Republic: The Revolution Review

By Rob Fahey Published 29 August, 2003

We left Rob in charge of his own country again. Oops!

Version tested: PC

Considering that the game is only hitting shelves in UK retailers today, it's quite amazing how much opinion among gamers is already polarised by Republic: The Revolution. In development for more years than we can care to remember, publicised with regular fawning articles in games magazines, and coming laden with some of the most extravagant promises about gameplay and graphics that any game has ever had to bear, Republic is a game which seems custom-made for reviewers to rip to shreds with sadistic glee - as some of them undoubtedly will. The question is, are they justified in doing so? Just how many of the outlandish claims made for Republic have turned out to be untrue - and stripped of the hype, is the game actually any good?

Power! Domination! Control!

'Republic: The Revolution' Screenshot 1

The basic principle behind Republic is actually quite a simple one; you play the leader of a revolutionary faction in the fictional Eastern European state of Novistrania, and must increase your power base by recruiting competent minions and sending them around performing a variety of tasks ranging from support-gathering political actions to violent or dirty tricks on your opponents.

Each city in the game is divided up into a number of districts, each of which has a unique set of values and demographics. The three basic resources and vital factors in the game are force, influence and wealth, and each district aligns itself through a division of these factors. Working class districts, for example, tend to be Force districts; prestige business areas align to Wealth. Your level of support among the people of a district (measured as a percentage) grants you a certain number of resource points from that district each day.

You then spend your resource points on a huge variety of actions which your lieutenants can carry out; vandalising the property of an enemy faction, for example, costs Force points, while destroying the reputation of one of the enemy lieutenants might cost Influence points. It's a system which takes a little bit of getting used to - and the game doesn't actually make it very obvious that this is how things work, unfortunately - but it's quite simple at heart and anyone who's played an even remotely complex tabletop game will settle into it with ease.

Sex Up Your Dossiers

'Republic: The Revolution' Screenshot 2

On top of this simple basis for the game is built a relatively complex set of additional layers. You also have to keep an eye on the loyalty and commitment of your lieutenants, persuade key community figures to aid your cause (through a bizarre sub-game which sees you allocating conversation "points" and playing them off against your opponents points - a bit like a Top Trumps card game, in effect) and maintain a balance between the need for publicity to drive popular support, and the need for secrecy to keep away from the watchful eyes of the government and your enemies.

All of this is achieved in broadly the same way - you set up tasks for your lieutenants to perform on a timeline (which looks suspiciously like a Microsoft Project layout, if you're familiar with that sort of thing), and they go off and do them. Tasks, people and vital locations are represented in icon form on top of a colourful map of the city districts, which also shows you your support levels and the activities of your enemies in each of the districts.

This gameplay mechanic would, quite probably, work very well in a free-form environment - however, Elixir have chosen instead to lead you through the game by the nose, with a sequence of mission objectives which you must achieve. Some people probably won't like this aspect of the game, but we felt that it gave the experience much-needed structure and a concrete set of goals to achieve - and to be fair, you are given a massive degree of freedom in between goals, and can go off and do whatever you like on the map before coming back and completing the objective in question.

The Buck Stops Here

'Republic: The Revolution' Screenshot 3

So far, so good - but sadly, while the core gameplay ideas behind Republic are solid (if very hardcore, much more so than even the most complex PC real time strategy game), the implementation of those ideas leaves a lot to be desired. The interface of the game is one of the most awkward, poorly thought out graphical interfaces we've ever had the displeasure of encountering, crammed as it is with a myriad of poorly labelled buttons and controls. Tooltips are occasionally helpful, but are often downright cryptic or simply missing entirely from the controls.

Even the help screens aren't shockingly, well, helpful when trying to work out what on earth is going on; sometimes actions fail for incredibly obscure reasons, and at that point your only recourse is to go and dig out the manual for the game and wade through acres of text to try and work out why. Some will disagree, but we're of the opinion that a game which forces you to read the paper manual in order to proceed is inherently flawed.

