Are you sick of the flood of strategy titles saturating the market? Don't give up hope just yet, because Supreme Ruler 2020, the inventively titled sequel to the 2005 strategy game Supreme Ruler 2010, is quickly coming your way from BattleGoat Studios and Paradox Interactive.

Gameplay

The first thing you'll notice about SR2020 is that, even though it appears to be just a regular battlefield in the vein of the Command and Conquer series. It'll take a little getting used to, this is entirely due to the fact that the tutorial that will be included with the final game was not present in our preview copy. After a little experimentation with the UI , you can dive right into the action. Oddly, even at the fastest speed available, in-game time advances at only about two minutes for every five seconds. When building structures like roads take <i>fifteen days</i> to complete, you realize that a game like this requires patience, and lots of it.

This title is deceptively deep however. In the process of making genius tactical decisions like declaring war on my neighbor, Oregon, as soon as possible (the little 'push the red button to declare war' animation is wonderful), I built extra silos, deployed more military, and basically proceeded to gradually and completely ruin my state of choice, Washington, both economically and structurally. The interface, while not immediately user-friendly, quickly becomes second nature and making many actions require just mousing over a unit or building, which is, design-wise, a nice touch. So far, this game has all the makings of a classic, well-made strategy title.

The Big Empty

One thing that has worried me about the preview copy of this game is the game's graphics. So far, the game's graphics are a little plain and chunky. However, this does enable Supreme Ruler 2020 to run well on just about any machine with little slowdown.  Despite these setbacks in the graphics department, it will not prevent players from experiencing the overall idea that Battlegoat Studios had in mind for this title. With more detail, we could see this end up being a great geopolitical simulator.

Conclusion

If all goes well, BattleGoat and Paradox can work out these minor worries before the game releases. Supreme Ruler has the makings of a truly fun strategy game hidden behind the development teams ideas. If you appreciate in-depth gameplay than this title will be something you should considering purchasing when it gets released this June.

Written by: Ted Arial, Staff Writer