Empire of Sin is Out!

Discuss among yourselves, because I'm sooooo excited!

Also tagging in here. Don't have it yet - still sorting which platform and I'm wary of some of the bugs/issues but I'll definitely be picking this one up.

I will probably pick this up at some point too (possibly in a sale).

I'm leery of this kind of game on console, but my X Box One X is much more powerful than my PC right now. I'd be interested to hear how well it works.

Are there auto-resolve options for combat? I can imagine as your Sinful Empire grows I might want to skip some of that.

I have not been able to try it yet. Just fired up the lovely, exquisite loading screen. Soooo frustrating to wait till COB lol.

I have not seen an auto-resolve, but I'll keep my eyes open.

Seems to me like the battles are short enough that it won't be an issue.

Mmmm, Kotaku was.... not thrilled.

I'll wait to see what y'all say because I'd been really excited about this.

Prederick wrote:

Mmmm, Kotaku was.... not thrilled.

I'll wait to see what y'all say because I'd been really excited about this.

Yeah, reviews across the board are very middling.

I've gone from interested to waiting for a few patches.

From the interviews I've seen, most reviewers have spent more effort on their puns about the 1920's than playing the game.

I've played it. Seems good enough but oddly it didn't really hook me. I'm a huge xcom fan and I love management/business games. I think the real big thing was it didn't feel like I was making interesting decisions. That and the combat was just fine. Not one more turn good. Just fine. Which is an issue some the game is mostly combat with business dressing. To be fair I haven't gotten super far but the rest of the game didn't seem that different.

I actually think the game would have been better turn based instead of real time. Though the whole living city thing is pretty cool. Maybe something like gangsters organized crime? Old game but man that had some style for the time.

Still it's alright way to kill some time.

Thanks for the impressions, Robear and master0 - would love to hear more.

The reviews give me a definite sense that this is an extremely interesting, ambitious design that could have used more polish. I'm interested in either the PC or Switch version, although I'll hold off until patches and/or a sale.

I find it interesting that none of the reviewers made the obvious analogy to the relationships between gangsters on the player's squad: Jagged Alliance 2. That's another game on which Brenda Romero worked -- was it the inspiration?

The reviews have definitely pushed me from buying day 1 to waiting for a few patches and maybe a sale. It is a really good mix of mechanics and theme for me though.

bbk1980 wrote:

The reviews have definitely pushed me from buying day 1 to waiting for a few patches and maybe a sale. It is a really good mix of mechanics and theme for me though.

Agreed. Took it off my Steam wishlist and will wait for a sale. Honestly if Paradox wasn't so rigorous in how they support their games after launch I'd blacklist it.

I think waiting is a good strategy. Obviously I have faith it will be improved over time, with the pre-purchase I'm committed; the team is good and Paradox has a good rep for that. I'm sure we're looking at the reason for the release delay. This may turn out to be like Imperator, and have major systems redone over the next year or so to turn it into a banger.

One can hope, anyway.

I picked this up last night because I have poor impulse control apparently. So far I'm really enjoying it. Right now it's a nice, easy sim-lite, tactics-lite style game and I'm all for it after being mentally exhausted from working all day. I think the Paradox name had people hoping this would be a 1920's gangster skin of something with the depth of an EU, Stellaris, or even Cities: Skylines but it's not that. So far it's had a nice frequency of missions popping up, enough of a story going to keep it interesting, and fights have been easy but fun. Guess I'll see how it progresses but for now it's perfectly fine for me to just chill out for an hour or two and grow my little empire.

As one example of how unbalanced the combat can be, I walked into a speakeasy with my boss and decided to attack. There were four guards around me but because of my initiative I went first. I used his signature skill, Last Rites, which lets him fire his pistol until the gun empties and if he downs one enemy he moves on to the next. I had just equipped him with a mauser that had a 10 shot clip. He downed all 4 guards before any of them got a shot off and the place was mine. That was just fun and felt like a scene in Last Man Standing.

It definitely does honor to gangster movies and legends. And the ambience is phenomenal. Great settings and details like clothing, and honestly I love the over-the-top voice acting. There’s a lot to like here but I like Kehama’s “lite” description, it feels right at this time.

