Empire of Sin

Developers abandoned the game and left false promises. Steer clear.

I really love Paradox. Their strategy games are almost always worth hundreds, if not thousands of hours of game play. I cannot recommend Empire of Sin though. Having spent countless hours building my dynasty in CK3, growing my galactic empire in Stellaris, and getting steamrolled in HOI4, I found EOS and was immediately intrigued. I've always liked prohibition era mafia media, from movies to books to games. I had high hopes coming into this. Empire of Sin is unfortunately just one of Paradox's weaker titles. There's countless game balance issues, both for and against the player. The diplomacy is lackluster at best, even after the update, there's very little replayability, and several bugs, ranging from annoying to save corrupting. The game balance issues are the most minor of the lot. Player controlled mobsters move faster than AI mobsters, allowing you to react to situations far away from you with ease. On the other hand, the AI gets to deploy multiple groups of dispensable mobsters for exploration and combat while the player is limited to 10 mobsters at a time that all take a monthly cut of the profits. RNG seems to weigh heavily in the player's favour during combat, but simulated battles seem to heavily favour the AI. After having been on the market for years, EOS still has game breaking bugs. From incomplete missions and story lines to simply being unable to open the map or select characters after a battle, these bugs seriously harm the playability of the game. Aside from balance and performance issues, there just isn't much replayability. Each mobster has different perks and special abilities, so there's some minor differences between each playthrough, and the "main quests" for each character are different, but at the end of the day you're just going to end up taking rackets, declaring wars, and taking more rackets. The player always grows faster than the AI so you quickly eclipse the AI's income and the neighbourhood system forces you to grow in a rather predictable way. I've invested hundreds of hours in Paradox's other titles, but I doubt I'll ever hit 100 hours in Empire of Sin.