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Empire of Sin - Brenda and John Romero's turn-based Mafia strategy

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Strap Yourselves In Codex+ Now Streaming!
WTF I love John and Brenda Romero now
 
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Kalin

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Definitely where it's at. I still play it regularly and always have a blast. Cheers for the trailer by the way, don't think I saw that back in the day. Funny thing about Brenda's abortion is that it seems to purposely violate every principle that makes Gangsters: Organized Crime a great game. If anything Empire of Sin only seems to emulate Gangsters 2: Vendetta (one of the worst sequels ever made) which also "featured" a restrictive story-mode and shitty little maps instead of a huge and complex city.

You worry about your social justice, me, I'm more concerned that half of the game is apparently a bad browser version of Theme Hospital:

fv3sc0n2.slu.jpg

"Whack a mole" indeed. I am also puzzled by the addition of CYOA decisions like in Expeditions: Conquistador and the focus on token tacticool combat looking like it was ripped straight out of Shadowrun: Returns (but without magic or cyberware). While it is definitely current-year ugly and a steaming pile of bloatware to boot I cannot even see it pleasing the dorito console crowd.
 

Boleskine

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https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...-the-many-layers-of-an-american-gangster-cake

Empire of Sin - enjoying the many layers of an American gangster cake
Whoopie.

I had the chance to play Brenda Romero's new gangster game Empire of Sin for five hours the other day and learnt a number of things about it.

I learnt that it's a game about moving up and down through layers. That's why it's hard to call Empire of Sin any one thing. Sometimes it looks like an RPG, sometimes it looks like XCOM, sometimes it looks like Civilization, and I'm sure at one point it even looked like Monopoly, the view zoomed so far out the buildings looked like plastic miniatures. But I can't call it any one of those things because the charm lies in Empire of Sin being all of those things.

It's a game where at one moment you can be running your team around the streets, like you would in an RPG, ticking off quests in your journal, talking to characters, playing with character builds, swapping equipment out. And then in the next moment you can be up in the clouds looking down on the neighbourhood and mapping out your turf.

Then, you're diving into the menus, managing what you've got. How many breweries do you have and what is their production like? Can you change the alcohol there? How alluring are your speakeasies, your brothels, your casinos and hotels? How well protected are they? There are pie charts, summaries of ins-and-outs, detailed breakdowns.

Then, you're having a cinematic sitdown with another crime boss. You're either behind the desk, like Don Corleone in The Godfather, or sitting facing it like a naughty school child, camera switching between you as you make your dialogue decisions. How dare you knock off one of my rackets? How dare you talk to me like that? Fuck you! Yeah, well fuck you too!

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Bosses. Note their special abilities.

Negotiations broken, you're into XCOM turn-based combat, but still inside the HQ you were arguing in, now seeing it from a different view. There's a turn order, action points, and running from cover to cover, trying to find a clear shot while not getting shot yourself. Win and the HQ is yours, and the gang you're fighting will be no more. You will have chopped the head off the snake. But lose and it's game over for you too.

I like this layer-hopping because it scratches an itch I get playing games with more rigid approaches. In Civilization, I might think, 'Wouldn't it be cool to go inside these buildings and see what they're like, walk around and see what I own?' And in Empire of Sin, I can.

I can walk into any one of my rackets and see them in action, people going about their business. I can talk to them, have a drink. I can even watch the businesses change before my eyes as I pour money into them, improving the decor or bulking up the number of guards on duty there.

Similarly, I can push relationships further with my team of gangsters. I can get to know them in the way I would an RPG, even go on personalised loyalty quests for them, and promote them within my crime family if I like. Or, I can do what I dream of in RPGs, and own the towns I walk around. And not just one building: the whole damn thing.

These layers alone aren't anything particularly special, nor more detailed than you've seen them in other games before, but they compliment and fulfil each other in a way I've never seen before.

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The special abilities in action.

