Empire of Sin Reviews

i really hate leaving bad reviews on games but this game kinda deserves a bad review, the game is great, the graphics are great, what is not great is the fact that is so anti player is not even funny, if you play on medium difficulty or higher the AI has a ridiculous amount of armor and grenades that they just grenade spam you and kill all your guys, basically killing any sort of strategy you may have in mind dead on its feet, the fact that you cannot change the music at will is also another big downside, if you are playing a long run you get what i am saying, the DLC did nothing to really make the game that much enjoyable because the game is great is the anti player tactics the ai and difficulty will use to kill your vibe, sad to leave a bad review to a game that couldve been a great gem of a game.

Great game if you like 4x, Tactical, Turned Based, Strategy Games. And to top it off, adds a Highly Accurate Twist of Historical American Prohibition Period. Smart Deadly AI, Supported by a Soundtrack thats great & matches that era of time. There is always something to do and Strategize about. Great job Publisher for delving into uncharted territory & great job Development. You should be proud of yourselves.

Excellent to see, that this game was brought to back in life at 2025! Played it again for couple of hours and the enjoyment is still there. Hopefully it gets treated well, as it deserves and there will be continous support from developers. There is lot of potential and possibilities to expand this game! "Someday - and that day may never come - I'll call upon you to do a service for me." - Don Corleone

This game must have been fixed since launched, Tried it for first time, with all DLCs, and its a very immersive and fun experience.

I seen the preview commercials long before it released, ever since I thought thats gonna be a cool game. It's been on my wishlist ever since it released. Finally got it in this summer sale... It is so much better than you might know at first glance. It's basically a prohibition era version of Xcom crossed with perhaps, I dunno, Star Trek Birth of the Federation. If you love either of those games you will probably have a blast with this one, especially if you like the whole gangster themed empire building. Sure, they could probably have done more, added more, expanded, but it is a solid playable game as is. Anyone who doesn't like the game probably doesn't like any of the other games either... It is kind of a hybrid of everything, not quite real time but not strictly turn based either. And, your every decision matters. So, if you love Xcom, or similar, you probably going to enjoy this. If thats not your kind of game, then you probably wont.

The worst part about this game is that it's fun, the story is simple but the game play is fun. The combat scratches the itch I have for games like this. The controls are easy to understand and can be as complex or complicated as you'd like it to be. With that being said this game is an old release. Years and years old BUT there are still tons of game breaking bugs that don't allow you to progress in the already simple story. Getting soft locked in a game this old from a simple mission is frustrating and makes your play through impossible to complete. I wasted almost 20 hours in this play though. I can still play can still attack others but I can't "beat" the game. Frustrating and uninstalling. I'd say wait to buy when they fix the issues but the game is old enough.

This game is a cool idea and I had a lot of hope on release but unfortunately is simply not very fun. Likely due to poor development process (long story short: Romero were the initial devs and quit after scamming, to protect themselves Paradox the publisher took over development SEVERAL years late) the game simply is not all that fleshed out. You'll likely see Paradox do what they did when they bought Prison Architect and sling out high amounts of over priced DLC and end up ruining the functionality of the game in the process. The game really boils down the slog of taking your group of unique mobsters (as in their models, there's nothing more to it than that other than their relationships which only matters in terms of who you can have hired at the same time) to run around the map and kill off the other factions. Not that it should be a problem, but there is a finite number of them so if they all die off/get hired by enemies you could get soft locked. The combat system is pretty well fleshed out; however, the animations and sounds are wonky (pumping a shotgun wrong and six gunshots for a three round burst from SMGs for example). You will run into the same map repeatedly. While you have to cut through copy and paste enemy gangsters, you only have access to bringing unique ones with you. You also can't send out groups on scouting or exterminate missions like the AI can, that has to be done with your unique crew. I think the game would be better if you had to have a unique gangster as a crew leader that you send on missions and can have several out there as opposed to really only having access to one party. Diplomacy is empty and the autoresolve calculator is pretty dumb (a 6v1 ended in total defeat for me one time... my troops were better quality too). All of the quests are fetch quests and none are particularly interesting, but they do spice up the world a bit. The AI is also pretty bad at building their empire. Also got soft locked in a war after ransacking and entire enemy neighborhood and couldn't find their safehouse. Any management decisions you make are pretty irrelevant, I had an event pop up where I sent two of my gangsters to jail and they only lost one morale and loyalty each (these scale from 0 to 500). Managing finances is very easy, strengthen one area to bankroll your expansion and then expansion will cover all future expenses. Equipping your crew is also a very "eh" process, the black market really isn't helpful unless you get lucky (weird reset cycle too). It's also weird that you select a boss but when you control them on the world map they say stuff like "on it boss." Nit picky I know but it gives me a sense that you're not really playing as that boss. The game autosaves in months and money is earned weekly. But you can get a TON done in just a day which can put you in a weird situation where you might just have to wait for long periods doing nothing. I'm not sure how the modding scene is, maybe it can do great things for the title. But other than that just save your money, get XCOM or hold out for the upcoming Star Wars turn based game.

