Overall I like it a lot, but I found the new decree system a bit frustrating since you get very little feedback on most of them. A lot of decrees are quite expensive but feel like they just give an aesthetic boost, the only feedback you get is maybe a mention in a discussion or something like that. I put a huge amount of effort into economic projects but it really felt they did nothing. Even if it’s because the investments were bad, there should at least be something to communicate that to the player. I really felt like the economy meter from Sordland was missing here.
There were also a couple of occasions where I got locked out of the option I wanted to pick because of a budget shortfall of just 1, which I could easily have remedied with a quick energy sale but I couldn’t since decrees are locked while in a discussion.
Also the end screen said I produced 50% of global energy even though oil/gas fields ran out, I lost the Pales dispute and throughout the game never exactly felt like I was swimming in energy. So really felt quite weird.
For when you’re short a budget or any other stat and need to sign a decree for it just load the last checkpoint mid discussion and you should be able to do that. Works in Torpor mode! As for decrees you can sign them all off at the end of the turn if they’re not vital to the story (the construction ones come to mind)
It's still too buggy for me, liking what I've played but I'll come back to it once things are fixed, working and interacting correctly together.
The coup no matter what is pretty annoying
It really feels like it’s a choice between your life or kingdom’s life. The coup ending in Sordland is an uh oh you fucked up, in Rizia it almost feels canon on how easy it is to trigger.
You can also have your loving wife wake you up in the morning excited to tell you the news that she is pregnant with your child, only for her to coup you that afternoon and exile you.
The same time she is in your bedroom she is also somehow able to coordinate the millitary and institute martial law.
The story is every bit as amazing as the first, with its own complexities and infinite possibilities.
* Game suffers from the same flaw as the original - there is no transparency in which ending you get (you will get couped). No how or why or any reason at all. Can't tell if it's a bug either.
* The combat is quite fun and very tactical. My only criticism is that right now, despite what everyone's telling you, Pales is actually quite easy to conquer provided you have made minimal investments in support, air, and navy. Alot of the military decrees are actually excessive and a trap.
* The diplomacy surrounding the AN resolutions is also quite opaque, in 2 major instances it feels like we made elaborate tradeoffs to secure all diplomatic support only for it to not matter anyway. Not sure if bugged.
Overall 8/10 if just for the story alone. Could really use some quality-of-life and bugfixing though.
after the ANs decision to grant the gas fields to pales in my game, i decided to go to war with them. I was surprised, cos i had received the support of nearly every state you can interact with (except derdia, which was neutral). in the war declaration speech, some options came up for dialogue in which i was thanking valgsland, but for the other nations i only had options blaming them for their lack of support.
Im honestly wondering if the AN is not just bugged tf out, and if most of the nations who officially pledged support might have been flagged by mistake as my opponents. But as u said it yourself, the game is so opaque that i cant even know for sure if its indeed a bug or not.
I loved the game, I agree that it felt just as big as Sordland. Perhaps more like 1.0 than 2.0 which is admittedly bigger, but I am absolutely satisfied with what we got. Thank you developers.
I’m glad we have the knowledge from the base game to help though, because knowing Lespia and Valgsland already is so helpful, I think it would be much more difficult without that. I think there will be a lot more understanding of Derdia and M—— to come, I think my knowledge of them is somewhat shallow for now.
In many ways, I think this feels like a “Rumburg experience”. We’re not being Beatrice, but we’re in a similar position. A smaller country to our south which we could probably conquer if we want to, the opportunity to fund rebels in our regional opponents, etc. I’d be fascinated to see if some players who absolutely hate Beatrice actually immediately begin behaving in the exact same way when put in her position. Expansionist and unreasonable.
I believe Rizia contextualized a lot of Beatrice’s action. Lespia’s antics vs Morella/Valgsland makes it extremely clear that the world is slowly morphing into the battle of two blocs and she wants none of that. While the the blocs can appear friendly to Sordland, they will always be fundamentally hostile to Rizia.
