It's disappointing enough that this sequel is lacking in new features. Stardock had four years to add something, anything, to expand and improve on gameplay. And there were no shortage of useful and reasonable suggestions: primaries, debates, third parties, a map editor. Heck, they didn't even take the obvious route of harnessing user-generated content -- even a rudimentary way to share custom candidates, maps, and scenarios could give this game significantly more replay value.
But no, TPM2012 actually takes away content from the last game. The historical campaign? Gone. The European, Civil War, and Drengi scenarios? Gone. Most of the old candidates? Gone, gone, gone. Oh, and the Steam integration makes it impossible to play a LAN game against a friend or yourself unless you buy it twice (not happening).
But hey, it's got a few new bobbleheads! And a few more text entries in its issues database! And a coat of shiny on all the buttons! Too bad those are the most trivial and non-essential aspects of the game.
I'm not a hater. I loved TPM2008 to the point of hacking together my own custom scenario, pre-ordered the sequel months ago, and was planning on writing a big post promoting the game for a fairly large and politically astute web community I'm a part of. If it were at all an improvement rather than a cash-grabbing step backward, I would. But this isn't even worth pirating.
I'd love for some actual meat to get added to the game's bones in a future update, beyond dead-simple stuff like tweaking the issues matrix (something I, a programming novice, was able to do myself in my free time). But honestly, if Stardock couldn't add anything meaningful in four years, I don't see them adding anything in the next few months.