There are certain games you play that are great at telling a story and delivering it so well that you become emotionally invested and feel like you are actually living that story. République is one of those games. The story immerses you into it and puts you on an emotional roller coaster that is constantly making you think about right and wrong. It also forces you to feel like a parent to this mysterious girl you are protecting. The graphics in this game are very well done and I never encountered any major issues. It felt like the graphics during any given level were designed to make you feel the emotion of that level whether it be mystery, sadness or even fear.
The controls can be a bit confusing at first since you are not only controlling the environment around you but also controlling Hope at the same time. The good news is that they definitely grow on you and by the end of the game you feel like you are truly progressing. The actual stealth mechanics felt very touchy at times and you would not know if you were safe or not but it definitely made the game more challenging. It never just thrusts you instantly into a hard situation, it builds up as the game goes on. On the other hand, the hacking part of the title felt very well done and the only complaint I have is the small freeze you sometimes get when switching cameras. Honestly, the only real problem I had throughout the game was with the few seconds of lag you get when changing rooms.
The game does not slowly transition you into the story, it throws you in almost instantly as this young girl named Hope calls you and pleads for your help so these people do not “erase” her. Shortly afterward she hears guards coming and hides the phone. After a short conversation, the guards bring her to a solitary cell for “recalibration” but luckily a quiet man named Cooper brings her the phone. With the help of the player, she is able to escape the cell and start her emotion-filled journey to escape this place she has been trapped in all her life. You take on almost a parent role throughout the game as you feel the need to keep her not only physically safe but also mentally safe by avoiding all the death going on around her.
The beauty of the story is the fact that you play yourself the whole time. You cannot hide your actions behind a fictional character on the screen because they are your choices to make and you have to decide what is best. By the end of the game, you will feel almost like you are looking at a different girl not seeing her as a young child that needs protection but a mature young woman that has been through hell and back.
As hinted at earlier, the graphics for this game are absolutely stunning and really contribute to the game’s story by enhancing the feelings you are already getting from the story itself. I remember one level specifically where you are in a graveyard hiding from this giant creepy man while trying to find a way out. Throughout most of the part I was terrified by this monstrous brute but what kept that uneasiness going all the way till the end even when I knew I was safe was the dark and isolated setting.
Going into the graphics a bit more, the only hits to performance I ever encountered were at the very end of the game and only lasted about a second when an animation was going on. There was one static effect when switching cameras and major areas that caused a little bit of eye strain for me but it was never anything major and only really affected me a few times when it froze while doing it. I think story and graphics are where this game really shines and makes it an almost must-buy.
At the end of the day it all comes down to optimization and I am sure the developers are aware of the problems and working on a fix. Hopefully it will be deployed sooner rather than later. These are such small issues that they do not detract from the game whatsoever.
The way you play République seems to slowly open up the further you go into it as at first stealth is the only choice. However, the more you adventure, the more you see new opportunities open up by using items you find and abilities you buy with intel you earn through digging deeper into the game’s lore. At the end of the day both are optional. From what I found, there seem to be four items throughout the game, three of which are weapons that temporarily or permanently disable guards and one is to give you more charges to use your abilities. I am not sure the exact amount of abilities that were in the game but they ranged from stealth-based ones that gave you opportunities to lure guards away and story-based ones that allowed you to hack into computers and other devices to get a better handle on the lore. There are also many collectibles in the game that open up the backstory and opinions of the characters.
Hope and the player are required to work as a team. The interactions between you and her make you feel like you are actually working with someone rather than just controlling them. It is a rather unusual and unique feeling that I want other games to replicate. This is another reason why République is so good.
Going back to the controls, they were the element I had the most problems with throughout the game and honestly they were almost perfect as well. The biggest problem I had with the controls was with them being a bit hard to learn as even by the end of the game I found myself making mistakes over which button was to actually do the task I wanted.
The other aspect I had a problem with was that Hope would often get stuck close to walls when I was trying to make a sneaky escape which ended up slowing me down a bit or getting me caught once or twice. The controls did register very well when switching between camera mode and Hope mode and that definitely made up for the other issues I was having. Most of the issues I did have with the controls were minor and almost never affected my gameplay which was surprising with all the tasks you have going on.
Summary
République is an amazing episodic stealth adventure game that really pulls you into the deep story it offers. It allows you the freedom to make choices in the game that directly affect the outcome and your relations with the other characters. The graphics are absolutely amazing and help draw you into an already immersive story. The gameplay allows you freedom to choose how you want to play—whether it be locking all the guards in rooms and laughing at them or slowly sneaking through. The controls are barely lacking and work very smoothly with the tasks that need to be performed. Depending on how you play this game, it offers almost a day of beautiful and heartbreaking gameplay that I highly recommend experiencing.
Noel was a regular ICXM contributor in 2016, publishing 83 articles across game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the run-up to Xbox One S and Project Scorpio, plus the broader Windows 10 gaming push.