Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic

This game is for people of systems. It is as addictive as Factorio really, and as enjoyable as Transport Fever.
But God save you if you let the "City Builder" tag fool you in a false sence of security - it has almost nothing in common with any of Simcity games, and only surface similarity to Cities Skyline series.
WRSR is deeper, MUCH DEEPER.
I'm not talking about comlexity, though game does have it in drowes, to the point when Cities Skylines would seem too shallow, forever unable to scratch the newfound itch, you never thought you have. I'm talking about your worldview.
No, you will not suddenly become a communist, nor the game make you prone to the socialist thought. It will not move your political allignment one inch. But game WILL make you appreciate all your everyday life conveniences.
You will see - buses around you are not going on their own, tap water didn't made itself available for you by some kind of a magic spell, elecrticity is not something made who-knows-where, constantly available and convenient just because.
These things are the product of systems. In fact - you are too.
Game lets you make some of those, tinker with them, and try yourself as the system architect and engineer. Your reward here is not the numbers on the Republic's bank account (game will make you understand - money is meaningless, while labor is not), your reward is beatifully functioning Republic, self-sufficient or not.
My personal experiece with WRSR is quite similar to the bonsai-tree growing, or trainset building. At this point it's meditative, relaxing and even creative hobby of mine. Through 5 years I've spent far more time on it than I care to admit.
Most remarkable thing about WRSR for me - It made me genuinly interested in the soviet city planning.
I was born in Siberia, in the town of oil workers right at the time of the Soviet Union's collapse. The town itself was constructed in the middle of nowhere among wast Vasyugan marshes near Ob river. Our parents all were at the mercy of town's oil industry - but town itself was only the sleep-place, while nearest oil rig needed to be reached by a helicopter (due to endless marshes and overall lack of infrastructure). The place wasn't exactly small (47k residents in its peak), but nevetheless peculiar, young both by average age of its inhabitants, and by itself (being founded in the 1966). It've always seemed like an island of sorts, both connected to the rest of the country with oil pipes and things, and nevertheless isolated. Quite strange feeling, I wasn't able to really put my thumb on it.
And now, with the help of WRSR, I DO understand how and why the place was the way it is.
Look for Strezhevoy on wiki, if you interested.
Buy it, play it.
10/10

As the meme says: If you think this is going to be another city building game, you're not gonna have a good time.
If you're looking for a regular city building game, go play I don't know, Cities Skylines 1 or 2, or one of the Simcities, I hear they are lovely this time of the year.
If you have already played city building games and want a bit more realistic one, and don't mind ugly concrete architecture, or even better, actually love concrete brutalism as an architecture style of choice, this is a game for you.
First go play the tutorials, and then start playing with almost all of the systems disabled, and then when you start understanding how the game works on a base level, start by turning the systems on one by one in an existing game to learn them out.
The game simulates many, many, many things that are just obfuscated or handwaived away in other city builders. On base settings you can buy buildings by paying money, either rubles or dollars to your friendly neighbours to build things, but the fun part is when you start building things yourself. Because then you need to get concrete, gravel, and asphalt from somewhere, get relevant trucks to transport it to the construction site, get an excavator on site to do the groundworks for the factory and then you need even more concrete, some bricks and steel to build the actual building, and after that even more steel and mechanical components to build the machines inside. After the factory is finished you need to ensure it gets the necessary raw materials so it can produce whatever it is producing for you, maybe you can use the bricks now in building other buildings so you don't need to buy them expensively from your friendly neighbour across the border. That is if you get workers there, and the building has electricity, drinking water for the toilets, and oh yeah, toilets, that reminds me, how have you planned and built the sewage pipes to take away the waste water? Also, now that we are producing things, there's all kinds of garbage and broken bricks that are starting to collect in the garbage dumper, when is the garbage truck coming to load all of them up and taking them to the dump?
And just keep multiplying this on and on.
The game is really good, but the learning curve is really steep, but on realistic mode it is nice how good it feels to finally get a gravel road built all the way from the border to your laid out shell of a town, as that means that all of the building materials and foreign workers don't need to crawl along on the old mud road that turns into a morass when ever it rains, nevermind snows. Which reminds me, did you have enough snowplows to clear the streets during winter?

This has ruined other City Builder games for me. Excellent job depicting real life vehicles, buildings, and places. The developers have clearly put a lot of passion and effort into this game.
Don’t skip the tutorial.

If you bought Cities Skylines 2 and were incredibly disappointed, I encourage you to read this review, as someone who has 2k+ hours on CS1, and plenty of hours on other various sim titles.

Let's get a few things out of the way, firstly, no, this is not a standard city building game. No beautiful modern skyscrapers, or fancy road network construction, but that's okay, because those are about the only two features CS would have over this game other than a better UI which isn't really a dealbreaker.

Now, this is, without a doubt, the most complex, and in-depth city building game I have ever seen. I was downright impressed at the level of detail the simulation goes into, things that Colossal Order barely implemented in CS are fully realized here. Things that I never considered being something to manage, you are challenged with here. A few highlight reel points that would entice any seasoned CS player.

