Republic: The Revolution

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Republic: The Revolution is a computer game produced by Elixir Studios - better known for developing Evil Genius - published in 2003. It takes place in the small nation of Novistrana, a Ruritania that has just gained independence from the Soviet Union. You play as a political mastermind... whose family was assassinated by the KGB... and unfortunatly, the man who was resposible for those murders is currently "president for life" of Novistrana and beyond the reach of the legal system.

Thus, the player's job is to set up a party and gather enough support to launch a revolution. Of course, you're not the only one with an agenda - opposing him are several other groups, including other political parties, churches and even criminal organizations. In order to overcome the opposition and overthrow the president, you'll have to persuade others to work with you and support your campaign. Of course, they're trying the same...

The game's politcal spectrum has three dimensions: Money, Force and Influence. Different ideologies draw (or repulse) different voting groups and can make recruiting certain people easier (or harder). The military is more likely to support a person with an interest in force, while the church can be hard to persuade to join the cause unless you share their belief in the power of influence. Corporate salesmen care for nothing but cold hard cash.

Tropes used in Republic: The Revolution include:

• Awesome but Impractical: 3D mode. Most of game is played from 2D map.
• Beat Them At Their Own Game
• Betting Minigame: A very important part of the game. Negotiations are played by a system resembling a card game. You can skip them, but you have much better chance to win than the AI, so that's not a good idea.
  • Also, at one point can try to convince a wealthy businessman to support you. If you mess up the negotiations, he won't give you anything. Win, he pays. Go over the top and he pays extra.
• Black and Gray Morality: Karasov is President Evil. You're out to topple him because he made your parents disappear, and arranging a regime change will require ruthless tactics up to and including corruption and murder. Even a pure Influence playthrough requires setting up a charitable trust you can use to fund your political party and arranging for the martyrdom of one of your allies so you can use his death to spark the revolution.
• Character Customization
• Character Portrait
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience
• Cold War: Set shortly afterwards, but the point of the game is that the Hole in Flag phase hasn't properly arrived yet and you're supposed to finally rid the country of authoritarianism (at least in theory).
• Coup De Grace Cutscene: When you order someone killed.
• Divided We Fall
• The Dragon: General Alexashenko. Can be bribed into Dragon Their Feet.
• Experience Points
• False Flag Operation: You can pull these. It's just takes some extra effort.
• The Fundamentalist: Some of the church people (obviously).
• Fog of War: Played with. You can see the world whereever you want, but you won't know what your enemies are doing if you're not actively investigating.
• Hide Your Children: Partially explained, however, by some of the information boxes in the 3D world. Children's play areas exist, but are said to be abandoned because few parents let their children out on the streets of Novistrana, while the fact that no schools can be seen is explained by the poor education system the regime is running
• In Universe Game Clock
• La Résistance: You start as this. Whether it lasts or not is up to you.
• The Mafiya
• Mini Game: See above.
• Multiple Endings: Though you take over the country whatever happens, your ideology determines the method used.
• Old Soldier: Force-oriented parties tend to hire these guys.
• Patriotic Fervor: Going between Force and Influence ends somewhat like this.
• Plot Lock: You can't mess with the President's power in the center of Berezina, at least not directly. You have to gain control of the proper institutions (the central bank, the Cathedral, or the Secret Police HQ).
• People's Republic of Tyranny
• Real Time With Pause: You can issue orders while in pause mode.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified / The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Depending the player's choices, but leaning more towards the latter.
• Risk Style Map
• RPG Elements
• President Evil: Karasov
• Ruritania: Novistrana, whose name is a Fake Russian rendition of novaya strana (it literally means "new nation").
• Scare Campaign: Support us, or the evil commies/capitalists/anarchists/fundamentalists/atheists/etc. are going to EAT YOUR BABIES!
• Secret Police: Borderline State Sec, since there's so much crossover between the Secret Police and the army.
• The Syndicate: The Konstantino Cartel, despite its name.
• Stat Grinding
• Sliding Scale of Libertarianism and Authoritarianism: And you get to decide where you want to sit!
• Speaking Simlish: Novistranians seem to be speaking a weird mix of Ukranian and Russian, and the "Cyrillic" letters are fictional.
• Strawman Political: EVERYONE
• Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors: Influence beats wealth, wealth beats force and force beats influence. In theory. In effect, the one who keeps gathering the most raw support beats everyone.
• Tech Demo Game: Sort of. There's a huge highly detailed city... that is pretty much useless in gameplay.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters
• Velvet Revolution: When Karasov finally goes down, he goes down quickly and without much fuss. Even more so in the Wealth ending, where you force him to resign by screwing with the economy.
• Voice of the Resistance: Obviously, capturing a radio or TV station helps to persuade people to join your cause.
• We ARE Struggling Together
• Welcome to Corneria: There is only a small set of opinions the people have to share. Hilariously enough, the text shown might match the voiceover, since there aren't enough spoken lines to go around.
• Working Class People Are Morons: In just three days, the entire city can go from religious fanatics to capitalist to military dictator to pro-democratic movement.