https://www.cybersport.ru/games/articles/obzor-empire-of-sin-bagi-dengi-dva-stvola

“Virgin territory for brothels”

At its core, Empire of Sin is not much different from other games where you need to paint the map in the desired color. There are also several players here, whose tasks are to explore the world, develop an empire, expand borders and eliminate opponents. However, due to the specifics of the setting, the scale here is much smaller than in global strategies in the style of Paradox Interactive – players will have to fight within the same city.

Empire of Sin takes place in 1920s Chicago. At this time, industry was booming in the Windy City, which attracted many immigrants. And the wealthy population, in turn, becomes a bait for criminals of all stripes. And, of course, we must not forget about Prohibition, which, like nothing else, contributed to the flourishing of American organized crime.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, in the 1920s, about a thousand gangs operated in Chicago. In our virtual Chicago, there are slightly fewer of them: 13 large playable syndicates, a couple of dozen small groups and a bunch of uncontrolled bandits, whose only function is to catch the bullets of our fighters with their bodies.

I can’t say for sure about all the heroes of Empire of Sin, but at least half of the playable bosses are based on real gangsters. Among them are Al Capone, Dean O’Banion, Cy Vin Mock, Stephanie St. Clair and others. This, of course, contributes to the immersion in the atmosphere of the game, although in fact, not all of these gangsters worked in the real Chicago.

Even if we close our eyes to this nuance, it will still be very difficult to call a historically accurate game. Some of the conventions of modern gamedev may greatly appeal to the progressive part of society, but cause misunderstanding among more conservative layers. Half of the soldiers of any syndicate are women. And in the family and even in high positions, you can accept any mercenary, regardless of his gender or nationality. This is not very typical even of modern organized crime.

“Capitalism is a legitimate racketeering of the ruling class”

The main goal of the Empire of Sin story campaign is rather prosaic – to crush the whole of Chicago under itself. For now, this can only be done by killing all other bosses. Other winning options may appear in future builds. The developers are considering them, but so far they have not promised anything.

At the beginning of each party, you must choose one of the bosses, which have unique perks. Each has an active combat ability such as area shooting or knife throwing, as well as three passive bonuses. Otherwise, the start of the game will be exactly the same – you will have a revolver, a shelter, one brewery and one bar.

In total, you can build six types of establishments on the map. Shelters and hotels provide bonuses for the area. Breweries produce alcohol for other businesses to operate. The main income comes from bars, brothels and casinos. Each business has its own characteristics. For example, brothels earn little but steady income, while review income is volatile.

At first, Empire of Sin can be intimidating with a large number of not very intuitive tables with numbers. But pretty soon you will realize that you don’t need a degree in economics or management to run a virtual business. It is quite difficult to go into the red, and to increase income, it is enough just to improve the establishments and buy new ones. It’s also a good idea to alternate them, it brings small bonuses.

When running your own business, you shouldn’t forget about your neighbors. Over time, you will still eliminate all competitors, but until then it is important to maintain good relations with them so that you do not have to fight all at once. You can trade with gangs, make alliances, and sometimes even complete unique missions together. Unfortunately, AI sometimes behaves unpredictably – here you are offered a good deal, and after a minute they tear it up and declare war.

There is also a completely unique faction in the world of Empire of Sin – the police. Why it is needed and what it does, I have not found out. In theory, cops and feds can raid your establishments, arrest accomplices and harm in other ways. However, nothing like this happened to me in several games. Despite the fact that I had the maximum level of suspicion, I killed legalists and even received the status of “enemy of the state.”

The main thing when playing Empire of Sin is not to sit too long in strategic mode, otherwise its superficiality will be revealed very quickly. The game clearly lacks the depth of full-fledged strategies and some unique features. Replace gangsters with countries and buildings with cities, and a formulaic strategy comes out.

Omerta – City of Gangsters, which is not devoid of shortcomings, with almost the same concept, had more originality. Take the system of “clean” and “dirty” money. In Empire of Sin, there is nothing like this – and this despite the fact that Al Capone was added to the game, the person thanks to whom the very term “money laundering” appeared.

“The organization I created is built on fear.”

Build, negotiate and trade is a noble business, but, as one of the heroes of Empire of Sin says, “a good word and a gun can achieve more than one kind word.” Sooner (most likely very early) or later you will have to take up arms and pour blood on the streets of Chicago.

Battles in Empire of Sin take place in a turn-based isometric mode with a two-point action system. In other words, this is a complete copy of XCOM and hundreds of other tactics like that. That is, in general, one to one – there is practically nothing distinctive like stealth from Mutant Year Zero or good luck from Hard West.

