The movie industry is rife with films that paint a powerful picture of merciless but undeniably charismatic thugs from eras gone by, and several of them are held up as cinema's best. Empire of Sin, developed by Romero Games and published by Paradox Interactive, looks to tell the well-trod mafia story from a much more interactive point of view, and even through mixed results its clear the game has an impressive reverence for its source material and tone.
Empire of Sin is a complex tactical game. The game puts players in the shoes of a mob boss in 1920s Chicago, at the height of Prohibition, and tasks them with turning a meager, one-racket speakeasy operation into the undisputed ruler of the city's criminal underbelly. To accomplish this, Romero Games produced a unique blend of tactical combat gameplay and resource management that feels a lot like the combat of XCOM mixed with the core gameplay of the Civilization series.
Players have a wide roster of fourteen different playable crime lords. Some, like the legendary Al Capone, were plucked from the annals of history, but there's a hearty helping of fictional gangsters, and they do an excellent job of coloring out the roster. Players can choose a brash circus ringmaster with a whip, a gorgeous French singer with a checkered past, or a brutal Mexican gunslinger among others. Each boss has their own passive abilities that will impact empire building, and their own special ability for use in combat. They also all have a different personal questline which will unfold over the course of a single play session, giving the player an engaging way to get familiar with their chosen gangster as they go.
In combat, players are assisted by a hand-selected party of gangsters assembled from a similarly diverse roster. Each gangster has a distinct personality and appearance, and even if that personality ends up being somewhat one-note, they at least remain memorable. They're invaluable when a fight breaks out, too. The basic fighting concepts are easy to grasp, and character progression is reasonably paced. The biggest downside to combat are the player's faceless thugs - when a gang war breaks out, the player will typically have to spend a lot of time defending their rackets using these random goons, who are typically terrible shots with weak weapons. Even victories in these scenarios feel dull.
Thankfully, most fights that actually involve the player's party are meaningful because they result in the acquisition of rackets. There are multiple different types of rackets to convert a building into once it's been seized from rival gangs or thugs, and successfully balancing speakeasies, breweries, and brothels is key to a successful empire. In order to maximize their value players can even study the financial situation of a given neighborhood and make sure they're producing the right quality of alcohol for the right clientele. Keeping an acceptable profit margin isn't too hard, though, and the in-depth financial work is more likely to be skipped by casual players who won't be penalized for doing so.
Diplomacy is another thing likely to be skipped. At the start of a game, players decide how many rival gang members they must contend with and how many neighborhoods are up for grabs. Empire of Sin then gives players a frankly overwhelming amount of information and options for how to interact with their fellow crime lords. Unfortunately, since the only win condition is eliminating all the other bosses, there's not much incentive to interact with the diplomacy mechanic, since allies just get in the way in the endgame.
Ultimately, Empire of Sin is a lot like the gangsters it depicts. The thrilling combat and engaging 4X gameplay put on a charming façade, but players won't be able to embrace these aspects fully without also contending with the game's dark side, a lack of diplomacy incentives and punishingly repetitive gang wars. The struggle of this duality leaves the player with a game in Empire of Sin that's easy to have fun with but doesn't quite live up to the potential of all of the innovative qualities it tries to implement. Romero has already discussed DLC plans, so there's a chance that future content will come with a few more win conditions and a few less nameless thug fights.
Empire of Sin releases on December 1st, 2020 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. A PC download code was provided to Screen Rant for the purpose of this review.