Power & Revolution 2022 Edition

Power & Revolution 2022 Edition is the latest instalment in a yearly geopolitical simulation series from French developer Eversim, tracing back through editions for 2019, 2020 and 2021 — and, under earlier names, further still. The pitch has stayed consistent across that whole run: take control of a nation, as its head of state or as the opposition trying to topple one, and manage its economy, military, diplomacy and public standing in granular, systemic detail. This edition adds the war in Ukraine, disinformation and conspiracy theories, and climate policy as live scenario elements, and its 967 reviews land at a Mixed 59% positive — a score this review's research suggests is less about any single flaw than about a long-running, genuinely frustrating pattern.

A simulation depth few competitors attempt

The clearest, most consistently credited strength is scope. Reviewers describe managing everything from sanctions and trade relationships to domestic unrest and covert operations, and several specifically frame the game as filling a niche nothing else on Steam quite occupies. One detailed review from launch week, playing as the USA managing the response to the Ukraine war, describes being able to "smoothly impose sanctions on Russia" while managing the knock-on economic consequences — the kind of systemic interconnection that's the series' clearest selling point across every edition. That depth is real, and it's the reason a meaningful share of this game's reviewers keep buying the series year after year despite everything else in this review.

A fanbase that keeps buying, and keeps complaining

What makes this edition's reviews unusual is how many of them read like they're written by people with a long, ongoing relationship with the series rather than first-time buyers. "It's incredible how every year they don't fix the problems and bugs and yet I still buy this game every year," reads one representative review from launch week; another says plainly, "I have been buying this game since 2016." That's a genuinely distinctive pattern worth naming honestly: this isn't a game struggling to find an audience, it's a game whose audience keeps returning despite specific, repeatedly unaddressed complaints — which says as much about the strength of the underlying concept as it does about the state of its execution.

Bugs reviewers say have outlived several editions

The specific complaints are consistent and concrete. Multiple reviewers describe a clock that sticks at 23:59 and won't advance without a restart, crashes on larger or longer-running save files, and geographic and data errors — one reviewer points out China is modelled with only five airports in the 2022 edition specifically. What makes these complaints land harder than ordinary launch bugs is that several reviewers explicitly say the same issues existed in previous yearly editions and were never fixed before this one shipped, turning what would be a normal early-release rough patch into a pattern spanning several years of the series' life.

A missing module, sold separately

A specific, sharper complaint concerns the God'n Spy espionage module. Multiple reviewers from launch week say it was included in the 2020 and 2021 editions and ask, sometimes angrily, why it's absent here — and this review independently confirmed via Steam's own store listings that a separate "God'n Spy Add-on - Power & Revolution 2022 Edition" DLC exists for this specific release. Whether or not the module was truly free in every prior edition, reviewers' anger at being asked to pay again for content some believed they'd already effectively bought is a real, specific grievance rather than a vague one.

A steep price for an annual refresh

At roughly NZ$62, this edition costs as much as many full, from-scratch strategy games, and reviewers are pointed about what that buys: incremental changes over the 2021 edition rather than a substantially new game. "Same game as last year plus Ukraine War and conspiracy theories," reads one detailed, 87-vote review, arguing the new content "could have and arguably should have just been added in an update, not a $50 new release." That's a fair characterisation of the tension running through this whole review base — a series whose yearly cadence works against it, since each edition invites direct comparison to the one before at nearly the same price, and the differences reviewers describe are real but modest.

A patch record that fits a yearly cycle, not abandonment

This review pulled Eversim's public Steam event history for this specific edition directly, and it shows real, sustained support through the game's first year: a balance patch within two weeks of launch, a macOS version added in June 2022, a modding-tool DLC and further patch in May 2022, and two more numbered updates through the rest of the year, with a final AMD/ATI compatibility fix landing in April 2023. That's a genuinely different shape from a developer walking away — this review independently confirmed via Steam's own store search that a Power & Revolution 2023 Edition exists, meaning support for this specific edition wound down because the series moved to its next yearly release, not because the developer lost interest in the underlying game. That context doesn't erase the specific, multi-year bug complaints above, but it does mean the support story here is closer to "the series moved on" than "the game was abandoned."

Where it lands

Power & Revolution 2022 Edition offers a genuinely rare kind of simulation depth, and its most dedicated fans are the first to admit that's worth something even through real frustration. But bugs that multiple reviewers say have carried over unfixed across several editions, a paid module that reviewers believe was previously included, a dated and unclear interface, and a steep annual price for what many call incremental change are real, specific, well-documented problems. A 5 credits a simulation with no real substitute for what it does well, held back by a development pattern that keeps disappointing the very players who keep buying it.