Republic: The Revolution Video Game Review

The cover of Republic: The Revolution proudly boasts a "Best of E3 2003: Strategy" award from GameSpy. Let me set one thing straight right now, that is the ONLY award this game will be winning. I normally don't go straight into talking about the game in the first paragraph, but this isn't a normal game. It has a lot of potential but it has a lot of flaws that hold it back from being a great game.

There was a lot of hype built up around Republic in the months prior to its release. It is a different kind of strategy game. It involves using Actions (which are exactly what they sound like) to change the opinion of the world around you. Basically, the country the game is based in, Novistrana, is in chaos. A corrupt president is in office and it is your job to start a revolution however you want to. Seems like an interesting idea, and it would have been very good if the game had its flaws ironed out.

This game has a ton of upsides and downsides to it. The game takes quite a while to understand all of the controls and actions and the lack of a detailed in game tutorial makes it a lot harder to understand. In fact, it really seems as if Eidos purposely made the game ridiculously hard to understand. A very brief and not helpful manual, a tutorial that doesn't even help, characters that don't even speak English and there are no subtitles, etc. It just feels as if Eidos put no effort into the game. How can a gamer get into the game if he or she has no clue what is even going on?

So now you understand that the game is very vague on the details. Alright then. Still interested though? Well, the controls aren't easy either. The camera angle is pretty crappy and takes a while to completely get used to it. Of course, you will only use it when viewing things on street level and as you go on you will find yourself just playing the game from the "Satellite" (overall map) view more often anyway.