms of ecomics and social policies.
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It is easy to understand what each polciy does.
Cons:
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It is probably too easy to beat, just a bunch of algorithms to beat.
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There’s only one way to “win” and that is pretty much going full “social democrat”, nothing else seem to work.
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Very few scenarios.
– Real player with 19.4 hrs in game
Kommissar
Love the idea of this game, but it has a lot of problems that even a pre-alpha version shouldnt have. The games code dosent insert the color of eyes, gender, or any details of people you interogate, which nobody seems to have found yet. Also the grammar is god awful. I would most defiently recommend that you wait until this game is fully realesed before you give it a go. (Really it shouldnt even be on Steam at all…)
– Real player with 2.8 hrs in game
The game needs a lot of work, from simple things like bugs and graphical glitches to large things like story inconsistencies, proper english, a proper tutorial and a better gameplay. The fact that the last update happened on May gives me very little hope for the future of this game. Of course, something may have happened to the Dev, and i wouldn’t blame them for it, but be aware of how regular the updates really are when buying this game by taking this in mind. With that being said, the idea is quite interesting, and although it did remind me of “Papers, Please”, It offered what i think is a fresh take in the “Be a government employee in a Dystopian Environment/Country” genre.
– Real player with 1.8 hrs in game