Suzerain's facade is very good. A beautiful map, a 4X-style UI, some resources to manage and distribute and pages upon pages of deepest lore and people to keep pleased. The further you get into the game, and especially on repeat playthroughs, the cracks in the veneer show hard, and it will dawn on you at some point - this game is way closer to a dating sim Visual Novel than any 4X thingy.
Suzerain is just text choices and basically nothing else, where you basically balance relationships, constantly doing everything you can to make the waifus of you preference back you. And by waifus i mean the oligarchs or the old faithful.
And viewed in that light, Suzerain is really dull. When you get past the awesome conceit of the game and the occasional cool things you can do, it mostly consists of endless, endless text boxes of slightly meaningful decisions punctuated by the occasional chance to drastically change the land in one swoop.
Though probably the main problem is the writing. For a game which is so text heavy it's characters are so stock and one-note it verges on parody. This isn't helped by there being so damn many and almost none of them getting a scene solely dedicated to themselves, but when the Vice President character does get a bit of that time and has no character traits beyond "Adulterer" and "Alcoholic", and he's the most well rounded of the cast, there's an issue.
And you will spend like 90% of your time in the game in endless meetings with these boring people making decisions which might eventually add up to something but probably not. All of this with extremely minimal artwork, and clicking between the 5 different places on the map the game lets you because it wants to pretend its a strategy game still.
The way choices are dealt with suzerain is very frustrating. The game follows a general order of events no matter what you do, which is not the best thing in the first place, with some slight weaves around this core line depending on whether you go full facist or not. This both really restricts how far the political stuff really lets you go (no matter how hard you try you can't really make any revolution happen in anything other than "we'll do it soon!"), but also feeds into that good old choice-game problem where one choice near the endgame can just take you wildly off course because the game still needs to have 9 endings. So near the endgame you can get some severe whiplash when one aspect of the story you've built up essentially railroads you and there's no way out.
If you go to war, for instance - that defines your run. Every other aspect of government ceases to matter and your policies and politics have no more bearing on the plot besides how much attention you paid to millitary waifu. And you'll get one of 2 endings from that point onward depending on whether you win or not.
Suzerain feels like a game that should have fallout style endings - reflecting on how each of your decisions effected different people, countries, branches. But it's not. And the more I reflect on it and the potential it had, the more it infuriates me.
It's all a facade. Those beautiful moments at the start of the game where you're watching the meters and going through the codex and making rational decisions thinking it will all add up - they end up meaning fuck all.
If the writing and story was good, I could easily forgive it. But when that facade crumbles there's nothing left to Suzerain.
Suzerain is just text choices and basically nothing else, where you basically balance relationships, constantly doing everything you can to make the waifus of you preference back you. And by waifus i mean the oligarchs or the old faithful.
And viewed in that light, Suzerain is really dull. When you get past the awesome conceit of the game and the occasional cool things you can do, it mostly consists of endless, endless text boxes of slightly meaningful decisions punctuated by the occasional chance to drastically change the land in one swoop.
Though probably the main problem is the writing. For a game which is so text heavy it's characters are so stock and one-note it verges on parody. This isn't helped by there being so damn many and almost none of them getting a scene solely dedicated to themselves, but when the Vice President character does get a bit of that time and has no character traits beyond "Adulterer" and "Alcoholic", and he's the most well rounded of the cast, there's an issue.
And you will spend like 90% of your time in the game in endless meetings with these boring people making decisions which might eventually add up to something but probably not. All of this with extremely minimal artwork, and clicking between the 5 different places on the map the game lets you because it wants to pretend its a strategy game still.
The way choices are dealt with suzerain is very frustrating. The game follows a general order of events no matter what you do, which is not the best thing in the first place, with some slight weaves around this core line depending on whether you go full facist or not. This both really restricts how far the political stuff really lets you go (no matter how hard you try you can't really make any revolution happen in anything other than "we'll do it soon!"), but also feeds into that good old choice-game problem where one choice near the endgame can just take you wildly off course because the game still needs to have 9 endings. So near the endgame you can get some severe whiplash when one aspect of the story you've built up essentially railroads you and there's no way out.
If you go to war, for instance - that defines your run. Every other aspect of government ceases to matter and your policies and politics have no more bearing on the plot besides how much attention you paid to millitary waifu. And you'll get one of 2 endings from that point onward depending on whether you win or not.
Suzerain feels like a game that should have fallout style endings - reflecting on how each of your decisions effected different people, countries, branches. But it's not. And the more I reflect on it and the potential it had, the more it infuriates me.
It's all a facade. Those beautiful moments at the start of the game where you're watching the meters and going through the codex and making rational decisions thinking it will all add up - they end up meaning fuck all.
If the writing and story was good, I could easily forgive it. But when that facade crumbles there's nothing left to Suzerain.