Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Nov 9, 2021

  I keep waiting for a game to reach the heights of the classic Gangster’s Organised Crime (GOC). While this game isn't terrible, sadly it also isn't game to take us back to the heights of GOC. This has potential but it’s basically just a trading game. Other than the fact you collect protection money, and can see the area you control, you may as well be playing shop manager. With GOC, you feel like you are playing the boss of an outfit, with this you not only feel like you are running a shop, but you have to the day to day chores of running the bloody thing. I don’t mind the running about hustling at the start but once you have a crew the system for automating this away is dreadful, as ultimately you still have to micromanage the whole thing. WTF is the point in having hoods who have developed great organisation skills if you still have to micromanage everything. It should be a case of… Here is 5k, now bugger of and get this all running for me. I don’t want to be pissing about with picking up apples because someone messed up their delivery and doesn’t have the gumption to go back and buy more. I don’t want to have to overcome the challenge of having to source stupid crap like bottles, it’s a bloody bottle FFS, not a nuke. In GOC you told your hood what to do for the week, and they went away and did it. You could see it all play out and real time; and intervene if need be. They followed orders and acted on their own, sometimes things went well, other times they didn’t, and then you dealt with things. The shootouts were amazing, in this is a 2D screen-over. Yep, one of the most exciting things about these games, reduced to a 2D screen, Jesus. Of course, the cynic in me thinks he knows exactly why this is. It’s an engine developed game (looks like Unity to me) and no one on the team knows how to programme AI, which seems evident through out the game, hence the need to micromanage everything. Maybe I am wrong, and the next update will transform the game into more than just shop manager, but until this time it’s a no for me, and back to GOC.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 8, 2021

  I like many people loved the idea of the Gangsters: Organized Crime game and see it as the defining light for games of this nature. I know the slight difference is that this is a crime suited tycoon game versus a realtime game, but the premise for both of these games have to be the same: Clear purpose, concise methods of doing what is needed, and a real feeling of building a budding criminal enterprise. This game doesn't really feel like that in my opinion: [b] Expansion is Tedious[/b] The idea is, you speak to someone that owes you a magical favour that is never forgotten about no matter how much you annoy them, and say you want them to collect envelopes for you of money, with no cut going to them. Great, this guys working for me for free and getting nothing out of it besides I don't break his kneecaps. He will slowly one corner after the other try to establish respect in that area. Great, I just need to pay between $8 and $15 and thats about it. You can't open another front while this guys gaining respect for you because magic, even if they are in two totally different precincts and areas which is absolutely silly. The later into the game you get, and the more money you make the worse and more annoying this becomes. The scaling on buying property is equally a nightmare, because eventually you start paying ridiculous sums of money just to open up another business unless you are lucky to get another favour from someone. But again, getting a favour just increases the overall price of buying a new business which is ridiculously expensive. Some businesses barely even have enough room to hold more than two batches of resources at the same time. It's manufactured tension, not real tension. I can't go and buy storage in a storage yard to hide some of my legal manufacturing items and expand that storage as needed and locate that storage in a reasonable place, I have to use whatever. All these people offering me favours don't seem to want to help me store stuff either, which is silly. [b]"Crew" are Glorified Deliverymen/women [/b] Literally, you use them for delivering things and that's about it. There is no auto-explore, you have to do that manually, meaning that you are going to be sat there like a clown trying to learn where things are, constantly. Hoping to god that uncover the thing that you need for you to build one of your stills and start producing some alcohol, and that's not assuming that they won't do business with you because they are "irritable" which happens all too frequently, until you meet a friend of a friend of a friend to introduce you to them properly, which is equally a nightmare to find. [b]Deliveries CANNOT be Conditional[/b] I have tried so much to setup the most efficient delivery paths. The best delivery path is always the Protection Racket Collections ending with a vehicle repair order, but that's really about it. There is no way to figure out how long a delivery will take overall as this is simply not calculated. There is no "IF" in the scenario to take what the business NEEDS, you are set to picking up very specific amounts and hoping that your tiny backroom can fit it all in. There is no actual strategic elements to check what all of your businesses are doing at a time. There is no strategic element to check what level all of your guys are at the same time, you have to click them one after the other. [b]Dirty Money and Clean Money are Irrelevant[/b] This game does away with clean and dirty money. The police effectively are nerfed into the ground if they don't ACTUALLY investigate finances, even if you have all these "Money Laundry" and "Cooked Books" skills, they're totally irrelevant. Infact they have absolutely no effect according to their descriptions. At least when I learn something it tells me what it is there for. [b]Speakeasies ain't Easy[/b] So the Bootlegging operations are literally the worst things in existence. Especially for Tier 1 alcohols. You can't sell enough to make it profitable, and if anything only pays for 5 - 6 crew wages. Unless you are lucky and start off being able to make Applejack. As soon as you his the Corner Speakeasy you start making huge amounts of money, so much so that the previous level was absolutely pointless and wasn't even worth the running costs. Not just that but the game doesn't allow you to specify the amount of stock per day, or what is inside of it, you just have to pick randomly and get the random stuff that each type of speakeasy needs. [b] Gambling is a pointless gamble [/b] So eventually you get access to gambling dens, which you will need to spend in the range of $10,000 overall to get running efficiently for the skills, actual games, actual building and so on so forth. Not to mention the favours and hope that there is a decently located building in the area. You eventually start making money but for you to get the MOST money out of it you have to go and kick down doors and demand the money. There is no automatic way to do this so you start micromanaging this and hoping that you get stuff out of it. Most the time they run away and you lose even more money, making the casino not worth anything because yes, you guessed it, after they start in debt, the debt becomes worthless. This is TEDIOUS like a lot of other things in this game. [b]Autogeneration of Maps is Terrible[/b] Hilariously I have a save where there are three bridges that lead to absolutely nowhere. I mean literally a 1 tile plot and nothing else, and sometimes entire sections of the map are gated and have absolutely no other crime families that could possibly get there. Sometimes the maps are totally broken, really weirdly positioned, business variety is a mess. Just feels really poorly generated and needs a bit of work before it hits the sweet spot of you being able to actually play in a randomly generated town. Especially a European one, it goes absolutely mad. [b]Favours for Favours for Favours for Favours[/b] Directly expanding is annoying because I have to find a guy, who is friends with a guy, who is friends with a guy, who is friends with a guy, who is friends with a guy, who is friends with a guy to then speak to the guy I want to expand into and then he says "Uhhhhh... No sorry I'm not that kind of guy even though you've just totally incriminated yourself to be that you want to extort my neighbours!"... The system makes no sense when expanding into other corners, and the idea that you can't establish another front while expanding in another is absolutely laughable. Since when is respect gated? [b]Overall Final Impressions[/b] These developers took a great idea, and implemented it in a programmable way. Well done. The problem with the way it works is that it is neither realistic, fun after long period of time, have no quality of life, has no conditioning to allow you to run things like a proper tycoon, because lets face it the point of a tycoon game is to have more and more reasonable amounts of automation so you can create a TYCOON BUSINESS... You spend so much time repeating boring content than having anything great to do, diplomacy is boring and limited, troublemakers are boring and limited, and all of the content of the game that is stuck behind a paywall isn't worth the money because most of that content is in the main game without you having to buy it. With SO MANY different games to take inspirations from: Empire of Sin, Gangsters Organized Crime, Gangsters 2, City of Omerta... yet you ignore 90% of the cool things that happen in them like fight nights, brothels, money laundry, bribing police chiefs, judges, attorneys, all of the depth of a realistic game have been removed for a gamey, light, unrealistic time sink that gets you driving that car around and clicking green question marks. Please do not buy this game until they add some realistic content, quality of life and overall some real GANGSTERS business. EDIT: DLC introduces what should be in the maingame 0/10
• gamedeal user

