I do not want to give you a rating.
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.
