izigame.me

Hardly 3 hours in and I already sense a trend.
Played through a few scenarios and I can't say that I'm very much impressed.
Not a bad little title, but it has some serious, serious flaws.
While a fun little time waster that has you juggling plates, the disparity in difficulty is telling of the integral flaws in the game's design.
Your goal in the game is to make citizens happy, appeal to the global society for aid, stave off sociological negatives (corruption, inflation) which sour the pot of your benefits, balance your tight budget, and manage a full scale war.
In reality, the only thing that really matters is the war - the civilian sector is the extra step you need.
Basically - at its core, you start out with a health bar. When bad things happen, you lose health - when good things happen, you can gain a little bit too.
It's a war of attrition and, frankly, a contrived - nonsensical one at that.
Worse off - there's really only one correct way to play.
Start out: Cant build military, spend budget collecting intel and getting people their basic needs.
Try to find time to get a point or two into global aid/corruption suppression.
Never have less than $10 in your bank in case an emergency pops up.
After a few in-game months, insurgents will attack.
There is only one - ONE solution:
Train 1 Coalition troop (Foreign loaned ones), pour your funds into the green Locals.
Now, you have to balance your budget between boosting your green boys on the front lines and keeping citizens happy so you don't lose health.
Green Locals suck, take forever to train, and are super expensive. There are also a finite amount, No matter what, you will not have enough to beat the game with your own army.
Blue Coalition troops are the ONLY reliable way to defeat enemies at the start, and you really need them at the end to deal a killing blow to the enemies. They are not cheap. And are FINITE (You get about 5!)
However, they only stick around for a couple in game years, and then they request to leave.
If you need one of your 5 blue units, it will cost you A MASSIVE SUM OF HEALTH.
If you do not want to sacrifice your health to keep them - they leave FOREVER.
Even on Easy, you will see the problem.
Enemies become increasingly aggressive and powerful. Even when you beat them back and route their territory, a surprise army will sprout up out of nowhere with overwhelming force (And really for no reason)
Whenever they enter your territory, you lose health. The better your territory, the more health you lose.
If you give the enemy concessions to attain peace, you lose health.
Random event: you don't have enough money: You lose health.
Bad terrain: You lose health.
And this isn't a small sum of health.
On normal, you have 80 health to start,
If the insurgents spawn in the middle of nowhere, they can take 6 health.
But - oh no - your critical blue troopers that are holding the line as you train up your own reserves are about to self-delete... so you beg them to stay for 2 more years - wave goodbye to 9 health.
In a moment, you can lose 15 of your 80 health on what should be a routine aspect of the game, but it isn't.
Fighting the insurgency and bringing stability to the lands isn't so much a balancing act as much as it is the same tired practice thrown into the fray with random chance - and I do mean RANDOM.
Like... gamble the entire game on a 20% chance of failure level of random.
I can see what the appeal might be for some - it's a nearly impossible uphill battle that encourages planners and strategists to minmax and really force themselves to throw their weight behind the same tiny map for hours until they randomly get the chance to not die fast enough.
Even on easier difficulties, the game starts taxing your health - which is unbearably moronic.
"The people have lost faith in you and the project is ruined"
Bro - I just brought plumbing, education, robust healthcare reform, gender equality, jobs, banks, electricity, telecommunications, roads, highways, colleges, police, engineering networks, infrastructure, and mass vaccinations to the lands. Through political leverage I placed the location on the map of the world. For a decade I led a crusade against deadly insurgents, chasing them into the mountains time and time again. I routed out rampant corruption, lowered inflation, made countless jobs, provided a bastion of security - and raised an army that would make the international coalition proud.
-Random enemies spawn at the edge of a map and move to the town below before my troops arrive-
"The people have lost faith in your abilities GAME OVER"
It's contrived and inorganic.
I've played through about 10 scenarios, 4 of which were doomed attempts at Normal difficulty.
They're all the same - all trite - all predictable - all painfully languid.
I enjoyed moving my soldiers around and trying to make the best nation for my people, that much was fun.
But the elements of the story do their best to ruin the fun, and take whatever control you may have thought you had and throw it to random chance.
3.5/10
Rebel Inc: Escalation is a Flawed game.
It shines with the hope of a new dawn, but like its own balancing choices - it often runs out of steam before it can get you anywhere near satisfaction.
EDIT:
Because of comments, I want to clarify.
I do not find the game DIFFICULT.
The issues from the gameplay are not hard to overcome - it is simply repetitive and linear. While people want to say that I find the game lacking because of its difficulty, on the contrary - I find it to be an eloquent problem with a yawn educing solution.
In addition - Folks say that 2.3 hours is too short of a time to develop an opinion - but I played through OVER 8 scenarios in that time. It is more than enough to develop an idea of the core gameplay loop.