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Good Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: September 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I never believed a computer game could realistically cover the complex maneuverings that is an urban insurgency. I still don't (laugh). But this game comes the closest. As a revolutionary, you start with only yourself and through the course of three cities and your choice of path, you rise to overthrow the President of your country, Novistrana. The game is sufficiently complex, but easy with a good inner circle. I got it two weeks ago (it came out earlier in England) and am still playing it, although on my third game. There is of course, a downside. The manual is not good, without a real Help service within the game. This means you really have to learn On The Job, which while realistic can be very frustrating. The game is also really tedious, requires constant attention to detail. This is also realistic, and good in it's way, but it can lead to quite some frustration. Overall, I recommend it highly for anyone interested in strategy games (though if your the StarCraft type, it takes until the third city before you can actually order someone's death).

Good game, but over-hyped

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: September 23, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This may go down as one of the most over-hyped computer games in history. Don't get me wrong, the game is pretty good, but it has been touted for so long, and delayed so many times; various reviewers over the last few years have carried on about its remarkable flexibility and wonderful graphics and game engine. In the end, it's good, but doesn't quite live up to the hype.

The game is intended to be a political simulator. You play an insurgent or visionary in an Eastern European country, part of the former USSR. The aim is to overthrow the President and become president yourself. You do this by recruiting helpers with various skills and abilities, and putting them to use in turning the population of various cities to support you. Amongst other things, you can leaflet a district, arrange for the bashing of a rival to weaken their resolve, vandalise an opposing factions' district to weaken their support, and hold public rallies to build up popular support. In this way, it is quite flexible.

However, this is essentially a turn-based game; the ever-running clock merely limits the time you have to decide on your actions in each turn. Also, the manual and `tutorial' in the game are not well written and therefore not very helpful. As such, you'll find yourself learning as you play and it will probably take some time before you find all the commands and options you have access to.

Perhaps my biggest gripe is that the ideology model is quite one dimensional, with anti capitalism/pro-union on the left, freedom/democracy in the centre, and capitalism/free-market on the right. Then again, while real world politics has many more dimensions, this is probably a relatively accurate portrayal of major parties in many countries.

Overall, if you are interested in politics and want to try a very different sort of game from your average first person shooter or RTS, I'd heartily recommend it, but don't be fooled by all the hype from the last few years.

Immediately disengaging

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: September 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game as soon as it was in store. After crashing for about three hours, I finally got it running. What I saw was disappointing.

There is no tutorial, but there is six (count-em, six) poorly compressed images that pop up at inconvenient times explaining a very, very clumsy interface. I bought the strategy guide with this as well, but even then the learning curve has a tangent line with slope of infinity!! (Calculus 1 is haunting me, help!)

This could have all been redeemed with an immersive gameplay that immediately draws you in and leaves you playing until two in the morning without realizing this. Instead, you must settle for less. Way less.

It's supposed to be real time, but it's most definetly turn based, and giving actions is about ten times harder than it needs to be. Keeping track of where you are in the city (whatever one of the THREE you're in) is hard, the camera controls are clumsy, and the different views can become absolutely worthless.

Maybe it could still redeem itself if it was a game where you have completely free reign over how to accomplish your goals. Not so. You pick right from the start which one of the three routes you will take... either through force, wealth, or influence. The inability to cobble your own rise to power from scratch is incredibly lame and disappointing. If the next part of your plan requires you to "gain 50% support in this district", you can forget about doing anything until you gain 50% support in the said district.

That isn't to say it's without pleasentries. The "argument" system, the way you battle opposition and your own party members in order to convince them to join you, or bolster their resolve, is pretty neat when you figure it out. The music fits well, the graphics are gorgeous (if haunted by a poor camera system), and watching and listening to someone argue in a Baltic language is just plain funny.

Still, I only recommend this to the most hardcore of hardcore strategy fans... if you liked Master of Orion 3 (Oh, who am I kidding), you will like this.

