Empire of Sin - Hands-on Preview @RockPaperShotgun

RockPaperShotgun went hands-on with Empire of Sin and found it a game of four halves.

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. 

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