Masters of the World – Geopolitical Simulator 3, a very complex political simulator. There’s a lot to the game, much more than I can explain, but if you’re into political simulators, I can say that I recommend the title.
The game’s fun, however, does come at a price. It’s not very… optimized. It constantly lags, freezes, and crashes. I’ve yet to play through a full game without running into at least one crash. A lot of others seem to be experiencing these crashes, and I hope that they could be fixed. That alone is the game’s major flaw. There’s also a special form of DRM, on top of the game’s Steam DRM, which was quite annoying, but shouldn’t have an effect on me as I only plan on having the game installed on my one computer here, not four.
There is a ton of information to digest on screen. Maybe not as much as Democracy 3 (well, that game displays just about ALL of its data on-screen), but enough to warrant confusion. Even so, I jumped right into the game and had a great time. I played as the US once, and had warmongering set to its max. I then declared war on Cuba, and due to warmongering being at its max setting, I soon had the Bahamas, Canada, France, and Mexico helping me out against Cuba. Even so, the US somehow lost 120k soldiers, whereas Cuba lost about 50k.
I find enjoyment in the game by playing it like I do any other strategy game, taking over all of my enemies (friends too!). This is a geopolitical simulator, so that’s not usually the course of action one would take whilst playing, but its the one I had the most fun in.
As for the game’s simulation aspects (of which there are plenty), every aspect of running a country seems to be covered. I even have the ability to order an assassination of my wife (no, I didn’t do that). The guy running my secret service seemed to get me in meetings with terrorists all the time, although this only happened with warmongering at its greatest (again, the best way to play).
Graphically, the game is decent. There’s nothing to complain or praise about the graphics, they’re pretty on par. However, this doesn’t apply to the character models, which were absolutely ridiculous. Each character model looked like an alien and I lost it everytime an adviser talked to me because of it. The voice acting is terrible. Absolutely. The voices are just flat-out bad, but then again, when combined with the models, it adds even more hilarity to the game.
Be prepared for a harsh learning curve. I didn’t have that much of a problem because I played Commander in Chief 2008 (also by the same devs) back in the day. I had a lot of fun with that game, and Masters of the World 3 is a great upgrade to that classic. Expect to spend a ton of time just figuring out the very basics of the game. There are tutorials (which I ignored, oops), but I had more fun figuring out the game for myself.
Overall, the game is still fun, and I can still recommend it. Although the pricetag is rather high. I’d try to pick it up during a sale.
cublikefoot 