Empire of Sin - A Gangster strategy game from Paradox Interactive

[jztemple2]

Empire of Sin- an exciting character-driven strategy game set in 1920s Chicago will be coming to PC, Mac, Switch, Xbox and PlayStation consoles in Spring 2020. Find out more: https://www.empireofsingame.com

In Empire of Sin, players build their own ruthless criminal empire as one of 14 distinct bosses vying to run the seedy underworld of organized crime in the city. With randomly generated starting conditions, players will have to adapt to survive and do whatever it takes to outsmart, out-gun and outlast their opponents.

Has kind of an XCOM look to the tactical combat, but what doesn't these days? Still, looks like an interesting take on the genre and who doesn't like a good gangster game?

[Sepiche]

It's a good premise for a game, but this is a bit out of Paradox's usual wheelhouse and I can think of a number of failed attempts of similar style games before. Definitely keep my eyes on this though. It takes them a few tries sometimes, but Paradox usually gets it right eventually.

[Isgrimnur]

Wiki

Empire of Sin is an upcoming video game being developed by Romero Games and published by Paradox Interactive

Wiki: Romero Games

Romero Games Ltd. is an independent game studio that was established on August 11, 2015 by John Romero along with his wife Brenda Romero and is located in Galway, Ireland.
...
The studio's first game was an HD, re-skinned Dangerous Dave in the Deserted Pirate's Hideout which added new graphics and music to the classic platformer that he had designed and released in 1990, but was released on mobile. The studio's second game, Gunman Taco Truck, was released on January 28, 2017 on Steam (Windows and Mac) and for the iPhone and Android devices.

[Sepiche]

Wiki

Empire of Sin is an upcoming video game being developed by Romero Games and published by Paradox Interactive

Wiki: Romero Games

Romero Games Ltd. is an independent game studio that was established on August 11, 2015 by John Romero along with his wife Brenda Romero and is located in Galway, Ireland.
...
The studio's first game was an HD, re-skinned Dangerous Dave in the Deserted Pirate's Hideout which added new graphics and music to the classic platformer that he had designed and released in 1990, but was released on mobile. The studio's second game, Gunman Taco Truck, was released on January 28, 2017 on Steam (Windows and Mac) and for the iPhone and Android devices.

Ooooohhhh... caveat emptor.

[Daehawk]

I wish you didn't have to do the battles. Just control the gang and send them out on missions. only do combat if you want to. Turned based combat bores me these days when in the 90s it was my favorite part.

https://www.pcgamer.com/john-romeros-gr ... re-of-sin/

lol....

John Romero's great-grandmother is an underworld boss in Empire of Sin

[Max Peck]

Release date: 1 Dec 2020

[jztemple2]

Good preview article regarding the gameplay of EoS from a journalist that got to spend six hours with it: Preview: Empire Of Sin is a seamless blend of four different gangster games

What you’ve got here, is your classic game of four halves. Empire Of Sin is a stats-based management game, about running the speakeasies, breweries, brothels and casinos of your chosen mob. It’s a turn-based squad tactics game, where you fight to take premises off other gangs, or for any one of a dozen other reasons. It’s an RPG, where you lead your growing bunch of naughties around the city streets, pursuing various story quests, and tooling them up with new weapons, equipment and skills. And of course, it’s a gang-based grand strategy game about taking over a city, where its heritage as a Paradox publication becomes immediately recognisable in diplomacy, warfare and so on.

And there’s more. It veers into being a close-up narrative game during boss-on-boss sitdowns, into citybuilding territory with its building upgrades, and even into the realm of Crusader Kings with its dozens of recruitable gangsters, all of whom have grudges, affections, ambitions and personalities.

Sounds promising. And a video:

[Hrothgar]

I want to believe, but when was the last good John Romero game?

[jztemple2]

I want to believe, but when was the last good John Romero game?

I'm willing to believe that there's always room for hope . Also in the same way I think that a past history of good games isn't necessarily a guarantee of future good games (Cyperpunk 2077 still might be a trainwreck), a past history of bad games doesn't mean this one won't be good. Also they have Paradox behind them and I think that's a good sign, Paradox would be influencing the development since they have a reputation to protect.

Check out the preview, it certainly has the aspects of a good strategy game.

[Max Peck]

The devs have been streaming a series of gameplay sessions under the banner of the Chicago Chronicles.

[ydejin]

I wonder if it’s coming on Game Pass? Seems like a lot of Paradox games, like Crusader Kings III, are out there day-and-date on release day.