I also learnt that Empire of Sin has a playful heart. It's a game that enjoys the legends of Prohibition America as much as the history it's based on, and is the better for it. It has a charm, a cheek, and I can't tell you how refreshing it is to hear jaunty jaz in the background while you're shooting a place up.

It reminds me, this larger than life approach, of Civilization, and how the figures from history are handled there: in a slightly caricatured way, but still broadly authentic. This is most apparent in boss abilities, which are overpowered super-attacks. Each boss has one.

When I was Angelo "Bloody" Genna, for instance - a real figure from history - I could fling knives like Gordon Ramsey in a dirty kitchen. Could Genna do this in real life? No of course not, but it's fun in the game. Other bosses do things like swing baseball bats at heads like they're hitting home runs, blow hallucinogenic powder into enemies' faces to mind-control them, and shoot wonder-bullets that can ricochet around every enemy in the room. Realistic? Does it matter?

There's a bit of rule-bending concerning the bosses themselves, too. One of them is actually John Romero's great grandmother! She's Elvira Duarte, and though she didn't exist in Chicago in the 1920s, she did exist down in Mexico around the same time, and by all accounts was a bit of a gangster herself. Brenda Romero wrote to John's aunt to find out more. "And the letter we got back was like, holy shit," she tells me.



"So, [Elvira] owned multiple brothels. She had bars. And then at one point, she wins the lottery and decides to go straight. She sells all that sort of stuff up, and with her money she builds a chapel to herself. She starts taking kids in from all over the place. She also used to eat rattlesnake meat. She was feared and loved. It's unbelievably fantastic."

So Romero moved Elvira up to Chicago. It helped bring a bit more diversity to the game's palette, something very important to Romero. It's why they pulled real-life gambler Stephanie St. Clair over from New York, and why they created fictional boss Goldie Garneau, too.

Another thing I learnt is there's more nuance to Empire of Sin than can be experienced in five hours. Of course there is. Here's a game like Civilization Revolution (I use Revolution because it's more streamlined than a dense, traditional Civ game) where you pick a faction - a boss in Empire's case - and try to complete the game with them. Try to take over Chicago. I didn't even take over a neighbourhood, let alone 10 of them. How can I expect to grasp the nuances of strategy in five hours?

My experience was actually fairly one-note. Mostly, I ran down the street with my team, finding buildings I could attack and therefore take over. Attacking them takes you inside the building and puts you in turn-based combat mode, as the game does when any combat kicks up. Incidentally, combat can feel a bit fiddly and sluggish. Sometimes I'd struggle to select places to move to, and it'd take a while for fights to play out. I'd love to see it sped up a bit, respond more crisply, and behave with a bit more clarity. But there is acknowledged fine-tuning to do.



Then, presuming you're successful in combat, you decide what happens to the building you attacked. If it's already a racket, you can keep it as it is, simply taking it over, otherwise you need to pay to make it one, or smash the place up. Rinse, repeat.

Even when I jumped save to Goldie Garneau, in the mid-game, I did much the same thing, though she already had dozens of business and a weekly income in the positive. But still I seemed to be following a routine of finding a building to take over and then adding it to my pile. Quantity over quality, it seemed.

It wasn't until, flush with confidence, I decided to declare war on Angelo Genna's HQ, and got my arse handed to me, I realised I'd butted up against the learning curve in the game. I would have to look again. My team wasn't well equipped enough, they'd all need better guns. My team also wasn't big enough; I had four people but I could have had, apparently, 10. But I'd need higher notoriety to hire other gangsters in.

And my empire, though it was bigger, was still not providing enough. And was it balanced? When speaking to Romero Games after I played, I realised I'd not paid any attention to creating synergies between the buildings I owned. I could have had Three of a Kind, Straight, Full House - do you see where this is going? And if I stuck a hotel nearby, it would turbo-charge them all, my door people effectively funneling guests to my rackets.