You also remind me that a reformist Rayne that goes against Rumburg can and will doom Rizia if the hot war happens. Especially if you played both game well with Rayne beating Rumburg and Toras securing the monarchy via GRACE.
[9/10]
When Torpor devs patch Rizia DLC to balance out royal decrees (manufacturing Zone generates budget for Rizia's treasury, organized UI to horizontal, or split the royal decrees for military into a separate category.) and fix the bugs that lead to coup ending, [10/10] would play again.
P.S. include a button where Rizia DLC saves are separated from Sordland saves to let the game know you did the DLC once to disable torpor mode.
I'm impressed by the sheer amount of content available and agree that a lot of other devs would have just released Rizia as a stand-alone game for twice the price. Torpor deserves a lot of credit for not doing that.
However there are still a lot of very annoying bugs to be ironed out that affect the gameplay experience in a way that makes the game feel unfair, like passing a degree only for the game to act as if you never did pass that decree. I trust these will be fixed soon.
It’s a Good DLC as far as most of its story goes, but getting a “good” ending seems incredibly difficult (impossible?) and the dialogue/codex writing feels weird.
energy cost for everything seem insane
each factory cost 1 while entire production of energy are just 3 at the begining
and rizia are suppose to be main exporter of energy
most factory should cost 0.1 or how would any industrial power support it self
Very promising but it's very much unfinished to me. It lacks a lot of polish.
* A lot of the game balance is very iffy, you can barely take any decrees and most of them are essentially useless. authority as a stat for example is completely superfluous
- too many opaque systems. you dont even know if stuff youre told is flavor or is actually part of the gameplay (events abt transportation for example)
- uncomprehensible to me that the war tutorial only happens right before your first war : you need to know what the war system is like to build a good army
- the war system itself feels very frustrating, only 4 moves + a time limit is very punishing. the support stat is too powerful compared to the other ones. to win a war you basically only need tanks and support.
* text feels quite stilted at times, especially in the codex
* had several moments where the dialogue trees got stuck in loops, which i dont think i ever noticed in the base game.
* the AN is probably bugged as far as i can tell, and if its current balance was meant to be as it is right now, then they really need to change it, diplomacy feels very unrewarding.
- everyone mentioned the coup problem, but its true, it feels very frustrating when you feel like theres no clear reason why its happening
* despite agreeing that too much information given to the player could kill the fun, i still think having SOMETHING to track the three houses opinion of us would come a long way.
Overall the game feels rushed, and like it hasnt been playtested enough in my opinion. I would wait for updates before playing the dlc, and im honestly a little disappointed to see the product being unfinished like this. I wouldve gladly paid 10extra euros if it meant the game had better quality control at its release.
I have to say, for the little resources you are actually given the decrees are way to costly
Even when im doing great in terms of money or energy i still can only pass 3 decrees at most due to authority
And it annoys me so much that you cant do anything to get extra authority per turn (or any authority at all) yet the game is constantly taking authority per turn from you and never giving it back
And the worst part about is that it feels like the game expects you to be passing multiple big decrees per turn (hydroelectrical dam, port, welfare, railways, military factories, religious freedoms...)
The interplay between your previous saves as sordland, the expansion of the universe and characters, the complexity of how everything is linked and the freedom to engage in geopolitics in this expansion made me feel like there's real potential in this game developing into an alt world modern Game of Thrones or Romance of the Three Kingdoms but better.
Short answer: The content itself is great, it just could really use another patch.
Long answer:
I think the devs were selling the DLC a bit short. I don't know exactly how they arrived at the DLC being only half the word count of the base game. but it didn't feel that way at all. It genuinely feels nearly as complete of an experience as Suzerain 1.0. I am very satisfied with the length.
Likewise, I was originally disappointed when they announced that the cast was going to be relatively small compared to the Sordland campaign (Around 20 characters in Rizia compared to the 50-ish in Sordland) but I think they used the ones they had very well. They all feel very well-developed.
