From my point of view, it is one of the better political games, with a quite excitingly written story. You can draw comparisons to the game Suzerain, in which you run a fictional state, unlike here. What they have in common is the way of governing, namely making decisions in the form of a text selection. The consequences are therefore, in contrast to games where you adjust sliders, rather unpredictable. However, this makes governing more realistic for me. If you want to get involved in the game, you have to be aware that there is a lot of text to read, because only in this form the story and the gameplay is transported. In contrast to Suzerain, sooner or later you are forced to use dishonest methods to either stay in power or achieve the ultimate goal of ratification of Amendment 28, due to the predetermined criminal background of your character. Thus, playing as a consistently "good" president is out of the question, which I find a bit of a shame. However, the fact that you have a criminal background also adds to the tension of the story. You always have to worry about not being exposed. Since I'm not familiar with the American electoral system and the structure of the state organs in detail, I can't say anything about the authenticity portrayed in the game. Nor can I currently say anything about the game's length and replay value, since I've only played the game for a few hours so far.
For me, Battlesector is one of the most polished game titles in the Warhammer 40k series, along with Mechanicus here on GOG. In terms of gameplay, Battlesector can best be compared to Sanctus Reach. Where Sanctus Reach now has a larger selection of factions through DLCs, in Battlesector you can currently only choose between two factions, the Blood Angels and the Tyranids, although it should be mentioned that each of the two factions has a large selection of unit types. Currently there is only a Blood Angels campaign. I expect that more campaigns, factions, units and maps will be added to Battlesector via DLCs like in the other Slitherine games. Graphically, Battlesector is ahead of Sanctus Reach and the usability and UI has been improved significantly. The morale system of Sanctus Reach is missing in Battlesector, but a momentum system was introduced, which requires a more aggressive approach. Contrary to Sanctus Reach, Battlesector has no turn limit. What I like about Battlesector are the mission objectives and maps, which differ significantly from mission to mission. What bothers me, however, is that the primary mission objectives, such as holding a position for 7 turns, are completely redundant, because in each mission it ultimately comes down to destroying all enemy units. I hope the developers will fix this. Otherwise, the game runs smoothly for me. I couldn't find any bugs so far. Since I don't know the tabletop game, I can't comment on how close Battlesector is to it in terms of gameplay.
The game is best described as the successor of the game DEFCON. It extends the game mechanics of DEFCON by adding things like a technology tree, satellites, and so on. An important innovation are the so-called attack plans, which can be used to automate and coordinate large-scale attacks. This saves a lot of micromanagement. Unlike DEFCON, there is apparently no unit limit. Units can be built and placed anywhere within the area of influence. Likewise, any number of bombs and rockets can be built and units can be reloaded. The phases of defcon, such as setting up units, moving units, first attacks on the enemy and launching nuclear missiles are also dropped. Compared to the game DEFCON ICBM plays a bit slower, which is probably due to the more extensive game mechanics. ICBM also runs perfectly over Wine (Wrapper 2.9.0.6; Engine WS11WineCX64Bit19.0.2) on my Mac (macOS Catalina), if I don't use the Launcher.exe, but the ICBM.exe.