Also, not great timing for me, with Cyberpunk 2077 releasing just over a week later.

[jztemple2]

The game is still scheduled to release December 1st and has some pre-order bonuses, so I've pre-ordered from Green Man Gaming.

Here's another video, this really does a good job in two and a half minutes explaining how the game is played.

[Apollo]

Looking forward to this. Looks pretty good!

[Daehawk]

Its getting middling reviews. Anywhere from 50% to a 7 or so.

PC Gamer review
https://www.pcgamer.com/empire-of-sin-review/

My attempts to become the biggest mob boss in all of 1920's Chicago haven't been foiled by the cops or my rivals, but by corrupt saves, broken missions and employees that simply vanish. Two campaigns have ended up in the bin because of two entirely separate game-breaking issues. I've had smoother experiences with fresh early access games, and frankly I feel like I've just been a QA tester for a week. Even with access to the day one patch, I've encountered some significant problems, and they go a lot deeper than bugs.

[jztemple2]

Its getting middling reviews. Anywhere from 50% to a 7 or so.

PC Gamer review
https://www.pcgamer.com/empire-of-sin-review/

My attempts to become the biggest mob boss in all of 1920's Chicago haven't been foiled by the cops or my rivals, but by corrupt saves, broken missions and employees that simply vanish. Two campaigns have ended up in the bin because of two entirely separate game-breaking issues. I've had smoother experiences with fresh early access games, and frankly I feel like I've just been a QA tester for a week. Even with access to the day one patch, I've encountered some significant problems, and they go a lot deeper than bugs.

Oh well... at least Cyberpunk comes out next week . And Empire of Sin is published by Paradox who do have a reputation for pushing devs to get fixes out. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself

[Max Peck]

RPS: Empire Of Sin review

If you enjoy the RPG side of the game – sitting down in smoky rooms to strike deals – the sudden combat scenarios get in the way. If you love the combat, all of the gritty empire management gets in the way.

For players who enjoy both, this is a detailed sim worthy of your time, but only if you’re initially prepared to put up with some bugs. I enjoyed the review build much more once a 30MB patch landed on Friday – what a difference 30MB can make – but over the weekend I returned to my safehouse and the mouse and keyboard controls simply stopped working. My top-hatted kingpin stood in the parlour, refusing to respond to my right-clicks. I pressed escape to load an earlier save, but that didn’t work either. I had to Alt-F4 out and realised that between the stilted pacing and the technical issues, I’d lost the will to keep going.

Tl;DR: Buggy Malone

[jztemple2]

Tl;DR: Buggy Malone

[Max Peck]

The Buggy Malone byline was the best part of the review.

[jztemple2]

So I've put in about two and a half hours on the game and... hmm. The game is a mix of different genres, which isn't bad, but somehow the gameplay feels, well, clumsy. Let me explain. Maybe it will help me as well.

At its heart EoS is a strategy game where you accumulate "rackets", which are individual buildings, that host various businesses like breweries, brothels, speakeasies, casinos and hotels. You get these buildings by buying them, taking the building over from thugs, or taking them over from other gangs. Each "racket" costs money to operate and some make you money, so this part of the game is about managing cash flow. You also can upgrade buildings to bring in more customers and that's important because in your neighborhood there might be other gangs running their own rackets and those businesses of theirs are competing with yours. And your neighborhood is just one in the city, eventually you'll expand out into other neighborhood when you become a big deal.

Now getting and holding those building by force require you to have your own gang of muscle and that's another part of the game. You hire gangsters to work for you. Each has their own perks, attitudes towards other gangsters, equipment, skill tree and other attributes. Each has their own personalities, more so than say XCOM, and you can tweak their skill accumulation tree, which is very like XCOM, to tune their combat play style to your needs. But each of those gangsters cost money, in upfront costs and wanting part of the take, and the latter is what will effectively cap your gang size. You simply cannot hire endlessly because you'll go broke.

And this brings us to the next part of the game, combat. Combat is a rather stylized activity, much like XCOM. There is cover and half-cover, movement costs, special abilities for some gangsters, etc. It plays like XCOM, although the combats often start off short ranged and are over pretty fast. The maps are pretty and fit the location of where you are fighting, like a brewery or speakeasy. Combat can also take place outside as well.

Next we have the relationship between rival gangs and also with the police, the diplomacy system. You can make pacts with rivals, trade with other gangs, pay or demand tribute, pay off the police to cleanse your record or give you assistance, and no doubt more things.

