Empire of Sin review – intoxicating but overwhelming • Eurogamer.net

There’s a lot to love about this 1920s gangster simulation. It’s an intricately detailed play on a fictionalized era. And as you might expect, there are gangsters in fedoras, fur coats and flapper clothes, as well as Tommy guns, dusters, and baseball bats. Those winding old cars and delivery trucks rumble through the cobblestone streets, often wet with rain. And behind the mundane facades of everyday life – grocery stores and laundry rooms – illicit industries roar. Speakeasies jump with music and laughter as breweries bubble in an effort to keep up. And you can see everything in gorgeous detail, right down to the fugitive cigar smoke and the glow of lanterns.

Perhaps more importantly, you can get closer to the people you control, which infuses the game with personality. You can get to know the gangsters you employ, like Big Fat Gibby Willard (that’s his name!) , Who runs in pants and suspenders but no top, exposing his flabby upper half. He was great until a cop got lost in a growl we had and he died. And now – yes – he’s dead for good.

But there are plenty of other gangsters I can hire, not that I can pay them all. And they all have their own stories, their own ridiculous names, their own traits, their own abilities. Some love each other, some hate each other. Some are better drunk than sober. Some are courageous and others are timid. They all have their pros and cons. Some may even work against you as a mole, although you will never know for sure. And you’ll get to know those you hire as family.

You will also get to know other bosses. You will have meetings with Al Capone and Angelo Genna, real names of the time, as well as a few who were invented and others sequestered elsewhere in history. Take Elvira Duarte, who I played: she’s an older lady who ruled a crime empire in Mexico around the same time, and she also happens to be a relationship of John Romero – the director’s husband. from the game Brenda Romero. Elvira has a wonderful ability that allows her to blow hallucinogenic dust on an enemy’s face and effectively control them through the mind, but other bosses have exaggerated abilities as well. It’s a framework of play that comes out of that kind of romance, though clearly underpinned by a lot of homework.

The other big advantage of Empire of Sin is that it is at the same time a kind of city management game. In addition to leading a team through the streets of Chicago and engaging in XCOM-style turn-based battles, you also take control of buildings and turn them into illegal rackets. The types of rackets you can own are speakeasies, brothels, breweries, casinos, and hotels. You can buy them or take them from someone else, and when you have them you can upgrade many aspects of them.

To make this easier, 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 go back even further to see a summary of each Chicago neighborhood, how they fare, and who they belong to. And stats, logs, and charts pages highlight that, helping you know where you are strong and where you could be better.

Do you have too many gangsters on your payroll? Are you serving the right kind of alcohol for your neighborhood’s prosperity level? Can you breweries produce it or do you have to buy it from another gang? How are your brothels and illegals – are they full? Maybe it’s worth investing in word of mouth? Or you can open a hotel nearby and earn a bonus, as customers are directed there to your snowshoes. But be careful not to arouse too much suspicion or the authorities will come knocking on the door, and other gangs will too.

For a while you will develop undisturbed. You will carefully follow the few missions in your journal, do your companion quests, and get to know the people around you. You’ll take charge of a few rackets occupied by thugs in the neighborhood and carefully polish your meager empire to get every penny out of it. Progress will be calm and manageable.

But as you grow older more and more things will buy your time, and this is where the game starts to warp. The more control of buildings you take, and there are many of them, the less attention you will be able to pay to each, unless you cherish an exhaustive amount of administration. There are summary screens to try and help you out, but you’re still prompted to click each one individually to select an upgrade, or open and close them to reduce suspicion levels. And it takes time. A lot of time.

Then your allies start talking about war, which can be great because when you are at war you can attack your enemy’s buildings without other factions advising you against it. The downside is that your buildings will be attacked back, and when they do, you’ll be taken through town to check their defense (when you find out firsthand how effective your security upgrades are). These battles are usually very boring. Often they are very one-sided, some against many, but you still have to play the game ahead one scary turn at a time.

The fight is decent but can lack excitement and be tricky. Sometimes you accidentally end up putting characters where they shouldn’t be, or ordering them to do something you didn’t want to do, and in a high stakes battle it can cost you dearly. Encounters can also feel a bit long, in part due to the fairly low weaponry at first. 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 standard guard battles. Not being able to auto-complete them and keep them from interrupting everything you are doing is oversight.

It is made doubly frustrating because there is so much to do. The layers that make the game unique almost start to cannibalize as you progress through the game. Suddenly a companion wants to talk to me but I can’t because another gang wants a shoot and then me to join. their war, and then someone attacks my bar. And during that time, I haven’t been able to optimize my empire in ages. I don’t even know what I own.

But apparently from the graphics I’m the biggest gang, which is weird, because I don’t feel like I’ve seen a fraction of the other neighborhoods. So I put my apparent position to the test and attacked a rival’s refuge, which is difficult to do. And it’s a really tense and exciting battle, and somehow I win.

Then I’m like, well, if I can do it, I can probably take the other shelters too, so one by one I set out to do it. And every time I win, I add their entire empire to mine. I don’t even care about optimization anymore, because more and more money is flowing, and the weapons I have taken from bosses are incredibly powerful.

I am unstoppable. Other gangs call for sitdowns, but they can get lost – they are next. And I don’t need to do any other quests anymore because the real end – Chicago’s domination – is in sight. Everything else falls by the wayside until the final battle is won and Elvira Duarte crowned Queen of Chicago.

I feel like I just did the tank-rush equivalent. I barely saw anything from the other neighborhoods, but somehow won. And all the negotiations, the exchanges, the synergies – the nuances of a strategy game: I haven’t done any of this in ages. I never saw anything from the police, never saw the investigation office. I surely should have. But I guess that’s what happens when you cede control to a randomizer and tell players to do it their own way. This is also what happens when you start each faction at the same time.

It would have been great for the other factions to have a head start so that I had an empire to destroy while I tried to find a foothold in the city. It would have given the campaign form and a climax, it would have put value on leveraging my empire, and it would have given me an epic final battle to top it off. In fact, Al Capone was seen by someone in a matter of days, and no one really had the chance to stand out in anything special.

The flip side is that it could be very different next time around. And it is fascinating. Next time I play, Al Capone might be more of the story figure that I know him, and all the other gangs might start further off, giving them more time to build up. Big Fat Gibby Willard might not be shot in the park. I could have a whole different gangster team. I’ll be a different boss. I will try a more difficult difficulty. And I’m going to let myself be at the mercy of the variables, hoping they land in a little more interesting way. Because that’s all he needs, a perfect roll of the dice, and it could be magic.