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Has anyone played Democracy 3? I found Democracy 2 relatively shallow and toy-like - the RockPaperShotgun "Wot I think" didn't make it Democracy 3 sound like a

by asb 13y ago

Has anyone played Democracy 3? I found Democracy 2 relatively shallow and toy-like - the RockPaperShotgun "Wot I think" didn't make it Democracy 3 sound like a significantly deeper experience http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/10/31/wot-i-think-democracy-3/ http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/10/31/wot-i-think-democ...

frozen_tomato 13y ago
Yes, I hadn't played Democracy 2, but I was going to buy Democracy 3 on a whim, instead when I found the high price I pirated it. I got well past the initial hour mentioned in the blog, but after about the third hour or so my interest waned, it is pretty shallow and to an extent just feels like you are 'playing' a spreadsheet with the occasional random value thrown in. I hope this doesn't sound too disparaging, since I did have fun for the four hours or so I played, but I wouldn't call it deep strategy at all, and I would have felt pretty let down if I'd paid full price for it.
chewxy 13y ago
I bought it. I couldn't get it to run on Linux so I spent a couple of hours on Valgrind figuring out what went wrong where. I finally gave up and figured out that all copies on Steam's servers were bad (they had some AU/NZ server issues back then I believe), so with some hackery I downloaded a previous version. I played it. It was great. But as the other commenter mentioned, it is pretty shallow. It's easy to "beat the game". The challenges come from one self though. For example, to win the game in any country except US, the easiest course is to direct that country to be a socialist utopia. One of the challenges I set myself to win was to make it a religio-anarchy type of of government. That's when the game gets fun IMO. Also, US is challenging no matter what your plans are.
vacri 13y ago
I have vague memories of trying the Democracy 1 demo, found it promising, buying the full game, and finding that the demo was basically 90% of the full game. No extra depth - and the demo by itself was shallow. I didn't bother with Democracy 3 because of this 'burn'.

by asb 13y ago

frozen_tomato 13y ago

Yes, I hadn't played Democracy 2, but I was going to buy Democracy 3 on a whim, instead when I found the high price I pirated it. I got well past the initial hour mentioned in the blog, but after about the third hour or so my interest waned, it is pretty shallow and to an extent just feels like you are 'playing' a spreadsheet with the occasional random value thrown in. I hope this doesn't sound too disparaging, since I did have fun for the four hours or so I played, but I wouldn't call it deep strategy at all, and I would have felt pretty let down if I'd paid full price for it.

chewxy 13y ago

I bought it. I couldn't get it to run on Linux so I spent a couple of hours on Valgrind figuring out what went wrong where. I finally gave up and figured out that all copies on Steam's servers were bad (they had some AU/NZ server issues back then I believe), so with some hackery I downloaded a previous version. I played it. It was great. But as the other commenter mentioned, it is pretty shallow. It's easy to "beat the game". The challenges come from one self though. For example, to win the game in any country except US, the easiest course is to direct that country to be a socialist utopia. One of the challenges I set myself to win was to make it a religio-anarchy type of of government. That's when the game gets fun IMO. Also, US is challenging no matter what your plans are.

vacri 13y ago

I have vague memories of trying the Democracy 1 demo, found it promising, buying the full game, and finding that the demo was basically 90% of the full game. No extra depth - and the demo by itself was shallow. I didn't bother with Democracy 3 because of this 'burn'.