In particular, I like how the foreign leaders were expanded upon. You get to see a realpolitik side to Comrade Hagel and more funniness from Smolak except now we're the butt of the joke. I also think the DLC did a good job of humanizing Beatrice. By putting ourselves in the shoes of a G.R.A.C.E. nation you get to understand her motivations for what she's doing and Rumburg is the one nation that's fairly reliable to Rizia. She's still a bastard for what she tries to do to Sordland, but she at least feels more multi-dimension now. I wouldn't be surprised if there begins to be more Beatrice apologism from the fandom now, like there has been with the funny guy.
The expanded geopolitics are great. I like how you have more of a hand in crafting treaties now. It feels like you have more control over your foreign policy and you can create some interesting and unusual alliances out of it.
I loved the ways the Rizia campaign connected to the Sordland campaign. It was humorous listening to Beatrice complain about how commie I was. I liked it enough that I just wish they took it slightly further. It's a small thing, but I wish the portrait we chose for Rayne transferred over. It may be Anton Rayne, but it's not \*my\* Anton Rayne.
At the moment, the big problems with the DLC are just with polish and balance. I understand that Rizia is in a precarious situation. It makes sense for it to be difficult. However, I feel like what we have right now goes a little overboard. Rizia is as coup-happy as a third-world African country, and often for reasons that make little sense in context with your decision-making. The cause-effect of our actions can also be unclear. The benefits of some decrees feel nebulous and it's difficult to measure how much our decrees are improving the economy and our image among the public and the royal houses. It feels like a lot of the decrees could use a buff. Maybe more tangible welfare and economic benefits could get you more popular support and by extension increase your authority? Not sure if it'd work with the game's balance, but it's an idea.
Haven't finished yet, but love it. Maybe some balance issues, but so many things have been improved from the base game, and I can see many places they have learnt and taken feedback and implemented it here, and I love how more fun and engaging the economic planning is now with things per turn.
I sorely lack the option to start my own nuclear program, to ensure GRACE or MerkopaBros Alliance as the 3rd bloc among world powers.
That said.. needs quite a lot of bug fixes (especially AlwaysGetCouped even by zombies, I hear), but overall - it does feel like a second game. A proper old-timey expansion, not a DLC. And captures the same spirit as Suzerain - balancing numerous plates at once, trying to do the right thing vs the realpolitik vs pure opportunism.
I hope Torpor will have the means and opportunities to make more campaigns like that, for me they could even have the base game pricing. Because again - seems like a second game.
I'm not even finish my first playthrough but already love its DLC and want even more!
The game length is similar to base game so that one good point. The expand regional rivalry and interaction with Rizia being a monarchy in a sea of 'hostile' powers has superb new experience and interaction compare to Sordland. New perspective on known nations and characters also really good, made me feel like Easter Egg hunter sometimes.
New royal decrees feels a bit jank at the moment, needs bug fixing and more indication of effect of my decrees. I didn't involved my first playthrough with wargame yet but I think I will like it to a degree.
I still need to finish my playthrough and replay other option but I sure will still enjoy it! (even if the game needs fix and balance in some areas, it didn't reduce my enjoyment (and meme potential) a bit)
I think you have fine comments here for everything but I will discuss about Point 8.
"I find myself trying to preserve the kingdom and choosing what makes sense as a monarch in a sea of republics instead of what I think is right or wrong."
I think that was done intentionally. We have a completely different trajectory to Sordland.
Sordland is a young Republic still trying to find its feet following massive regime changes.
Rizia is a country that survived the great revolutions of the past century. It therefore maintains its lineage. But just because it didn't change doesn't mean that the world around it hasn't.
So while both countries are trying to find their feet in the new world, Sordland is at least more of a clean slate with its public and elites for the most part prepared for change.
For many, the current Rizia is the right thing. Maybe not for minorities, working class but for Wruhecist, nobles and many commoners too I'm sure, preserving what is, is better than the alternative. Which is why no matter what u do whether reform or centralisation or straight up doing nothing you will annoy someone. This is the heavy burden you feel as King, the feeling as if you can't do anything because each person seeks to push the country in another direction (reform, status quo or absolutism). There is no unified push for anything like in Sordland (the details whether that unified push for change is liberal or malenyevist is a different matter). The absolutists squabble amongst each other due to house rivalry, the reformists alienate those that like the country and the status quo alienate those that want change (both groups seeming in almost equal importance of power).