The other real problem here is the nagging feeling that Republic is a very simple game which has had layer upon layer of unnecessary complexity - both in terms of additional gameplay mechanics and hideously convoluted interface - have been heaped in order to make it all look more interesting. In ways this isn't a bad thing, and it does add much-needed variety to the game, but ultimately we still walked away from each marathon playing session with Republic feeling like we'd just spent hours dealing with the "civil unrest" bits of Civilization III - without any of the fun bits. This feeling is only enhanced by the fact that while the game is turn based (three turns a day, representing morning, afternoon and night), there's actually no apparent way to skip to the end of a turn - all you can do is speed up the clock fivefold, so if you're finished doing everything in a given turn, you still have to sit around until the end of that time period before doing anything else.

The Infinite Monkeys Engine

'Republic: The Revolution' Screenshot 4

Hang on, I hear you cry (this is a lie, but bear with me). Didn't Elixir bounce up and down about the amazing graphics that Republic would feature? The Infinite Polygon Engine, and all that twaddle? Why haven't you fawned over the graphics yet in this review, eh?

There's a simple reason for this; quite frankly, the graphics engine in Republic is the single most superfluous use of 3D graphics we've ever seen in a game. You spend practically the whole game in a zoomed out 2D mode, occasionally dropping in to the 3D city for a distressingly unskippable cutscene featuring badly animated characters speaking to each other in something that sounds like Russian recorded backwards (yes, there's no proper voice acting in the game), or to watch a special event in the game. Annoyingly, several actions can only be carried out in this 3D view - annoying because it's a complete pain to navigate due to some extremely odd camera controls and a general lack of useful icons on key buildings and so on.

Admittedly, it all looks quite pretty, and on a technical level we're quite impressed with the ability to load in a full-size city and let you zoom around without any further load delays. However, for an engine which has been under development for so long, there are some unforgivable bugs - in one early cutscene, the whole front of a building "pops" from being a single badly textured polygon into a full-resolution model while you're not more than 30 yards away from it, and many of the cutscenes and city zones in the game chug horribly even on a high spec machine (we tested Republic on an Athlon XP 1800+ system with a GeForce 4 Ti4600 and 1Gb of RAM - frankly we don't expect to see massive slowdown when the game puts five characters on screen at once on a rig like that).

Championship Politician?

We're sure that the tech used in Republic is quite good in some respects, and we'll be interested to see what Elixir's next project, Evil Genius, does with the same technology. However, in this game all it serves to do is prove that Championship Manager has the right idea - if you're going to make a complex management simulation, give it an interface which is suited to handling masses of statistics and information in a competent way. Republic would quite probably work excellently as a well-implemented "spreadsheet" style game; the 3D element is worse than pointless, and just gets in the way of the gameplay.

That being said, Republic is actually quite entertaining in a way which will appeal to the "beard and sandals" contingent of PC gamers. It's effectively a quite competent tabletop game translated into PC form - you can see heavy influences from something like Risk being thrown into the mix. It's certainly a game that you can get deeply involved with for several hours if you've got nothing better to do - but the extravagant claim that this is a game you'll be playing for the rest of your life is one we don't see any evidence for here.

If you love hardcore simulation titles like Master of Orion, then this political version of Championship Manager may be for you. If you get heavily into games of Risk, then you may well enjoy Republic. However, don't be fooled by the screenshots or the hype; this is a slightly above average political simulation title which would have probably worked better as a board game than as a videogame, shackled down with a 3D engine that serves no useful purpose and is almost entirely non-interactive. If all that was attracting you was the promise of infinite polygons or of innovative gameplay, our best advice would be to steer well clear.

6 / 10

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About Rob Fahey

Read more articles from Rob by visiting the Rob Fahey archive page.

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Comments (56) Latest comment 9 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • dstarr78 #1 9 years ago

    Has anyone in the UK actually got their hands on this game?

    Seems that no-where I've tried has it in :(

  • lennon #2 9 years ago

    yup came this morning just about to give it a whirl

  • Errol #3 9 years ago

    6. lol.

    Infinite polygon engine my arse.

  • dstarr78 #4 9 years ago

    darn - where did you order it from?

  • Blerk #5 9 years ago

    Having read various reviews of this, I can't help wondering what all the hype was about? It just sounds... rubbish. And is, judging by the scores.

