Empire Of Sin (PS4)

This could be the last game I'll play on the PS4, and what a sour note to end on.Let's start with playability. In the early stages of Empire of Sin I was eager to get into combat and there was ample opportunity to do so. However, you quickly find yourself doing small 3-on-3 battles with the same thugs in the same small buildings (even the largest buildings feel claustrophobic) and the stakes are often just as small. In short, tactical battles quickly become yet another spreadsheet chore.Replayabilty is thin. You have fixed bosses and gangsters and even the relationships between these gangsters are fixed. Without the ability to customize, the only reason you are playing more new games is to go through each boss's story, and those aren't that interesting. Lack of customization means you just don't have much of a connection to him. The boss is just another piece on the chess board. An overpowered one, which brings me to:Balance-there's not much sense of jeopardy. Your chosen boss is rolling panzer and can dispatch multiple baddies with ease while one or two gangsters with him will make you unstoppable. Even the strategic layer is a cakewalk. Just send panzer and company to a rival bosses' safehouse, bum-rush him and poof! His entire empire is yours.Immersion, evocativeness: By which I mean does a game make you feel like your really are in the chosen setting or period? An example of immersion breaking is Star Wars Attack of the Clones. Whenever Padme starts prattling on about democracy like Woodrow freakin' Wilson, it yanks the viewer out of a "galaxy far, far away" and plops us back in the very mundane world we were trying to forget about for a few moments by watching a sci-fi film in the first place. When it comes to historical settings, immersion is even more fragile. Liberties can be taken and are sometimes necessary for the sake of balance and playability, but in Empire of Sin, these liberties are gratuitous. Gangsters have skills that feel like magic spells rather than actual skills. Half of the Prohibition-era Chicago PD and thugs are gun-toting, bat-wielding women. The effect of this is the game feels silly, trivial, and most glaringly not a Chicago mob game. When the combat is as bland and unbalanced as this, the game can't afford such indulgences. This game is a great concept on paper, poor in execution. Not a recommend.

Happy with item

The combat is very xcom like.

The price - around £10 - is fair now. The game feels strangely unfinished and half-baked. The tactical battles are fun, as are the characters and their special abilities, but you will get sick of fighting on the same small map collection of speakeasies and warehouses. The grind to acquire and defend rackets makes this worse.The strategic element is shallow and mainly involves upgrading your assets to get more money to upgrade the assets again. You can create alliances with other gang bosses, but as your goal is to take over everything you only want to make alliances that won't restrict your rapid expansion. Since you can only take districts bordering your existing ones, you want to be in a position where you don't have a two-front war, which is the only major use of diplomacy outside of trading.You play as a boss character who can run around the quite nice and detailed map of Chicago doing some quests for NPCs. These are a nice addition which add a layer of role-playing. Each boss you can pick has a sort of loose 'story' parallel to the main quest of taking control of Chicago, but from what I saw in my one playthrough it's not much to write home about.And yes, I only could stomach one playthrough. Once you've grinded your way to take control of the entire map, you'll likely be as sick of the battles as I was (auto-resolve is risky, so save-scumming is necessary if you want to reduce some tedium of taking over rackets - you won't want to auto-resolve the battles against other bosses anyway, as these are the best part of the game). So, it's very unlikely you'd want to sit through maybe 25 or 30 hours of that again just for the sake of using a different mob boss and seeing their thin storyline. If you want the platinum, god help you, as you have to take over the city with each mob boss, and there are around 10 iirc.It's worth it now for a single playthrough, but if you want replayability and strategic depth on console stick with Crusader Kings 3 and Stellaris.

This was a Christmas present.It was on the wanted list.Arrived on time and we are very happy with it.

This could be a great game. A cross between xcom which I thought was fantastic and the godfather pc game from many years ago, taking over neighborhoods, upgrading your gangster team in skills weapons armour and ammo. I read a lot of negative reviews re how unstable it is, but figured it's been out for over a year now, surely it's been patched and sorted right? Wrong. Within minutes of playing it crashed with the error shown in the picture. This would happen regularly every hour or so, usually when it tried to auto-save or it changed scenery from indoor to outdoor when leaving a building. I made sure I saved often and whilst frustrating, it was tolerable. That is until one crash where it wiped the entire save slot - manual saves, auto-saves, the lot - gone. Hours of gameplay, very close to the end, disappeared. That was it for me - this is far too unstable for a game that's been out this long and will be promptly returned for a refund. Very disappointed as the premise is great but I won't risk all that time and effort only to lose it all again at any time.