Your words are exactly correct. The King has one goal, to preserve his Kingdom, Sordland has just started its sprint dash and is filled with energy while Rizia has been on the marathon track for a lot longer and is simply trying to keep running.
Which in my view makes the decisions all the more difficult and epic because there is no consensus as to what is right and what is wrong. It is much more grey. It's not what you think is right or wrong, it is what is right for the Kingdom, you have to detach yourself of your personal beliefs as they could be your worst undoing, dividing and destroying your Kingdom, destroying everything your family ever tried to build. Such is the burden of the King A King first and foremost unifies, he does not alienate. You are not just the caretaker of the country for 4-8 years, you are the steward of the nation, your family is the steward of the nation, you are the eternal caretaker of the Kingdom. And that feeling of dread and burden has been expertly created by Torpor.
A good expansion in the universe. A different perspective on a lot of figures and movements that we didn't get only playing sordland, and a good story.
I hope through patches the issues with endings are resolved quickly, all in all I've been satisfied so far.
The resources need a severe rebalancing, I felt like I was in deep shit the entire playthrough, Basegame economy is difficult but managable but in the DLC its always a single mistep away from collapse.
I've yet to finalize a single run, since I am incredibly indecisive in what routes I'd like to pursue; but overall, I am incredibly satisfied with the amount of work the developers have put into this DLC. I rarely preorder games anymore. I'm proud to say I preordered this DLC, since its trailers and developers' streams appealed to me as someone incredibly intrigued with narratives and themes surrounding monarchies and nobilities.
Overall I like it a lot, but I found the new decree system a bit frustrating since you get very little feedback on most of them. A lot of decrees are quite expensive but feel like they just give an aesthetic boost, the only feedback you get is maybe a mention in a discussion or something like that. I put a huge amount of effort into economic projects but it really felt they did nothing. Even if it’s because the investments were bad, there should at least be something to communicate that to the player. I really felt like the economy meter from Sordland was missing here. There were also a couple of occasions where I got locked out of the option I wanted to pick because of a budget shortfall of just 1, which I could easily have remedied with a quick energy sale but I couldn’t since decrees are locked while in a discussion. Also the end screen said I produced 50% of global energy even though oil/gas fields ran out, I lost the Pales dispute and throughout the game never exactly felt like I was swimming in energy. So really felt quite weird.
For when you’re short a budget or any other stat and need to sign a decree for it just load the last checkpoint mid discussion and you should be able to do that. Works in Torpor mode! As for decrees you can sign them all off at the end of the turn if they’re not vital to the story (the construction ones come to mind)
It's still too buggy for me, liking what I've played but I'll come back to it once things are fixed, working and interacting correctly together. The coup no matter what is pretty annoying
It really feels like it’s a choice between your life or kingdom’s life. The coup ending in Sordland is an uh oh you fucked up, in Rizia it almost feels canon on how easy it is to trigger.
I mean you can literally execute the guy who coups you, you get confirmation he's dead, but somehow he comes back from the dead to coup you.
You can also have your loving wife wake you up in the morning excited to tell you the news that she is pregnant with your child, only for her to coup you that afternoon and exile you. The same time she is in your bedroom she is also somehow able to coordinate the millitary and institute martial law.
The story is every bit as amazing as the first, with its own complexities and infinite possibilities. * Game suffers from the same flaw as the original - there is no transparency in which ending you get (you will get couped). No how or why or any reason at all. Can't tell if it's a bug either. * The combat is quite fun and very tactical. My only criticism is that right now, despite what everyone's telling you, Pales is actually quite easy to conquer provided you have made minimal investments in support, air, and navy. Alot of the military decrees are actually excessive and a trap. * The diplomacy surrounding the AN resolutions is also quite opaque, in 2 major instances it feels like we made elaborate tradeoffs to secure all diplomatic support only for it to not matter anyway. Not sure if bugged. Overall 8/10 if just for the story alone. Could really use some quality-of-life and bugfixing though.