And now we can talk about the mission/quest feature. You will be receiving what seems to me to be numerous requests to do things, kill (or not kill) people, go talk with strangers, reach income levels, etc. All these come with rewards of some sort, some seem to have some kind of time limit, not always obviously stated, while some are as simple as "Own Ten Rackets". The missions are interesting for the most part, giving reasons to go to different parts of the map and talk to strangers, but I've come over at least one that I can't seem to solve since I can't find the damn person I'm supposed to talk to

Let's see, what else... graphics are very nice. You zoom in to actually see your people and the interiors of buildings, or be outside in the streets. Zooming out will show a stylized neighborhood map with buildings color coded for ownership and various symbols for racket type and other information. Zoom out further and you get a nice summary of what is going on in each of the neighborhoods.

The music is OK, appropriate for the period. The language of the characters is (realistically?) rough with the f-word being tossed around a lot, so it's not a game to be played in earshot of those who might be offended by that, or shouldn't be exposed to it.

There is a nice tutorial system that walks you through your first game, explaining each menu and helping you learn the various systems.

So, all the above is what the game is about. But is it a good game? Again, hmm... the financial stuff works fine, the building up of rackets and maintaining a positive cash flow. Hiring and managing gang members works well too. Combat is simple and appropriate, not really anything elaborate but you shouldn't really be buying the game if complex combat is what you are looking for. Diplomacy works OK too, as far as I've gotten in the game. Certainly there are a number of ways to interact with other gangs besides violence. Regarding the mission/quest system I don't know that I've played enough to have an opinion on it. Most of the missions have been straightforward and I just might not be understanding the ones I've had trouble with.

I've not had any bugs so far, like crashes or lockups or loss of save games. There was a Day One patch and maybe that has helped. Or maybe I just haven't gotten far enough into the game to see them.

So what is there not to like about the game? I can't put my finger on it, but the game just feels unwieldy. Not broken, not bad, it just seems there are a lot of plates spinning and I'm not sure I'm dealing with them all. Maybe in another half dozen hours I'll feel like I know what I'm doing. In some ways I'm feeling about this game the way I felt like the first time I played Crusader Kings II. I could understand what the individual parts were doing, I just wasn't sure I was doing what I needed to be doing with them.

[jztemple2]

After playing three more hours I'm getting to understand the game and enjoying it more. The thing to do is not to focus too much on the financial side of things and instead enjoy the missions which can have multiple goals and branching decisions. This game had some really interesting features to it, like this pop-up decision dialog which resulted from a mission I undertook.


I had another one of these decision dialogs which ended up forcing me to let two of my gangsters get picked up by the police. They weren't happy with that of course and for a while I was short handed.

I'm not really sure about some of the various ratings, like Faction Rating, in regards to how it affects whether a rival gang decides to attack you or not. I had one gang (Capone's!) who even though I had a reasonable relation with them decided to attack one of my breweries. The attack was by three of their low level goons and so my local guards defeated them (barely) and good old Alphonse went on like nothing had happened. In a way that makes sense, since the attack failed he simply disavowed knowing anything about it.

I'm still at very early stages in the campaign, still in my starting neighborhood with two rival gangs and one minor gang (think city-states in a Civ game) that I share it with. I haven't been raided by the police yet but that might be because the game doesn't beat you up early when you are still just scraping by. I'm trying to be neutral to the two gangs in my neighborhood and other gangs in the city who are trying to muscle in on me or want me to join them in their gang wars. Lot going on.

The comparison to Crusader Kings is getting to be more and more relevant. This isn't a game where you say "if I do this and that and then proceed this way I'll be closer to winning", it it more "let's not do this or that, because those seem stupid to do right now, but let's try this other thing because hey it might pan out into something cool".

And after five and a half hours I haven't had any crashes, lockups or other significant bugs, just one mission where I just can't find the damn person I'm supposed to talk to . It's not a game breaker or even that important a mission, so I'm just ignoring it. So I'm upping my recommendation to a cautious thumbs up. If you are interested in the era or the genre, it is a good game. I'm deleting this recommendation, see my next post two messages down.

UPDATE: Release trailer...

[coopasonic]

Based on your description I am interested, but no time for it any time soon.

[jztemple2]

I've played another hour today and found I've burned through all the interesting missions being offered. Now it's just mission objectives like "Hold ten rackets" and "Earn $5000 a week" which are basically milestones. I don't know when the more interesting missions might return, if ever.