Yeah I am enjoying it so far as well. It scratches that itch with the gangster feel, phenomenal music, vibe and atmosphere of the 1920's. I haven't gotten very far yet but wow, it really hits that timeframe well, taking me back to the Untouchables, Mobsters, Last Man Standing and other cool gangster flicks.

I'm waiting for one of you to do a deep dive. Brenda Romero is clearly very excited about it, so it hurts to see just how bad the reviews are. I'm hoping there's more game under there that reviewers don't see in their rush.

Gita Jackson was pretty positive about it:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7m7...

garion333 wrote:

I'm waiting for one of you to do a deep dive. Brenda Romero is clearly very excited about it, so it hurts to see just how bad the reviews are. I'm hoping there's more game under there that reviewers don't see in their rush.

Will do!

I'm circling around it, but Logistical: Earth is taking a lot of time these days. Probably this weekend.

I've now spent a few hours with the game and I'm actually getting a little overwhelmed with all the missions it's throwing at me. I can't quite tell which ones are important, and which ones are just little side filler. I have been surprised that they've already given me some missions with definite choices on which direction I can go that would change the entire mission structure.

I also agreed to go to war against another gang with one of my allies so I've had to fend off a few attacks and gotten into a few street fights. The great part is that since I've bribed the police into a positive attitude with me they help me whenever anyone attacks me openly.

The game keeps hinting at things getting deeper, plot-wise, but no idea if that'll every pay off or if this is just going to be more like a CIV game where I eventually try to eliminate all the other players/gangs.

From what I understand you have to eliminate everyone. Don't think there's a diplomatic victory.

And yeah this game nails the style. If you are a fan of gangsters this game will ooze charm. I love there variety of bosses and dialogue.

I've seen a few gameplay videos online, and it feels very X-COM, which is fine but I thought there was supposed to be more to the game than just combat? Because it seems like it's 95% combat.

I had hoped this game was going to be like the Gangsters sim games from the 90s, but alas, it is not. Maybe some day we'll get a proper one.

There's an entire management sim as the second major part of the game. Work different businesses, combine them to gain synergies (essentially supply chain monopolies), upgrade them, hire people... You have to protect them, and you can take over other mob's businesses. That's a principle way to advance in the game, in fact. There's a lot of demographics, too, with different neighborhoods wanting different qualify levels of vice.

I've spent a few more hours with it and I'm enjoying it as a nice break between heavier or more high paced games. I feel like I'm starting to pick up a lot of momentum now and that I'm on the verge of being able to steamroll everyone if I really wanted to. Additional story missions have continued to unlock as I hit various points in the game and so far they've all been self contained little side stories but no real overarching story that I can see, but could be wrong.

The only time I've gotten annoyed was when I decided I was going to try to take out a gang's entire territory in one shot. I ran my crew up to the enemy boss's safehouse and decided I was going to declare war on them and then immediately rush in and try to take out the boss. As soon as I declared war on them I then had to go through a dozen or more battles because all of the guards outside of my operations were immediately attacked by rival guards on the same street or any patrols that were out by the enemy faction. Nothing like having to sit through a slow as molasses fight between 5 nameless enemy guards against 3 of my nameless guards and none of them are able to hit the broad side of a barn. I eventually ended up reloading because I had yet to get back to my main group that was literally just outside the enemy safehouse and I was still having to fight those guard fights.

I also feel like my gang doesn't function like the other gangs. For instance, my rivals always have lots of groups of 4 or 5 guards roaming the streets in addition to the 2 or 3 guards stationed outside of every business. They also can attack multiple locations of mine at once but they'll come storming in with a bunch of nameless guards. They also hire the named guys but they're usually only inside of businesses or safehouses. Whereas with my gang, I seem to only control nameless guards when I'm on defense, I have no roaming patrols, but I can control my named gangsters that I've hired and they do all of my attacking. Now that I've got them fully upgraded I can send in 3 of my named guys to take out a large business full of 7 guards and I get out without even any injuries.

Anyone tried this post-patch? I'm curious how it is now, especially since it's available on Game Pass.

