Power & Revolution

Does anyone remember Real Lives 2010? The game where you play an ordinary citizen from any country on the planet from birth to death? ...This game kind of feels like that, but rougher and incredibly bizzare. The game, for all intents and purposes, is about you as a leader of a political organization. You seek to either remain in power or take power of your country. How you do that is your decision, and boy howdy do you have LOTS of decisions. The game, first off, feels really cheap. I don't mean in love from the creators, but in the UI interface (Mispellings/mistranslations, Menu's disappearing or appearing out of nowhere) as well as the voice acting (Which is ironically a plus, as one of the advisors sounded just like Optimus Prime). In all honesty, charging 50 bucks for this is really asking a LOT, and once you go through the start menu, you feel like you made a big mistake. Once you get through that, you have three options to start with: Already be in power of a country, be a democratic opponent of a power, or be a resistance group (AKA terrorist group) of a country and try to set it free. I first tried to be a terrorist group in North Korea, and the key to success is courting and schedualing as many diplomats, terrorists as well as associations in the country and finding ways to get money, weapons as well as support for international interference. The best way to describe it is a cheap dating sim, but the balance of your group could hang in the balance. The second time, I became the leader of the United States, and since I was NK crazy, I attempted to make myself the dictator of the USA. And this is where the game shines: simulating the entire world going crazy. Riots begin to happen, diplomats and head's of state question and put down my decision to have a statue of me in every classroom. It progressed from simple riots to outright terrorism acts and my cabinet demanding I change it or resign. WOULD I RECOMMEND THIS GAME: NO This game is charming and obviously has a great frame to hang itself on, but the price is just too high for something this cheap...If it were cheaper, heck yeah I would be saying buy it! It has a great amount of charm in it, as well as a interesting representation of discord and anarchy that hasn't been tried by a lot of Global Political simulators. SUGGESTION FOR DEVS: Lower the price or make the UI a lot cleaner and flashy. RIght now it just looks like an Alpha instead of a finished product.

Alright I've been playing this game for a while gone through a few achievements, still playing. Here is the one thing I really want to say this game has the MAKING one of the greatest grand strategy games of all time but at every level starts to fall short. Combat, elections, interactions, character creation, budgets, etc all with improvement could make the game amazing. My advice is drop the price and attach the modding tools, god n spy, etc to the game, build a larger base of supporters and content creators like Paradox, I understand you are a small outfit but whats better to sell one game at 50 or 10 games at 20. I really really want this game to grow and get modded, be updated, more cool DLCs. The potential on this game is really really great. Also the quotes and trivia are great, its great to see a game by politic nerds like myself. I hope you take my advice in good stead, I want this game to succeed.

This is a very difficult game to evaluate. First - it's very deep and complex. They aren't kidding when they say "Geo-Political Simulator". It goes much deeper into politics and economic simulation than even paradox games. This game will only be of interest to you if you're interested in politics, and know at least a little bit about macroeconomics. This isn't Tropico, Democracy or Hearts of Iron. All of those games are great, but they simply don't compare to this by sheer depth. This game doesn't ♥♥♥♥♥-foot around, it treats you like an adult. There are hundreds of different laws and taxes you can change, thosuands of characters you can interact with, and enough graphs to satisfy even the stingiest statistics professor. You can play as any nation in the world (besides a handful of micronations like the Vatican), as opposition political parties, or even as an illegal groupр, such as the Kurds in Syria or the rebels in Donbass (although the meat of the game is when you play as a head of state). Your actions affect not just your popularity and budget, but also many macroeconomic factors. Factors such as inflation, unemployment and crime are all inter-related, and you'll often times find yourself trying to reach a happy compromise. There really isn't any other game like this. This is due to the fact that Eversim is a company that creates simulation games for intl' organizations and their mindset is very clear with even their consumer-level products, such as P&R. However, the game has it's fair share of flaws. Crashes don't happen often, but they can happen. The game can experience slowdowns. Sometimes, things you click won't register properly. The UI sometimes feels clunky and unrefined. Relationships between characters are poorly explained - you can tell if somebody likes or hates you, but not WHY, and you have limited means to affect them. Many things in the game are poorly explained, as well. Power & Revolution is part of the Geo-Political Simulator series, which I've played since the second installment, called "Rulers of Nations". I have far more hours on this game than my steam account shows - this game used to be sold on Eversim's website, seperate from steam. I converted my non-steam copy to a steam copy after that became possible at a later date. Even after all of that I'm not sure how certain things in the game work. The military module is also quite basic. Don't be misinformed - this is NOT a wargame and never has been. If you're buying this as a sort of real-time military strategy game, you'll be disappointed. Another issue I have with the game is the pricing model: They want you to buy the game at AAA prices, after which, you can pay to get the 2017 and 2018 DLC (the game ships with data as of early 2016). The game also supports modding, but, get this - you have to buy a modding tool, to both edit and play mods. You don't pay for the mods themselves, you pay a one-time fee for access to the modding community. I had the modding tool in GPS 2 and it was kind of buggy and not full-featured. I haven't used it since, but I've heard people say it's mostly the same. Then, you can also buy "God'n'Spy", which is something in between a modding tool and a game cheat trainer. So - buy the game, buy the dlc, buy the mods, buy the cheats - that's what they want you to do. Now, I understand - Eversim is a small studio and it's catering to a very niche market. As with any niche good - you can expect prices to be high. Basic economics dictate that in order to remain solvent in a small market, you need a high profit margin. That's completely acceptible. But I still think that the game would have a healthier community had the modding tool been free, or at least - allowed free downloading of mods. The game itself is very deep, but it also feels rough and lacks polish. More than anything, it's the bugs that drag it down. If this game had better performance and less bugs, it'd be far easier to recommend. You can get overthrown far too easily if you do something that is controversial. Deselected by the ruling party, impeached by parliament, killed by an assassin, lynched by a mob, deposed by a coup d'etat. The problem is that you often times aren't warned this will happen, it just does. Even if you are given some forewarning, you often don't have enough time to do anything about it. While this may be realistic in a way, it's bad game design - it's simply not fun to have your game abruptly end. Thankfully, you can use the helpful cheat "Helpmepresidentwashingsky!" after hitting ctrl + shift + enter, in order to give yourself godmode and be undeposable (and yes, you can use this even if you don't own "God'n'spy"). Despite all of it's flaws, however, it is the most in-depth geopolitical game on the market. I don't know of any more detailed game than this, and I've gone out of my way to check. It's better now than it has been in the past, but still has a long way to go. The game needs polish and optimization above all. With that said, if you're the type of person who doesn't get invited to your family's dinner parties anymore, because you turn them into political manifestations, if you're a political sciences student, or someone that can name the ruling party of all major world countries - you're really going to enjoy this game, regardless of all the bugs and issues it has. I'm giving it a thumbs up, but with a huge asterisk - only for those with a serious interest in politics, and those who are willing to put up with a few bugs. If you are both of those things - you are going to enjoy Power & Revolution and wish there were more games like it. For all the criticism - I probably have hundreds, if not thousands of hours on the GPS franchise combined. I can definitely say I got my money's worth.

