The story behind the game is very simple and to the point. You live in the ex-Soviet country of Novistrana ruled by a corrupt president who just so happened to kill your parents when you were a child. You have grown up vowing revenge and have decided the best way to do this is create your own political faction to oppose him. From there on it’s up to you how you proceed. Do you want to remove him democratically? Form a business empire to help you rise to power? Or simply become a dictator yourself and overthrow him in a bloody rebellion?
You start off the game in the small town of Ekaterine. After completing a series of objectives you get given the option to move on to the next city or remain in the current city a while longer to bolster up more support (which will help you have more resources in the next city if successful).
The complicated bit
So, how do you get support in a city? You see the game is split into three separate ideologies; Force, Influence and Wealth. Each faction’s philosophy is a combination of all three ideologies, which is shown as a pie-chart. A dictator for example would have mostly force (Red) in their chart, with very little wealth (Yellow) or influence (Blue). A democratic politician would have mostly influence in their chart, with a bit of wealth and very little force. A capitalist business tycoon will have mostly wealth in their pie-chart etc. I’m sure you understand.
What your own party ideology will be is determined by 1) Your choices in a questionnaire at the beginning of the game and 2) Your subsequent actions in game.
To sway the public support on your side you must perform actions (like poster campaigns, rallies, vandalism etc.) in different districts around the city. Each action requires a number of resource points to work. However, unlike other RTS strategy games resources are not physical things like money or natural resources that you gather up, it’s public support.
Each district in a city also has a particular preferred ideology, and these are separated into the 3 ideologies listed above. Run-down slum areas for example will have force ideologies primarily while wealthy districts will clearly have a strong wealth ideology leaning, and commercial business districts will fall into the influence category. Now, for every district you have active support for your faction you’ll get more resource points every gaming day to perform more actions the next.
For instance, if you had 50% of the population behind you in a wealth district worth 50 wealth points, at the beginning of the next game day you’ll get 25 points in wealth to your cause because half the population of that district supports you.
Now it sounds a little complicated I know, but after a (real) day or two it does make perfect sense. Essentially support in a district leads to more resource points which in turn means you can perform more actions to gain more support elsewhere, which in due course leads to you taking over the country.
Actions
These ‘actions’ you can perform using the resource points are determined by the ideologies of your main character (the avatar) and the ideologies of the inner circle members you recruit to your political faction.
Those who are force orientated (yeah, I know it sounds like Star Wars) will have actions governed by that ideology like beating people up, assassinating people, oppressing people etc. Those who are influence orientated will use rallies, speech and campaigning to win people over. While those are wealth orientated will impress, bribe, and cheat their ways to the top. The number of actions a person can perform is decided by his particular experience level. As the game goes on you therefore get new actions, which keeps you interested as you progress.
These actions are contemplated and ordered on a top down map of the playing area, by which the player points and clicks on the chosen district with the selected action you want to perform. You then have the option of watching the action unfold in 3D close-up, or continuing scheduling orders on the map for the following days.
Unfortunately you have no direct control on these events as they unfold. This is perhaps the biggest disappointment I found, and certainly wasn’t what I expected the game to be (and I imagine what many others would think when looking on the box). What many will expect when they see the nice 3D visuals is that you can run around in third person conducting these actions ala GTA3. This sadly is not the case.
Yes, you can float around with the camera, but ultimately you’re just observing. This is another test on whether you’ll like Republic, as many action junkies will not want to take an observing role.
