12/12/23
Status Update: Its somehow worse.
Once more I reiterate: I get its ambitious and it does have promise... BUT when you have mods that do a better job of portraying nations that have been added its indicative of a failing in research and application that I don't think can be excused. One thing I was looking forward to, specifically for the UK which is my place of agony, was the depiction of the greens, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, Sinn Fein, Plaid Cymru and the modern Labour Party in the sim, it could show some promise and interesting signs.... if the dev even did any research on the UK's politics. It seems clear to me, specifically for the UK, that the Dev just took the top 6 Seat winners in the 2019 UK general election, got rid of any looks to polling and then just rolled with it. You know how I know this? If it was based on the Regional PV (to account for regional parties), then Plaid Cymru, The Greens and the Reform Party would all be present. It is worth noting of course that only the greens of the above parties would exist in 2000, so perhaps they are bound by this but at the same time the SNP didn't exist with any dominance until the late 2000's and UKIP, the infamous predecessor to the Brexit, now Reform party, also existed in that time frame and I would suggest had a much larger impact than the Lib-Dems. This is also before noting that the ideologies are just frankly wrong. the only party in the UK's base game that isn't socially conservative is the Labour party, or rather the "social party" because why would you use the actual names of parties I suppose?

All this is the case whilst maintaining the issues that were present at release, I admittedly have not played enough to say whether the Bicameral legislature bug in my comment below is still present, but every other thing in my below review is applicable 3 months after the initial release and I must reiterate 3 years of work.

I would suggest to the creator that perhaps they should ask locals from the relevant nation who are politically active to describe each party in lawgivers terms so to speak and, if not able to do that, take on the effort that mod makers have put in, pop them onto the team and give them a portion of the at this stage £21 being asked of for this game. which is not worth it frankly. And considering no updates since September and the quality of that update, I am loath to suggest that a major improvement will appear anytime soon.

21/8/23

I really Wish I could recommend the game but it is just at this stage too... well for lack of a better word, broken. There is a game ending glitch where you cannot progress through the game if you are flat out unlucky with statements, Whilst you have a wide selection of characters to start as you can only customise things about them once you're in the game and this bizarrely does not include ideologies, the party system is fine but your character as I see it cannot change party. Local government is only represented by randomly switching mayors every whenever, there may as well be no tutorial for how much good it does ya, the difficulty is not at all explained giving you the choice between 1 to 5 like the first game and the only way of telling which is harder or not is the confusing and barely helpful "Activist" to "Dictator" naming for the preset difficulties, is that your experience with these games (a-la most games) or how easy you can win? Its not stated and your only hope of finding out is trial and error. There is no ability to engineer the setting to be just right unlike the first game and you cannot customise parties at all unless you get to the modding, that's before we get to the minor but still annoying pet peeves I have, namely: WHY IN TF ARE THE NAMES WRONG???? It is a big project I get it and it is still in Alpha but... We have waited 3 years, the fact so much of this is so rough indicates one of two things, either a- there was no playtesting (Which I know is false, my friend was a closed early access player) or b- the developer didn't apply criticism. The only saving grace is the mod community is already active fixing a few small things but if ya want much else? no dice.