The first glance at Democracy 3 can cause an immediate "it's too complicated" reaction, but the well-designed interface enables a fairly quick understanding of how to manage the policies required to create your own personal political utopia. For those that are into this kind of thing, Democracy 3 is a great way to test pet political theories in a (mostly) consequence-free way.
Political simulations are not everybody's cup of tea, but this one goes down smoothly. It'll show you how hard it is to please citizens so they don't run you out of office. [Issue#236]
Though, not for everyone. It is a complex and wonderfully fun game with a great modding community. It has a complex yet simple layout with each country having very different qualities, I'd recommend it for those who love politics or elections. It does need to be harder though.
great game, tons of depth, very interesting to find yourself passing laws and changing policies that at the start you swore you would never do :D Its very welcome to see indie devs making games like this which you know EA or the other big companies would never touch. Definitely recommended.
Democracy 3 is a pure management game that needs almost no graphic to entertain the player. But under the tons of statistics the gameplay is too simple and the Steam Workshop integration is the only real improvement over previous chapters.
Democracy 3 is a title with a very interesting level of complexity but many important aspects are left unsaid. Though it has evolved since its second installment it forgot to include some elements that would have made the game a really complete political simulator. Its excessive standardization relegates the game with a choice for casual entertaining and it will be difficult to explode this Positech Game's proposal for long. Once corrected its technical mistakes and when the mods start to rise, we may be able to take this game to a higher, different level.
The idea is great, the realization not so. Democracy 3 fails to portray the nuanced inner workings of a democratic government, instead presenting the player with a sort of strategical puzzle that can and must be solved in a clear way.
If you’re already a fan of the series, it’s impossible to recommend a bare-bones expansion like this at its current price point. If you’re not… well, I have a hard time imagining that you’d enjoy the third installment at all.
Great fun, I thought the game was cool BEFORE I realised there was a political compass built into it. Now I'm having a pretty amusing battle with some steam friends seeing who can win an election as far to the left or right as possible. So far my skills as a communist outweigh my skills as a fascist. I think once modders have really got going with adding extra policies it will be better still. It's not a cheap game, but given the hours I've spent playing it, I've easily got my moneys worth from it already :D
I really wanted to slam Democracy 3 and label it as nothing more than having a left wing bias but on further thought I’m not sure if I can or if that even matters. Here is the story of one of my reigns as Prime Minister of Canada:
I am in power for over 20 years. I give the people everything they want to the max in terms of government funded education; government funded university; max funding to libraries, police, jails; subsidies to every sector you can imagine; legalized drugs, prostitution and gambling, etc. By the end of the 20 years I win every election with 96% of the vote each time. It doesn’t seem to matter to the people that we are $1.4 trillion in debt, have a deficit of $100 billion per quarter and are heading for the brink of destruction. This all with an income tax rate of 55%, corporate tax at 25%, sales tax at 20%, a gas tax, capitol gains tax, etc.
Now for the flip-side I tried a more libertarian approach, still had all of the personal freedoms as before but taking out the government funding to all that I could. I also reduced the income tax from 55% down to 20%; reduced the corporate tax from 25% to 10%; abolished the gas tax, tobacco tax, alcohol tax, capital gains tax, inheritance tax and had plans to reduce the income tax further. We had $100 billion in reserves and had a surplus of $10 billion per quarter after just five years. I lost the election only getting 2% of the vote.
I tried playing as Australia, The United States and Germany having similar results with all three. Now my first thought was that this game just loves left wing socialist policies but then I got thinking maybe it was trying to make a statement about how dumb the average voting public is. I could certainly agree if it was. I then thought that maybe the moral of the game was that it isn’t your job as leader to do a “good job” but to get elected. A grim and cynical view but one that has some truth to it. I could easily win the game and continue to get elected if I pushed aside my personal views on politics and policy and went with what would garner votes. In the end maybe it doesn’t matter. If you enjoy simulation games and have an interest in politics you will surely find some value in Democracy 3. You may want to turn off assassinations as it is next to impossible to not get killed within 5-10 years by some group you have angered. This being said you have a good amount of options you can tweak such as political apathy, natural disasters and citizen views. You can also enact a good amount of policies as well as adjust a lot of different taxes. You can play pretty much any way you want to, or try to anyway. There are a decent amount of countries to play as and the difference is mainly what the laws and policies you start out with as well as the makeup of the population. I disagree with certain consequences that policies have such as legalizing drugs increases organized crime. That makes no sense as that takes business away from organized crime.
I played Democracy 3 on Linux. It never crashed on me. There is a manual save option allowing you to save whenever you want. Alt-Tab didn’t work while playing. While playing the game my system used 525MB of VRAM, 2% of my CPU and 2.3GB of system RAM. I was playing version 1.30.2 that I got from GOG.
It is easy to get bogged down in a political debate with the game but at the end of the day it is solid fun and most of it’s issues I had with it such as the assassinations and the policy consequences. Many of these issues can be side stepped such as turning assassinations off and other things such as the prostitution issue are just a personal belief that is what it is. Once you set aside your personal beliefs and just work within the game rules it can be fun.
My Score: 7/10
My System:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 19.1.3 | Samsung 850 Evo 250GB | Manjaro 18.0.4 | Mate 1.22.1 | Kernel 5.2.4-1-MANJARO
It's entertaining.. for a bit... but scores low on replayability to be honest.
Get it for a couple of dollars, if anything, but with pretty much zero international relations, quite a few unrealistic policies and simple gameplay, it's barely better than a web app to score your political standing.
I believe there is an inherent grandeur in politics, weither your are engaged in promoting ideas and values, or a simple citizen making sure the government makes the right choice on important issues, with you vote, your voice or your feet.
Democracy 3 turns that picture into dull accounting, making the reelection your sole goal, and insidiously validating the fact that it's good to compromise with you opponents to gain a share of the votes, and take advantage of people's values and commitment to fool them.
This game does not hide the fact being reelected will be hard and you will suffer. In fact, your eyes bleed at the very moment you see the general view and your policies. No scaffolding or ramp-up here. You don't start locally, lobby for one issue, push a particular law and move your way up to the top House of Cards style ; without the sex and murders. No, you are already in the President's shoes, knee-deep in a maze of interconnected and complex "stuff".
I understand this is a clear choice from the developers, and even if I formely enjoyed the idea of playing Democracy 3, it was the fastest disappointment I ever had in games.
Hopefully, real democracy can be experienced in the real world, so you can pass this game without regrets.
SummaryHave you ever wanted to be president? or prime-minister? Convinced you could do a better job of running the country? Let's face it, you could hardly do a worse job than our current political leaders.
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