I still wish there was more rackets but once i got past that i started to really enjoy the game. Its not perfect they decided to go woke instead of aiming for historical accuracy. They have trans bosses and about one quarter of your henchmen look like some form trans. According to this game about a quarter of all Chicago's gangsters in the 20's were trans. Half the gangsters are women and a good portion of them are old ladies. So it's really hard making a crew that could be considered realistic which is my main gripe with this game why do we have to force today's issues into a game about 1920's bootlegging? i don't know but despite all that ridiculousness I still enjoy this game which says a lot because woke shit is dumb

*updated review* This game is 5 years old and riddled with game breaking bugs. Apparently Paradox has taken over development. I wish them well, but it needs much more than just bug fixes. This game's primary sin is that it's confusing and much of what you do is inconsequential. The game is about expanding territory. The map is divided into precincts. You can build a speakeasy, a brother or a casino to make money. You build a brewery to provide them with booze. There's no difference between them though. Sure, casinos don't stop making money when there's no booze, but you will never run out. You don't need to provide girls for the brothels. There's some talk about "chemistry between buildings" but... money isn't particularly hard to come by. So, the buildings might as well have called the buildings Red, Blue and Yellow. You can upgrade Red Blue and Yellow, but their upgrades are always the same. You get to upgrade security, reduce the amount of attention they get, and increase income. For the latter - and this is VERY exciting - you can either increase ambiance to increase spending, or increase word of mouth, which... increases spending! I can barely contain myself. So maybe we should call these two upgrades "Increase spending A" and "Increase Spending B". Now that we know how to upgrade Red, Blue and Yellow with Increase A and B, and you have applied a few upgrades to make more money in your first precinct, we can completely forget that knowledge. It is inconsequential. You are there to conquer the map, remember? You will never ever need to upgrade any building you conquer. Seriously. Once you have upgraded Red, Blue and Yellow in your first precinct with A and B, you are golden! GOLDEN! You have enough dough to hire goons and take over the map. From now on, that is all you do. You attack a precinct with admittedly competent but not super interesting turn-based combat, take over the central depot, put new Red, Blues and Yellows into place (no need for A and B!) and move on to the next precinct. Occasionally you build a brewery. Upgrading their production does help somewhat. But you could also only ever build Blues and Yellows. Then you don't need booze. Money is pouring in. Your goons are decent in a fight but they aren't much good for anything else. You can assign a sub boss and an advisor. Sounds intriguing, but you will never even know they are there. Once you have 4-5 precincts under control (you can do this without attacking a single other crime family) you are so big, no one has the balls to attack you. Everyone comes begging for your protection. Oh! The missions! I almost forgot the missions! Go to a Red in location 1, talk to dude. Next, go to a Blue in location 2, kill all dudes. Return to original red, talk to dude, get your reward. EVERY mission fits into that scheme. Sometimes you visit 7 locations. I am over the moon! Not really, I am over this game. The sin, here, is that it was put on sale. I bought it at discount, and that was still too much.

They made a post saying, "We hand it to you modders" but then later down the road give a DLC that breaks all the major mods and contributes barely anything.