We. The Revolution

A harrowing tale of the French Revolution, (the classic one, not Victor Hugo's) wherein you play a power-hungry judge who cares more about advancing his own position and eventually sitting at the right hand of the Incorruptible than actually meting out justice--or at least, that's how I played it. I imagine that it's possible to play it from a much more idealistic standpoint, doing your best to tease out the facts of each case, taking only the necessary measures to defend yourself in the intrigue segments, and such, but it would be significantly harder to keep your head in that scenario. It's not perfect; some of the mechanics are a little obscure, and it suffers from feature bloat to a degree--every couple of turns a new minigame gets added, most of which have no real influence on the main meat of the game, which is the trials and your character's personal life. I remember almost laughing when they introduced the military campaign aspect, for example. Still, they're not much of a time sink, and it remains a very good experience. I picked it up through a Humble Bundle, but it's absolutely worth a standalone purchase! POST-FINISHING: Whew, it really takes a turn near the end! Ho…

So many mechanics to learn, too little story. the game is buried behind so many min games, and guides are very sparce.

This is pretty much illusion of choice: the game. When you're choosing the fate of other people: Freedom, prison or the guillotine, it doesn't actually feel like your choices have any effect, and the game just incentivies you to go with whatever choice is most beneficial to your alliances, rather than making you think about your own morality. And then, when it is time for the actual overarching story to take place, you rarely get any say in how anything plays out. It just feels like you're strung-along for a long, meaningless ride.

I liked the game over all. The trials were interesting at first, but eventually everything becomes about balancing numbers between factions to keep yourself alive. It's very easy to try again if you make a mistake by exiting to the main menu; however, at times this becomes tedious. I'm not sure if there are multiple endings, because I really can't see your choices affecting the overall story since you can get murdered and lose if your numbers drop too far for certain factions.

First of the review is not totally negativ, I actually liked the first act, and enjoyed most of the second, although by act two the game becomes more of a numbers manager than actually playing the cases. Which, given the time I can tolerate, I assume during the age of terror a judge would also go more by this is how the other factions don't kill me, instead of hearing ever argument in a case, so while not a great decisions, I can tolerate it. And then there is act 3. If you enjoyed the game up to this part this is where it fell apart for me, the story stops making sense (and has one of the flattest villains with zero real motiv) and nothing you do actually has an impact, neither from a story perspective nor from a gameplay mechanic (looking at you family dynamic), the battle mechanic is one of the most tetious and drawn out things this game has to offer and it forces you to play them, and if you play well you get punished by playing more rounds because reenforcment apparently won't come unless you are nearly lost. So yeah not a totally bad game, but the decisions story and game play mechanic wise of the third act are baffeling, before that it is quite fun.

This game is so many games and things in one. It’s a historically grounded narrative game, a court simulator, a papers/text game, a strategy game, etc. Somehow, they managed to combine it all into one good game. The gameplay might be difficult. You have to read a lot (there is no voiceover for the text), work through endless court cases, and deal with intrigues. Yet, somehow, you also have to fight on a map of Paris as a strategist in a turn-based map mode. This game will take up a lot of your time and cognitive resources. But on the other hand, We. The Revolution will teach you a lot. You will learn more about the French Revolution, train as a judge in court, and understand how intrigues work. So, isn’t it a good game that teaches you while you play? Arts: Good and unique Gameplay: Nice, intuitive, but resource-intensive Vibe: Exactly what you would expect from a Revolution-era game about a judge Music: Not bad Texts: Well written; I spotted just one typo Difficulty: High All in all, a fascinating game and a great experience. 8/10