Have not gone back to it yet. Maybe later this summer. Not playing a lot of management games lately.

Chiming in as I installed it and played a few hours this weekend on Games Pass. No DLC purchased.

It's still got bugs. Some in the form of frozen quests or glitching with one battle not rendering anything at all. Both of these bugs were able to be worked around with reloading. It's playable enough.

The management aspect is just spreadsheets and is a bit tedious trying to upgrade every store 25 times (5 categories of upgrades to 5*). I haven't worked out the synergies yet but I think it's something along the lines of: make a ton of distilleries that "fuel" your other rackets, principally speakeasies which make the most reliable income. Then you sprinkle a brothel or casino to increase patronage in a precinct.

This brings me to my next point: money and its impact on combat difficulty. Initially it's very tight and you run missions which reward a lot of cash. Part of the difficulty curve lies in the early game where you have a limited number of gangsters with subpar weapons and you are raiding opponents who outnumber you.

But once you get a bit of a snowball effect you have more than enough money to upgrade your precincts and either loot decent weapons or get them from missions or the store, in standard skirmishes the enemy numbers simply don't matter. OH: the autocombat resolution sucks. The algorithm means you'll often lose even in a battle where manual control will result in a compstomp outcome.

HOWEVER the boss battles can be really fun. I just took out a boss and it was something like my 6 gangsters vs 12 mobsters and a round of enemy reinforcements (hint: clear the entire precinct before attacking a safehouse to mitigate against enemy reinforcements). It took me close to an hour as the AI would heal injured units and I used up all sorts of consumables in a war of attrition, rotating gangsters in and out of cover to take damage while waiting on healing cooldowns etc. Finally got the upper hand as I focus fired the enemy one by one. So although a lot of the combat is tedious, it's far more enjoyable on a grander scale.

Putting aside specific support abilities such as healing that only doctors can perform, Gangsters come in different classes but are mostly indistinguishable until they get higher perks. A bit like Jagged Alliance, they also have quirks (bonuses or malus) and lovers/friends/rivals. All of this makes for interesting min-max strategies. For example, I managed to recruit a "Hired Gun" gangster who had 100 marksmanship and two accuracy quirks; gave him the best Tommy gun money could buy and notwithstanding the weapon's negative accuracy he could still wield it at super high accuracy, making him almost one shot anything.

Lastly, the quests or "missions". The questing journal isn't that great and it can be hard to track what needs to be done and by when. A predicament I'm in is in relation to said boss battle - by the time I cleared up a gang war, the main quest got failed like a minute afterwards. I don't know if I could travel fast enough from my last save to prevent this from happening but yes certain events are time bound and you can miss them if you're not paying attention.

Overall verdict? Worth your time if you've got an itch for TBS. It's got enough flavour to hook you in for a bit but I don't know if it's enough to last the distance.

Thanks BFGP. I was pondering getting this. Probably will (or maybe I did, I forget whether I have a season pack).

I've been playing this cos it's free on PS Plus and I'm marking time till God of War Ragnarok drops.

It's pretty fun ... for a free game!

It's still quite buggy, mostly through crashes to home menu. At one point it wasn't telling me how much booze I was producing, then suddenly it did again, and I was underproducing by a lot and needed to up my brewing capacity.

The combat is VERY repetitive, with literally hundreds of fights in fairly similar locations. Your goons get weapon perks after X number of kills with that weapon and the number required for the high-level perks is pretty big -- like 175 kills. Although there's an auto-battle feature, I think if you do that, your goons won't get the kills they need to grind the perks. I tended to auto-battle if it was a fight not involving my named squad and grind the rest. Plus they are very foul-mouthed goons, dropping f-bombs aplenty during combat.

On the more positive side, the setting and ambience is great, the empire management/economy stuff is simple enough but OK, as is the special weapons and gear you can equip. You definitely get the XCOM thing where your squad is overpowered and just stomps after a certain point. You can have 10 in your squad, so it's an embarrassment of riches sometimes, with the enemy never even firing a shot before being wiped. I just love me some turn-based combat with levelled-up badasses.

I've nearly finished one playthrough, not sure if I'd go back to it again after that.