Wonderful Wednesdays: Democracy 3 First Impressions (aka "Something something bubbles")

A review copy of Democracy 3 has been generously provided by Evolve PR.  The fact I got this for free does not, and never will influence what I say about the game or games below.

Welcome to Wonderful Wednesdays!  As promised last week, here are my first impressions of Democracy 3!

First off, you have an eerily accurate representation of various state governments, and you pick one, you set up the conditions for your win or loss along with the political affiliations, and then you’re thrust straight from the frying pan into the fire (I just started with the default conditions for my first game for what that is worth).  

First you’re greeted by a humorous line or two about the bad things politicians do in the loading screens (the loading screens are absolutely perfectly themed to the game, you guys), and then you get a lot of information about the state of the union to start off with. (The state of the union was pretty bad, with tons of crime problems and problems with the air quality.)

Then, after you’ve sufficiently gotten all the information you need, you are put into the main interface of Democracy 3. There are lots and lots of bubbles, so I was glad I had the tutorial enabled for this first playthrough; however, even then the tutorial barely covered the intricacies of this game.

Now, the idea of political capital to change things like subsidies, et al. is a great idea, but it just feels weird to play Democracy 3 with this and have barely any explanation in the in-game tutorial as to what to do.

Now there is one thing that I’d like to offer to Cliff Harris, the man behind Democracy 3, as a bit of constructive criticism here.  There are way, way too many nested menus, dialogue boxes, and the like, none of which actually tell me what I can do to fix (insert problem here).

By this I mean I was trying to fix the problem of pollution, but I kept clicking on things that took me to even more menus and I never felt like I was getting much of anywhere even then to curb that problem sufficiently.  Same with, of all the possible things, military spending.  It took me several in-game turns to curb military spending, and by then I was in deep debt trouble because I took so long to curb military spending. As a result, I intentionally kept some wildly unpopular policies with the rich guys in place so that my game would end early with an “assassination”.

However, on the whole, I think that this game is absolutely fantastic, and a truly eye-opening experience for me, because now I know way more about the intricacies of political dealings than I ever really wanted to know.  I think, if the price was right and with a few minor tweaks, like maybe a few more tool tips to explain what each new policy did in terms of effect and popularity with various groups without having to implement them (even if you CAN cancel for free), that this could be used for civics classes in high schools all over the country, and maybe even all over the world.

Democracy 3 is available now on GOG.com, Steam, and Cliff Harris’s own website, positech.co.uk for $24.99 or your regional equivalent.  The “Social Engineering” DLC expansion is another $4.99 or your regional equivalent on top of that, so if you like the idea of fixing problems using the populace then I say go for it.