Nor did I realise I had to tailor alcohol types to match neighbourhood prosperity levels, and that I could mess up other neighbourhood's prosperity levels by shooting them up. And because I didn't venture too far, I didn't get a feel for gang alliances or group-declared wars, or anything like that.

So you're beginning to see, I hope, there's a lot more to Empire of Sin than maybe meets the eye. Brenda Romero describes it as a "system soup" and I love the description. You control the ingredients. You fling them in and stir them around and every time you pour a bowl of something new. That's the plan. And we don't have long to wait for a taste.
 
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Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/20...mless-blend-of-four-different-gangster-games/

Preview: Empire Of Sin is a seamless blend of four different gangster games
*That's* how mafia works

90


There are two, pretty obvious, factors by which I judge strategy games: how immediately satisfying they are to play, and how well that satisfaction holds up in the long run. Success in the first respect is often a trade-off for success in the second, as the things that dazzle on day one become dulled by the cumulative effect of small design problems. It’s hard, then, to take the measure of a big ol’ strategy game during a limited preview play session.

But after just a day with it, I have high hopes that Empire Of Sin, the extraordinary prohibition gangster simulation coming from Romero Games on December 1, is going to hit the big time on both fronts.

The key phrase here is “just a day”. It’s not too often I’ll want to keep playing a game for more than two or three hours in one sitting. I got six hours with this one, and I was genuinely aggravated that I had to relinquish control of my burgeoning crime project. It had its hooks well and truly into me. I suspected I would enjoy Empire Of Sin when it was announced, and I’ve followed development closely, so I knew what to expect. But when I actually got to grips with this seedy, saxophones-and-grubby-velvet Chicago-’em-up, I was surprised by how far it exceeded my expectations. Empire Of Sin is greater than the sum of its parts, and all the parts are pretty great.


Like a really menacing version of Guess Who.

It’s a lot, is what I’m saying. But none of its strands feels like a minigame, or a darling lingering long after it should have been killed. Each of them is fleshed out to the extent where I couldn’t name any one as the “main” component of the game. In X-COM, for example, there’s a clear distinction between the big-picture Geoscape segments, and the episodic bouts of squad fighting on the ground, which are the clear soul of the game.

In Empire Of Sin, it’s harder to separate the pieces. For a start, they blur visually into each other. The bustling, honk-honk streets of Chicago zoom out smoothly into a whited out, board game abstraction of a map, with buildings colour coded by gang ownership, and little icons showing where your various spivs and bruisers are lurking. You might send your boss and some goons into a venue, Baldur’s Gate style, only to have the camera swoop into a zoom to show blokes scampering about with guns once things kick off inside. The sitdowns may take place in moody gangster movie close-up, but they occur in the very interiors you’ve upgraded and populated with saxophonists during management. Later, they might be where you accomplish the pivotal braining of a rival sociopath.




Delicious, forbidden whiskey data.
And that’s where the real magic is here. Because each of Empire’s primary strands affects the play of all the others, via a dizzying level of integration. Your management game lives or dies by how you perform in combat, since while you can buy buildings (like a chump), it’s generally far more efficient to pay for them in human blood. Similarly, your performance as a gang dictates your equipment budget, who you’re able to recruit, and so on. How you follow your mob boss’s personal story will have an effect on who they are, where you fight, and how you relate to your gang, while… crikey. Just trying to think about how to summarise how all the various interactions between things is making me faintly anxious, so please just take my word for it.

If I’m honest, I think I like the management game best, because I’m a nerd. It’s essentially about brewing secret booze and running secret pubs, and I am inherently satisfied by games about supply and demand. As I’ve said, everything else feeds into it; the effect of the cops on your business, let’s say, will depend on how you’ve chosen to handle them in other strands, while virtually every parameter of your operation will be affected, in classic Paradox style, by huge numbers of tiny nerfs and buffs imposed by decisions made elsewhere. But even without all of this stuff reaching in from the rest of the game, I think I’d enjoy it on its own merits. Definitely something I’d pay a tenner for on steam, at least.




