Suzerain

Suzerain is a very mixed experience. On the positive side the world you occupy is incredibly immersive: The dialogue is brilliant, the political landscape is believable, the characters are interesting, the histories of the countries, region, people, organisations are all very detailed and realistic. This is the true beauty of the game and it really is an impressive achievement. I grew to love Sordland and was genuinely emotionally invested in the plot. On the negative side, although I learned a lot about political systems, I'm not sure I actually had much fun at any point during my 30hr first play-through... It often felt like a second job and as I got further through the experience I couldn't really tell whether or not the events were just a pre-determined story playing out or if my choices actually mattered. The 'game' seems to be a kind of hidden mechanic system/ puzzle that you can't reasonably solve with the information given to you, although the extensive 'Codex', info panels and newspaper articles are truly vast and I made sure to thoroughly read and contemplate every last shred! It often felt like, in retrospect, monumental decisions weren't presented as such and vice versa. It feels like a game that is perhaps intended to be replayed in order to figure out the optimum path but I wouldn't score the replayability particularly highly at all, as the player has to skip through walls and walls of text in order to get to the interesting decisions. Upon reflection, I think the game presents itself as something it perhaps isn't - it is less 'a strategy game where your leadership style, philosophy, morals and decisions' really feel like they make any kind of difference and more of 'figure out the hidden successful choices that you can't possibly know without either luck or trial-and-error'; maybe that is my fault and I went in with the wrong expectations but I strongly feel that a large part of it is the way the game presents itself and builds the premise from the start. There were a couple of significant events in the game where I didn't feel that the way they unfolded were realistic or representative of my actions... They left me in a state of bemusement. I think maybe this was the intent of the game designers as I appreciate that real-life politics can be like this but I personally struggle to understand this approach and find it quite unsatisfying and flawed for a game design. I think my overriding sentiment for this game is disappointment at what it could have been and ultimately I judge a game on the way it makes me feel overall - this game left me feeling confused, betrayed, bewildered, perplexed, tired, frustrated and incredulous. I'm not particularly interested in finishing another play-through (although I did start one and got to chapter 2) as I feel it won't be satisfying and will more likely frustrate me further - I'm not particularly interested in doing several trial-and-error run-throughs to figure out where and what the secret fire extinguisher is to put out the largely mysterious fire. 4/10.