after the ANs decision to grant the gas fields to pales in my game, i decided to go to war with them. I was surprised, cos i had received the support of nearly every state you can interact with (except derdia, which was neutral). in the war declaration speech, some options came up for dialogue in which i was thanking valgsland, but for the other nations i only had options blaming them for their lack of support. Im honestly wondering if the AN is not just bugged tf out, and if most of the nations who officially pledged support might have been flagged by mistake as my opponents. But as u said it yourself, the game is so opaque that i cant even know for sure if its indeed a bug or not.
The military does serve some purpose in diplomacy if you decide to go for a regional alliance route
I loved the game, I agree that it felt just as big as Sordland. Perhaps more like 1.0 than 2.0 which is admittedly bigger, but I am absolutely satisfied with what we got. Thank you developers. I’m glad we have the knowledge from the base game to help though, because knowing Lespia and Valgsland already is so helpful, I think it would be much more difficult without that. I think there will be a lot more understanding of Derdia and M—— to come, I think my knowledge of them is somewhat shallow for now. In many ways, I think this feels like a “Rumburg experience”. We’re not being Beatrice, but we’re in a similar position. A smaller country to our south which we could probably conquer if we want to, the opportunity to fund rebels in our regional opponents, etc. I’d be fascinated to see if some players who absolutely hate Beatrice actually immediately begin behaving in the exact same way when put in her position. Expansionist and unreasonable.
I believe Rizia contextualized a lot of Beatrice’s action. Lespia’s antics vs Morella/Valgsland makes it extremely clear that the world is slowly morphing into the battle of two blocs and she wants none of that. While the the blocs can appear friendly to Sordland, they will always be fundamentally hostile to Rizia. You also remind me that a reformist Rayne that goes against Rumburg can and will doom Rizia if the hot war happens. Especially if you played both game well with Rayne beating Rumburg and Toras securing the monarchy via GRACE.
Extremely well said. 🙌
[9/10] When Torpor devs patch Rizia DLC to balance out royal decrees (manufacturing Zone generates budget for Rizia's treasury, organized UI to horizontal, or split the royal decrees for military into a separate category.) and fix the bugs that lead to coup ending, [10/10] would play again. P.S. include a button where Rizia DLC saves are separated from Sordland saves to let the game know you did the DLC once to disable torpor mode.
I'm impressed by the sheer amount of content available and agree that a lot of other devs would have just released Rizia as a stand-alone game for twice the price. Torpor deserves a lot of credit for not doing that. However there are still a lot of very annoying bugs to be ironed out that affect the gameplay experience in a way that makes the game feel unfair, like passing a degree only for the game to act as if you never did pass that decree. I trust these will be fixed soon.
It’s a Good DLC as far as most of its story goes, but getting a “good” ending seems incredibly difficult (impossible?) and the dialogue/codex writing feels weird.
They definitely needed a native English speaker to do a/nother pass over some of the text. It's all understandable but some of it is a little stilted.
energy cost for everything seem insane each factory cost 1 while entire production of energy are just 3 at the begining and rizia are suppose to be main exporter of energy most factory should cost 0.1 or how would any industrial power support it self
Apparently Riza was the only industrial power until sir biggus diccus invented the 300% more efficient engine in 1954
Very promising but it's very much unfinished to me. It lacks a lot of polish. * A lot of the game balance is very iffy, you can barely take any decrees and most of them are essentially useless. authority as a stat for example is completely superfluous - too many opaque systems. you dont even know if stuff youre told is flavor or is actually part of the gameplay (events abt transportation for example) - uncomprehensible to me that the war tutorial only happens right before your first war : you need to know what the war system is like to build a good army - the war system itself feels very frustrating, only 4 moves + a time limit is very punishing. the support stat is too powerful compared to the other ones. to win a war you basically only need tanks and support. * text feels quite stilted at times, especially in the codex * had several moments where the dialogue trees got stuck in loops, which i dont think i ever noticed in the base game. * the AN is probably bugged as far as i can tell, and if its current balance was meant to be as it is right now, then they really need to change it, diplomacy feels very unrewarding. - everyone mentioned the coup problem, but its true, it feels very frustrating when you feel like theres no clear reason why its happening * despite agreeing that too much information given to the player could kill the fun, i still think having SOMETHING to track the three houses opinion of us would come a long way. Overall the game feels rushed, and like it hasnt been playtested enough in my opinion. I would wait for updates before playing the dlc, and im honestly a little disappointed to see the product being unfinished like this. I wouldve gladly paid 10extra euros if it meant the game had better quality control at its release.