Although no, I’m lying, there is still something. The battles here are much more bloody (we remember that John Romero’s studio is behind the game) and are accompanied by executions that can intimidate opponents and damage the psyche of allies. It definitely adds to the spectacle and benefits the surroundings.

Otherwise, everything is pretty standard: we take cover, shoot with different hit probabilities, use special skills. Some of them are pretty gingerbread. For example, there is a perk that gives additional AP for kills – with it, I sometimes managed to destroy all enemies in a location in just one turn.

This, of course, was helped by the top equipment. The game is full of various weapons, armor and other loot. Barrels differ in rarity and class: shotguns, machine guns, rifles, etc. At the same time, it is clearly felt that some are much more effective than others. For example, a regular rifle is better than a sniper one – it only needs one action point, and since the locations in the game are small, its range is more than enough. Possibly, in future patches players will see changes in the balance.

In addition to your own skills and weapons, your gangster subordinates will come in handy in battle. The game features several dozen mercenaries – shooters, doctors, swindlers, demolition men and thugs. However, for them to follow you, you will have to gain notoriety and pay them a salary.

Over time, new fighters will become available to you, but discarding old ones is not always the right step. With experience, they gain new abilities and begin to better handle weapons, but their salary remains the same. In addition, they can fall in love with partners or at least make friends with them.

In general, fighting is fun at first, until you get stronger and start noticing problems. The set of locations is very limited, which is why very soon they begin to repeat themselves. The design of the levels does not shine either – these are the same warehouses and underground establishments without any zest. They don’t even have verticality.

Opponents finish off the local combat system – they gladly rush under the bullets even when it is known in advance that they will be hit. In half of the cases, they do not even think about shelters, and they are able to get around from the flank only if they initially spawned there. There is no need to talk about diversity, the setting does not allow to roam. Although, with the proper imagination, I am sure, it was possible to come up with something more interesting than ordinary shooters.

“Nothing personal, just business”

Empire of Sin not only has a main story quest, but also various side missions. We talk about them in the last place for a reason – you can win a game without paying attention to them at all. And their narrative value certainly won’t be the deciding factor when buying a game.

Quests are made mainly so that you can take a break between endless battles. And this does not mean that there are few battles in the missions, it just adds a small role-playing role to them. It is expressed in dialogues in which one or another decision can be made. Sometimes the game will even test your beliefs or leadership, just like in Fallout.

Missions can be small – in such missions it is enough to just get to the point and talk to someone – or they can consist of whole chains of tasks. There are those issued by subordinates. If you fail them, you can lose valuable personnel. Others involve hostile bosses whose premature death will result in the loss of the quest. If you want to feel better in the role of a mafia, such tasks will help you with this. But from a gameplay point of view, you can not waste time on them at all, the game does not force you to do this.

All bugs were dumped on me, except, perhaps, real bugs

Pre-release versions of games are always full of bugs. Many reviews even say nothing about them – over time, you stop noticing every little thing and only remember what gives you real trouble. But in the case of Empire of Sin, you won’t be able to ignore the bugs – the game seems to consist entirely of them.

Sometimes I feel like I spent more time explaining the bugs I encountered to developers than I spent on the game itself. And I know for sure that I was not alone in this. At the same time, turning off animations, freezes or crashes are not so bad. Even critical errors that prevent you from completing the walkthrough are not the worst things you can face here.

In Empire of Sin, I came across bugs that interfere with the perception of the game and getting a full experience. The above mentioned policemen who never intervened in the gameplay. And it is not clear if this is luck, a bug, or they really roam the city just for beauty. Another mistake prevented the game from increasing or decreasing the level of prosperity in the districts and, accordingly, changing the preferences of the inhabitants. Because of this, during all the playthroughs, I didn’t have to think about the management of the breweries. In addition, in all games closer to the middle, my heroes invariably pumped so much that they just stopped missing. This made the process incredibly easier. Even after talking with the developers, it didn’t become clearer whether it was a bug or a feature.

And there are a lot of such cases: whether hotels should spontaneously collapse, is it possible to appoint one lieutenant to several districts where gangsters disappear from the map, when formally they are still in a gang, etc. – I never found out the answers to these questions. Due to such bugs, I cannot say with complete certainty that I played what the developers intended. Perhaps you won’t come across such errors at all, or maybe they will be fixed in the very first patches. There is even a possibility that my nitpicking about superficial strategy mechanics and boring battles will turn out to be just a consequence of the missing letter in the code, and in fact everything in the game is great. But this is all “if” and, unfortunately, it doesn’t matter right now.