In many ways this game is a straight upgrade from the developer's prior works. The politics, country management, and economic management have all been generalized in a way that is more interesting to interact with. The omnipresent division of political power down to regions and ministries allows gameplay that it is interesting both in and out of power - an accomplishment few other political sims have managed. While the ui and some underlying mechanics are a bit clunky, most things are more transparent than they have been in previous games like Crisis in the Kremlin and Ostalgia. Activities of other parties are also well done, providing a feeling that the party you're control has some meaningful competition. Add in the interesting post-cold war political milieu which is well presented through events and you get a game which well worth the asking price of $7.

That said there are a few criticisms which I'd like to enumerate, both because I think they could be a dealbreaker for some and also because I have hope that the developers will make efforts to improve this game as they have their previous titles. The first and most obvious - obscured mechanics. Above I applauded the steps this game has take towards transparency as compared to previous games, but there are still a number of situations where greater feedback would be useful. What specific policies are causing Russian support to fall? Why is party unity going down? Why did the Separatists just win an election in the breakaway province when loyalists make up 100% of the population? Poke around enough and you'll find the answers but the game would gain so much from just presenting information to you up front. Strange translation is also somewhat troublesome on this front as others have noted, but for the most part the issue is just that the game gives you insufficient feedback about what's happening.

The second and by far most frustrating issue I have is with ability (or more aptly lack thereof) to campaign for public support. There's pretty much only one appreciable way to change public support for your party in regions you don't already control - inciting protests. The problem with this is that you choose a party to target and then the region which is targeted is chosen randomly. This can be an immensely frustrating experience when you are just trying to eke out a little more popularity in a given region but keep getting other regions selected as a target randomly; moreover, since the distribution of party popularity is not at all even across regions it can be doubly annoying when you are trying to target a party which is only strong in one region since all other random outcomes result in no benefit.

As someone who really enjoyed Ostalgie and China: Mao's Legacy, it pains me to have to give this one a pass. The interface is even more indecipherable than Crisis at the Kremlin with none of the learning resources found online. I understand that a major appeal of these games is trial and error and simulating how real life politics is a black box, but a new player will literally get no help in this game apart from simple descriptions on what things are. Also, there are no English guides for the game and the playthroughs on YouTube are also done by people who have no clue with what there doing.

I really want to like this game. I really do. But at this stage, unless you are willing to devote a lot of your time trying to play the game, use deductive reasoning to figure out what the bad Russian to English translations of the text are saying, or you really really liked Suzerain and want more gritty realism to it, I cannot recommend this game.

Pros:

• A lot of laws and other tools to really shape the direction of where you want your country to go
  
• The different political parties allow for a lot of different starts and replayability
  
• The best post-soviet state political simulator (by virtue of a lack of competitors in the genre)

Cons:

• An interface straight from the gulags
  
• Lack of online resources for new players (unless you are a Russian speaker)
  
• Translation effort needs work better comrades

I like Kremlingames, but this game is not ready for release; confusing user interface, no tutorials, no advice on game principles, no proper dashboard, no warnings, too random.

You take control of a Post-Soviet Republic after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It's like the previous games, alot of text/lore and button clicking, if you liked the previous games, then this is for you. The game also supports mods. There is a clicking sound, whenever you hover over an option, which is atleast for me annoying. The English is understandable, but weirdly written, the developers have a strong english language support base, I don't understand, why they don't let them volunteer to help improve the texts. But other than that, it's an alright game, if you liked the previous games, and are interested in the concept, then this is nice.

The game is brutally hard I have spent over 90 hours trying to understand the game mechanics. even in sandbox mode the game is hard and since the last few updates the game in my opinion isn't worth it at this moment. maybe in the next update i will reconsider. Also the game needs to have better english translation it is very hard to understand what you are doing in the game.

Unfortunately this one was a bit too ambitious for Kremlingames. It lacks the moderate level of polish they have reached in their other recent releases, and the increased complexity combined with the confusing, rough UI makes the game too opaque to play.

