Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

The first hour is all about settling into a deliberately unglamorous political routine. Each day, you pick an action—visit a place or arrange a meeting—and inch toward the larger goal of becoming Prime Minister. It is a wonderfully odd setup for a strategy game: instead of commanding armies, you are building a career one useful contact and one solved citizen problem at a time.

What starts to click is the connection between practical experience and public approval. Solving problems builds your credentials, while campaigning pushes popularity, and both matter if you want to win the vote. Items can also sway public opinion, giving the climb an appropriately cheeky political edge. The game’s strategy is less about grand tactical flourishes than deciding how to spend limited days on the route to enough support.

The frustration is easy to predict if you need immediate action or a lot of direct control. This is completely menu driven, and its day-by-day structure asks you to enjoy the process of nudging numbers and standing upward through choices. If that sounds like spreadsheet work with a punchline, it may wear thin. If you enjoy compact turn-based systems where every selection is another small gamble on a final result, the premise has real pull.

Graphics

The game is based on the work of cartoonist Hisaichi Ishii, and that comic, farcical foundation fits its political subject well. This is politics treated as a joke with consequences, not a sober simulation of public office.

Story

The central arc is a straightforward rise-to-power tale: you begin as a budding politician and work toward the office of Prime Minister of Japan. That goal gives even routine decisions a useful sense of direction, because popularity is not an abstract high score; it is the currency of your eventual election.

Citizen problems provide the game’s most grounded thread. They frame your accumulation of experience as public service, even while the broader game cheerfully allows campaign work and opinion-changing items to share the same road to victory. That contrast is where the satire lands: idealism and image management sit side by side.

Do not expect the political theme to play as heavy drama. The tone is explicitly farcical, and the story works best as a framework for the climb, setbacks, and small victories of a politician trying to become electable. The target is clear from the beginning, which makes a successful final vote the natural payoff.

Overall Experience

Ishii Hisaichi no Daiseikai is a peculiar little strategy game whose strongest idea is also its entire character: politics reduced to daily choices, accumulated experience, and a popularity contest. Its simplicity can be refreshing. You always understand what you are chasing, even when the route demands patient, incremental play.

The payoff is worth it if the idea of winning an election through careful planning sounds more inviting than controlling a battlefield. The game asks you to find humor in ambition, public favor, and the occasional nudge to opinion rather than to seek deep tactical complexity. Go in ready for a measured board-game rhythm, and its satirical campaign can be pleasantly distinctive.

It is easiest to recommend to strategy fans who like unusual themes and do not mind a menu-driven format. Anyone after fast action or elaborate political simulation should look elsewhere. But for a focused, turn-based climb from aspiring candidate to national leader, it has an appealingly mischievous premise.

Retro Replay Score

6.7/10