I had a lot of fun renaming premises to things like “absolutely no beer” or “couldn’t be a pub”.

If I’m lukewarm on anything, it’d be the combat game. There’s nothing bad about it, and indeed many elements are really good: each boss, for example, has one ludicrously powerful special ability that defines the way fights play out. My boss, Maggie Dyer, was a really hard circus lady who could drag enemies towards her with a whip. Beyond the actual tactics, there’s some brilliantly rowdy fight jazz that plays in battle, and the battlefields – both exterior and interior – are awash with the slightly larger than life, mega-moody period charm of the game at large.

Generally, though, the turn-based fighting is played by the book. It doesn’t feel generic, but it doesn’t feel particularly innovative either. Like the management strand, it would probably work perfectly well as a game in its own right, but probably not one I’d bother buying this time.

Going back to where I started this post, however, there’s a note of caution here. The more moving parts a machine has, the more things can go wrong with it over time, as little parts wear out and stop bigger parts from working. Having chatted at length with the developers, I’m reassured by the sheer quantity of playtesting and balance fine-tuning that has gone into Empire Of Sin. But even so, what they’ve done here is stitch together a load of games from different genres into one playable whole. Over six hours, as I said, it was a seamless effort. But I just don’t know how it will all hold up to extended play.




Cracking stuff.

That doesn’t mean I’m dubious, it just means I have no idea. There were whole game systems I was still discovering at the end of my session, and I was far from developing an instinct for even the ones I fully understood. I have a good deal of faith, however, that if Empire Of Sin has been made to function at all then it has every chance of lasting the distance. And for all that’s said about post-launch patching, this seems an extremely reasonable case for the application of small tweaks over a long time, as unforeseen interactions crop up for regular players.

Presuming it does all hold up, I think this game really is a bit special. Prohibition-era Chicago is such a phenomenal setting, and it’s one that I’m surprised hasn’t been used more over the years, given its mythic significance. A strategy game, a management game, a squad battler or an RPG taking place in Capone’s town would all have been great prospects. To get all four at once is a real feast.
 

The_Mask

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Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
I haven't watched this one whole yet, but as far as a couple of minutes in: they took great care to be as accurate as possible to the stories and characters of the real mob bosses from back then, and they've also added lip sinc & some voice acting.
The one for Capone sounds decent, as far as I can tell.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


As a boss you need to be ready to get your hands dirty. Combat in Empire of Sin is turn-based, and there's a lot to it! In this video, we tell you about crew specialties, boss abilities, hit points and all you need to know to master combat in Empire of Sin.
 

The_Mask

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Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
So this is why they're calling this one an RPG, but the fact that you cannot (at the time of this posting) create your own boss, and several other factors, we simply cannot call this an RPG. But nice try Brenda!



There can only be one king or queen of Chicago. How you get there is up to you. Empire of Sin has a lot of roleplaying elements, including quests, missions, and different ways to customize your gangsters. In this video we show you how you can tailor your crew and your empire to suit your own play style.
 
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Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Edutainment:



What was 1920's Chicago actually like? Empire of Sin Game Director Brenda Romero sat down and had a chat about the real history of Prohibition with a Pulitzer-prize finalist, Daniel Okrent - author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.
 

The_Mask

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This one is fun. I've only watched the first 5 minutes, but their boss gets knocked out during a boss fight in a safe house, so the game *can* be punishing, especially if you push your luck.
The consequence of losing your boss (at any time) will lose you the game.
 

sser

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Pre-ordered. Just too much of a nerd for organized crime stuff. It was one of my early historical interests, and Gangsters is one of my favorite games, and Mob Rule a guilty pleasure by relation. This game looks rough around the edges but I dumped a solid amount of time into Omerta which was considerably more restrained in its mechanics than this.

