Analysis Empire of Sin: build your own criminal empire

Empire of Sin is the new strategy game from Romero Games that invites us to travel to Chicago in the 1920s, with Prohibition and the criminal families running wild and dominating the cities of the United States. Empire of Sin proposes turn-based strategy but mixing action and role-playing. The result? Read on..

The important thing is the Family

The first thing to do is to choose our boss. Empire of Sin allows us to choose between 14 mafiosos and mafiosas, some based on real figures and others directly real, as is the case of Al Capone. Each character is unique and has specific skills for both business management and combat.

Once we have our capo selected, we have to start creating our "Family", hiring thugs who will help us do the dirty work.

A curious mix

It is not a strategy game as usual, but combines different styles, it even has touches of adventure and role playing. On the one hand, combat is turn-based, in the purest XCOM style. That is to say, we place our men, we look for cover and perform the actions per turn that correspond to us and then it's the machine's turn. This turn-based strategy works perfectly and is a success.

Secondly, when it's not a combat and it's time to move around the city, it's as if it were an adventure. We go with our men or our boss, selecting and performing missions and as we overcome them, we unlock new ones. Some missions have a really interesting story behind them, like discovering that a member of our family is playing us with our merchandise and is taking it for personal gain... Something that is not tolerable and that we have to solve as soon as possible.

And the part that I like the most of the game, the resource management part. In the city (which is divided by neighborhoods), there are several mafia families living together and of course, there is no "business for everyone". We have to ally with some families and have wars with others to get their business. Once we have conquered those businesses, we have to manage them to make them attractive to customers and make them spend money in them (improving security, the atmosphere of the place, the quality of the drinks...). The better we manage the business, the more profit we get and therefore, the more money we will have to hire better men and keep expanding.

We can set up several types of business in the city: brothels, nightclubs, casinos, hotels and distilleries. Each business is different and all of them are complementary.

And finally it remains to talk about the relations with the rest of the families, that in the purest Civilization diplomacy style, we have to exchange, pay or demand benefits to the rest of the mafia families. Decisions that can lead us to war with them or to have a good alliance that will help us in case of entering a war with another family to defend our territory and interests.

By the way, and as curious things, the police also makes raids and we always have the option to bribe them. And if we have many brothels and we have a thug who likes to frequent them, you can catch an STD disease.

Conclusion

A game that combines many styles of strategy game, but that succeeds in combining them and presents us with a fun and very replayable title (because every time we start a game the map changes completely). And with respect to the technical aspect and sound, they comply perfectly, creating the atmosphere of the 20s that you expect in a good game of gangsters.

The only negative point is that it has come out a little green (although they are fixing it with updates).

If you like strategy games it is a great choice.

The best thing about it

• The atmosphere
• The mix of styles that is very fun
• The replayability

The worst thing

• The bugs that are being fixed

We have made this review thanks to a PC download code provided by Koch Media