Republic - The Revolution - A Failed Coup?

Thanks to Eurogamer for their review of Elixir's Republic:The Revolution for PC, discussing the previously-featured strategy title that has you taking control of the fictional Eastern European country of Novistrana. The review points out: "...it's quite amazing how much opinion among gamers is already polarized by Republic: The Revolution", but concludes by suggesting "...this is a slightly above average political simulation title which would have probably worked better as a board game than as a videogame, shackled down with a 3D engine that serves no useful purpose and is almost entirely non-interactive." A review at GamesDomain is slightly more forgiving, but has similar views: "Freeform, subtle, complex, rather dry, and just the tiniest bit (appropriately enough) oppressive, Republic: The Revolution is likely to sharply divide gamers."

Comments

Evil Genius looks a lot better.

[Anonymous Coward]

Elixir's next game, Evil Genius, uses the same engine to much better effect, and looks pretty cool in a '60s spy movie pastiche type way.

Re:That's too bad

[Ceyan]

It's sort of like another Sim game, but this time you're a trying to start a revolution, instead of build a city or something. The problem with the game is that you assign your tasks for your people to do over the course of the day (three phases in each day), and sit back and watch. It takes quite some time for anything to happen (which I've got patience and I love games that require critical thinking, so it wasn't a big deal for me), most of your time is spent doing tasks that seem mundane and repetitive (well, they are reptitive).

I'd highly suggest trying it if you can enjoy extreme micro-management and politics. However, the thing you have to get past is the fact that you spend several minutes just staring at your screen with short bouts of interaction in-between. That's because you can give orders as far in advance as you want, and (as I mentioned above) change just doesn't happen all that fast. The time-compression really doesn't help much either, because at the fastest speed it still takes roughly a minute or two (didn't actually time it) to pass one phase of the day.

I enjoy it personally because it's one hell of a challenge overall, and because it's a new concept. I'd probably see if you could borrow it from a friend, wait for a demo, or buy it from a place you can return it before decided to stick with it. As the Gamespot review mentioned, it's going to seriously divide gamers between 95% that hate it with a passion, and the 5% that will form another eternal underground cults that rise up for those games that require too much thinking for most people to deal with.

(BTW, that last line wasn't meant as an insult, it's just true that most people who don't play games like Republic because it's simply too much to worry about, and they play games for pure actiony goodness and not to think about things)