Fun for the first hour or two but becomes very repetative very fast. There isn't a lot of thinking involved besides spam the same few buttons and watch the numbers go up. Some automation in the mechanics would help a lot imo. More of a meme game then anything else if you ask me.
+Good for memorizing province names. Somewhat good for getting a glimpse into geography but you can do that easily through google as well so, you decide on if this is praise or not.
+The first few hours can be enjoyable, especially after you become president and handle some events. But thats where it ends.
-After that first few hours, after that first "oh its a brand new game, brand new mechanics" after that feeling wears off, the game becomes incredibly boring and repetative. Spam the same few buttons, go to the next turn, watch the numbers go up, spam buttons, next turn, numbers go up... Even becoming president and being popular enough to become the president again and again, election after election... You just don't feel anything. Still spamming the same few buttons...
-The UI is not great. Especially the background for the... Parties menu I think it was. Its a lot of colorful shapes moving quite fast in the background and I just hate looking at it. Some of the other menus aren't great either, I'm not sure why I have a terrain map mode in a game where terrain means nothing. Or alternatively, when I look over at Syria why is the default map mode the terrain map mode which is again useless and the other map mode when you're looking at Syria is a colored map mode showing you which faction (Syria, Turkey, YPG) has control of what province within Syria. Thats the only useful map mode when you're looking at them, why is it not the default?! You can't rearrange or set defaults yourself so you make do with what the game gives.
-Music is repetative. Mindless... Endless...
-There is an EU, NATO (called something else in game for some reason?) and international relationships/aggrements mechanic. They all seem pretty useless, you don't do much with them and they don't have much of an effect either. Some buttons literally say work in progress, I have no clue why the game doesn't include an early access warning cuz I feel like we're in early access territory with buttons like that.
-The achievements seem a little bugged. When you're president, one of your events is about recognizing or not recognizing the Armenian Genocide. I chose to recognize it, I got an achievement that said "we've agreed to protect the EU by letting refugees into our borders" I don't think thats what we did. I think that was bugged.
-On the top left of your screen, you'll get notifications in between turns. Some of these can be turned off, some cannot. You have to look at them before you can move onto the next turn and a lot of them are just the same useless thing about some party teaming up with another party which you can happily ignore. Unfortunately, the game will not let you ignore so you gotta click on it, read it, click ok, then you can end your turn. Very annoying.
-On the top of your screen, similar to what you'd find in other strategy games especially ones like Paradox's games, you'll have a lot of numbers and symbols. All of them are showing you some resource about your country. Research, military power, money... Here's the issue. You don't use these unless you're the president and even then it mainly happens through events. Events that stop appearing after some time, there's only a limited number it seems. Not only that but at the same time, you gotta memorize what these symbols mean, what resource the symbols are. When you don't have anything open on your screen, you can hover your mouse above them and there'll be a little pop up that tells you what that symbol is, what that resource is. When you do have something open on your screen, like for example an event where your decisions use these resources, you cannot hover your mouse above them anymore. The small box that tells you what that resource is, what that symbol means, that won't pop up anymore. So you gotta memorize the symbols so you can remember which one is what resource ahead of time before coming across an event when you're the president.
The elections themselves, getting popular in provinces, seeing the number go up is only fun for so long. After you become president, the events are fun but there isn't that many events so you're just back to clicking buttons mindlessly when you know you're gonna win the next election anyways. It feels as if the game wants to be a strategy game, giving you research (when there's no tech tree) and military counters (when you don't use armies yourself and its all just "I have 12 guys, you have 10 in this province in Syria haha I win, I have the province") but no real way to use either. More importantly, this doesn't effect your politics. Winning or losing a province in Syria means nothing. Its just a side game, a mini game for when you're bored of clicking the same few buttons in Turkey and you wanna click other buttons instead. Congrats, instead of clicking on 4-10 buttons in Turkey per turn, you're now ignoring that all together, the main portion of the game, and you're spamming 2-4 buttons in Syria instead which do not effect your votes back home. Why?? Anyways, fun for an hour or so but turns repetative very fast with little to do besides the same thing you were doing for those few hours. I suppose its a lil funny, democracy in Turkey and all, but its not worth trying. Its repetative, its unfinished and the mechanics feel very disconnected from one another.
