izigame.me

As I started the game I was hoping that I would get to decide about the fate of my new country at my own pace and be more involved in building it from the ground up. I expected to see things like stats, skill-trees, and general outlines of what diplomacies I have available, as well as some general gameplay tools with which to keep things interesting and have some way to express my own style of gameplay. It held my attention for one solid playthrough and it was quite enjoyable, but if we're being honest it is a very bare-bones visual novel political thriller with no actual gameplay substance.
This is a game that is stuck somewhere between Papers Please, political sim and visual novel but is not nearly as exciting as it could potentially be while not really excelling in anything. There is no strategy or planning ahead, but mostly passing your so-called turn reacting to situations as they arrive and guessing at your dialog choices hoping they will have the effect you actually want. I have parameters like personal wealth, country's wealth/debt and economy, but there is no real explanation as to what any of them do, what influences them, what I can do to change them or when I will have the chance to raise them. I have my cabinet, political party and it's members, so I would at least hope to be able to speak to them at my leisure or change them as I see fit. I can have debt for example, but I have no way to see the actual money value of it or when it is beginning to be too much. Is -5 too much debt, or is it -10 before we go into depression? The economy stat is even worse because it is just a coloured bar that goes from red to yellow to green to indicate how well it is doing, meaning what exactly? How is this going to help me decide if it is safe to spend government money or not, and by how much? I only have the occasional newspaper blurb or random area report to give me a vague idea of what to expect, but it is not nearly enough to make an informed decision.
Checking up on these basic things which you would expect to easily find in a stat menu at your leisure at any time can only happen during the game's glacially slow story pace and only if you have been given the dialog choice to ask about it, which from a gameplay standpoint is incredibly annoying and counterintuitive, not only because it happens randomly and is beyond your control, but because even then it is incredibly vague and has almost no informational value whatsoever. There isn't even any dialog record to go back to in-between turns to cross-check your information or make notes about them later, whatever notes you are expected to jot down has to happen immediately so good luck trying to identify and remember what information is useful or not. The codex is also borderline useless because while it can identify names, it is useless for finding abbreviations and political lingo, which are used and are referenced to often IN THE GAME ITSELF.
On a first playthrough it is impossible to know exactly what choices will lead to what if your main goal is a communist dictatorship, for example. There is no way to predict, influence or delay any events as they come up, beyond blindly guessing if you should invest in healthcare or education and hoping that the story accommodates your choices. Instead it looks like you will need multiple playthroughs of tediously clicking through massive walls of text in a process of trial-and-error as you search and experiment with what choices influence what, and even then it is mostly guesswork because, as previously stated, there is absolutely no numbers to reliably crunch or gameplay to interact with. This process would be markedly improved by including even the most basic gameplay elements like gameplay tools, stats, skill-trees and strategy.
The game is obviously designed around the world-building and story and to be played multiple times, all of this on the bold assumption that I find it interesting enough to read all there is to know about it... which I unfortunately don't. It is also extremely un-replayable in one other regard due to how much MANUAL blind clicking you have to go through while simultaneously remembering where you are in the story or if you are even picking any new dialog options along the way. Visual novels have had the foresight to at least include a fast-forward button that stops at decisions and dialogs you haven't yet seen for just such occasions, and this has been standard practice for YEARS. Not acknowledging this is amateurish work at best and re-inventing the wheel at worst.
For all of it's flaws I can see what the developers we're going for, a plot-driven and character focused game of political intrigue where you are the president, but made to be a puppet and figure-head. Most of your decisions are made for you, and there is no telling what effects your decisions will have as you fumble in the dark for a choice which at the time felt right. Even if the gameplay falls flat on it's face, I can understand the political message it is trying to convey, that is assuming that this was intentional and that I am not giving the game too much credit by reading in to it too much.
Yet the fact that this game is a glorified visual novel without ANY changes to background art beyond the beginning and end of the game is inexcusable. How is it possible that the codex has different pictures of cities and flags attached with it's information, but I can't get a token background change to a kitchen or living room as I interact with my family? How is it possible that the map of the game has some slick graphical effects and 3D models on the table, yet for huge events such as my re-election or world summit meetings I am STILL stuck staring at the same map and the same gray text window taking up most of my screen?
This game has potential and is worth one good playthrough, but is a one-trick pony which gives you the illusion with it's bells and whistles that it is more complex than it really is, and feels either rushed or incomplete. There is mountains upon mountains of text for every character, location, governmental body, political movement etc, but that's where most of the effort was allocated. It's even worse how even this is just wasted effort, because nothing in the codex is so critically important that you can't do without it. In Papers Please you need to rely on how well you organize the steadily increasing amount of documents while relying on your own precision and skill to spot forgeries, on top of making tough moral decisions. Suzerain unfortunately doesn't even come close to any of it, either due to lack of focus or the sheer scale of the project.
Overall it is a good attempt at a game, but far from finished. It is a shame because I really tried to like it, but it is a disappointment in so far that it showed a lot of promise but failed to deliver. As I was playing I had these constant nagging thoughts in my head about how much more enjoyable certain aspects of the game could be if they had just been improved and polished a little bit more, and how easy it would have been. Most of what the game has to offer can literally be either read as a transcript via a walkthrough guide or watched as a gameplay video and you wouldn't miss out on anything, which is absolutely pathetic.
I essentially bought myself an e-book with fancy covers, which is puzzling because the start-up and loading screens take 5 minutes to get going. Just what is it even loading, for god's sake? Consider me bamboozled, but that's all you will ever get out of me from this point forward.