This game is honestly not bad, it just has a serious flaw to it: The game doesn't want you to play politics. Finding yourself struggling to push for a certain thing and so decide to make a compromise? wrong answer according to this game. The solution to everything is to be uncompromising, don't even think of negotiating. Anytime you try to strattle a line or make a deal or try to play both sides, the game registers this as "inconsistent policy" determines your answers as "wrong" and punishes you. That is not how politics works though. Let's say for example, you are wanting to turn the nation communist. Then you have to be unapologetically communist in your run, not even secretive just flat out extremist. You won't face any troubles for that decision either, the opposite in fact, you'll be rewarded.

Beyond that, the story isn't bad, just don't expect an in depth politics simulator, it's more akin to a visual novel than anything else.

Finally, I've seen other people mention this, the developers do have a bias. Credit where it is due, they did a good job at keeping it in check, but it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore the bias once you notice that no matter what you do in your run, this settings version of the USSR always ends up as a perfect utopia while this worlds version of the USA always ends up as a corrupted hellhole relying heavily on mercenaries, oh and the USSR equivilant is a better aid, support, and ecenomic partner than the USA equivilant.
Again though, it's MOSTLY kept in check and limited to the dumb fluff text you learn to ignore.

The game is like an multiple choice exam. You have options, but only one of them is correct.

It is very boring when you realise this as the intrigue of the game disappears and the characters around you delivers simple good/bad job depending on how your choice aligns with their predetermined values. You may find that they lack diplomacy and perspective in their reasonings as it is impossible to change their mind no matter the argument you give.

Would have bee nice to see what the impacts of my choices would have been before chosing as it feels like you can only really play the game once you have already finished it (more like The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante).

5/10

overall, this seems to be a good game, but due to several disabilities i struggle to read for extended periods of time, and this game doest have any read-aloud options, and my usual text reader doesnt work with it. of course, this is very much a me problem, and if you're able to play games which rely almost entirely on long passages of text, i suspect you'll have a great time with it :)

that being said, i also had some issues with the UI, which might be unclear delibertaly to be more realistic, it makes it hard to play as a strategy game, and makes it feel un-interactive, and at times drawling. simple progress bars, or a more clear techincal intro, or the economic growth bar showing a full history insted of momentary growth or decline would help.

i want to see how my actions impact the world without having to sift through paragraphs or seek it out, and without a simple way to see it, the game ends up feeling quite stale.