Democracy 2

I barely played but the premise seemed sound. democracy 3 came out making me playing this kinda obsolete.

A game that makes a mixture of accounting, politics and economic management very fun for serious nerds. Sliders have never been so much fun. There are limited graphics and the user interface favours practicality over visual stimulation. Actually, that last sentence doesn't quite capture how much you have to rely on almost totally psychological satisfaction. If balancing a budget, placating an electorate, shuffling a cabinet to improve generation of political capital, and the social implications of a virtual nation's tax policies don't sound utterly compelling to you, this game might not be your fit. Very few explosions, even fewer watch towers. Thumbs way up.

great game i played it when the original title was oval office! was so happy to find it on steam played it and loved it again just like I used to!

Exactly how an edu-tainment game should be. While mostly a tool for understanding politics, it's still rather fun to play president for a while and see what actually happens when you legalize prostitution (and more importantly, why).

not the democracy is a bad game, it is just that it get boring fast. the replay ability is an illusion in this title. it is alright for a time killer. and compared to other games out there its not too bad. however their are better options. aswell as this newer games now. i'm a late reviewer

Good

Political sims are hard to do well. The ones that try often go for a grand scale (eg Supreme Ruler) and tend to fall flat. The only quite successful one which comes to mind is Shadow President. Democracy 2 is more confined than most, limiting the outside world and turning everything into sliders and charts. It's a nice try, but aspects of it really don't come off well at all. Superficially, it seems quite good. The interface is fairly well designed, presenting most of your key info on a single screen - although the inability to change the resolution (leaving me, on a widescreen monitor, with either bits of the interface cut off or a window which can't be enlarged at all) is frustrating. There are a wide variety of potential policies, each with adjustable levels. Unfortunately, the gameplay doesn't hold up. It is far to easy to "game" the mechanics - just pour money into tech and universities and suddenly you are making massive income through technological advantage, which lets you build up everything else to win votes. The difficulty comes from random, arbitrary and unfair events. Random factors can completely decimate your popularity - slowly build up to an election winning lead over the course of years, then suddenly lose half your voters in one turn because the global economy drops. It's also littered with grammatical errors, rather unfortunate for a game targeted at a more intellectual audience. I wanted to like it, but found it a frustrating and unsatisfying experience.