I am Your President

[al_infierno]

I'm a little torn between "It sucks" and "It sorta doesn't suck."

In terms of game structure, those who played Suzerain will feel right at home.  It has a similar system where each "turn," there are story events you must complete and side-events as well, but you can complete them in any order.

The political memes are pretty heavy-handed right off the bat.  The only scenario available is called "Make America Great Again" with some nonsense about "you either die a covfefe or live long enough to [some other Trump tweet reference]".  Not a great sign.

For the most part I'm not a fan of the conversation system. You are generally given two answers to choose from, and they are usually just paraphrases of the same basic answer, which I don't like at all. Thankfully, when it comes to actual decisions, it's generally clear what each one entails and you're also given the option to just say "I don't care" and delegate.

Writing quality is fairly poor across the board. I don't know why a POTUS would ever say "Yeah, dude!" to his top advisor, but it feels like the devs tried too hard to make the game lighthearted and funny, and it just doesn't land for me.

I do like the visual presentation with your advisors portrayed as literal cardboard cutouts who sort of dance around like South Park characters.

Editing and quality of writing is a bit hairy.  When choosing your platforms, one question and possible answer goes:

Q: What do you think of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program?

A: No, redistribution of wealth is ineffective. We should lower taxes instead.

Uh, what am I saying "no" to?    Seems the question was originally written as "Do you support..." and when they changed it, they forgot to edit the follow-up.  Not a good sign for core text right at the beginning of the game.

Also, weirdly enough the questionnaire decided I'm a democratic socialist before the questionnaire was even over, which I found odd especially because I felt like my answers were pretty 50/50 in terms of being traditionally right-leaning and left-leaning.  I suspect it just lumps you into a category once you've hit a set number of answers for one side, e.g. once you choose 4 "lefty" options the game goes "oh, you're a leftist!"  They do let ultimately let you choose between Democrat and Republican which is nice.  A few of the personality test questions don't make much sense without context which is weird.

Election promises are very one dimensional.  You can choose between "Reform Police," "Enact Stricter Gun Control," "New War on Terror," "Solve Opioid Crisis," "Human Mission to Mars," and "Build the Wall."  And that's it.

So, yeah - without getting into the nitty gritty of it, I think that pretty much answers any "bias" questions people might have. Just for shits and gigs I chose Gun Control, and it's been kind of a mixed bag of tasteless jabs at gun owners and being able to actually say sensible things like "I think we should fund gun safety education."

Anyway, I think I can safely say this game is not for me.

[Jarhead0331]

^thanks for taking one for the team. Pass.

[al_infierno]

Luckily I made up my mind quickly enough that I got a refund for it.