Realpolitiks

This is my kind of game. I loved Superpower 1 and Superpower 2 when I was a kid, so I was really excited to give this one a try. Despite being a mobile port, it actually holds up kind of well in many ways, but it falls flat on its face in several areas that really count. My biggest gripes? Some of the random events are so broken and in need of major repair. I was playing a game as Brazil and had "terrorists" rise up in the Amazon Jungle sporting 40 fighter jets, 80 tanks and 180 infantry. They could have gone toe to toe with America's forces at that point in the game, so I was absolutely crushed by this "terrorist" group that had been hiding a military big enough to take over all of the South American continent in the Amazon Rain Forest for who knows how long? I was playing a game as China as well and managed to emerge as the only super power in the 2040s. I had the best and biggest military hands down (Mexico was even giving the US trouble at this stage and Russia had spent its entire military in the Baltics). It was an interesting scenario. I found myself under constant harassment from Japanese spies so I decided to give Japan what for. Firstly, Russia declaring war on most of Eastern Europe seemed to warrant a 50 warmonger penalty for Russia. Me declaring one defensive war against Japanese aggression warranted me an 80+ war penalty? Okay, whatever. I keep playing this game, attacking those who spy on me a lot, I get attacked by India and Indonesia several times and I kick their butts. I start really building an empire. All of a sudden a "random event" happens with the UN attacking me in full force. I am in the middle of a couple of wars so it does prove to be tricky, but I manage to match them 1 for 1 but it just doesn't matter. After the pre-determined time limit, I have a war score of -12% (barely a loss) and that means the UN took over my entire country and split it up? Considering the UN Forces weren't even maintained by any nation shows how broken this is.

Realpolitiks has great ideas and potential, but fails in pretty much anything it tries. If you are used to the Paradox games, do not even try this one. I will try to summarize the problems it has, so you can decide if you want to give it a go anyway. The war system does not make any sense. You and your enemy choose a strategy that your troops should be doing, so no real troop deploymeny. It does not follow logical sense; like if the enemy plays "Take vital cities", how is "Cut supply lines" not the best option, but results in instant defeat? The best thing is to save scum and select what the developers thought was best. The whole policy tree is broken. Policies can be bought and maintained by gold and action points (economic power). The maintenance is based on your population and your GDP; the higher these are, the more expensive policies are. This means that over time your nation becomes weaker over time (if you think you play well). I played a medium sized nation, became #1 in ranking and in 2090 I lost so many action points per month that I couldn't do anything anymore because of my extremely high GDP and slightly bigger popultation. I removed policies to reduce maintenance, but even when everything was removed, I had a net loss. I was just literally waiting until the game timer ran out. Fun, right? The constant attack by rebels. Imagine a peaceful country that is not expanding... Why would hordes of terrorists (that have the same size or bigger armies than yourself) be constantly attacking your country? How is this realistic? And my biggest complain in the end is that the game is way too easy. In my first playthrough I choose a relatively mediocre nation and won. I won pretty much all space races and events, resulting in the highest score. I never broke a sweat. Is this game easy, or am I that good? All in all; this game is broken. The policy tree is neat and the events are interesting, but the game in it's current state is just not done. I had high hopes.

There is potential here, however, the game is really dull... a little bit like a game of Monopoly after everybody has been around the board twenty times and your realise absolutely nobody is going to win. It does not have the depth of Geo-Political Simulator (and its numerous broken sequels) or the irreverent focus of Superpower 2. The graphics are nice and the loading screens showing world leaders playing the game is quite amusing, but these are momentary and the game itself is long and drawn out. It has a very developed world focus and is virtually impossible (and absolutely no fun) to pick a small country and try to turn them into a regional power. Also, a real gripe about modern gaming, is they have now realised DLC instead of a patch to improve the tedious game experience of the original.

I got this on Switch, which comes with New Powers. I'll not talk about UI, nor will I review the new aspects New Powers brings. While lacking a lot of features one would expect from the veteran grand strategies out there, Realpolitiks does offer a taste of grand strategy in a simplified edition that everyone can try. The core problem of Realpolitiks is neither in the balance (or lack thereof) nor in its simplicity (it's actually pretty good all things considered), but in the incredible lack of information presented. It's no secret that the complexity of grand strategies necessitates a wiki of some sort, but Realpolitiks shows you less information than Final Fantasy Tactics does, which is incredible considering that Final Fantasy Tactics was made 2 decades ago While the tutorial tells you a thing or two about the game, ultimately you'll be left wondering "what does this do again?" or "why is this happening?" pretty much all the time. You're given no information in practically everything: why am I losing a battle? What does the province stats do? why is the world economy plummeting? and so on and so forth All things considered, it's something you can try if you wanted to try a grand strategy but is not willing to jump straight into the behemoths that are Paradox games

This game does have some moments, but It is just a generic country sim with "events" taken from recent world events. It is in no way realistic, it is more of a "react to random dialogue that happens to have something related to world events" sim with some managements stuff thrown in. It is very similar to HOI, but lacks the balancing and polish of the latter. I have played mods for HOI that are about 90% this game in terms of content and context, but with the fully balanced HOI government systems. If you can stretch your mind into thinking this as more of a sandbox, you will probably have some fun, especially with some of the scenarios. But if you came to have a go at what real politics (get it) feel like, I am afraid you will be heavily disappointed. pros- Its like re-watching every major national news event from the past 30 years in a game, so if you are not fully caught up with world events, you will get some cheap information. The UN is fairly realistic; apart from being annoying at times, they are useless and controlled by the biggest delegates.