I played a few hours of this the other day, and I have to say I am kind of disappointed.
I've never played a previous Democracy game, so I'm not sure how they compare, but I find the game to be quite unrealistic and lacking in depth.
For example, at the beginning of the game, you choose from a list of several countries to start with. However, all this seems to affect is the starting stats, like I guess your GDP pool.
I choose Canada, but there is nothing to really indicate that I am playing as Canada after the fact. The laws that you start with don't even seem to properly reflect the country I am playing. For example, marijuana was legalised at the start of the game, even though it is not legal in Canada.
As for how unrealistic the game is, my credit rating went from AAA to a B, after like only a years time, because I was running a budget deficit of something like 2~3 billion dollars each quarter. I didn't realise country's credit ratings dropped just for having small budget deficits? And so significantly at that? In reality Canada has run a deficit of over 20 billion dollars the last 5 years, and yet the last time I checked our credit rating is still AAA...
Another thing is the laws you enact. Mandatory military service has support from like 50% of the country. In Canada. That's ridiculous. Many other laws were like that too, even some having as high as 98%.
The game is called democracy, yet there are no real politics going on. There are opposition parties (apparently) but there is never any question period, there is never debates with other parties of things, it's like they don't exist and I just do whatever I want. I made abortion illegal. I made marijuana illegal. I raised the drinking age to 21. I cut back the amount of money people get on maternity leave by half. I installed mandatory military service for a year in the country. And yet 72% of the country approves of me and would vote for me in the next election? Pretty ridiculous I must say, and not a very realistic government simulator.
There were also lots of minor things that annoyed me. Like when you are choosing a country why is France the only one that has a population growth stat on the summary screen? Why is the big mac index only given for a few countries? Or how I would get a message that said "A pipeline has been attacked in a neighbouring country". The only real neighbouring country is the US, why not at least make me feel a little bit like I'm playing the country I selected? Or at the start of the game 41% of the population would vote for me in the next election, so the game calls this poor and casts doubt on whether I would win. I didn't realise this was a 2 party system? 41% of the vote is pretty much a majority government here.
I understand the game is likely low budget and all, but I wish they would've put a bit more effort into making the game realistic.
