SuperPower

There aren't really all that many games about world "simulation", and few of those are modern-day, so standards for this kind of thing aren't terribly high. But unless the computer you're reading this review on is also from the 90s and you can't play anything newer, this one ultimately isn't worth your time.

From a purely technological standpoint, the game hasn't aged well. It's stuck at 800x600 and only works full-screen, and the game interface is fairly slow and cumbersome to use. The 'learning' AI, one of the game's more unique features even today, generally isn't smart or obvious enough to stand out. While the information seems fairly accurate and comprehensive, it's for 1997 - not as amazing nearly two decades later and of little impact in-game except that many countries have military units you won't know anything about.

As for gameplay itself - while you're free to change pretty much anything at any time, the effects of your actions are generally very hard to see. The summary screen is very poor at showing you relevant events (such as research progress) and once you tire of messing with your own state/republic/kingdom/etc, interactions between countries are fairly limited. But the biggest flaw is that the player has almost no access to automation and, especially if you're in a war, will spend the vast majority of your time micromanaging. This includes everything from setting city development priorities, designing and upgrading combat units, choosing which units and how many and where to build them, moving/grouping units, personally targetting every single nuclear missile before launching them, making/accepting treaties... With a few exceptions, there aren't even suggestions. (While there are advisors available for some parts of the game, they use the same learning AI and so are usually unhelpful and almost never specific.)

And as for combat, which is where every game ends up eventually - because there's nothing else to do once you prevent your own country from collapsing - it's just not that fun. The surprisingly-detailed real-world map is a nice touch but doesn't matter much since units are (manually, of course) placed in certain 'zones' before the battle. The command system isn't great and although all the various research levels have a huge effect in this part it's impossible to see details on your units unless you've copied it down beforehand (let alone information on what you're fighting against). On the other hand, you can at least automate this part.

Even though almost this entire review is negative, I don't think this deserves just one star. The game was popular enough at the time to get a sequel, which drastically altered many things I've mentioned above (graphical options, automation, more diplomacy and perhaps-overly-simplified combat are the most obvious). And it's not necessarily a bad game - just one for a fairly niche audience that hasn't aged well. But unless you feel mistakenly nostalgic one day, and need to correct your memory, there's no reason to play this anymore.