Suzerain

My first playthrough - acting like a civilized, sane man, willing to tackle every possible issue and stand my ground against both the old guard and the oligarchs. Limited privatisation, aggressive social reforms, promoting sex equality, worker rights and supporting ethnical minorities. Uniting the nation, banishing terrorist organisations. Trade agreements and alliances with the most West-oriented countries, including the Western superpower.Wise international politics, no war, stability in the region. Still, despite this, unable to contain the unrest and economical depression. New constitution - also failed, due to lack of convervative support. The outcome? But of course: coup d'etat. An unexpected punch in the gut, hurts like hell. Over 30 hours of playthrough - all to no avail. ARGH! But did I have it coming? Oh boy,straight from the beginning! Ignoring the business people, underestimating the military, in an almost failed state with rich coup history - that was not very rational. So, is this a good game to realise one's fantasy of being an honest, good-hearted and progressive leader? Absolutelty not. Play like you're in a 21 st. century Sweden and you will find yourself crying on the floor in no time. But is it a good lesson of life and REALPOLITIK? Oh, yes.

Suzerain is basically a role-playing game, in which you play as the president of a newly-republican Turkey-like country during a Cold War-like period. Your job is to lead the country out of its economic, social, and political troubles while dodging coups, wars, scandals, and the breakdown of your family. The game is presented as a series of dialogue choices, each of which, it turns out, has enormous ramifications as the game develops. The true brilliance of the game is in the depth of the world in which you play and the multiplicity of choices available to you. While seemingly simplistic at first, the game begins hinting to you early on that it's paying attention to what you're doing, and it's reacting accordingly. Moreover, it reacts logically, which I really appreciated: if you piss people off, they remember, and they make sure to undermine you or harm you whenever they can; if you help people, they will be willing to help you in return. But then again, what if you help somebody who is already set on working against you? Then you're being naive, and you're a really crap politician! Basically, the game encourages you to really think like a politician, to understand the weaknesses and strengths of those around you, to act ruthlessly when necessary, to be polite to most people, but above all to be consistent, so that people can understand your intentions. In my first playthrough, I got an excellent result for my country, and avoided most of the terrible possible outcomes, simply because I thought logically about my choices and employed policies which, in the real world, are beneficial to the majority of people, while also making sure that people SAW ME being a good president. Downsides? They're few, and minor. The encyclopedia entries appear to be mediocre translations from the original German. While their intent is clear enough, these need a bit of polish. The ending also came a bit suddenly - I really had no idea how long the game was supposed to be.

The first playthrough was great, the story was gripping and consequences felt real. Even though it is only text based, I could get into the characters shoes pretty well. I especially liked the aspect that there is so much going on and you can influence only some (major) things. There are accidents all over the place and you cannot personally go and do something about it, because you have a funeral to attend, or an international visit. But if you do well the things you can, you actually influence the country and the proportion of bad news to good news start to change. I also liked it has its "wikipedia" in case you get lost in all the names, cities, regions and factions. If you meet someone for the first time, you can get a quick read on them, so that you know what topics to avoid. The only thing that this game lacks (for me) is replayablity. Once I knew what is and is not coming, I could work around that and it was rather easy to get great economy, happy population and international connections on the 2nd try, even though I was messing around most of the time. PS: I played a bleeding heart liberal and it worked out just fine. It went so great actually, that I suspect that the game was made by liberals :-) Maybe going out all Fidel could also work... PPS: The UN meeting was definitely a highlight.

I love political simulators, like "Hidden Agenda" and "Shadow President". I read somewhere that "Suzerian" is a modern successor of these games, so enthousiastically I bought. The "character creation" did a good job in world creation and I was only more enthousiastic when the map appeared with shiny buttons to press. Quickly I wanted to have an overview of the budget, create alliances and check what else I could manipulate. I clicked everywhere and found no such thing. Then I saw you can only click on events and select an answer after some discussions. Then it hit me hard..... this is not a political simulator, this is a visual novel, but instead of dating jailbait or a catgirl you play president. What a disappointment! Walls of text are fine by me, but the passive, reactive gameplay gets to me. You cannot initiate anything yourself, you just have to follow the story that is set in stone. Is it a good visual novel? The writing seems competent and you choices do have different outcomes. There is only one savegame, but I just backed it up in case something went wrong. And boy are there some weird reactions from the characters. One minister was saying how proud she was and all that. A second later, she called me power hungry despot and resigned. Why? Did I take two sugar scoops in my coffee instead of one? There was no decision in between that would allow such a shift in attitude. PMS maybe? Now I think of it; there is no likelable female character in this game, so I understand why they have fewer rights in this fictional country. At the end I had my economy maxed out, all ministers where happy and people danced in the street, until there is a hard-coded event, that causes the voter group with the lowest happiness to openly revolt. The result is that in 2 events, my economy was at the lowest level and everybody said what a loser I am. Nice. In short: "Suzerain" is a visual novel, not a political simulaton or strategy game. I think it is worth only one playthrough.

Very impressed with this game. Such a great journey that made on your choices, and it's not always clear what results you will get after those choices. Very enjoyable characters and art. Masterpiece soundtrack !