I am probably among the "easy to please" on the target audience spectrum for this game being a political science major and even I think this is a rather weak showing. Like I won't even make fun of the MS Paint art style much since its a strategy game and frankly I don't play these for the graphics but this really feels like someone took the basic conceit of a character centric strategy game and didn't think through what would be needed to update that crusader kings like premise to a democratic government system outside a very basic common sense application of realism. Like a lot of what you do here is a fine foundation for a prototype of the premise but so much more could be done conceptually. Like interest groups and intra-party poltics (stuff like super delegates or early primary Iowa/South Carolina retail politics endorsements) are such a big impactful thing in US politics for better or for worse and yet the trust statistic feels too simple to model those dynamics. This isn't the only failure though. Like how the hell isn't there a deal making and or black mail aspect of the game? Henry Clay, Mitch McConnell, New York era FDR, and so many other famous politicians in US history have used the levers of machine politics to get what they want and yet you can't really replicate that dynamic in game. Hell why isn't making a party that can cannibalize one of the big 2 and create a realignment/replacment party an option? Plenty of examples of that happening in US history. This just feels too simplistic for what it aims to do. Also for the amount of turns you can just automate in this game I feel like this could have benefited from a skip to significant week option.

Edit: There is a skip option but its rather hidden on the UI so I missed it at time of writing this review.