Mixed or average reviews - based on 12 Critics What's this?

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Mixed or average reviews- based on 22 Ratings

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  • Summary: In Supreme Ruler 2020: Cold War, players will enter a portrayal of the world in the year 2020 based on recent real-world headlines. Battle economic challenges, unstable governments and worldwide tensions in this grand strategy experience.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 12
  2. Negative: 0 out of 12
  1. Aug 9, 2011
    A solid strategy game for exciting hours in a historical context.
  2. Aug 11, 2011
    Supreme Ruler: Cold War is an old strategy game whose gameplay recalls the times when you had to face real difficulties and every videogame was a challenge. Same goes for the technical side, with its graphics and sound that seem to come back from the '90s. Only for fans.
  3. 70
    Huge and extremely ambitious strategy with exceptional attention to detail. In other words this is not a game for common gamers – it consumes great amounts of time and requires absolute attentiveness. [Issue#208]
  4. Aug 5, 2011
    Just like most Paradox Interactive strategy games, Supreme Ruler: Cold War has become a very difficult game that is made for the best strategists out there. The lack of a tutorial doesn't help and the meagre graphics don't make the game any more accessible. However, if you're looking for a deep strategy game that can give you a big challenge, try it out.
  5. Sep 6, 2011
    A deep and profound strategic title wich fails to deliver, mainly due to a lame user interface, lack of tutorial, questionable AI, bad graphics and boring moments. The multiplayer fails to save it. It's definitely better to look elsewhere into the Paradox portfolio with better, more refined, titles as Hearts of Iron or Europa Universalis.
  6. Aug 3, 2011
    Excellent simulation and storic research, Cold War suffers some AI problem, poor engine and inconsistent music and sound effects.
  7. Aug 11, 2011
    Quotation forthcoming.

See all 12 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 11
  2. Negative: 2 out of 11
  1. Jul 20, 2011
    A detailed and sophisticated strategy game - you won't master this in a day (or a week or a month...) but it should offer huge replayability, between the campaigns (play as US or USSR), the Sandbox (play as one of about 200 regions), or Scenarios (shorter games with specific objectives). It will take about an hour to get used to the interface and the controls/options, and there is a good manual and some good "walkthrough" guides. After that it is about trying to master the control you are given versus what you can get your ministers to do for you, etc etc.

    Warfare can get a bit cluttered at times, but this is in part to the much improved game speed versus earlier titles in the series - when things get hot you should 'slow down' to the lower speed levels, so that you can properly manage your units. At the fast speed, let the AI take care of it and just watch the fun.
  2. Aug 1, 2011
    I'd actually like to give this game a 9.5, but that's not possible, so I'll round up... There is a huge amount of greatness in this game - depth, a good user interface, lots of strategy, politics, replayability, tactical battles, strategic planning, and even global nuclear war!

    Yes, there are some weaknesses - a big learning curve, dated graphics, so-so sound... on the other hand there is a huge map, battles with as many units as you can desire, a very detailed combat system that includes supply, indirect fire, terrain, line of sight, and much more. And the economic/resource model is great too... maybe not enough difference between communist and capitalist economies, but the fun is in cornering the market for finished goods, or invading an oil producing country to resolve that pesky shortage!

    I've been playing it for a week now and can't wait to dive in and try something new the next time. There is a LOT here for your money.
  3. Jul 22, 2011
    This game can get a bit scary at first because so much is going on at once, but then when you slow the game speed down a bit you can really get to appreciate the detail and the vast number of choices you get when you play Supreme Ruler ColdWar. I like the military battles side myself, so the improvements over the older Supreme Ruler games with better naval transport, and the option to fight wars as a "proxy" instead of declaring war on everybody, are very big features.

    The Espionage side is a bit boring, but the tech tree is improved and easier to understand, and ties in better with the rest of the game. Diplomacy has some cool new options, and a lot of the other regions (controlled by the AI) seem to have lots of things of their own going on. I'm actually preferring the Sandbox to the Campaign game, but that may change - lots of gameplay and replay value in this game.
  4. Jul 22, 2013
    This is one of the better RTS games I've played, although with me being a strategy game nut I can't really overlook the swarm of bugs in this game.
    Although it's got massive replay value, it's really a one trick pony.

