➤ Realpolitiks II, the review of a strategist who loses the elections 🎮

Realpolitiks had great ambitions, but too many flaws. On paper it was intended to be a grand strategy dedicated to soul and pixels simulate the complexity of the world of contemporary politics, but in practice it was a game with a cumbersome interface and really superficial mechanics, which after a few hours turned into an arms race to crush rival nations. There review di Realpolitics II it can therefore only begin by wondering if all these problems have been addressed and solved. Unfortunately the answer is no.

models

Jujubee, the developer, evidently has an idiosyncratic relationship with the genre grand strategy: on the one hand he seems to want to look at the classics of Paradox, but on the other he seems to fear complexity and tries in every way to simplify his games, even at the risk of watering them down. If we want with Realpolitiks II this is exactly what happened. The premises of the game are interesting: playing the role of a leader of the modern world who must make his nation dominant over all others. Now, it is not necessary to have studied political economy and game design to know that the theme is not easy to translate into a video game due to a thousand problems, first of all the difficulty of making the artificial intelligences of the various states interact with each other in order to make them seem likely, but we have several examples of successful games in this sense, first of all that absolute masterpiece of Crusader Kings III, which we can consider a real reference point for the entire genre. Unfortunately, Realpolitiks II does not even come close to it in its ability to propose a model of government that has plausible consequences for decisions often dictated by reason of state, but just as often by the individual traits of the rulers. Here, as in the first chapter, we practically always end up aiming to enlarge the army so as to be able to conquer all the opposing nations, with the remaining game systems that frame the military ones, in pursuit of yet another delirium of videogame omnipotence.

Game mechanics

Realpolitiks II, the review of a strategist who loses the elections — The combat system would be satisfying, were it not for the flaws of the interface

Yet on paper there are many things to do and consider: you need to have advisers, you can put pressure on parliament to push your agenda, there is a large diplomatic section, you can tighten alliances with other nations trying to reach a common goal, projects can be financed to improve the well-being of one's own nation, there is a commercial section to buy or sell the resources indispensable for development, spies have been improved which now truly represent a resource valuable for blackmailing allies and enemies and there are several other systems that give the illusion of being faced with a deeper game than it actually is.

The truth is, so many of Reakpolitiks II's features work pretty badly. Take diplomacy for example: foreign rulers seem to act randomly and uniformly, so much so that they appear to be a single artificial intelligence that rolls the dice for every decision. The domestic economy also has several problems, probably due to bugs. For example, playing we found ourselves with buildings that have literally disappeared, which have given a huge boost to our economy. Impossible to know what happened.

We are talking about bugs because reloading a previous save did not repeat the phenomenon. Another oddity: we found ourselves with building maintenance costs skyrocketing for no reason. Bug or did something happen that we didn't notice? Who can tell. The side too military suffers from many problems, especiallyinterface, the first of which is the movement of troops, which is really cumbersome. Things have improved slightly compared to Realpolitiks, but not as much as they should have. A few examples? The troops must be selected individually and cannot be grouped, or by zooming the map the units disappear and lose sight of each other. Given the importance of the military side, could not we work to make it more usable? There has been progress, both in the amount of troops and in the artificial intelligence that moves them, but the annoyances caused by the interface are really too many and make the entire combat system more complicated than it really is.

Bow

After all, the Jujubee title has so many bugs that it is often really difficult to play. While we were testing it for the review it crashed twelve times, so to speak. However, the bugs do not end there, because there are something for all tastes: from graphic glitches to erroneous descriptions of projects, passing through collapses of the framerate, even on very performing PCs (we tested it with a GeForce 3070), despite the graphics is really essential. You will therefore understand that the main problem of Reakpolitiks II is not so much that of not reaching the level of the Paradox titles or proposing a formula that is too simplified for a grand strategy, as an objective difficulty in allowing the player to start a game and finish it without incurring in strange situations. Too bad, because some things are done very well and the step forward compared to the first Realpolitiks is quite clear.

In particular the side of the Customization of the game is decidedly more accurate, between the unique characteristics of the advisors and project management, which on paper allow you to orient the type of government as you wish. Unfortunately, it is precisely the unexpressed potential that makes the judgment on the game more bitter, which fails to live up to its name and fails to transform itself into a lighter and more fun alternative to the typical heaviness of the genre, despite the depth of the background that characterizes it. .

Comment

Digital Delivery Steam Price 29,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

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Realpolitiks II is certainly not a treatise by Machiavelli transformed into a video game, even if at certain moments it would claim to be. The too many bugs and various problems told in the article, first of all a certain roughness of the interface, prevent it from standing out on the competition, which remains a couple of inches above. Too bad, because the good ideas are there and the road seems the right one, but the execution really leaves something to be desired. It will be for Realpolitiks III.