Democracy 4

For whatever flaws are apparent in Democracy 4’s base game, it is the only game out there that depicts the densely interconnected system of mechanics that influence our political system. It fulfills a fantasy you can’t get anywhere else in video games — and certainly nowhere else in life. This is why no matter how many criticisms I can list for Democracy 4, I find myself returning to it over and over. That doesn’t necessarily make it a good game, but if it’s the type of game you’d enjoy, there’s simply nothing else like it.

In the end, however, those are minor blemishes that can surely be patched after launch. Democracy 4 is the unique kind of game that targets a strategy niche, giving players control of governments in a more authentic way than the Civilizations out there do. This is the franchise’s strength, but also its weakness -- not every kind of player will have the patience and the mindset to parse through that much data and play the slow game to get policies across. Still, that is hardly the game’s fault, so if you are a fan of political strategy or just politics in general, you should definitely give Democracy 4 a very fair shot.