![]() Furthermore, the AI here can be quite unreasonable: I’ve had situations where I made a tough compromise to give an important business back to a tertiary party and they took it the wrong way and went to war with me instead. The pre-amble dialogue here gets repetitive eventually as you’re forced to have the same he-said-she-said conversation with several mafiosos over a short period. Generally, I found that I was just tapping the different ‘F’ buttons on my keyboard until I saw the screen that I needed so I could gaffer tape the proverbial leak and get to the elusive good bit.Īs a formality, you’ll meet mob bosses for fully rendered sit downs when you encounter them, or if they take umbrage with a business deal. I really wanted all of these moving parts to stop shouting at me so I could focus for a moment and take in the inimitable world. There’s a whole section devoted to alcohol which eludes me beyond ‘click the button to produce the swill the people like’. Upgrading a specific business feels arduous, and the few pages that compare your economy to other gangs blend into one for me. Most of the issue here is that they’re a pain to navigate. Yet I find Empire Of Sin’s spreadsheet menus off-putting, and I’d be lying if I said I understood them, even after hours of play. Taking out bosses is a very formulaic process that gets old when the rest of the game isn’t hitting its stride.įor some context, I would consider myself a strategy game fan, although a casual one – I’ve played plenty of XCOM, Civilization and Crusader Kings. There’s a lot to play with here and hours of potential fun, but I always found myself looking for something more. The systems in place are impressive and do a good job of implementing the rudimentary ‘code’ of “This thing of ours” – you’ll lose face for ambushing a gang without declaring it first, and you can become an honorary deputy of the police force, if you bribe them enough. It’s like every strategy game rolled into one – a great achievement – but the stability of the game’s ambitious systems seem to suffer for it. I’ve had multiple campaign-ending issues, such as a glitch that stops me from completing combat sections, important missions breaking for the entirety of my playthrough and animations not firing when they should on a regular basis.Ī good chunk of it is par for the course when it comes to a sandbox such as this, but there’s only so much you can ignore before it feels like Empire Of Sin is actively impeding your progress. Unfortunately, as well as thugs, there are plenty of bugs. As well as the many gangs you’ll encounter who are vying for control, there may as well be an in-universe faction of vest-wearing dudes who seem to squat in most of Chicago’s real estate… ![]() This really isn’t anything important, but it certainly feels a bit lazy. Speaking of goons, the ‘thug’ enemies that occupy the many derelict buildings in the game seem to have the same character model across the board. The camera can also feel quite cumbersome in battle, especially when you’re trying to attack specific enemies with an ability that lets you target multiple goons. It’s not a total dealbreaker for me, but these feel like foregone features in modern strategy games, and the former really starts to grate when you enter many similar combat situations. The minute-to-minute gameplay lacks some quality-of-life tweaks that are present in other games of its ilk, like the ability to speed up animations in battle or quicksave and quickload on the fly. The first few hours of every campaign are an unmitigated delight, but it’s easy to get restless and irritated as you dig deeper. You’ll play it and inevitably find yourself wondering whether you can squeeze in just one more raid before bed.īut the problem with Empire Of Sin, however, is that you may eventually see the forest for the trees. There are screens upon screens of data to tinker with and plots to enact within a gorgeous, meticulous world. You’ll build up rackets, hire goons and ransack breweries. It does a fine job of introducing you to its slick world, and it’s very addicting to start, as you pick between a baker’s dozen of fascinating mob bosses and get to grips with the beats that define their personalities. The arsenal and the intrigue make sense within the framework of an XCOM-like game – which is why Romero Games’ Empire Of Sin is such an enticing prospect.Īnd it works, for the most part. A strategy game set against the rich backdrop of Prohibition-era Chicago is fundamentally a great idea.
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