So anyway, time to mention a brand-new game that threatened to bring back the good old days when men were men, sheep were scared and games were original, insightful and plain old fun. Don't worry, though, Republic: The Revolution never fulfilled its threats. It turned out to be yet another example of great concept destroyed by awful interface.

Let me start by saying that Republic is far from original. It's nothing more than another Tycoon game, actually pretty reminiscent of Pizza Tycoon where you tried to get a certain market share in each neighborhood (with the difference that in PT the market share wasn't all that important). The game itself puts you in the role of a revolutionary wannabe with the ultimate goal of taking over a country. The whole resource gathering and spending is simple. There are three types of resources, and you get them depending how much public support you have in a certain district; each district producing a certain amount of resources. Then you spend them on various actions aimed at recruiting people, increasing support, decreasing the support of other factions, blackmail, assassination and other fun stuff. The game itself has a pretty robust political model and decent A.I., and has the potential of becoming one of the best political simulators ever; pretty much on the same level as Capitalism Plus is in economic simulators.

The potential is there, but the execution is terrible. The game is full of useless features or overly complicated schemes, but forgets to include the most simple concepts. Here's the list pro problems that render the game under-average.

1. 3D view. Even though the game plays in a 2D view, you can fly over the city in a very impressive 3D view. Gameplay-wise it does nothing, but it inflates the game's hardware requirements. The minimum is a 800MHz processor with 512MB of RAM.

2. Conversation model. Once in a while, you'll need to convince someone, and you switch to a minigame where you play cards with the character, each card representing a certain turn in conversation. This is completely unnecessary, and just makes the game more confusing (the manual never really explains how it works). (For the record, some reviews mentioned that this resembles Japanese dating simulations; I can't confirm that, as I never played those games.)

3. Diplomacy. Let's see. Three to five enemy factions and the government. You can't eliminate any of them from the game. Great potential for some in-depth diplomacy, right? Guess what: the game lacks any diplomatic model. None. The other factions will remain pain in your ass, and even though they'll send you threatening letters from time to time, you won't be able to contact them and broker a deal.

4. Interface. The game is turn-based, with time limit on each turn being 4 minutes. The problem is that you'll average 30 seconds to give orders each turn. However, there's no mechanism to end your turn prematurely; instead, you'll sit there and stare on the screen for another 3.5 minutes. It took me 10 hours to beat the first out of three parts, during which I actually played only an hour or so.

So anyway, if you were thinking about picking up a new political simulator (let's face it - there's so few of them that every self-respecting gamer should think about buying it), wait till it hits the bargain bin.

Hmm.... I think I read about that game..... two years ago or something. Must have been in development for quite a long time. It indeed sounded promising, but I guess I'll have to take your word for it being executed badly, because I certainly won't try it myself. Maybe in ten years I'll download an illegal copy

Well, there was a lot of hype about the game because it was developed by Elixir Studios, a new outlet created by the guy who designed Theme Park when he was only 17. According to the game credits, however, he had nothing to do with Republic, and instead all creative design was handled by a bunch of former Eidos managers who were responsible for Hitman 2, the new Championship Manager and a bunch of other games, neither of which is known for good interface or groundbreaking design.

Have you seen the novistrana website (www.novistrana.com)? It?s intended to be funny but I just find it offensive and ignorant. Making fun of former soviet republics is easy, hard thing is to see the active system?s own mistakes. The developers would be in deep shit if the dictatorship in the game was based on USA, not USSR, now they'll be rich or some shit like that.

Edited by Burseg at 01:46 on September, 02nd 2003

You mean more offensive than this?

It's always very easy to make fun of dead systems. It's also cheap.

That's why there are so many Amiga jokes?

Well, let's see: Three people posted in this thread. Two are using Amigas. Not bad for a 'dead' system, isn't it?

I know; that was a very cheap shot, but I couldn't resist

heheh a meteorite, that cracked me up.



But I didn't get this one. Renaming months won't change the system and this phrase seems to come from someone who doesn't care how days and months are called in any language other than english. Turkmens didn't use the word Saturday at all

One day an american girl greeted me on icq. I told her it was 2:00 am and all I wanted was some sleep. She thought I was making fun of her and left. Either she didn't know the world was round or assumed that I were asking to sleep with her. In any case, I weren't :p

I was just pointing out that no matter how crazy Novistrana.com looks, they are doing a pretty good job at immitating the real life of a real post-Soviet republic. In fact, when I played the game I pretty much felt like I was in Turkmenistan

That sounds as if you wanted to sleep with her

I see. Azerbaijan's situation is even worse. These kind of things occur but they're far from being funny, especially for the average person unlucky enough to live there, I don't like to see such things as the western kids' entertainment. Additionally Turkmenistan or azerbaijan culture is so different than the "generic republic" Novistrana that I failed to related them until you suggested.

Azerbaijan elections will be held in a short time (or are they already?) and Haydar Aliyev is trying to get his son to the presidency be joining the elections himself (he's 80) and later leaving, asking those who support him to vote for his son (after having the opposition's supporters jailed). That seems to be the plan if he is still alive. He might be dead given that he's an old diabetic man with prostate cancer and a sick liver, lung, stomach and heart and some other organs that I don't know how to call in English. There's a special medicine that makes his total health costs more than 34 MILLION DOLLARS PER MONTH to keep his body alive.

He's not heard of for a very long time and azerbaijan government spokesman accused Turkish press for making up such stories while it is known that Aliyev recently visited Turkey to have a heart device implemented, a device that recently, after a heart attack, kept him alive by restarting heart functions when it stopped to beat. A robopresident.

He was just lucky to be the communist party chief at the right time. He tried to gain acceptancy as a national hero and now he's turning the system into a dynasty.

Who else has the chance of spending others' 34 million dollars every month and still be respected today?

Edited by Burseg at 01:28 on September, 03rd 2003

Azerbaijan was the worlds first oil superpower. At the turn of the 20th Century they were the first nation to build an oil pipeline(made from wood!) and they also built the worlds first oil tanker. In the year 1900 they were responsible for over 80% of the worlds oil production.

So things havent allways been so bad for the Azerbaijanies. 200 years ago I lived at the centre of the worlds largest ever empire, richer and more powerful than anyone has ever been or probably ever will be, but now after the demise of the said wealth and riches, I dont whinge about the fact I have lost my past glories, I get off my arse and go to work to make the best I can. I have no sympathy for countries that languish in failure and make excuses, ex-soviet state or not.


@NetDanzr - that Amiga joke was the funniest thing ive read....ever

You were in Azerbaijan? Despite what I say about current political situation, I think you are cool!

fretz: Thanks

Anyway, my final review of the game is here. I rated the game 6.3 out of 10. The good points were the presentation and technical issues, while the bad points were the lack of focus and bad interface.