#and laurento can come take over for deivid after he retires

[vice-president-galade]

I finished Rizia and it went better than I expected, considering how rough my start was. (I think it's a lot more forgiving of mistakes than Sordland -- it seems like there are multiple ways of addressing most problems.) I'm very happy with my run! I got Zille back through a referendum, got half the rights to the Aureus gas field, and successfully transitioned to a constitutional monarchy. I ended up abdicating in favor of Vina (who married Manus) so I could live openly with Pabel. Pretty perfect, really.

I was getting inklings that Lucita was going to cause problems -- she was the only member of the Council who seemed less than pleased about the reforms (even Hugo was okay with it!) and we had a meeting where she said House Azaro was upset with me. (Probably because I kept selling off all our military equipment.) So I might have been heading toward a coup that I avoided by abdicating.

Ultimately I don't think I like the Rizia campaign quite as much as Sordland -- the narrative and characters are still great (especially Elena, Estela, Hugo, and Laurento), but I kind of bounced off the resource management element. It was honestly just annoying to keep having to balance authority/budget/energy. I kept missing out on things because I didn't have the budget, even though I could have sold some energy to get there, because I didn't know I was going to need it right then. That's just not a gameplay element that appeals to me, but I'm sure it's something that a large portion of the Suzerain fanbase enjoys. (I didn't touch the war mechanic at all -- pretty sure that's not my thing, either.) But I did still love the story.