Not the game I fell in love with, but still decent.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: September 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Three and a half years ago, I read the announcement of Republic's development with great joy. Unlinear gameplay, multiple approaches, interaction which every individual citizen in the game... Ah, the joy I felt when I read those previews. Screenshot after screenshot came... delay after delay... and then we ended up with this.

We were promised the moon and the stars and we ended up on the sidewalk with mediocre gameplay, a rather-linear storyline (although the methods to accomplish the objectives are yours to choose, the results are always the same), and an AI that makes you question whether or not they are actually your opponents.

However, when you forget what you were promised, and look at what you have, it really isn't that bad. It accomplished quite a bit, the engine is definitely worth looking for in future titles, and the gameplay can be fun when you surrender yourself to the fact that you will be spending 95% of the game-time either looking at a 2D map of the city with pie charts and avatars, or playing the conversation minigame (perhaps the single feature that embodies the shortcomings of this game).

My advice: read the reviews on gamesites before you buy this one. I am TOLD the learning curve is steep, but I had no trouble whatsoever- I think such people are used to mindless games like Grand Theft Auto 3.

Good premise, not so good execution

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 38 / 38
Date: October 02, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The premise of Republic is this: your parents were "disappeared" during the days of the Soviet Union. Now the man who did the deed is the totalitarian president of the country. You decide to remove him, and replace him with yourself. The game takes you from the beginnings of forming a political party, to the hard struggle against the government and other factions to gain control of the country. For students of political history, it's a dream come true.

Unfortunately, Republic is one of those games that you play and you initially think is really cool, but then as you get in deeper into play time, realize is fairly repetitive and slightly boring. More on this below.

Learning Curve:
When I first started playing the game out of the box, one of my chief frustrations was the manual. The interface of the game is not exactly intuitive, and while it's functional and works well when you get used to it, initially learning to use it is difficult.

The lack of a well written manual made that learning curve a bit more tedious. All the information needed to play the game is there, but it's poorly organized, making the player spend endless minutes scanning through it to try and find a one sentence explanation of a major aspect of the game. I have never understood why game makers with complicated manuals don't do their customers a favor and include indexes. This is a game that really could have used one.

The in-game tutorial wasn't much better. While it too gave much of the pertinent information you need to play the game, it is presented as a sort of slide show of pictures, little more than a reference guide. It's the poor man's way of making a tutorial, and unfortunately only mildly useful in explaining how to play. Much of it is learned through trial and error.

Both these issues result in a medium to high learning curve.

Game Play:
Republic plays like this: You recruit henchmen who then go through the city and do your bidding, using different methods such as leafleting and posters to convert the city's people to your party. Other parties try to do the same thing. To stop them, you have the ability to attack them through propaganda or even by discrediting their henchmen. To win, you have to build up your own resources, which you use to further your cause, and fend off the other parties. The end goal is to become president of the country.

It sounds good on paper, and the execution isn't terrible at first. There is a lot of strategy involved in planning where to send your henchmen, and how to stop the other parties from trying to stop you. You need to balance your resources, keep up the resolve of your followers, and beat down the resolve of your enemies. It's a fine balancing act that can be quite entertaining.

The problem is that Republic becomes predictable. All the major events and goals in the game are scripted. No matter how many times you play, the result is the same, and though the game has 3 cities, all three cities mostly play out the same way. Perhaps if the makers had used random goals or added random events that could add or subtract to your progress things would be more exciting. As it is, by the time you get to the third city, the repetitiveness of doing the same sort of actions over and over becomes a drain.

Control and design:
The whole stats system is quite novel and I rather liked it, though at times, the manual's lack of clarity frustrated me when commands didn't work the way I perceived they should. Overall, I was quite impressed, especially with the design of the conversation dialog.

The game's camera controls have been complained about as cludgy. They are a bit, but I had little problem with them, mostly because I generally spent most of my time in the map screen.

Incidentally, I had no crashes or noticeable bug appear while playing. Kudos to the programmers!

Graphics:
Republic's graphics are pretty good for a sim game. The game's cities are active living places, with people and cars moving around following their daily routines. The people themselves are well animated, and the buildings do appear to have some depth to them. The game's camera has a 360 option, allowing you to scroll around and view things from any angle. It really is a visually attractive game.