  • ssuellid #6 9 years ago

    So the infamous 3d engine that has been hyped to hell is not actually used much? lol. When it first appeared in Edge it sounded really ambitious and promising - looks like they could not do it all.

  • Rizo #7 9 years ago

    I was going to buy this after work now I don't know what do to :(

  • UncleLou #8 9 years ago

    You spend practically the whole game in a zoomed out 2D mode

    Wouldn't it have made sense then to show some screenies of this mode instead of the superfluous 3d-mode? :p

    Just nitpicking, Rob, good review, will save me a few Euros!

  • #9 9 years ago

    "beard and sandals"

    bit embarrassed to admit that i'll be checking this out. what about you uncle lou?

  • UncleLou #10 9 years ago

    Tbh, I don't think I'll buy it now that I've read a few reviews. It's not that I am not still interested generally, but I just bought a few games, and together with EVE, my upcoming holidays and HL2 thereafter (hopefully), I just wouldn't know when to play it anyhow.

    I hope they make a demo though, I'd love to at least try it out.

    edit: I just thought my "will save me a few Euros" comment might have been wrong. I meant "I'll save money cause I probably won't buy it", not "I'll save up some money to buy it." Damn English. :-)
    Edited by 1 at 29/08/03 @ 14:54

  • FWB #11 9 years ago

    If you love hardcore simulation titles like Master of Orion, then this political version of Championship Manager may be for you.

    Yes I do. I think I'll check this out... at some point. Considering I wouldn't even be able to make use of the 3D view on my machine its probably just as well that you don't have to rely on it.

  • Tricky #12 9 years ago

    Actually Lou, "will save me a few euros" clearly and consisely indicated what you meant to me. And anyway, never mind "damn English"; what about German (which is a language I enjoyed learning and actually don't mind that much before you get too offended), where you have more than one word for "the"? And who on earth decided that a car was neutral, a cat was female and pen was male? Huh? Huh?

    Edit: not that those examples are specific to any worry of my own, they're just the first ones that came to mind when considering der, die and das. (or das, die and der if we're going by the order I put them in)
    Edited by 2 at 29/08/03 @ 15:06

  • Shinji #13 9 years ago

    FWB - I should probably have pointed out in the review (but ain't the comments system a wonderful thing!) that although the 3D view is superflous to the gameplay in every way, you do sadly have to use it quite often. For example, the conversation system - a sub-game which is entirely based on allocating numbers to cards and playing them against each other, and which could be done on text-mode telnet - insists on showing you 3D footage of the two people involved in the conversation, which can REALLY make your machine stutter. Viewing an enemy action, even though the actions are marked on the 2D map, forces you to go to 3D mode, locate a little rotating icon, and click on it to select a response (again, something which could be done over a telnet interface).

    It really does feel like they built a game that didn't need a 3D engine, and then went "but we spent YEARS making this engine! We have to find a way to force people to look at it! Isn't it pretty!"...

  • FWB #14 9 years ago

    Arhh, ok, thanks for the heads-up. Can I assume you can't turn down settings on the 3D engine (or at least it doesn't really make much of a difference)? I'm still interested but I think I'll have to use Game's return policy for this one.

    If all that was attracting you was the promise of infinite polygons or of innovative gameplay, our best advice would be to steer well clear.

    So the gameplay really isn't anything different? I'm not expecting groundbreaking, but at least not MOR.

  • UncleLou #15 9 years ago

    lol, I rather meant "My damn English". Damn English. :p

    I take it you know Mark Twain's The Awful German language?

    And of course a cat's female, a car neutral and, first and foremost, a pen male! What else should they be? English is the one-button mouse of languages!
    Edited by 1 at 29/08/03 @ 15:13

  • FWB #16 9 years ago

    English is the one-button mouse of languages!

    Ooo. Them be fighting words. Quite the insult you've thrown there. :)

  • FWB #17 9 years ago

    Russ, Russ, Russ.

    /Shakes head

    Where do I start?

  • UncleLou #18 9 years ago

    *grins*

    Nice one russ, you're dead right there on the Mafia issue, and you couldn't have chosen a better nickname, a better place and a better time to post this.

