Jey's Empire Reviews

I enjoy this game, even though it can be infuriating at times. I would enjoy a relatively easy mode where you can play from 1957 to 1972, just so I can cruise and enjoy the ride.

I love this game, as my number of played hours attests. This game is fairly simple to learn but difficult to master. There is a huge amount of depth to it. When you are able to make things go your way, it is intensely satisfying. It is also insanely well researched and actually really funny in a lot of ways. You can tell the creator has read up on J. Edgar Hoover and the historical events presented in the game. Some of the details are so small that they could be missed if you don't seek them out. My favorite example, at a certain point, the New Orleans Mafia action is listed as "Visiting Guatemala." This is a reference tot he fact that the US government once deported New Orleans Mob boss Carlos Marcello to Guatemala, which he had falsely listed as his birthplace. Details like this really add flavor to what otherwise would be a straightforward management sim The few negatives are occasional bugs and not so friendly interface and difficulty getting all the information you need. This is a game that rewards patience and attention to detail.

Quite unique FBI head simulator - you're Jey, and you're asshole. You manage agents, cases, fight against crime or what you see as crime, but firstly you fight against yourself and your demons. The balance between management game and elements of visual novel is good, so I liked this game and recommend it.

Very fun game despite crude graphics and UI. Become J.E.Hoover and tackle on commies, kkk, color extremists, mafia and crime with limited assets (agents), while keeping your sanity in check. All in colorful environment of 1960s politics and despite politicians (e.g. Kennedy family) throwing a wench every now and then.

Great game! Very complex, tons of weird ways to get from A to B, and very funny under the very serious veneer. I saved America from the Red Menace by making a child cry. The only Steam achievement I've ever been proud of!

Very fun, but very hard for first time players.But once you get the hang of it, you can be the best policeman in the world. Tip: DO NOT GO AGAINST THE MAFIA IN YOUR FIRST PLAYTHROUGH. It's best to play the short campaign lengths so you can prepare yourself for the upcoming threats before trying out the long campaign which is more of a sandbox where you can dick around.

Really good game, I love the characterization of Hoover as both an incompetent closeted gay man, and a hypercompetent superstar cop, depending on how good you are at the game. Another neat touch is the threat score, which is both America at larges opinion on how bad a threat is, such as those dirty commies, and also just how batshit scared Hoover is of it, like the McLellen Commision. Another thing I like a lot is the freedom it gives you to choose your targets, if you're interested in roleplaying Hoover you can focus all your attention on harmless college kids(commies) and civil rights movements, or go in the complete opposite direction and go after the KKK while supporting civil rights movements, with no judgement from the game itself whatsoever. The gameplay itself is also very enjoyable, as a kid I loved playing old DOS games so playing this I've gotten a lot of happy flashbacks to Crisis In the Kremlin. Get it on sale, pop on a decent podcast and have fun saving America.

This game is essentially similar to Crisis in the Kremlin except you manage the FBI instead of the USSR, for those not used to such games, essentially the mechanics work like this: You get a phone, secret files, and a map. With those you can assign agents to infiltrate criminal societies, extremists, etc. Your job is to stay in power until the end of the scenario and essentially you can pretty much let the country play out however you want :D 10/10 I highly recommend this!

I found myself binge-playing this game, despite some of the gameplay being annoying, as I detail below. So I'd recommend it, but with caveats. The Good: - Not many games like it out there. There are management elements, and role-playing elements. The design is also pretty simple, but there is sufficient depth to make it challenging and interesting. - There's something satisfying about building up a case, and dropping the federal hammer on criminals right before they strike. And when your agents mess up, yes, you really do want to send them to Alaska. The Bad: - There's a lot of micromanagement. You have to remember to stick X number of agents on a carjacking ring in Omaha, or eventually you'll lose the game. And it's hard to keep track of everything, because there isn't a handy "sort" feature. I wish there was a menu that was basically an Excel spreadsheet that gave you information, rather than having to click around from office to office to get that information. - A lot of the dialogue/information you do get is repetitive, so it is easy to miss out on data/information that is actually important. I don't really care that my agents in Omaha, New York, Anchorage, LA, and Chicago have all leveled up. I do care that my agent in Chicago's cover is threatened, and/or there's about to be a big heist somewhere. Basically, the filtering could be better. The Ugly: - I feel like the game wants you to play it in a particular way. Basically, you have to run the FBI like, well, J. Edgar Hoover. So if you want to not chase Communists and go after the Mafia, you have to do this rather deftly, or you'll lose. That's part of the game, but I sometimes wish I had either a little more choice, or that the Communists would actually DO something/justify spending resources on them. - Occasional small bugs, especially when transitioning between screens, where the way to solve it is to save the game, exit, and come back. Not game-breaking, not all the time, but it does happen.

Edit: Some of the problems in the game have been fixed, such as the text not fitting on the screen. Go ahead and give it a buy. Long story short, I am in love with the concept, but disappointed in the execution. In this game you manage the FBI, and have to crack down on various groups in order to maintain your job, while also dealing with situations that will harm your character's self-control. The game does a pretty decent job in fulfilling an RPG "feel" for choices that you make in terms of fulfilling your own agenda in a small folder of operations on your desk. I have never seen anything quite like it in terms of theme in a management/strategy game. So the game is very novel, and I would like to see more of that. But the game gets very repetitive, even when new situations and organizations appear on your radar. This is especially the case because where you are finally building up excellent cases against high profile criminal targets, many of these will never see any kind of resolution. For example, illegal land appropriation in Alaska? You actually can't solve it, no matter what. Make arrests on a mafia family? The game just puts them in court, never allowing you to see a resolution or reward for the long and arduous process of building your case. I am sure the developer would say that this is just realism, reasonable minds could disagree, and it comes off more as a sign of incompleteness rather than a feature that adds to the gaming experience. Furthermore, despite being about investigations, some known criminal activity is not able to be countered at all. The game mentions that organizations can have buffs like "Corrupt Cops" or "Corrupt Politicians" and "Corrupt Judges" but with no means to go after those cases on their own. This was a huge missed opportunity because it would add narrative to the gameplay, where to make going after the mafia easier, you could first crackdown on corruption in the judiciary, police, and legislature, and only then being able to tackle the mafia, KKK, or whoever. And this would feel much more rewarding than just feeling like you are attacking one organization that has these buffs that are just a blob that is attached to the first case. Conversely, considering you are playing as a corrupt madman, should it not have been considered that you could induce the same corruption from judges, police, and prosecutors yourself? Alongside this, the game resolution does not have any kind of UI scaling, so playing on high resolution will result in very small text for menu options, and seems to have problems fitting all the text on the screen so as to be readable in complete sentences, without deducing context clues. This makes the game feel very unpolished. All in all, I had my fun in the first few hours, but quickly became bored and frustrated soon after. Love the concept, but really think it needed more work in the gameplay to be something that I could play for more than that. The 17 dollar price is very steep in light of these considerations.