-You want a transit focused city? Literally, do not allow people to buy cars. That's a thing here. There's car dealerships, and in order to fill your cities up with traffic, you CHOOSE how many cars to sell to your people. And because this is all about communism, you can even control who gets to park where, or who gets to own a car at all, you can literally decide if only the elderly or only the young should drive, if only the educated or uneducated get to drive. The control you have over transportation in this game is second only to the late great Transport Tycoon.

-And that being a mention, those familiar with TTD will feel right at home, much of the vehicle mechanics work the same, having a vehicle depot to deploy vehicles, and various "load/unload" stations that act as connection points for your logistics. But to have that level of complexity, tied into a real city builder. Is what makes it so impressive in this game.

-Those unfamiliar with TTD. Annoyed that garbage trucks seem to only work sometimes? Make your own routes to a T, if one building produces more garbage, you can dedicate specific vehicles to perform specific routes. If certain routes are light, you can put a lower upkeep vehicle on that route. All traffic on the road is controlled ENTIRELY by you, not a single vehicle drives without your command. And that means no more "0/25 vehicles working" in a city that is requesting all 25 vehicles.

-You can completely edit intersections like in TM:PE mod for CS, edit timing of traffic lights, road restrictions, etc. It's a shame the road construction in this game is so clunky because the tools they give you for the roads are incredible.

-You wanna talk about a game feeling alive? Like each "cim" has a real existence? This game gives each citizen a stat page, which includes the usual stuff, name, home, workplace, but you can see their commute, how long it takes, you can see how long their work shift is, and track their quitting time. You can also see their health stats and how they feel.

-The industry part of this game is overwhelming, it's basically a mini factorio but people are required to work the smelters and assemblers. No you aren't battling out a hierarchy of item crafting, but trying to think out how this factory will work with your city is an incredible task to consider, and very cool as well. Blows CS "industry" out of the water.

-Map size is incredible, random map gen with control over how its generated as well as some handcrafted maps

-Workshop mods

I could go on and on, but really, I cannot stress this enough. I was practically speechless while going through some of the menus and aspects of this game. The level of complex detail the developer has put into this game, shows this product is an absolute labor of love. No, it's not a fancy AAA title, with a sleek and clean UI. But that's okay, because through the clunkiness you can sense it, the game has a soul. The simulation in this game is simply, the best in the business. No other city builder comes close, not a single one. You can crank up the challenge and difficulty so high, that you need to build a construction office, and purchase asphalt rollers and various construction vehicles, and then you need to import the materials, or if you are making them at one of your factories, you truck them to the construction site, and what's all this for? Oh yeah, IT'S HOW YOU BUILD A ROAD!!! On "realistic" difficulty!! Or you can ignore all of that, turn the difficulty down, and just build a nice city and focus on traffic management and happiness. In this game, the choice is actually yours to how complex you want it, from not managing any resources or utilites, all the way up to, every single structure requiring materials, construction offices, and man labor hours to build it, from buildings to roads to conveyor belts.

Incredible. 10/10 sim game, a real 10/10
I will easily put thousands of hours on this game over the next coming years, will easily surpass CS:2

This game showed me exactly why planned economies in socialist countries failed.
Because there was an idiot like me doing the planning.
People were waiting in a line in front of the grocery store because I couldnt manage my food supply chain
10/10 for realism

This is now my favourite city builder, beating Cities Skylines for the 1st place. Its simulation simply has more depth than any other. Let me illustrate with an example:
Main supply road in your city is congested and has to be upgraded. In CS you would simply pause the game, design a new road system and the traffic resumes as normal.
In this game, the construction of new roads and bridges takes time and resources. You start by stockpiling the materials close by, gather the machinery needed and create a temporary bypass road. Then you choose the workforce for the job, if they come from far away you need to provide them transportation, if you conscript people living nearby for it, they will not be doing their regular jobs for the duration. If you prepared well, the job gets done quickly with minimal disruption to your economy, but if you did not a lot of things can go wrong. The bypass road might get overloaded and construction machinery stuck in traffic. The workers might be taken from a critical industry, like food, halting that production for the time. The project might run over time, into the harversting season, blocking combines on their way to the fields which is bad.
There is also an option to play sandbox where stuff gets built instantly, but the realistic construction and planning are the best part of the game.

My steam profile says I bought the game in December 2020 and while I was fascinated by the game at the time I was also quite overwhelmed and couldn't get deep enough to really enjoy it, so I dropped it quickly.
After deciding to give it another go after the 1.0 release, I've dedicated more time in understanding all the intertwined systems and have been SLOWLY getting the hang of it. Bottom line is - I'm enjoying every step of the way (although there have been a few times when I was pretty furious with some game events, lol).
The reason why I wanted to post this review is simple - to recommend to ALL players (yes, even inexperienced ones) to play in REALISTIC mode. It is, for me, the way it's meant to be played - yes, it is hard AND slow, yes, you will make mistakes, yes, you have to think everything through and plan a TON... but hell the feel of accomplishment it gives you once you have a simple industry (or a train) running is AMAZING and there are very few games or other free-time activities that can give you that.