A simple, straightforward racing game, but that's what really makes this so effective for me. A very classic feel to it.

There's a great simplicity to this core concept, and it makes this feel quite addictive. Though if there was anywhere that this seemed to come up short, I think it's that this limits itself. The whole thing is building your collection, and the display areas feel quite constrained. Particularly given the number of variations and how often quests require specific things, having more on display in an easier fashion would help, as the long-term game involves the quests and it feels like the game runs out earlier than it should. The way that things are combined is also fairly opaque.

While it was a fun game, but as they've retracted support for it, that has set the precedent that they do not feel any obligation to maintain this game in working order for customers. A good game from an untrustworthy company is not a game I can recommend in good conscience.

Advertised as having Linux support, but it doesn't run on Linux/Ubuntu. That alone means a negative review.

I knew this game was for me when suicide was the solution to having a leader with bad stats and a great heir waiting in the wings.

I knew the game was accurate when I wasted years and huge amounts of resources because I thought I could invade Russia in the winter and succeed. I could not.

Good gameplay, and I do appreciate the multiple ways to win at it. My biggest issue with it is that some of the assets seem to cause the game to crash for me sometimes, and don't display right.

This game managed to have a puzzle so frustrating to solve that I wrote a 70 line Python program to run through an algorithm to solve it. Take that how you will.

The regular game was mediocre but the minigame that's not a game was absolutely an atrocious addition to this. It was absurdly pointless and took several times longer than the actual game, not counting letting it run over the course of days. Nothing but padding.

Having never heard of this game til recently (so no rose-colored glasses issued) I was quite impressed with how enjoyable this was. There's a great sense of humour running through it. Though at points that is a *very* adult meaning which isn't something I'd expected of it. A huge point to its credit is the quality of the acting. I don't mean just the sorta hammy stuff from Christopher Lloyd and Ben Stein who you actually see, but the cast for voice acting in this which is an outstanding list: starting with Tim Curry and Dom DeLuise (these two should need no clarification), but also Tress MacNeille (Dot Warner), Rob Paulsen (Yakko Warner), Dan Castellaneta (Homer Simpson), Frank Welker (Fred Jones from Scooby Doo), Jeff Bennett (Johnny Bravo), and Jim Cummings (Darkwing Duck). And every one of them has a bunch of other roles that you've heard them in as well and likely didn't realize it. It's an absolutely amazing line-up that add a lot to what is already generally well-written dialogue.

There were a few downsides I found with the game. Since much of the game requires finding the right thing to use the right way, there's a bit of a downside that some of the longer bits that you may have to watch 3-4 times (and more if you misclick) can't be skipped. So while it's good that it's all voiceover, it's a tad trying at spots. Personally, I was also annoyed by a couple bits that involved things being very tricky to find the right spot on the screen for, but I think that's more a mark of the genre. Finally, it was a bit tricky to find any info on the controls, both the actual in-game controls (right click allows for looking at objects) and how to access the game's menu to save progress or quit the game (CTRL + F5 for that menu).

That said, they're minor downsides compared to the game overall. It was certainly worth playing.

The game is extremely buggy, repeatedly freezing or crashing, and in the 4 hours I probably had to kill the process running it at least 20-30 times. It seems rather evident that much of the flavor text on elements doesn't display correctly, either, as a handful of descriptions showed up over and over again with little connection to what's being made. The actual connections often simply don't make sense at a certain point.

Finally, the quest sections were just straight up bad. They don't add anything to the game. I got this as one of 4 games in a bundle that cost $5 and I still think I overpaid for this.