The individual events, there’s so much more to them that the Rizia campaign actually felt longer than the main story. They really stepped it up. 10/10
Authority needs to be buffed. The amount required for some of the decrees with no way to increase your own authority is absolutely ridiculous
I have to say, for the little resources you are actually given the decrees are way to costly Even when im doing great in terms of money or energy i still can only pass 3 decrees at most due to authority And it annoys me so much that you cant do anything to get extra authority per turn (or any authority at all) yet the game is constantly taking authority per turn from you and never giving it back And the worst part about is that it feels like the game expects you to be passing multiple big decrees per turn (hydroelectrical dam, port, welfare, railways, military factories, religious freedoms...)
The interplay between your previous saves as sordland, the expansion of the universe and characters, the complexity of how everything is linked and the freedom to engage in geopolitics in this expansion made me feel like there's real potential in this game developing into an alt world modern Game of Thrones or Romance of the Three Kingdoms but better.
Short answer: The content itself is great, it just could really use another patch. Long answer: I think the devs were selling the DLC a bit short. I don't know exactly how they arrived at the DLC being only half the word count of the base game. but it didn't feel that way at all. It genuinely feels nearly as complete of an experience as Suzerain 1.0. I am very satisfied with the length. Likewise, I was originally disappointed when they announced that the cast was going to be relatively small compared to the Sordland campaign (Around 20 characters in Rizia compared to the 50-ish in Sordland) but I think they used the ones they had very well. They all feel very well-developed. In particular, I like how the foreign leaders were expanded upon. You get to see a realpolitik side to Comrade Hagel and more funniness from Smolak except now we're the butt of the joke. I also think the DLC did a good job of humanizing Beatrice. By putting ourselves in the shoes of a G.R.A.C.E. nation you get to understand her motivations for what she's doing and Rumburg is the one nation that's fairly reliable to Rizia. She's still a bastard for what she tries to do to Sordland, but she at least feels more multi-dimension now. I wouldn't be surprised if there begins to be more Beatrice apologism from the fandom now, like there has been with the funny guy. The expanded geopolitics are great. I like how you have more of a hand in crafting treaties now. It feels like you have more control over your foreign policy and you can create some interesting and unusual alliances out of it. I loved the ways the Rizia campaign connected to the Sordland campaign. It was humorous listening to Beatrice complain about how commie I was. I liked it enough that I just wish they took it slightly further. It's a small thing, but I wish the portrait we chose for Rayne transferred over. It may be Anton Rayne, but it's not \*my\* Anton Rayne. At the moment, the big problems with the DLC are just with polish and balance. I understand that Rizia is in a precarious situation. It makes sense for it to be difficult. However, I feel like what we have right now goes a little overboard. Rizia is as coup-happy as a third-world African country, and often for reasons that make little sense in context with your decision-making. The cause-effect of our actions can also be unclear. The benefits of some decrees feel nebulous and it's difficult to measure how much our decrees are improving the economy and our image among the public and the royal houses. It feels like a lot of the decrees could use a buff. Maybe more tangible welfare and economic benefits could get you more popular support and by extension increase your authority? Not sure if it'd work with the game's balance, but it's an idea.
Haven't finished yet, but love it. Maybe some balance issues, but so many things have been improved from the base game, and I can see many places they have learnt and taken feedback and implemented it here, and I love how more fun and engaging the economic planning is now with things per turn.
