The way it’s all executed, though, makes it little more than surface-level fun with no balance or depth: Alcohol out, money in, but you never make enough money to really feel like Scarface because upgrades and gang members are absurdly expensive. To do that you have to stay out of the police force's sight and try to one-up rival bosses in both business and territory control. The dominance of some strategies over others undermines what should otherwise be a wide-open sandbox game.All of that goes on as you build up your network of illegal breweries, casinos, speakeasies, and brothels to get rich on the management side. It's an honest crime that you can't vault over the bar counters into cover like in every gangster movie ever. The terrain is static as well: there’s no destruction, and no interesting ways for characters to get around. Most fights end up revolving around a single corner or doorway as you set up a kill zone and watch enemies swarm into it – and many of the maps only have one or two of those chokepoints to fight over. They're pretty, at least, thanks to locations like dim speakeasy interiors and luxurious gambling houses, but they’re chokepointed, poorly laid out, and offer very little tactical variety. It's the maps that really kill the combat. There are balance issues, like one-hit kills from sniper rifles and surprise damage from unavoidable dynamite attacks, but there's fun at the tactical core. There's also a half-or-full-cover system you'll recognize from every tactics game since 2012, well implemented here, with angle of attack and distance mattering depending on what weapon you're using: a shotgun does best from within two tiles, a rifle from seven or more, and a submachine gun is happiest somewhere in the middle. It's just enough randomness to make the weapon stats and upgraded rarities really matter. Basic combat numbers are pretty granular, with health in the 50-150 range, so a thug might take two to four pistol shots to go down. The tactical battles are built on good bones: Gangsters have a to-hit stat, hit points, and you find weapons with varied stats. Interacting with the characters of the '20s is where Empire of Sin shines, but the fights you're doing to earn those stories quickly become rote due to mindlessly repetitive maps and poor, buggy combat AI. Those might be fights with rival gangs, groups of independent thugs, and very occasionally even the police or the Bureau of Prohibition's agents. You direct your chosen gang boss around the city, doing missions with bits of flavorful dialogue to enjoy and controlling a crew of hired guns in battles against other gangsters. Like many of Empire of Sin’s ideas, it's a brilliant concept: You have to keep a lot of violent people with poor impulse control both happy and alive in turn-based tactical RPG combat in the vein of XCOM. (They're in love.) The charm wore off a lot quicker than I’d have liked, though.įights quickly become rote due to mindlessly repetitive maps and poor, buggy combat AI.The challenge here is to run a complex illegal empire while also balancing the chaotic personalities of criminals both in your gang and outside it. There's even really delightfully over-the-top voice acting for nearly every character, littered with standout performances like gangster boss Frankie Donovan, aged Western sharpshooter Grover Monks, or the hammy duo performance of a gambling bookie and a button man. The writing and weird cast of characters, both fictional and fictionalized alike, have a lot of charm. For what it’s worth, Empire of Sin really embraces the Roaring ‘20s style, showing off Chicago streets that are initially fun to navigate and a roaring soundtrack of jazz mixed with some more modern pieces.
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