What bugs(y) me is that I don't think we'll ever see another simulationist approach like we had with Gangsters. I think there's so much depth to the era/setting that a managerial approach would slide in like a glove. Oh well, this will still do.
 

The_Mask

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The management aspect of the game. So far this area we know the least about, which makes me the most curious of. I suspect this is the lategame/replayablity factor.
Boring clip, but I like that they don't serve everything.
 

Jinn

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So this is looking like it's going to be one of the better turn-based tactical games to be released in awhile. Thinking I'm going to have to pick it up tomorrow. It's got a lot going for it that has me intrigued.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Oh fuck, he's not trolling.

https://www.pcgamer.com/empire-of-sin-review/

EMPIRE OF SIN REVIEW
A mountain of issues crushes this ambitious management game.

I've got Feds breathing down my neck, a friend I need to betray, employees getting into love triangles and rivals making big plays—no wonder mob bosses end up a bit high strung. There are times when Empire of Sin's missions and emergent chaos collide to create a cyclone of compelling mobster drama full of intrigue, booze and bullets. Unfortunately, it mostly just gets in its own way, with systems tripping over each other or bugs dragging them down.

My attempts to become the biggest mob boss in all of 1920's Chicago haven't been foiled by the cops or my rivals, but by corrupt saves, broken missions and employees that simply vanish. Two campaigns have ended up in the bin because of two entirely separate game-breaking issues. I've had smoother experiences with fresh early access games, and frankly I feel like I've just been a QA tester for a week. Even with access to the day one patch, I've encountered some significant problems, and they go a lot deeper than bugs.

Empire of Sin makes a good first impression, though. It's clearly born out of a genuine fascination with the prohibition era, and as a management game it tries to capture the breadth of the illegal businesses and shady deals that kept these underground empires going—but it's even more interested in the people that join and run them. It's as much an RPG, and each boss has their own distinct, branching storyline that lets you shape the kind of crook you want them to become.

Daniel McKee Jackson—one of several characters inspired by historical mobsters—is a community-minded boss who runs a funeral business on top of all his criminal enterprises. He's also the only one brave enough to wear a top hat. Playing through his personal missions, l was able to decide if he'd be a ruthless businessman and aspiring politician, willing to do anything for a seat at the table, or man who breaks the law to make Chicago a better place. I opted for something in the middle, and my decisions during the big story moments then informed how I'd handle side missions and meetings with other bosses. It didn't take long until I knew exactly how I'd deal with a crisis even before the options were laid out.

The choices are usually binary, typically falling into the villainous or benevolent categories, so they're not that nuanced, but sometimes the roleplaying options do offer a bit more flexibility. You might, for instance, be inclined to pick the lesser of two evils at the cost of a big payout, but succeeding a persuasion or intimidation check could still earn you comparable or even greater rewards. It's familiar territory for RPGs, but in a game about forging a business empire and shooting up speakeasies, where you'd expect individual characters to get less time in the limelight, it really stands out.

Underlings generate plenty of drama and conflict, too. They've all got friendships, rivalries and vices, as well as their own side missions, all of which create new opportunities and obstacles. I couldn't get the boyfriend of one of my hired killers to join the outfit because he hated my buddy, Hugh, a burly veteran soldier who never takes off his uniform. Hugh then ended up falling for this guy's gal, turning him into an avenging angel of death whenever she got injured in battle. Every boss and gangster starts with traits inspired by their background, and then more get piled on as they fall in love, get hooked on the hooch or brutally execute a bunch of people. These can change how they fight, and how suited they are to leadership roles. Even when they just bump some stats, their impact is felt. And this is on top of the myriad combat abilities that you can manually select, letting your goons throw axes, heal mates and shower rooms in lead.