    (russ, be informed that FWB on the one hand and a few other regulars on the other hand have dissenting opinions on Mafia. Just an explanation, so it doesn't sound too insider-like.)

    *still grinning*

    And no, I am not russ.

  • lost_soul #19 9 years ago

    Mafia = great game.

    FWB = clueless n00b.

  • Singularity #20 9 years ago

    Well a cat is slinky - female, a pen is phallic - male, and a car, err, has a neutral gear. As long as it's not automatic.

    I'll get my coat.

  • lost_soul #21 9 years ago

    Please, don't remind me about gender in German. There's almost no logic to it and the only rule I could find was, if the word ends with an e it was usually femenine.

    Horrible language, grrr!

  • FWB #22 9 years ago

    Oh, God, the envy! The envy! Will it never cease? Look guys, I know you're all jealous of my superior game rating skills, but you're just going to have to face facts. I am your king and you will worship me. EU legislation and all.

  • commander dixon #23 9 years ago

    is there, in the end of the game , a " little bush option "to liberate the poor euroeastern sub-develloped country, and make everybody happy ?

  • Merefield #24 9 years ago

    English is the one-button mouse of languages!

    Ooo. Them be fighting words. Quite the insult you've thrown there. :)

    Need I remind people of the superior aesthetic appeal of the one button mouse Apple Mac???

  • Errol #25 9 years ago

    I think the Mac mouse looks shite.

  • lennon #26 9 years ago

    I got it from Gameplay. Cheapish as well. Looks very nice indeed. Bloody complicated though. So far I would liken it a bit to the game Gangsters but I really havent scratched the surface. I think the simple thing to say is if you are a action gamer then dont bother if you like strategy then look into it.

  • mouse Verified Graphic designer, Eurogamer Network #27 9 years ago

    What are you on about? I gave BF1942 9/10!

  • Pirotic #28 9 years ago

    Spot on review, the game deserves credit for its ideas but should be punished for the implementation, you can clearly tell the game has had more direction-changes than m.jackson has nose jobs, the hardly used 3D engine bein a prime example.

    I think Republic is the result of alot of kids being given computers for a few years and a wad of cash - sure its unique but it lacks backbone and structure and the gameplay is unbalanced and feels incomplete.

    despite all the options, your always either gaining support or trying to lower opponents support - both get dull.

    not worth the money, it'll be on budget in month or so.

  • Merefield #29 9 years ago

    What are you on about? I gave BF1942 9/10!

    Mouse, I think Nik might be referring to where you placed BF1942 in that top 100 thing you did...or was it 200, can't remember...

    Errol and I were none to pleased with its rank, either... ;)
    Edited by 1 at 29/08/03 @ 19:15

  • mouse Verified Graphic designer, Eurogamer Network #30 9 years ago

    Yeah well... I'm not taking any responsiblity for that, nobody asked me my opinion when the rankings were being compiled. I was the only one who'd even played BF1942 at the time - see what I get for being the underling? You see? :)
    Edited by 1 at 29/08/03 @ 19:18

  • X3ON #31 9 years ago

    bloody spot on review, gonna get on the phone now to the RSPCA and get them to investigate all of this very *obvious* monkey misuse ;)

  • praetorian #32 9 years ago

    Hmm. Was going to pick this up tomorrow morning. Don't think I'll bother now. To be honest, I was hoping for some Syndicate-type game. I don't know why, it just sounded like that kind of game.

    Mafia could have been great. But it came out just after GTA3, which kind of put it to shame.

  • Dynamize #33 9 years ago

    Buhh, was looking forward to this muchly, now I am very wary of it. Curse PCG for giving it 80% and maintaining my enthusiasm.
    Having said that, I'll probably still nip into town and buy it, so desperate am I for something NEW to play.

  • X3ON #34 9 years ago

    Dynamize I think that maybe Eidos's advertising in a certain mag *cough* PCG *cough* helped improve the score somewhat....

    I know what you mean though, there is nothing really worth playing out there at the minute unless you play something in the back catalogue - and it looks like the bastards have delayed TRON 2.0 until the second week of Sept.