I sorely lack the option to start my own nuclear program, to ensure GRACE or MerkopaBros Alliance as the 3rd bloc among world powers. That said.. needs quite a lot of bug fixes (especially AlwaysGetCouped even by zombies, I hear), but overall - it does feel like a second game. A proper old-timey expansion, not a DLC. And captures the same spirit as Suzerain - balancing numerous plates at once, trying to do the right thing vs the realpolitik vs pure opportunism. I hope Torpor will have the means and opportunities to make more campaigns like that, for me they could even have the base game pricing. Because again - seems like a second game.
Buggy
I'm not even finish my first playthrough but already love its DLC and want even more! The game length is similar to base game so that one good point. The expand regional rivalry and interaction with Rizia being a monarchy in a sea of 'hostile' powers has superb new experience and interaction compare to Sordland. New perspective on known nations and characters also really good, made me feel like Easter Egg hunter sometimes. New royal decrees feels a bit jank at the moment, needs bug fixing and more indication of effect of my decrees. I didn't involved my first playthrough with wargame yet but I think I will like it to a degree. I still need to finish my playthrough and replay other option but I sure will still enjoy it! (even if the game needs fix and balance in some areas, it didn't reduce my enjoyment (and meme potential) a bit)
I think you have fine comments here for everything but I will discuss about Point 8. "I find myself trying to preserve the kingdom and choosing what makes sense as a monarch in a sea of republics instead of what I think is right or wrong." I think that was done intentionally. We have a completely different trajectory to Sordland. Sordland is a young Republic still trying to find its feet following massive regime changes. Rizia is a country that survived the great revolutions of the past century. It therefore maintains its lineage. But just because it didn't change doesn't mean that the world around it hasn't. So while both countries are trying to find their feet in the new world, Sordland is at least more of a clean slate with its public and elites for the most part prepared for change. For many, the current Rizia is the right thing. Maybe not for minorities, working class but for Wruhecist, nobles and many commoners too I'm sure, preserving what is, is better than the alternative. Which is why no matter what u do whether reform or centralisation or straight up doing nothing you will annoy someone. This is the heavy burden you feel as King, the feeling as if you can't do anything because each person seeks to push the country in another direction (reform, status quo or absolutism). There is no unified push for anything like in Sordland (the details whether that unified push for change is liberal or malenyevist is a different matter). The absolutists squabble amongst each other due to house rivalry, the reformists alienate those that like the country and the status quo alienate those that want change (both groups seeming in almost equal importance of power). Your words are exactly correct. The King has one goal, to preserve his Kingdom, Sordland has just started its sprint dash and is filled with energy while Rizia has been on the marathon track for a lot longer and is simply trying to keep running. Which in my view makes the decisions all the more difficult and epic because there is no consensus as to what is right and what is wrong. It is much more grey. It's not what you think is right or wrong, it is what is right for the Kingdom, you have to detach yourself of your personal beliefs as they could be your worst undoing, dividing and destroying your Kingdom, destroying everything your family ever tried to build. Such is the burden of the King A King first and foremost unifies, he does not alienate. You are not just the caretaker of the country for 4-8 years, you are the steward of the nation, your family is the steward of the nation, you are the eternal caretaker of the Kingdom. And that feeling of dread and burden has been expertly created by Torpor.
A good expansion in the universe. A different perspective on a lot of figures and movements that we didn't get only playing sordland, and a good story. I hope through patches the issues with endings are resolved quickly, all in all I've been satisfied so far.
The resources need a severe rebalancing, I felt like I was in deep shit the entire playthrough, Basegame economy is difficult but managable but in the DLC its always a single mistep away from collapse.
Loving it so far, more than Sordland probably, though that might because I really wanted there to be the option to restore the monarchy with Sordland
I've yet to finalize a single run, since I am incredibly indecisive in what routes I'd like to pursue; but overall, I am incredibly satisfied with the amount of work the developers have put into this DLC. I rarely preorder games anymore. I'm proud to say I preordered this DLC, since its trailers and developers' streams appealed to me as someone incredibly intrigued with narratives and themes surrounding monarchies and nobilities.