Sit-downs are where Empire of Sin's criminal cast really gets to shine. While there's still that generic strategy game diplomacy menu that we can't seem to shake, you can also meet rival bosses to shoot the shit and make deals. They're hammy and immensely fun conversations, taking advantage of each gangster's personality and history to create memorable verbal sparring matches. Some of the voice performances are great, others are a bit awkward, but they're always enthusiastic and, importantly, offer clues about your rival's temperament. The illusion is shattered, unfortunately, when they offer completely random deals with terms that contradict each other, or when you realise that every deal is just a straightforward buff that costs you nothing. They're essentially just lucky dips.

The soap opera diversions are a lot more entertaining than sitting at a desk, staring at messy Art Deco menus and stark maps. The day-to-day management of even the most crooked of casinos is not, unfortunately, as exciting as you'd expect, and while there are a few different ways to ensure your businesses flourish, like matching the booze to the affluence of the area, it mostly amounts to just pouring excess cash into upgrades. Every now and then I found myself needing to spruce a brothel up for a celeb or sacrifice one of my properties for a bigger, riskier payout, with the game remembering that the seductive appeal of a life of crime is more complicated than watching a bank balance increase, but there was nothing making me feel invested in any individual business. Pretty quickly, they just became names in a list, which I'd occasionally click on to upgrade their security or ambience.

If you're inclined, you'll discover a lot of depth, but it's hard work digging into it thanks to a general lack of clarity and consistency when it comes to the interface. The payoff just isn't worth it, either. You don't really need to put in much effort to fill your swimming pool with cash. You can influence the character and affluence of an area through your businesses and criminal shenanigans, for instance, but I've not found it necessary to actively try to manipulate them. Constant, unrelenting expansion seems to always win the day, and once I'd locked down one neighbourhood I never had to think about cash again. You're pushed to play aggressively, but doing so effectively neuters the entire management layer. Instead of supporting each other, it instead feels like the disparate systems are fighting for attention and pushing others out of the way.

Combat is in a similar place. Everyone in the colourful rogue's gallery has a class-based skill tree, a growing list of dynamic traits and loads of slots for weapons and gear, which you can buy, loot and earn from missions. You can create a little criminal army, bung them into squads and tailor each of them for specific situations. It's lightyears ahead of what you'd expect from a management game and suggests some crunchy, elaborate battles. They never materialise.

Fights can break out inside businesses or on the street, but the most interesting thing about these impromptu battle arenas is that there's cover, or that maybe a nearby cop or random thug will be drawn into the scrap. It doesn't get much more surprising than that, and it's otherwise just an endless parade of plain bars, warehouses and depressing brothels, where you'll mostly fight faceless goons that go down in a couple of shots. Some abilities are so powerful that you can end a battle in one attack, and you'll quickly get unique weapons that eradicate any remaining challenge. The balance is just wildly off, leaving little reason to think tactically. In the late game, it's hard to lose a fight even if you're trying. Because of all the counters and reaction shots that you can get from abilities and traits, it's possible to win a fight without taking a single action. I'd prefer an auto-resolve button.

When you declare war on another boss, they immediately send their goons after your businesses, most of which will be protected exclusively by your unnamed guards. It's cannon fodder versus cannon fodder, where everyone is weak and near-sighted. Even the quick ones are a drag. The stakes couldn't be lower, either, because you can end a war and steal every business simply by sauntering into a safehouse and killing the boss in a slightly tougher but still pretty effortless battle. That's the most effective way to win—ignoring your businesses, the missions and all the drama, and just rushing straight into a series of quick, forgettable fights.

This might be good news for any prospective Empire of Sin speedrunners out there, but being able to easily skip the majority of the game is a peculiar feature. If the combat was engaging or I actually wanted to spend more time trying to untangle the menus—I do not—then maybe the easy route wouldn't be as much of a temptation, but it's also the best way I've found to actually finish a campaign without running afoul of progress-halting bugs. It feels like a shortcut or an exploit, but really it's just the most efficient way to reach the game's sole victory condition.