    From my 90+ hours of playing it, every game ends up nearly the same. Nothing new happens unless you directly cause it. The AI is buggy at times but generally stable enough to overlook. The economic aspect of the game is genuinely one of the more solid features in the game. If the developers added more random events and made the game not play out the same way every single time, I'm sure it'd be a much better game.

    Although it's not a bad game, it's not a good game if the developers had corrected the issues that plague It would be a far better game. So overall, the AI does the same thing every time, it's got it's priorities in the wrong places. For example, if I invade china it'll still keep most of it's army idle by it's capital instead of pushing me out.

    The game doesn't really have a good diplomatic system, but it isn't bad really. The AI makes terrible choices, like not accepting a peace agreement when you've occupied their whole nation pretty much and getting annexed instead.

    The moral of this, it's not a really good game and I'd avoid it unless you're a large fan of grand scale strategy games.
  5. Jul 31, 2011
    Not quite as difficult as you would think, but definitely a big game. The hardest part is finding any sort of manual or help file (assuming you downloaded it from Steam or other source). The interface is okay, but as far as presenting data efficiently, I believe this game fails. The financials are a classic example as you may see a daily deficit, but for some reason your treasury keeps growing. As it turns out, this has to do with trade and other items, but from the interface this is not immediately apparent. Your political leaning (ie. Conservative, Moderate etc.) has little to do with how you govern. Even if you're a free-market conservative, you're still ultimately controlling directly or indirectly (via ministers) all of the country's production and trade. If you can pick this game up for a download somewhere below $10.00, I'd say go ahead and buy, but otherwise, I'd suggest buying Capitalism II and mix it up with some Civ 5. Expand
  6. Aug 3, 2011
    Very interesting type of game, but don't expect a polished high-end product. In campaign mode, you play as the USA or the USSR. It feels authentic and the developers have spent a huge amount of attention to detail. All the strategic and tactical decisions you might expect are yours to take - this is a game grand in scope, complex and realistic. I'm a big fan of that type of ambition in a developer. (In sandbox mode you can play as any nation starting in 1949, I was amused to see that they've even gotten the geography and infrastructure of Sweden roughly correct.)
    However, beware that this feels very much like an Indie game. It runs a bit slowly. The AI seems so-so, it's not that proactive. The user interface is absolutely awful, no real excuse for that in a commercial product. Military unit models are somewhat detailed, but basically look like animated stacks of units from Civ 4. It takes a long time to play: after a while, even on the highest game speed setting, it felt like watching paint dry.
    Buy this game if you are new to this genre, if you're interested in the meta-game of the cold war. But bear in mind that this game has many shortcomings in terms of playability, game speed, graphical quality and variety. Given more funding and a larger development studio, this game would have been truly epic. Realistic, complex and detalied. But as it stands - mediocre.
  7. Aug 16, 2011
    The lights are on, but nobody is home. This game appears fantastic, until you play for a few hours, and realize what is missing. An accurate manual, a decent AI, and any sense of challenge, let alone realism.

    The manual is not only woefully light on detail, it refers to features that the developers admit didn't make it into the game, as well as having a lot of obvious mistakes on those features that did make the cut.

    The AI creates a mass of units, then uses them spareingly, if at all - even for self defense. It often seems to ignore air units totally. The AI cannot build new building complexes like the player can, only add to old ones. The game is exceedingly slow, even on relatively fast systems. Every game starts with the French declaring war on North Vietnam, and then the whole of NATO decides to pile into Southeast Asia too. If, playing as the USA, you help to defend South Korea after they are invaded, the UN will hate you (not join in, as in real life), and bizarrely, the South Koreans will hate you too. Oh, and the Suez crisis of 1956 will never happen - Egypt owns the canal in 1956.

    This game is either woefully unfinished, or just terrible. Buy at your own risk.

See all 11 User Reviews