What you are doing at any given moment is driven by what you, as a player believes is important. This lowered morale, leading to lost fights, leading to more money lost, leading to losing those guys.Empire of Sin, a game developed by Romero Studios and published by Paradox Interactive, is a hybrid strategy turn-based tactical RPG where you take the role of one of fourteen historical gang bosses in Chicago seeking to gain control of the city’s underworld and fighting off other gangsters – all while staying one step ahead of the law.Įmpire of Sin has a bit of a free-form style. I would spend money to improve my businesses, and while the improvements were being made, my dudes would need to get paid, but my coffers were dry. But on the default difficulty, I could barely get my business moving fast enough to avoid a failure cascade. I am the kind of player who likes a challenge, especially in a well constructed strategy game. You love managing which establishment gets what flavor of hooch? Be prepared to slog through a street ambush because one straggler wandered too close to your casino. Enjoying the RPG sitdowns? Then you better hope your speakeasies don’t get raided by a completely different gang. You’ll also find the different parts of the game intruding on each other in unfortunate ways. If you don’t move fast enough, it’s easy to lose too much money to get a good game going (ain’t that just how it goes with capitalism?). I found games extremely difficult to start. Still, as much as I found to enjoy in Empire of Sin, the game was determined to kick my ass. I can’t wait to dive into a wiki and read tons about all of these people, and their real life equivalents! The game’s writing tries a little hard to be Peaky Blinders or a Guy Ritchie flick, but I like those things so the many F-bombs and long scenes where characters discuss their heritage worked great for me.
There are also different campaign stories, which are a blast. Every combination of bosses has unique interactions and dialogue trees though blessedly, you can also skip these if you get sick of these scenes by your 18th playthrough. You will often find yourself sitting down with rival gang leaders. And if you’re looking for an RPG, I was pretty surprised to learn that Empire of Sin has you covered for that. There are a lot of ways to tip your business into the black. If you want a tycoon game well, that part of the game is strong too. (I particularly like the ring master’s line tamer whip attack). There are a ton of weapons, skills, and unique abilities to master. The three parts of the game function pretty well! If you’re looking for a good turn-based cover shooter, you could find a lot worse. Or hide your business to avoid police attention. Bring in more customers by drumming up word of mouth.
If video games are a series of meaningful choices, you won’t lack for those. You’ll have to develop and protect your various schemes (and legal businesses!) by increasing the quality of the product or experience. Sure, you have to look after your base in XCOM but in Empire of Sin, running a business is a little bit more complicated than that.