I've bougth every version of this game and I can finally say: DON'T BUY IT!! It is a very beautiful game concept but Eversim is a vary bad software house. They didn't make a real effort (through years!!!) to make this game more enjoyable. - The game is yet quite buggy - Many mechanichs are not really clear - The game manual is a fail - Many datas are not right - Ministries don't make any work for you, they only quarrel - Graphic and UI are very poor and messy - They don't have any relation with the community - The game is clearly overpriced. I'll be glad if a major company, like paradox, could take the concept over. Summarizing: DON'T BUY THIS GAME!!

This game is fun and it has a lot of potential, but the biggest issue I have is the fact that it’s extremely expensive and that each DLC is expensive as well. If they were to lower the price and possibly fix some bugs and keep updating the game then I could see this game being more successful.

[b]Summary[/b] A game with a lot of potential, but a terrible failure in execution. If done correctly, this would have beaten any Paradox game in terms of depth and immersion, but what you get is a buggy and unstable "simulation" that will make you lose support and get anti-capitalist riots if you dare to lower the taxes, where attacking terrorists that hide in the town with several fighters would cause the people to revolt against you instantly, and where things like private education or healthcare are unthinkable. Overall, I would love for this to work. I love the system of interaction with A LOT of different characters - politicians, governors, military men, secret agents, famous people like writers or athletes or even your wife and parents. This could have been insanely good, especially after years and years of constant development, but failed miserably. Don't buy it, unless maybe on -80% or -90% sale. It's not worth 10$ and will make you furious when you lose your save for tenth time in a row and have to start all over again. [b]What works[/b] 1. The great system of organizing meetings with different people, even though it gets repetitive after a while and there are not that many things to say. 2. Military stuff is alright, not nearly as good as Paradox's games or even Supreme Ruler, but it's alright. 3. Diplomacy is done alright and makes sense, but I would never call it "realistic". On realistic setting, in just a month, Afghanistan attacked Pakistan and Syria attacked Iraq. Almost every time. 4. Map is alright, and I love how there are many different regions, like all the US states, although the regions are too random at times - I don't like how in Syria the regions don't cover the Kurdish areas so you could create a realistic Kurdish state. 5. You get Wikipedia links to articles that describe issues that you have to decide on. That's a nice touch. 6. The revolutions and riots inside your cities that you have to take care of are a nice touch. [b]What doesn't work[/b] 1. The price and the DLCs. The game is WAY overpriced and the DLCs are really pathetic - the in-game editor that breaks your game after a while, every single time, and a modding tool that is buggy as hell and mods are usually unstable too. All that for a price of an AAA title. Go figure. 2. 3D models of characters - there are just a few of them, excluding the leaders and in some cases some important politicians - you get Jeb Bush for example, but not Rand Paul, for example. 3. Too few political ideologies - there are no proper libertarians, greens, and terrorists' ideology is "royalist". Seriously? 4. Economy is broken. Signing like 50 good or decent contracts with other countries and lowering the taxes a bit will easily get you a 60% GDP rise in a month, which is hard to stop and makes your inflation fly off the charts. What's more, most of my contracts were simply to sell my pharmaceutics across Europe as the US, along with maize, pork, beef, and some other stuff, while getting resources that I need - steel, bauxites, robots, coal, fuel - I negotiated reasonable prices for each good, which I guess simulates the international trade fairly well, but no - doing that will destroy the balance and make the game extremely gamey. Why even bother with the contract system then? 5. For whatever reason there are no real names and mods that allow them are buggy. 6. There is no private initiative in most areas - no private education, healthcare, research, insurance - you get stuck with public one and high taxes. Not really good if you want to try a more conservative or libertarian approach. 7. Unrealistic reactions of your voters - almost every tax reductios ends in popular unrest of anti-capitalists that somehow managed to get multi-million organizations in the US, and that can co-ordinate unrest accross America, you can cancel reimbursing people for doctor appointments and hospital visits almost entirely, but as long as you spend some more money on handicapped, emergency services and maternity care, it almost evens out. Bombing a town in the middle of Afghanistan with a few planes will result in an instant revolution. Is that "realistic"? 8. Bugs and terrible stability - your game will crash often, especially if you want to use the god'n spy DLC. You basically pay money to destroy your game. Classy. 9. There are very few character models which means that every military chief and intelligence officer look exactly the same - even uniforms are the same, and they don't even look realistic. [b]Summary[/b] They couldn't make it work many years ago, they can't make it work now. It's an overpriced trash. Even despite all that, I till hope that this can some day become the next Pride of Nations - a great game with a lot of depth and an amazing military system, but one that was once unbelievably buggy and unstable, and was so sluggish on a high-end PC that it was impossible to play. It's a great game now and easily beats Paradox's famous Victoria and Victoria 2 in pretty much every category. They've been patching it for years now, and you can really see their great dedication to a title that never sold that well and people who trusted them, and really earned my respect. Hope that this would some day finally happen to Geopolitical Simulator as well. It can be great, just needs a lot of polish.