    Although from this review, I think I'd rather have SARS than play Republic, that or pull my pubes out one by one.....which is nice

  • Shinji #35 9 years ago

    "No one seems to have mentioned the amazing muscial score that accompanies the game"

    Actually yes, that's a fair point - the music IS good. Although there only seem to be about three tracks, and they're used fairly randomly throughout the game, which is a shame.

    As for the language... It sounds like people talking backwards, frankly. It doesn't sound like a real language at all... In fact, Konami made a better effort at a made-up language with the Klonoa games, which is saying something.

  • Dirtbox #36 9 years ago

    I love it when dev's make huge claims and can't deliver. Makes my day, especially when...

  • Blerk #37 9 years ago

    6/10!! It seems to be getting great reviews everywhere else

    Games TM this month: 7/10

    Wow, that's GREAT!

  • Shinji #38 9 years ago

    "6/10!! It seems to be getting great reviews everywhere else...so maybe this reviewer didn't give the game enough time to get used to it."

    Er, or maybe I just didn't think the game was very good (and didn't allow myself to be swayed by Eidos' marketing budget)?

    Yes, Eurogamer gives low review scores. We don't believe in picking the scores out of a hat which only includes the numbers 7, 8 and 9, unlike most other websites. This comes as a result of a solid grounding in basic numeracy in primary school, which taught us that in fact, there are numbers all the way from zero to six as well!

    Note that 6/10 is still an above average score for the game, granted for reasons explained in the review. A 7/10 on Eurogamer is tantamount to a recommendation... But as with all things, caveat emptor, read the review and work out if the game is for you.

  • lennon #39 9 years ago

    Been playing this all weekend. It isnt without its flaws admitedly as the 3d engine isnt always used but to me its a game that isnt for everyone and therefore reviews are likely to be biased either up or down.

    6 or 7 out of ten would seem fair as an average of both types of review but to avoid it because one person doesnt like it or because of the hupe surrounding it (Mario or Zelda anyone?) seems a tad odd.

  • FWB #40 9 years ago

    sasasa, you're 1500% right on both issues, particularly the first one. However, about the scores here: you can't judge them against other sites. 5/10 is, in my books, an average game. Just because 99% of the other reviewers thing it means its shite, techincally, it isn't. 6/10 means abvove average. I can't comment exactly on this review since I haven't played the game, but judging by many posts here, they've got it spot on.

    lennon, then my question to you is, will I enjoy it? :) A hard one to answer, but to help you out, I do love complexity, I do enjoy the wonder that is politics and I'm not a graphics whore. Since you seem to see some light at the end of the tunnel, perhaps you can give us a brief on what is good about it.

  • jaa #41 9 years ago

    And of course a cat's female, a car neutral and, first and foremost, a pen male! What else should they be?

    No, no, no, no, no, no, no... NO!

    A cat is male, as is a car. A pen is female, of course. And what do you mean, 'neutral words'?

    :)

  • Shinji #42 9 years ago

    "Well yes, if say that 5 real Russian actors improvising a made-up language isn't 'proper voice acting'."

    I'm sorry, but "improvising a made-up language" (internally contradictory statement, by the way) does not equate to "proper voice acting". Especially when the resulting noises are then stitched together in the most unconvincing manner possible. I speak several languages, and your improvised babble doesn't sound like a proper language at all.

    "Still, I suppose we shouldn't worry about these comments- it isn't as if a 'proper' journalist made the review."

    Oh no! You cut me deep! With your razor-sharp wit and incisive insults, I'm sure you must be the terror of ALL the local playgrounds!

  • FWB #43 9 years ago

    Well yes, if say that 5 real Russian actors improvising a made-up language isn't 'proper voice acting'.

    Why didn't you just get them to speak Russian? As much as I hate to admit it, most E.European people speak it. Its the first language for many areas. For example, Ukrainian exists, but the country's first language is really Russian.

  • Blerk #44 9 years ago

    Why do people even bother to read reviews if it's blatantly obvious they've already made up their mind what score the game should receive? And why do they get so upset that someone dared to not like the game? It's not like they wrote the damn game or anything?