Empire of Sin is an ambitious management game that never manages to tie together its big ideas. There's definitely a version of it in there somewhere that's good, and the allure of all those dense and malleable systems is strong, but they all come with massive caveats that dwarf what it does well. It's just a bit of a mess. It's frustrating. The potential is obvious, but it hasn't been realised.

THE VERDICT
49

EMPIRE OF SIN
Empire of Sin's many bugs, balance issues and competing systems undermine what could have been a novel mob management game.

On the other hand: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-11-30-empire-of-sin-review-intoxicating-but-overwhelming

Empire of Sin review - intoxicating but overwhelming
The roaring d20s.

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A charismatic and enjoyable gangster sim that gets a bit bogged down in admin.


There's a lot to like about this 1920s gangster sim. It's an intricately detailed game about a romanticised time. And as you would expect, it has gangsters in fedoras and fur coats and flapper gear, and Tommy guns and knuckle dusters and baseball bats. Those curvy old cars and delivery trucks rumble down the cobbled, often rain-slicked streets. And behind the mundane facades of everyday life - the grocery stores and laundry houses - the illicit industries roar. Speakeasies jump with music and laughter while breweries bubble in an effort to keep up. And you can see it all in gorgeous detail, right down to the fug from the cigar smoke and the glow from the lanterns.

Perhaps more importantly, you can get right up close to the people you control, which breathes personality into the game. You can get to know the gangsters you employ, like Big Fat Gibby Willard (that's his name!), who runs around in trousers and braces but no top, exposing his flabby upper half. He was great until a police officer strayed into a rumble we were having and he died. And now - yes - he's dead for good.

But there are loads of other gangsters I can hire, not that I can afford them all. And they all have their own stories, own ridiculous names, own traits, own capabilities. Some love each other, some hate each other. Some are better drunk than sober. Some are courageous and others timid. They all have their pros and cons. Some can even work against you as a mole, though you'll never know for sure. And you'll come to know those you hire like family.

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There's me and Big Fat Gibby Willard at my casino bar. I miss him.

You'll get to know other bosses too. You'll have sitdowns with Al Capone and Angelo Genna, real names from the time, as well as a few who've been made up, and others sequestered from elsewhere in history. Take Elvira Duarte, who I played: she's an older lady who ran a crime empire in Mexico at roughly the same time, and she also happens to be a relation of John Romero's - husband of game director Brenda Romero. Elvira has a wonderful ability whereby she can blow hallucinogenic dust into an enemies face and effectively mind control them, but other bosses have similarly exaggerated abilities too. It's a game-setting that pops with this kind of romanticism, albeit clearly underpinned by a lot of homework.

The other big thing about Empire of Sin is that it's simultaneously a kind of city-management game. In addition to running a crew around the streets of Chicago, and getting into XCOM-style, turn-based battles, you also take over buildings and turn them into illegal rackets. The kind of rackets you can own are speakeasies, brothels, breweries, casinos, and hotels. You can either buy them or take them from someone else, and when you've got them, you can upgrade numerous aspects of them.

To facilitate this, you can zoom out from street level to a simplified building-level view and, at a glance, see who owns what, and what each building is. You can pull back even further to see a summary of each neighbourhood in Chicago, how they're doing and who owns them. And pages of statistics, ledgers and graphs, underscore this, helping you tot up where you're strong and where you could be better.

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Zooming out, for a view of the whole neighbourhood.
Do you have too many gangsters on your payroll? Are you serving the right kind of alcohol for the prosperity level in your neighbourhood? Can you breweries produce it or do you need to buy it in from another gang? How are your brothels and speakeasies doing - are they full? Maybe it's worth investing in word of mouth advertising? Or you could open a hotel nearby and earn a bonus from it, as customers there are funneled to your rackets. But be careful you don't draw too much suspicion or authorities will come knocking, and other gangs will too.