So let me get this straight, I buy the whole bundle for around $100, and then they go and release this "2019" Edition, which costs an extra $35, even if it's discounted for owners of the game.... AND, THE GAME I BOUGHT NO LONGER IS SUPPORTED BY UPDATES! That's right guys, UPDATES, BUG FIXES are now locked behind a DLC pay-wall. These devs are ridiculous, never seen such a money hungry group. THIS GAME HAS SO MANY BUGS, it's a massive shame that they actually have a genuinely good concept here, wasted because of their lack of care towards their own community.

I refuse to buy another game from this developer until they address the ongoing issues that have been clear and present since the release of Rulers of Nations years ago. There is no excuse in 2017 for a game this simple to perform this poorly. And the real eye gouger is it's pricetag. It's priced up there alongside AAA games which is by itself misleading. If it were a $10 game(Which it should be) I wouldn't complain. But we are 3 or 4 title releases into this franchise with next to zero improvements. Hell they don't even have a proper forum to discuss the issues and development progress. No troubleshooting, no Q&A, no nothin'. Clearly their passion is not gaming. It's counting money. They can count me out.

It's a shame...This game had so much potential. The bugs are miserable and the creators haven't even attempted to rectify most bugs...big ones that cause your army to drop to zero soldiers or similar economic issues, or that just cause the game to crash constantly. I had hoped that the creators would eventually fix these issues, but they didn't in the last 2 years. I will never buy another game from these makers again.

A very slow paced game that shows us that running a country isnt as easy as people make of it. Many games in this genre are using political, economical and social policies as a method to support an otherwise simple militaristic strategy game. If you feel like any other political simulator game has an unspoken goal of just ''taking over the world'' as the only interesting thing to do when you do good with a country then this is a game you should try. Power & Revolution deserves absolute praise for sticking with what should be the core-mechanic in political simulators: Governance. Dont expect that raising a few taxes to pay for an army is gonna cut it. P&R has a very complex system in place that introduces you to pretty much anything you can think of. Birth rate policies to micro-managing your industries to building houses for the homeless, you name it. Everything is related to each other and its impossible to have a perfect country. That said, knowing that the game is super complex and focuses on policy making rather than militaristic rts gameplay, it is insanely satisfying seeing the country that you run do well. You can really f*ck up a country or your progress if you are not completely sure in what you're doing. However, under this thick skin of complex policy making lies a very buggy mess. In certain playthroughs or after a few hours the game starts to completely miss-calculate effects, messes up sliders and bugs certain relationships between policies to a point in which random events will happen. In certain countries for instance, establishing a minimal wage will instantly result in a Game Over, no matter what you do. The game can randomly crash if it cant calculate certain parameters. In conclusion, P&R can give you lots of satisfaction for fans of this genre. However, the amount of game-breaking bugs that makes you wonder who's to blame when you Game Over makes this an unplayable mess if you are not familiar with the series. I would love to recommend this but after years of different games in the series with the same amount of frustrating bugs makes this a product to be avoided.