My chief complaint, however, is that this game doesn't really need them. Cut scenes would have provided much the same impact as the 3d rendering does. During 90% of the game you're in the map view. It's more efficient since the game takes so long to pass from one game turn to the next that using the increase speed option to help the game go faster is a must. It's an option only works in the map screen.

So in the end, the 3D graphics end up being mostly irrelevant. Sure you can go and look at your guys walking around handing out leaflets or putting up posters, but after the first couple times of seeing them do it, it loses it's novelty and you tend to do other things instead. A big minus.

Music:
One of the best things about this game is its music. Done in a russo/folk-classical style with an actual orchestra, it's not only instrumental (sorry about the pun) to setting the mood for the game, but it raises the game up a notch. Whoever wrote the music did a fine job. I almost wish I could get it on CD. It's that good. Incidentally, when you quit the game, Alicia Keys sings the Kostroma National Anthem. Star power. Woo.

Bottom Line:
Republic is a game that had loads of promise and just didn't deliver that well. It's entertaining, but once you finish it, there's not that much replay value. 3 stars

Very Disappointed

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: October 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Good idea. Good graphics. Very poor manual. Very laborious interface. Very frustrating. No hints / tips of any use. DON'T BUY IT !!

Dont buy this game is waste of money!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 10
Date: October 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Its so sad that this great idea and many work since 3 years ago turned to be a waste, The graphic engine is Good, we are talking about the game engine is ok but need testers so it can be a great game engine. anyway the game itself the gameplay it really sucks my friends its so frustating that the first day i bought i went back to the store where i bought it and turned back i got GTA vice-city thats a really nice game and fun that have also a city as this game but the gameplay simple rocks. anyway going back to Republic game well is so bad design, no testers, rushed to delivered, interface is the more bad i have seen, the 3d view of the game never you will use it because you will be busy with the satellite(2D) view getting so boring and frustating, I almost cry how bad this game is sorry folks i dont have more words to explane the bad feelings about this game!!. What is happening with the game industry, the fun of a game like was before is over, Now game developers are so busy getting the best frames per second than doing a good gameplay with good AI, for me is more important a good Gameplay, AI, Physics than awesome graphics. well if the gameplay rocks and the graphics sucks is also not good but is better than the other, so i want balance good gameplay but also good graphics, i dont want poor gameplay with awesome graphics, I WANT BALANCE game developers please.

Must have patience...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: April 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Republic: The Revolution is a great game. It does require time and patience to learn how to play, so if your attention span is less than 5 minutes and you like to run and gun don't get this game. As said in the reviews before the music is superb, and the actions are fun to watch and micro-manage. There are plenty of options through-out the game so as it does not become boring. It is pretty difficult to understand the manual and tutorial, but all that is required is to sit down and read the manual cover-to-cover to really understand what is going on. After that the control aspect becomes pretty easy. So far, I haven't noticed any bugs at all so great job on that Elixir.Oh and another thing that I noticed on another review site. One of the reviewers was complaining the dialoge was in Russian not English. For starters, the game is set in Post Soviet Union era so obviously the people would speak either Russian or some form of it. Second, the people are speaking jibberish... not Russian. Like the Sims I love this style of speech because it shows emotion and does not required large amounts of made-up information that has to tie together. That would be extremely difficult. Anyway, now that the game is only $20 to $10 bucks on Amazon it's a steal.

Not worth it

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 10
Date: April 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

First of all after the 2nd hour of the game. You have to be on top of everything to control all the territory and win support. I mean everywhere. If u try and control one area the others lower. Extremely annoying. Secondly They don't speak english. I don't even thing its a language. The Sims make more sense then them. The conversations are useless due to this. DON'T BUY IT!

Terrible.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 12
Date: June 21, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I spent $50 on this trash, thinking it a good game. I read previews, but not reviews. The game is a good idea, but they did it terribly. I would not even spend $5 on it.

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