Empire of Sin Critic Reviews (2024)

62 27%

Empire of Sin is ranked in the 20th percentile of games scored on OpenCritic.

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Jonathan Bolding

IGN

Top Critic

4 / 10.0

Dec 1, 2020

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.

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Robert Purchese

Eurogamer

Top Critic

Recommended

Nov 30, 2020

A charismatic and enjoyable gangster sim that gets a bit bogged down in admin.

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Fraser Brown

PC Gamer

Top Critic

49 / 100

Nov 30, 2020

Empire of Sin's many bugs, balance issues and competing systems undermine what could have been a novel mob management game.

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Metro GameCentral

Top Critic

3 / 10

Dec 4, 2020

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.

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5 / 10

Dec 15, 2020

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.

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Álvaro Alonso

Hobby Consolas

Top Critic

75 / 100

Dec 4, 2020

Despite a couple of negative aspects, if you are fans of the mafia genre, strategy and management, Empire of Sin will make you an offer that you will not be able to reject.

Review in Spanish | Read full review

TJ Denzer

Shacknews

Top Critic

8 / 10

Nov 30, 2020

There’s a lot going on in Empire of Sin. Romero Games and Paradox Interactive build quite a hybrid of business management, character growth, and turn-based combat, and the 1920s Prohibition-era backdrop makes for an interesting story. The gang leaders are varied in so many ways between their business, combat specialties, and personal stories. Meanwhile, the overall flow of business expansion, hostile takeovers, and diplomacy or confrontation with other gangs also makes for a mostly engaging gameplay loop.

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Claudio Chianese

IGN Italy

Top Critic

7 / 10.0

Nov 30, 2020

Empire of Sin isn't a bad game, just a simple game, not deep enough to catch the attention of the genre's veterans. The organized crime theme is, as always, interesting, but it could have been developed better: as it is, Empire of Sin looks more like XCOM-lite with gangsters than a true mafia simulator.

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Álex Pareja

IGN Spain

Top Critic

8 / 10.0

Nov 30, 2020

Fantastic mafia management game with a good combat system. Employee relationships make up for bad artificial intelligence and some illogical situations.

Review in Spanish | Read full review

PJ O'Reilly

Nintendo Life

4 / 10

Dec 3, 2020

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.

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Dean Takahashi

GamesBeat

Top Critic

Nov 30, 2020

Empire of Sin has its bugs and some rough cinematic moments. But Romero Games pulled this project off with a team of just 30 people. For a game of its ambition, that seems like a small team. It’s pretty much an indie project, or perhaps “double-A,” compared to other games that are more polished but have hundreds of developers — or even more — working on them.

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Tom Senior

Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Top Critic

Unscored

Nov 30, 2020

The sight of a gang leader brutally shotgunning several enemy goons is only improved by some sick swing high-hat hits on an old fashion kit while horns parp happily. In these moments Empire Of Sin is a world I want to live in, but ultimately not a world I really want to manage.

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Ricky Frech

DualShockers

Top Critic

7 / 10.0

Nov 30, 2020

Empire of Sin brings X-COM-style combat and in-depth strategy to 1920s Chicago in a package with tons of great ideas, but a lack of real focus.

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Giovanni Colantonio

Digital Trends

Top Critic

Buy

Nov 30, 2020

Empire of Sin delivers a clever, genre-melding experience that perfectly marries the world of 1920s organized crime with strategy gameplay. Bugs and a lack of combat speed or automation options can grind its pace to a halt, but it does a stellar job of putting the player in the mindset of a mob mastermind (or a gun-toting buffoon) with streamlined speakeasy management.

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Rick Lane

Guardian

Top Critic

Dec 2, 2020

As a prohibition-era mob boss, you're at war with rival gangs as well as the police in this ambitious, if uneven, gangster sim

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Samantha Nelson

Windows Central

Top Critic

Nov 30, 2020

A seamless blend of genres and high replayability make Empire of Sin and excellent choice for strategy gaming fans.

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Joe Apsey

PlayStation Universe

Top Critic

4 / 10.0

Dec 8, 2020

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.

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John Cal McCormick

Push Square

Top Critic

3 / 10

Dec 7, 2020

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.

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Jake Hill

COGconnected

Top Critic

79 / 100

Dec 5, 2020

The complexity of the interlocking systems in Empire of Sin feel like more than the game can handle. For every time a story emerges about love and loss as I described above, there are times when your speakeasy suddenly starts losing money and the game doesn’t communicate why. I’m sure through hours of play a pattern will emerge, but for now too much is too opaque and difficult.

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Jason Rodriguez

PC Invasion

Top Critic

6 / 10

Nov 30, 2020

Despite an overwhelming number of strategic options and features, many of Empire of Sin's mechanics just don't mesh well or they can be completely ignored. Playthroughs will feel roughly similar to what you've done previously, and it becomes a repetitive affair and a chore to see what else you could do.

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