  • StixxUK #45 9 years ago

    I think more places should use the no-score rating system that Edge adopted for that one issue. I feel that it actually worked quite well, but as they said in that issue, it's unlikely that people would accept it.

    I also found it pretty damn funny the number of letters they apparently received the next month complaining about the serious technical error that nobody had remembered to put in the review scores, when they'd spent most of the issue (massive exaggeration) explaining why they weren't there.

  • Shinji #46 9 years ago

    Didn't EDGE cop out and put the review scores in a section at the back of the mag, though?

    Review scores serve a useful purpose, to my mind; at the end of the day if you're interested in a game you'll read the text anyway, and if you're not interested in it then maybe a high score will convince you to read the text regardless. Obviously there are some people who come to websites and magazines and only look at the numeric score, but well, it's pretty hard for journalists to cater for illiterate people :)

  • Tiger_Walts #47 9 years ago

    So, if a magazine/website scores out of 100 does that mean the readership is more intelligent, since they can count past 10 all the way up to 100?

  • lennon #48 9 years ago

    Basically its the most complex game I can ever remember playing. Everything you do seems to effect someone or some faction. There is a plot line but it doesnt really get in the way. It starts off simple with a small number of actions available and you have to hire some henchmen and its best to try to balance the type of people you have.

    Everyone has a ideolgy and a degree to which they follow it. (and i mean everyone) this then effects how easily people believe what you say and how blindly they will follow your party and also how well they work for your faction.

    Either im not very good at it yet or I have barely scratched the surface as I have only about 20 different options available to me and I read there was around 100 (that may have been hype though)

    Each character has a loose career path they follow depending on the upgrades you choose which then I believe opens up more action paths.
    The principle of the game is kind of based on scissors paper stone where Wealth beats force force beats influence and influence beats wealth but that is just on the surface.

    The best moment of the game so far was seeing some dude that was causing me grief by writing newspaper articles against me jump for joy when i gave him a briefcase full of money and a new car. Needless to say I have had no problem since.

    As a reccomendation I would say try it by getting it from Game if you can and then if you dont like it return it. Ive ignored all the hype and apart from the gfx engine didnt know much about it so maybe thats helped.

  • Dirtbox #49 9 years ago

    hmmmmmmmmmm....


    nah

  • FWB #50 9 years ago

    Cheers, lennon. I think I will try it out.

    Basically its the most complex game I can ever remember playing.

    Not played Hearts of Iron, then? :)

    Everyone has a ideolgy and a degree to which they follow it.

    Shades of Tropico, non?

  • lennon #51 9 years ago

    Actually now you come to mention it yes a bit like tropico.

  • Dynamize #52 9 years ago

    I picked it up on monday and played for 4 hours, all the while thinking "please let this start being fun.". Then I gave up.
    Lack of fun was put down to a) the game essentially being Gangsters in nature (which I enjoyed only slightly), just not as fun for some reason; and b) it hating me with weird texture-warping and a horrible framerate.
    B can be explained by observing the min-specs and seeing that they involve 512MB of RAM, I have but 256. Well, that COULD explain it. On the other hand the Totality engine may just hate me, or my PC is too pooey nowadays. Bloody sudden leaps in minimum RAM required.
    A is not so easily explained...unless I just say that Demis Hassabis is crap and a gaylord. That was easily explained, hurrah.
    Having said this, I'm still gonna try it out some more. I think I may be stupid and so see this crap/boringly average game as a challenge. A challenge to find fun.

  • lennon #53 9 years ago

    In reply to Dynamise. I only have 256mb of Ram and it runs perfectly in fact better than my work machine which is twice the spec which is odd.

  • trippy #54 9 years ago


    Hmm, thats just dissapointing to read about this game.
    I remember reading many many years ago when this game first kicked off, and there was a massive article in edge.
    such high hopes.. all dashed.
    back to civ3 then..

  • royaldo #55 9 years ago

    this game is crap. No use for the 3d. The reviewer is right. This game stinks. I had high hopes for this game but turned out really crap. And that tutorial really sucks.

  • DasFx #56 9 years ago

    True.. this game sucks. Review is spot on