Unrealistic and buggy, SuperPower 2 isn't worth your time...
Ok, that's not even the worst of it. But a game which seems, for the most part, to take itself entirely too seriously when it comes to being based in reality, this simple screwup was telling.
In a game like this, the system should at least somewhat conform to reality, otherwise you're simply spending your time trying to figure out what the game is thinking. So I can raise taxes to 75% in the US, and my approval rating still goes up, eventually to over 80%. What the heck? And I could invade Saudi Arabia and take no hit in popularity (domestically or internationally).
The game is all over the place. The Gamespot review talked about occasional jumps into lunacy, but in my opinion that's all this game really offers. When Israel jumped in to aid Iran in a war I instigated as Pakistan, for instance. It happens all the time. Not to mention occasional very un-balanced military calculations, which had my two carrier battle group destroyed by an ASW patrol.
The economics is no better. Playing as the US I was dismayed to see that somehow the US consumes more grain than it produces. Which is completely contrary to reality. And odd, considering other parts of the game look well researched. But the inconsistency makes the game completely distracting.
The game is playable, however, and after awhile (once you jetison any connections between what you see and what you would expect in the real world) you might find something interesting here. That is, when the game isn't crashing halfway through your game.
The game is not difficult to pick up, but sometimes counterintuitive. Sometimes the game demands micromanagement, but doens't give you easy to use tools to perform necessary tasks. Information is actually pretty scarce, and unlike other games of this type, doesn't allow you much control over presentation.
Graphically the game is pretty garish. More information could be displayed graphically, but isn't. If you zoom into a battle to make decisions, the graphics are horrid. The models of the units are very bad (and sometimes don't even look remotely what like the unit resembles in real life). The map could have been beautiful and useful. Instead it is ugly and barely useful.
The sound often gets stuck and stutters, and you'll find yourself booted out to the desktop quite a bti (and I'm playing with the latest update, mind you). The game has been out over a year, and I thought the bugs would have been patched, but I was wrong.
Forget it, leave it on the shelf (or bargain bin). It doesn't deserve to be on your hard drive. I'll keep waiting for a decent geo-political sim game, because this one is crap.