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When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the news brought the promise of new hope to millions. With each passing year, expectation only seemed to grow until the entire Soviet block collapsed. Soon, it seemed, peace and prosperity would flow in the new bastion of East European democracy.
In 1999, we began hearing about the promising new game under development at Elixir Entertainment. It would be set in the former Soviet republic shortly after the collapse of Soviet-style communism. Beginning with a faction of just one supporter, you would seek to rise to power. You would have many ways to achieve this goal. The graphics engine would allow you to zoom from high above the city to focus on very small objects. Every citizen would have a complex, autonomous, & reactive AI.
That game has now been released. Republic: The Revolution is a real-time, political strategy game which unfolds in a series of missions. Technically, the graphics are decent, though I had to get the latest drivers to stop people in the game from blinking in & out of existence. Updated drivers didn't solve the problem with the sound; sometimes the voices will echo, sounding twice a split-second apart. The other sounds & the music don't have this problem.
The eventual goal is to topple the president. As the head of a political faction in this nascent & troubled democracy, you accomplish these missions by issuing orders to the members of your faction, including yourself as represented by your third-person avatar. The ideology of your faction is determined by your answer to a series of questions which you answer at the beginning of the game. That ideology can then change according to the actions you choose during the course of the game.
Trouble is apparent as soon as you start your first game. The opening cinematic explains that you are toppling the government of your country & pursuing personal power, not for ideological reasons or even for greed & vainglory, but for revenge. So much for playing an idealistic democrat or a Marxist ideologue who simply has a better idea of how things should be run. This is the first evidence that the original idea has been scaled down. Its also annoying in its own right–revenge is overrated as a motivation & overused as a cheap plot device by Hollywood & game developers.
From there the disappointments continue to accumulate. At first, you appear to be immersed in a bustling city; & I would say that the appearance begins to fade, but you probably won't notice that happen when faced with the alpine learning curve of this game. The documentation helps very little, & even after hours of experimentation, the interaction between the different elements a work remains a mystery. In short, the engine which supports the game manages to display its inner workings while keeping the outcome of its machinations to itself.
To make matters worse, the game marches along at a brutal pace. Twelve minutes of real time equals one day in the game, which is divided into 3 periods of 8 hours. You cannot pause the game at all without exiting to main menu, so there is no option to issue orders while paused. Action oscillates between clicking frantically & waiting for time to pass. You can adjust the speed to a certain extent, but that becomes one more thing to track & is likely to cause you to miss some event.
On good thing I can say is that Republic features a top-notch soundtrack of Eastern European-flavored pieces. If you close your eyes, you might think you really were in Novistrana. Sadly, this is the only way to believe you are there. To put it bluntly, the game fails to immerse you in what could have been a compelling saga. You do not directly control anyone, even your avatar. You name your avatar, but you have no control over how he looks. There is no collision detection, which was fortunate for my minion who stepped out of his car in front of a van. Conversation is a number game. Popular support swings about so wildly that you suspect the entire population of Novistrana should be prescribed Valium. Actions are scripted so that they seem largely the same, even if the results vary drastically. Republic doesn't feel like you are plotting & planning because the actions you are called on to perform do not seem to equate to the actions they are intended to simulate.
It wasn't long, historically speaking, until everyone could see that the former Soviet republics would not enter a golden age; the aftermath of the Soviet collapse failed to achieve its promise. Repulic: The Revolution unfortunately suffers the same fate as the historical event on which it is based.
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