The most you can really say about Republic: The Revolution is that it is original.
User Rating: 6.8 | Republic: The Revolution PC
In Republic: The Revolution, you are trying to start a revolution (surprised?) with politics. Sadly, this degenerates into a waiting game (and a long one at that) which really tests your patience. The graphics are great for a strategy game. Cars drive around, people are walking everywhere; all in 3D of course. The camera will give you different angles to check out what's going on in your city. Unfortunantly, this game really has no NEED for graphics. Very few times will you ever need to look at your city, since most of the time you'll be giving orders on an overview map. You can see how your citizens feel, or just watch your characters performing their given tasks, certain debates between characters can be seen as well; that consists of maybe 5% of the whole game, meaning you need a decent computer just for 5% of the game. The sound/music itself is nice, but the use of it is quite boring. The music is somewhat depressing and hopeless, which shows you what the people are feeling at the time. However, the music, as with the game itself, drags on and on, and doesn't give you any excitement at all. The sound affects would be great if they sounded at the right time. Many times you'll hear a wonderful sound effect and think to yourself, "What the hell?" since nothing happens for about 5 or 10 seconds to give you an idea about what the effect was for. I almost enjoyed the gameplay, but it just drags on and on for too long. Basically, you're struggling to get as many citizens to your party as possible to complete missions, etc... In order to do this, you can deploy your followers (anywhere from 0-5 + yourself, making at most 6 in all) on various missions to raise your support, lower another parties support, raise one of your follower's morale (called Resolve), or lowering an opposing character's Resolve. Eventually you'll gain enough support to complete a mission, and then you must gather up enough support to finish another mission. That roughly consists of 90% of the gameplay, the rest is having your character meet people and attempt to gain their favor (either to complete a mission or to have them join as a follower). In order to do this, you must succesfully 'debate' them, which is basically just a dice game. At the beginning of the 'debate' you assign 4 cards a certain number based on how many points you have. Once that's finished, you and your opposer use your cards to win points untill one of you gets whatever your number is to win. To win points, the card you play must be higher than your opponents card. In case of a tie, the points are given to the defender (a.k.a. not you). Most of the time this is just luck, since your opposer rarely has the same cards. The game is turn based, but you only have a certain amount of time before the turn ends (about a minute). Each of your followers can do one action during a turn, which must be ordered BEFORE that turn. You can give orders for all of the next turns (which can be deleted if something happens) if you know you're going to be busy that turn (debating). Unfortunantly, this results in numerous moments where you'll be waiting a minute or so for the turn to end, often times at the beginning of the game. Other times you'll be pressed for time since you had other things to do, and 6 people to order around. It would have been much better if you could order when to end your turn, and there might have been, I just never figured it out. The manual and the tutorial do little to show you how the game works, so be ready to be confused and annoyed for the first 30 or so minutes of the game. Many times throughout the game you'll be told 'look at this screen' to which you'll wonder 'where IS this screen?', which of course the game won't tell you. The manual is poorly labled which will result in you having to look through just about all the pages to find out what you want. This game could very well be fun if it was designed in a better way. Unfortunantly, in its current state, you must have alot of patience and a like for games that feel like boardgames. If you do not like that sort of stuff, or don't know if you do, I'd recommend for you to skip this game since more than likely you'll just be dissapointed.
