POTUS Election Sim

Political games always grab my attention. Read my top review on "This Is The President", to better know what I mean. So when I heard about this game, I kept an eye for it. So many trope AI-fail negative reviews, mixed in with some praise. I noticed that the devs did a MAJOR overhaul, and what the update seems to read - they addressed the sloppy nature of AI logic, and gave it better political-rules and built walls around it so it would stay on task better. When I looked at the reviews I could scarcely find a review AFTER the big update. I can't vouch for the shape this game was in before the big 2.0 update, but I bet those reviews were spot-on. I am happy to report though, the game is doing very well! Caveat: I chose the numbers-based version. It was still rich with AI-logic interaction, but if I'm playing an election game, I don't want someone 'telling' me their ideas on what it all means, I want to see it for myself. I'm impressed. It's not perfect. For example, running for congress, the game was asking me about my running mate? WHAT? Clearly the game was built with POTUS in mind, but I've seen worse. I was impressed when the game actually researched what I said when I gave it specific facts. I was impressed when I picked a remote area, and it researched the towns and areas, and accurately captured important issues for the area - VERY IMPRESSED. The default template options they gave were usually good, a bit repetitious, but then again, so is politics. Politics and Rockstars have many things in common - they get up on stage and sing the EXACT same song that got them the biggest cheers last time - so I'll forgive the repetition. Do I think I could break the Political-AI? Yeah, definitely, but I'm here to play a game, and I think it's doing very well!

After playing for a while, there are things I like and things I don't. In it's current state, it needs quite a bit of work. It can be fun, and the level of customization and AI to help you create policy is unique and creative. My biggest complaints are: - How much effort involved in different roles there is. As a State and as a US Senator both, the level of detail and minutia is almost overwhelming, especially when the button layout is still a bit broken, compared to a role like VP where there is very little going on for the most part comparatively. - It gets difficult trying to think of creative workarounds to input as customer answers for some of the difficult scenarios and problems it throws at you, and the quick answers are completely useless and don't relate to the issue at hand. I would prefer to use quick answers more often if they were actually specific to the topic. - The "Continue a run for President" button at the end of a run as VP first is broken, doesn't allow you to continue, and deletes your autosave upon return to the menu. - A lot of the questions/problems/scenarios are repetitive and get boring, needs more variety. - Should be an area to keep track of your pending and stalled bills somewhere. - Staff send out WAAAAY too many unapproved and off brand messages on social media, and firing them gets you criticized and losing valuable approval for no reason, and potentially face a scandal or ethics consequences for too many firings. Maybe once it is properly updated to fix some of these issues I would change my recommendation, but in it's current state I would say I do not recommend.

I really like the ideas behind this game, especially as a pol. Sim. I think there's clever use of the AI tool, and the developer is working like a mad man with updates!