This review contains spoilers
I must say this was an even more enjoyable experience that the base game. I am slightly biased because I replayed the main game just before (so I might be influenced by slight boredom from knowing what happened in Sordland), but this is such a breath of fresh air!
First of all, Sordland was an experience of coming into this poor, turmoil-ridden ****hole of a country, and forging your path from nothing. Are you going to turn it into a dictatorship? Convert it into a socialist dystopia? Try to appease everyone and work together (only for it to fall one way or another due to neverending, constant bickering between literally everyone?). This was very fun, and very creative, but it had a constant, ever-present shade of despair. It felt like nothing you try to do ever goes right, there's always twice as many people who are against you, and every single choice comes with an increasingly heavy cost for you, the public opinion, the economy, your relations or all of them together.
Here, in Rizia, you play as a monarch, and you begin your playthrough from a stable, firm position of power. The monarchy is fixed, the living conditions are okay, the populace is content, and everything seems rather fine. The challenge comes from deciding on (and sticking to) a path for the kingdom (reform? continued tradition? something else?), and then maintaining the relative peace and boredom of the kingdom without fucking it all up. This is a good, welcome twist to the power dynamic from the base game, that offers a lot of different approaches to problems. The story just felt smoother and less miserable than the base game.
I think the writing also peaked - it was far more interesting than the base game, the characters were nice and entertaining, each with a lot of fun twists to explore. The various events around the world are also very nicely crafted, offering just the right degree of constant tension (and immense satisfaction when your constant galore of appeasement/intimidation/manipulation/diplomacy actually works out in your favor. I am a bit spoiled because I managed to clutch probably the best ending of all (no spoilers), so your mileage may vary in the end.
The game also improves on the country management side - there are three understandable metrics to follow, each now having defined values instead of the confusing "economy trend line" that practically no one understands from the base game. Here, you can actually see what influences your results (as you should, there's an entire country worth of analysts to provide that info for you - damn you Rayne), and the inclusion of royal edicts allows you to induce some changes in the system without requiring separate dialogue screens for each - this means more possible changes, and more freedom for the player to balance the metrics. The war minigame is also amazing, but I haven't tried it myself (peaceful playthrough), but I would love to replay just to be able to enjoy it.
The ONLY negative thing this game has is Torpor Mode. Why is this even an option?? The game tells you that it saves after every "event" but a new save game is generated only after each turn, meaning that I lost around 30 mins of progress on several occasions just from forgetting about this nonsense. Why, why do games keep putting worthless save-game limitations in a single-player experience? Especially in a game that is essentially a dialogue choice tree with pictures??
To conclude: this is a brilliant, much-improved addition to the Suzerain universe. IMO it is better than the base game, and I am eagerly awaiting for more content (possibly a DLC involving an operation against Smolak, I hate that guy)
First of all, Sordland was an experience of coming into this poor, turmoil-ridden ****hole of a country, and forging your path from nothing. Are you going to turn it into a dictatorship? Convert it into a socialist dystopia? Try to appease everyone and work together (only for it to fall one way or another due to neverending, constant bickering between literally everyone?). This was very fun, and very creative, but it had a constant, ever-present shade of despair. It felt like nothing you try to do ever goes right, there's always twice as many people who are against you, and every single choice comes with an increasingly heavy cost for you, the public opinion, the economy, your relations or all of them together.
Here, in Rizia, you play as a monarch, and you begin your playthrough from a stable, firm position of power. The monarchy is fixed, the living conditions are okay, the populace is content, and everything seems rather fine. The challenge comes from deciding on (and sticking to) a path for the kingdom (reform? continued tradition? something else?), and then maintaining the relative peace and boredom of the kingdom without fucking it all up. This is a good, welcome twist to the power dynamic from the base game, that offers a lot of different approaches to problems. The story just felt smoother and less miserable than the base game.
I think the writing also peaked - it was far more interesting than the base game, the characters were nice and entertaining, each with a lot of fun twists to explore. The various events around the world are also very nicely crafted, offering just the right degree of constant tension (and immense satisfaction when your constant galore of appeasement/intimidation/manipulation/diplomacy actually works out in your favor. I am a bit spoiled because I managed to clutch probably the best ending of all (no spoilers), so your mileage may vary in the end.
The game also improves on the country management side - there are three understandable metrics to follow, each now having defined values instead of the confusing "economy trend line" that practically no one understands from the base game. Here, you can actually see what influences your results (as you should, there's an entire country worth of analysts to provide that info for you - damn you Rayne), and the inclusion of royal edicts allows you to induce some changes in the system without requiring separate dialogue screens for each - this means more possible changes, and more freedom for the player to balance the metrics. The war minigame is also amazing, but I haven't tried it myself (peaceful playthrough), but I would love to replay just to be able to enjoy it.
The ONLY negative thing this game has is Torpor Mode. Why is this even an option?? The game tells you that it saves after every "event" but a new save game is generated only after each turn, meaning that I lost around 30 mins of progress on several occasions just from forgetting about this nonsense. Why, why do games keep putting worthless save-game limitations in a single-player experience? Especially in a game that is essentially a dialogue choice tree with pictures??
To conclude: this is a brilliant, much-improved addition to the Suzerain universe. IMO it is better than the base game, and I am eagerly awaiting for more content (possibly a DLC involving an operation against Smolak, I hate that guy)