For a while, you'll expand undisturbed. You'll studiously follow the few missions in your journal, do your companion quests and get to know the people around you. You'll take over a few thug-occupied rackets in the neighborhood and you'll carefully tweak your meagre empire to milk every cent out of it. Progress will feel calm and manageable.

But as you grow, more things will vye for your time, and it's here the game starts to stretch out of shape. The more buildings you take over, and there are many of them, the less attention you will be able to give each one, unless you cherish an exhaustive amount of admin. There are summary screens to try and aid this, but you're still asked to click individually on each one to select an upgrade, or to open and close them to lower suspicion levels. And it takes time. A lot of time.

Then, your allies start talking about war, which can be great, because when you're in a war, you can attack your enemy's buildings without other factions telling you off. The drawback is, your buildings will be attacked in return, and when they are, you will be whisked across town to control their defence (when you'll discover first hand how effective your security upgrades have been). These battles are usually very boring. Often, they're very one-sided, a few against many, but you still have to play out the foregone conclusion one agonising turn at a time.

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A fight in the street. That large green cone is someone's overwatch - a very useful ability.

Combat is decent but can lack excitement and be fiddly. Sometimes you accidentally end up putting characters where they shouldn't be, or order them to do something you didn't mean to, and in a high-stakes battle it can cost you dearly. Encounters can feel a little drawn out too, partly because of fairly weak weaponry early on. But once you better equip your team, and unlock more abilities, things get more interesting. It's a shame the same can't be said for the bog-standard guard battles. Not being able to auto-complete them, and to stop them interrupting whatever you're doing, is an oversight.

It's made doubly frustrating by virtue of there being so much to do. The layers that make the game unique begin to almost cannibalise each other the further into the game you get. Suddenly a companion wants to talk to me but I can't because another gang wants a sitdown, and then me to join their war, and then someone is attacking my bar. And all the while I haven't been able to optimise my empire in ages. I'm not even sure what I own.

But apparently, according to the graphs, I am the biggest gang, which is odd, because I don't feel like I've seen a fraction of the other neighbourhoods out there. So I put my apparent standings to the test and assault a rival's safehouse, which is a hard thing to do. And it's a really tense, exciting battle, and somehow, I win.

Then I figure, well if I can do that, I can probably take on the other safehouses too, so one by one, I set about it. And each time I win, I add their entire empire to my own. I'm not even bothering with optimisation any more, because more and more money is rolling in regardless, and the weapons I've taken from the bosses are incredibly powerful.

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It won't end well for you, pal!

I'm unstoppable. Other gangs are asking for sitdowns but they can get lost - they're next. And I don't need to do any more quests because the real end - domination of Chicago - is in sight. All else falls to the wayside until the final battle is won and Elvira Duarte crowned queen of Chicago.

I feel as though I've just done the equivalent of tank-rush. I've barely seen anything of the other neighbourhoods but somehow I've won. And all the negotiating, the trading, synergies - the nuances of a strategy game: I haven't done any of that in ages. I never saw anything of the police, never saw the Bureau of Investigation. Surely I should have. But I suppose this is what happens when you cede control to a randomiser, and tell players to do it their way. It's also what happens when you start every faction off at the same time.

It would have been great for other factions to have a head start so that I had an empire to chip away at while I tried to find a foothold in the city. It would have given the campaign a shape and a climax, it would have given a value to eeking out optimisation of my empire, and it would have given me an epic final battle to cap things off. As it was, Al Capone was seen off by someone in a few days, and no one really got a chance to establish themselves into anything special.

The flip-side of that is it could be very different next time. And that's exciting. The next time I play, Al Capone might be more the figure of history I know him as, and all the other gangs might start further afield, giving them more time to build. Big Fat Gibby Willard might not be gunned down in the park. I might have a whole different team of gangsters. I'll be a different boss. I'll try a harder difficulty. And I'll leave myself at the mercy of the variables and hope they land in a slightly more interesting way. Because that's all it needs, one perfect throw of the dice, and it could be magic.
 

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