Posted on: July 18, 2021
WarlockOne
Possesseur vérifiéJeux: 556 Avis: 26
Well-written, with a convincing weight
"Suzerain" casts the player as the newly-elected President of a country emerging from years of turmoil after the reigns of two very different Presidents. The game is fictionalized, freeing the creators to make their own history and figureheads, but there are very clear parallels with the real-world situation in the mid-fifties, with yours as a medium-sized European country often dealing with regional rivalries and the machinations of world superpowers. Most of the choices the player makes in the game are simple multiple choice responses to dialogues, with a few binary choices (like whether to sign or veto a bill) and a few sliders (how much to privatize or maintain state control over particular companies). Despite the lack of fine, micro-control, the writing, strongly portrayed characters, and tense decisions all help to give the player a sense of weight (and sometimes the accompanying dread), even with such simple questions as how to greet a world leader or address your son's smoking. It warrants praise that the game appears to offer some way through via a variety of political tactics, whether one wants to be a liberal reformer or a hard-line near-dictator. What the game does not, in my limited play-through, seem to appreciate is half-measures. You may not be tripped up by every mistake, but fail to keep your promises, to individuals or to the country, and people will remember. If I were to cite one significant flaw, it's the way budget is handled. Predictably, large deficits are not a good thing, and there's never enough budget for all you might want to do. But the game does a poor job of giving you a sense when new expenditures will emerge, and even less when financial policies might see results or windfalls come through; two unannounced late-emerging bills that occurred in a single turn seemed to have more of an effect on the hard numbers than long-term infrastructure choices. Fascinating and a little draining (like a real presidency), Suzerain has my vote.
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