Also my relationships with the other gangs are weird. I'll be doing nothing (the strategic game runs in real time) and then suddenly I'll get a pop-up message that my rating with a certain gang has increased or decreased and I have no idea why. I'll make temporary deals with gangs and suddenly they break them for no apparent reason. And the menu screens describing each gang have lots of data but not a lot of information to explain what the significance of the data might be.

I've taken over the territory of a minor faction gang (they have no boss or safehouse), which consisted of three buildings. And although it decreased my rating with two other gangs, nothing came of that. I've not been attacked by a rival gang except that one time, and that attack almost seems like a bug since they attacked me with two guards, not gang henchmen. I've also not been bothered by the police, although they don't like me according once again to the various ratings.

Right now the logical thing to do is keep upgrading my existing rackets and also taking over buildings held by thugs to establish new rackets. At some point I'll have to go after the two gangs that are also in my region ("The Loop") but I have no motivation to start a war or join one right now since I see no advantage to doing so. Also while there is a rating (there are so many ratings!) telling me the strength of an opposing gang, nothing tells me how many henchmen they have or even a way to measure their combat strength.

So all in all I'm just not seeing a reason to continue playing right now till some patches drop and some guides are published that will give a better idea of what the heck I'm supposed to be doing, why I'm doing it and how to measure how successful those measures are. Therefore I'm going to change my recommendation I posted above to a hold off and wait before buying.

[Max Peck]

I'll be doing nothing (the strategic game runs in real time) and then suddenly I'll get a pop-up message that my rating with a certain gang has increased or decreased and I have no idea why.

There are weekly rating adjustments. If you go into the diplomacy UI and mouse over the faction rating icon, the tooltip gives a breakdown of the factors that go into the weekly change. In general, it seems that the weekly changes are driven by a normalization of the rating over time, as it slowly reverts to the mean.

The missions are interesting for the most part, giving reasons to go to different parts of the map and talk to strangers, but I've come over at least one that I can't seem to solve since I can't find the damn person I'm supposed to talk to

I haven't found a way to zoom to the location of a pending sit-down, but I've been able to find them by zooming out and scanning the neighborhoods for the sit-down icon. It may be located in a different neighborhood, in which case it's necessary to take a taxi to get to the neighborhood, then walk to the location.

[jztemple2]

I'll be doing nothing (the strategic game runs in real time) and then suddenly I'll get a pop-up message that my rating with a certain gang has increased or decreased and I have no idea why.

There are weekly rating adjustments. If you go into the diplomacy UI and mouse over the faction rating icon, the tooltip gives a breakdown of the factors that go into the weekly change. In general, it seems that the weekly changes are driven by a normalization of the rating over time, as it slowly reverts to the mean.

That's all fine, but it would have been better if the pop-ups gave some reasons why the change.

The missions are interesting for the most part, giving reasons to go to different parts of the map and talk to strangers, but I've come over at least one that I can't seem to solve since I can't find the damn person I'm supposed to talk to

I haven't found a way to zoom to the location of a pending sit-down, but I've been able to find them by zooming out and scanning the neighborhoods for the sit-down icon. It may be located in a different neighborhood, in which case it's necessary to take a taxi to get to the neighborhood, then walk to the location.

My missing mission isn't a sitdown, it is a guy I'm supposed to talk to in my speakeasy but nobody there responses as my mission target.

[Max Peck]

My missing mission isn't a sitdown, it is a guy I'm supposed to talk to in my speakeasy but nobody there responses as my mission target.

Yeah, I now have something similar. I'm supposed to talk to someone as the initial stage in a mission, but there is no marker on the map for him other than the one attached to the entire neighborhood that lists all the missions located in that neighborhood.

[Hrothgar]

Discussion of this dried up pretty quickly. Did anyone enjoy it?

[jztemple2]

Discussion of this dried up pretty quickly. Did anyone enjoy it?

I put in a half dozen hours and as I described above, lost interest because it just started to feel like I was grinding, which is something I hate. Maybe a dozen or so years ago I'd be more interested in the gameplay, but now I just find it too repetitive and unsatisfying.

The devs did put out the following message on Christmas Day. I guess I'll keep an eye out for updates that add something to the basic gameplay, but right now I see no reason to pick the game back up.

[mcdog512]

I like the game alot. I agree it does seem like grinding. It does have a certain style and I have alot of fun with it. I'm beginning to think it is what it is but Paradox is gonna pump out dlc and free patches unless the game bombs so there should be alot of new stuff which could really improve the game.