Republique: Anniversary Edition

Genre: Stealth / Action-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Republique is a Stealth game with Action-RPG elements released in episodic form on mobile devices from 2013 through 2016, ported to PC in 2015 and 2016, and collected together into a full game on PlayStation 4 in 2016, with an Anniversary Edition releasing in 2022 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR, and Nintendo Switch. This game takes place in a future dystopia where the populace is strictly controlled by a totalitarian surveillance state government, where the player essentially controls two characters – a young woman named Hope who has been captured by government forces, and a mysterious unseen hacker who is using the government’s own electronic systems to help her make her escape.

While this game has aged somewhat in the decade since its original release, its 3D visuals are still at least decent, and the game’s art direction does a good job creating imagery to really sell its vision of a future dystopian dictatorship. What’s more, the visual presentation is backed by a subdued soundtrack befitting the themes, and joined by an excellent voice cast with industry veterans like Jennifer Hale, David Hayter, Dwight Schultz, and Matthew Mercer.

For the gameplay itself, this game has a great concept – you alternately control hope as she moves around, tries to avoid or incapacitate guards, grab important items, and work her way through enemy-infested facilities… and also control a hacker who can change the camera everything is viewed through, interact with doors and other electronic elements of the facility, and also observe important elements of the environment. To safely make your way through the game, you need to alternate between the two.

When this works, it is a truly unique experience within the Stealth genre. Unfortunately, this game is constantly damaging this delicate balance in multiple ways. While you can manually swap cameras at any time, when Hope moves, the camera perspective frequently moves automatically. This can be jarring, as you’ll need to become reoriented every time this happens, even if you’re right in the middle of something time-sensitive, such as evading a guard who will be seeing you any second, and it can be infuriating when you scope out the best angle to see both Hope and the guard you need to avoid, only to have the game force a camera change when you move, or even shift the camera multiple times in succession as you move back and forth between different camera zones.

The camera issue isn’t this game’s only problem, either. You’ll also have to deal with both the cameras and Hope suddenly wresting control from you for in-game cut-scenes, which isn’t quite as damaging to the gameplay as the camera problem, but nevertheless is still really immersion-breaking.

As frustrating as these problems are, this game does something surprising that makes it very easy to forgive a good portion of its flaws. When this game was originally released on Nintendo Switch, it sold for a very reasonable $15. Yet, for reasons I am not privy to, this game suddenly plummeted in price six months after its release to an incredible $1 price tag, and it has stayed at that price ever since.

Is Republique still a flawed game? Absolutely. The camera problems alone in this game are maddening to a point of extreme frustration. However, this game has a fascinating world and a great premise, and for only $1, it’s hard not to recommend this game to Stealth game fans on Nintendo Switch It may not hold a candle to the greats of the genre, but it’s absolutely well worth this tiny price tag.

tl;dr – Republique is a Stealth game where players control both a young woman trying to escape a dystopian surveillance state, as well as a hacker using that government’s technology to assist her. This game has a fascinating world and a unique gameplay premise, and while the gameplay here is highly flawed due to the game’s frustrating camera issues, at the absurdly generous price of $1 it’s still an easy game to recommend to Stealth fans.

Grade: B-

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