Engaging — and often overwhelming — role-playing mechanics and meaningful decisions are found a plenty in 'Suzerain'. Yet, the game's biggest achievement is it diverse, starkly accurate, and gleefully playful representation of timely world politics. Capable of mutating between the hopeful and utopian or the amusing and bleak.
The game may look like initially that it will play out like a visual novel, it is in fact quite deep. The base game lets you embody Anton Rayne, the newly elected president of the relatively new, fictional country, Republic of Sorland. In your newfound position you quickly learn there are deep problems within the country, and it's up to you to address them. Over the course of the game you have to make decisions impacting your political and personal life. The decisions themselves are generally political in nature addressing one of the various dichotomies that could be tied to the political spectrum. As I said before. Indeed, the game is deeper than it looks and where there are different paths to an outcome, as it runs a small simulation in the background where even the seemingly smallest dialogue options may influence a large outcome. Overall, there is nothing quite like this game, it tackles multiple political subjects that are rarely addressed together.
While it's only words and music, this game is rough, and evokes considerable thought. You're shielded from the truth, and the truth of your decisions often lack nuance when the public hears them. A lot like real life.
If you have any interest in politics, you should play this game. Going through certain decisions in your early life makes the story personal. After you are elected, you slowly start to realise that every ideal you want to protect comes at a price. What makes the choices challenging is that you are placed amidst a hard time for the country - internal conflicts, recession, foreign threat - and every choice you make feels like the wrong one. Balancing between your own family, the country and its people, and every person of power with their own agenda makes you think twice about every word you say, ultimately hoping you didn't make things worse. If you ever thought "if I had power, I'd do this and that", this game is for you.