Empire of Sin Reviews
A strategy game taking place in prohibition-era roaring '20s, which has players role-playing as a bigtime gangster, slowly building their enterprise, and doing anything expected in such a line of work, whether that's selling alcohol, running whorehouses, striking deals with other crooks, "renting" guns for hire, looting or ransacking establishments, bribing the boys in blue, and many, many, many more. Quite an ambitious title, right? Sadly, an assortment of technical issues, an annoyingly busy UI, a total lack of balance, as well as a lack of challenge, has led to something that just isn't fun. Potential, thy name is Empire of Sin… but potential is great only when met.
Empire of Sin has too many bugs and too many balancing issues to make it worth putting up with its insanely uninspired combat and lacklustre story.
Oh dear. Empire of Sin has a fantastic idea at its core, and the jolly soundtrack perfectly complements the over the top character designs. But the game is a technical mess, littered with a spectacular array of bugs, and crippled by poor design choices that derail whatever little momentum the game may otherwise have had. Empire of Sin? They should have called it Buggy Malone.
The potential for an exciting period strategy game is clear but that only makes the buggy mess of unbalanced combat and simplistic tactical decisions all the more frustrating.
Empire of Sin is undoubtedly an excellent idea, a clever meshing together of management sim and turn-based tactical action that's set in a hugely compelling era of Chicago's criminal history. There are some cool mechanics here, too; the well-executed overworld map of the town, the gangster black book with its complex relationships and those tense sit-downs with rival ganglords. However, all of this promise is held back by copious technical problems, game-breaking bugs and management and combat systems that feel half-baked and scrappy. There are more patches and updates planned and we desperately would like to see this one sort itself out but, as things stand, it's virtually impossible to recommend – and it remains to be seen if future updates can bash it into shape.
Empire of Sin is a poor and skeleton-thin management game at its core with complicated systems, menus, and tutorials that do a poor job at getting you acclimated to the experience. Add on top of that a library worth of bugs that force you to restart, ruin pivotal moments of the game, and just make the experience more frustrating and you have a game that is not worth even worth a slight bit of consideration. Empire of Sin is a massive disappointment.
Empire of Sin's criminal management sim and turn-based tactical combat combo sounds brilliant on paper, but it completely fails to live up to its aspirations due to major imbalances and bugs.
Empire of Sin's many bugs, balance issues and competing systems undermine what could have been a novel mob management game.
The first hours of the game had a lot to offer, but the gameplay quickly became repetitive, and all the smaller and larger mistakes began to surface, which in the end hurt the Empire of Sin more than it should.
Review in Czech | Read full review
Empire of Sin is in a better state now than how it was at launch, with several fixes to its UI and performance, but this is still too much for the Switch to handle. I’m not talking solely about its still-underwhelming performance, but also the fact that it tries to be an excessive amount of games at once, without ever exploring all of its features to a reasonable degree.
I can’t for the life of me recommend Empire of Sin without giving it more time to iron out its issues. Gameplay-wise, it is quite enjoyable, but that enjoyable aspect gets drowned out in all the issues it has. Wait for them to fix the game until you decide to get it, and possibly a free story expansion with more icons to play with.
The music is lovely and it controls quite nicely on consoles but that's all the good things about Empire of Sin because the core gameplay feels very simple and willy-nilly designed and the amount of bugs and glitches are unbelievable.
Review in Persian | Read full review
Empire of Sin is definitely an offer you can refuse.
Despite of it's very successful atmosphere and its interesting management mechanics, the game suffers from many bugs. Moreover, the fight is not dynamic enough and not interesting enough to captivate the player over time.
Review in French | Read full review
Empire of Sin is a promising strategy game but one that feels woefully incomplete. I can't recommend it, but I can recommend following it's hopeful transition into something genuinely wonderful.
Empire of Sin has good ideas hobbled by poor execution and painfully repetitive gameplay.
“Empire of Sin is great when every mechanic and system are in its place and in perfect harmony. Sadly, these moments are few and far between. At this point its just a very great game in theory. Maybe Romero Games will make it better with expansions and updates, but that remains to be seen”.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
MEDIOCRE - Empire of Sin wants you to be the Mob Boss in all of Chicago. From managing relationships, to hostile takeovers, running an underground economy, and with an X-Com inspired combat system layered on top for action moments, this game has all the right makings for a top-notch prohibition management game. However, the menus are cluttered, heavy, and an unnecessary time sink, and the combat is just too light with clunky opponents, making the whole experience a bit awkward for me to really love.
Empire of Sin has potential, and I look forward to revisiting it after six months of patches that will hopefully address some of these issues. As it stands today, the game is buggy, poorly balanced, and blatantly half-finished. The initial strong presentation quickly fades to frustration as playing correctly is a fool's errand and cheating the system is the only way to play. That might be appropriate for a Mafia game, but not for this title.
At its heart, Empire of Sin does a little of everything and does none of it well.