---

It is one of those games which can be very entertaining to play, but it just keeps on disappointing you. It almost gets to that bliss of 'just one more turn', but severe design issues pull game right back to the ground and leave a sour taste in your mouth.

---

The fundamental problem of this game is that it possesses deep systems and gives you a lot of information. However, it doesn't give you tools to judge what is actually important and leaves your decision making to cards. Cards are very general and very large scale options for player to use. So, you have a system with a lot of parameters, but you only end up hammering the problem with sledge hammers. It's difficult to observe what you need exactly to do, a lot of options are not even available and any change requires massive amounts of investment. This leaves game into micomanaging hell where you have to over-invest into region for it to become productive and then constantly rotate massive policies to exploit the region or to add and remove same positive benefits constantly.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3428653836
Game then is equally arbitrary in regards to failure states. You can lose regions or even a game out of a blue. You get a warning before a turn and there is often nothing you can do at that point. You might not have funds, cards to change course or they might not even be enough. It is bizarre how turns are split into 5 years. You can reverse all undesirable policies and give freebies to a region and it will still reach a failure state. Game is flawed, because it seemingly calculates negative effects before positive ones and you can lose region outright if it has low life (hearts). Even if not, it can fail you due to extreme randomness in events. You can out of the blue lose several hearts, unexpectadly losing you a region in hours long game. This is incredibly bad design choice as it combines grand strategy with pure RNG mechanics which mesh with each other abysmally.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3428652891
Game is quite immersive. You do feel like you are doing something important. Constant news report helps to establish a living world. Protests and state of being of regions helps you to paint how it is to live there. This is sadly is another area where games fails. It is politically bias as hell. Take an example of GMO (genetically modified food). It is supposed to be a great short to mid term solution to food shortages. However, while it is easy to implement it, it costs insane amounts of money to renew it. It also costs a massive amount of money to cancel it. Tech is absolutely garbage and in most illogical ways too. There are plenty of techs which are absolutely unviable in this game. All of these techs and solutions tend to be around solutions which are not liked by greens. GMO, non-renewable energy sources, conservative policies, etc. So, developers not only were incompetent as game developers, they were bad people too when it came to politics. Rot all around!

It was a great game for its time when indie games were non existent and small titles like that were original, unique and high quality. Now environment is completely different and it looks like a joke by comparison. What it needed and needs is a sequel which addresses those balance and GUI issues. Mainly, game needs a system which would track what your policies are influencing. It would be like in Democracy or Orbi Universo where you could see how card will interact with all the variables. This will allow you to know precisely what you are doing without obtuse texts and high learning curve. Then a game needs to have a tracking screen for main parameters in how well a nation is doing. No more random failure states. Failure should be systematic and long coming. This way player could know that things were bad for a long time and it would be more of his fault for allowing or choosing to fail.

Game also needs to either simplify its statistics or to make each of them relevant. As of today, most of the statistics are irrelevant as game doesn't interact with them in any meaningful way. Another half are statistics which works, but are irrelevant for most cases like free land for agricultural use. Game really needs to hide statistics which are irrelevant and give them as 'base' while hiding unimportant statistics deeper in game menus. Only highlighting them as an issue when they are close to becoming relevant.

As for cards themselves. They need to have another system in place. You get few slots which you have to unlock. However, cards vary from essential and low investment like education to outright insane like space programs. Something like education, land protection programs are essential for this game and they cost little to do. So, they end up just polluting available space. They should be removed as cards and be given as sliders. How much you want to invest into education and healthcare? This would give player far more meaningful options as it would allow to keep those cards permanently on with 100% slider while allowing to adjust budgets by increasing or decreasing sliders with trade offs. Developers rarely get card systems right and this game is no exception. They just end up adding simple buttons and sliders into cards and instead of 'diplomacy button' you have a card which gives you diplomacy options. It is like this in this game and it is just as bad. Cards are supposed to be for large, expensive, strategic decisions. You should think about how do you want to approach the problem rather than solving it. Do you want to energy crisis in investing to renewables or nuclear power? So, you add a card which abstracts investment into those sources. A strategic level depth here being how much nuclear fuel is available and a player could potentially invest a lot of resources into energy production which in long term shall become useless. To add further depth, make a random seed of how much hidden uranium there is and cards to explore for new fuel sources which are revealed with varying levels of cost for exploitation. BAM! Instant strategic masterpiece!

---

The game was fine for its time, but we had come a long way since then. Its mechanics are fundamentally flawed. Its artwork is primitive. It speaks about experience and resources of developers who made them. It would had been fine for their first project which they later would massively improve upon in the sequel. Sadly, we are not living in such a world and nothing came out of this studio and we are left with thoroughly outaded game which time has rightfully forgotten.

---

Calicifer's Reviews

If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I don't allow endless discussions under my reviews. You will be warned and then your comment will be deleted with my final say on the matter.