The game has a lot of potential. There aren't many polsims out there of this type, and the setting is truly interesting. Alas, as it stands, in its English version the game is quite incomprehensible, I couldn't even understand what the ending I got was. I can't currently recommend this game in good conscience to anyone who doesn't speak Russian (I don't). I hope however that this game will be updated one day, and I will finally be able to understand what decisions I am making and maybe be able to recommend it as well.

Also, the constant "pop"ping sound is sooo annoying.

EDIT:

I am adding this edit to say that I eventually found a "seam" and managed to get to a win condition. I do like certain things about this game, I would not have pushed through if I didn't. There is a ton of depth, history, and care in this game. But at the end of the day, if you are looking at a Kremlingames game you know what you are getting in to and this one is rough even by their standards. Therefore, I still can't recommend it. I wish they would just spend a bit of money to get a good functional English localisation, or even just fix the acronym nightmare. Until then stick with Ostalgie, Crisis in the Kremlin, or my favourite China: Mao's Legacy

END OF EDIT


I have tried and tried and tried to learn the perfect combination of decisions that will allow the player to have a chance at surviving, but I just can't figure it out. I have gotten game over screens every single time I play, on the easiest difficulty, and always within the first few years of starting the game.

The translation is rough, which I can understand somewhat, but the number of acronyms for things makes everything so obtuse that it is almost impossible to know what effect your decisions are even having. Also there is very little documentation online about how to play, only very basic guides (yes I even searched in Russian using google translate).

The ususal game goes like this:

Pick a party, wait a month til the first election, win a region or two and get enough power to control one or two ministries, they start with some money, corruption and effectiveness. Then the corruption in your ministries and regions just starts going up extremely quickly (whether you fight it, do nothing, or help it, it makes no difference). Next your party unity will fluctuate for reasons you have no way to know, hope you don't click one of the decisions that tanks it, what decisions will do that you might ask? No way to know, there's no real useful tooltips. You can raise money or unity in your party screen, but sometimes you get a gameover as soon as your money or unity go down before you can get to that screen.

Oh and by the way there is Lower, Middle, and Upper class aggressiveness, these you can almost understand what would theoretically affect them (laws and such) but in reality I have never seen these change when laws are changed.

Also there is a crime stat, can you see it anywhere? No, you can't. Better keep crime down though, or else you get events that cost money and support and then you lose. How do you affect crime? No way to know.

You can look at the regions and ministries/portfolios that the other parties (the AI run parties) are running and see their corruption/budget/effectiveness, and it is always way better than yours. How? Why? Who knows. I can't emphasize enough how little time it takes for these things to get completely out of control. In one game I tried taking the Prime Minister portfolio, it started with a balance of 400/600 (600 being theoretically maximum effectiveness), and a monthly decrease of 150. This meant that within 3 months the Prime Minister portfolio would be at -50 (a situation that has pretty bad consequences oh and also means you can't do anything), all my other ministries had deficits as well so there was no way to reallocate funds. What causes this deficit? How does the AI avoid it? What do you do? No way to know any of this. You might be noticing a pattern here.

I want to like this game so badly, I want to understand what the trick is to get it to work, but right now it feels like a game that was designed to be as obtuse as possible so that only the creator could actually understand.

If anyone knows what the trick to getting it playable is please tell me, but if you are thinking of picking this one up because it looks interesting and compelling, stay away.

UI needs a face lift but you won't find anything like this. Political simulator with a lot of freedom of choice which you don't see too often. Interesting and uncommon atmosphere, the collapse of the USSR is a challenge for your little republic to manoeuvre through.

Terrible english, opaque yet intriguing game mechanics, a great sense of humour, and post-communist politics- yup, it's a Kremlingames production alright.

This one needs a more informative UI before I can recommend it. Love Kremlingames, but those opaque mechanics are definitely too opaque at the moment. This is exacerbated by the really bad english, which renders some tooltips useless.