  Jan 24, 2022

  Game needs more than selling booze. Need prostitution and assasinations.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 11, 2022

  **Update June15th, 2022** Wow ... they slowly release DLC WHICH SHOULD HAVE BEEN INCLUDED IN THE MAIN GAME AT RELEASE, and have the nuts to charge more money for it, when they released an unfinished product to begin with. I take back anything positive I had to say about the devs and this game. What a waste and you should stay away from this product. *** This game seems like it would be a micro-managers wet dream, however, I actually had to look back at the store page, because I had accidentally purchased this game in "development phase." Ultimately this game feels as though it is in Beta, unfinished, unpolished. TLDR: At first glance, appears to be an in-depth, complex micro-managers dream game, but quickly falls flat in bottle-necked game paths, clunky interface, bare and horrid graphics and ultimately shallow, unrewarded gameplay, which becomes boring and repetitive early-on. Somewhere hidden deep is a great, complex game ... but this "final" product certainly isn't it. Do not let the promo fool you -- this game is bare and ugly. I live and grew up in Chicago, and not even mentioning the questionable geographical and scale of the Chicago map, you would think a dozen people live in the entire city. It is dead, ugly and the color scheme and music are bland and depressing. With that said, for as bare as the map is, you'd be amazed an how clunky the interface is. It is a nightmare trying to navigate the icons, other characters/outfits or pinpointing resources. While the mechanics of setting up automated driving routes are pretty straight forward and easy, my god does it become a tangled web that is absolutely unusable and frustrating. Starting perks: other than two or three ... completely pointless and unusable. Why would you pick a brawler, when you could literally get a gun within a few moves, making hand-to-hand fighting obsolete? Why bribe or get a cop perk, when you can easily ever paying them off, the entire game? Speaking of other outfits and hooligans ... never a problem or real threat. As a matter of fact, the more the merrier because all you need to do is expand over a few moves, hire anyone, and two or three of your crew, regardless of their traits, can go beat down and kill every single NPC, with zero issue, and take their weapons, guns, money and stash ... literally making more money early game, than you would making booze. Just have buildings producing neutral ingredients, fill them up, then invest in expansion with a king's ransom of blood money and no threat. My favorite, is when the game just decides NPC's are going to refuse to be your front, or sell/purchase to you, especially when in your controlled territory. It makes no sense, especially after you've smashed the property and burned their building to strongarm them into paying you protection money ... but then suddenly they refuse to deal with you anymore, because .... reasons. You've murdered 30 people, smashed their property, bribed police and are a terror, but then they're like "we don't deal with the likes of you," and your character is just like "okay. Shucks." The game mechanics just suck and you are at the mercy of the RNG gods with zero balance. Do you want to have a character who starts in the Lincoln Park area, which should, offer it's own unique challenge? Do you want to have a background in homebrew beer or moonshine? Too bad. Create a character you'll get stuck in the Loop, making brick wine ... with no grape concentrate suppliers anywhere near you, because you rolled 50 car repair shops and a deli. That sounds more like Cicero. Hey great ... start over, this time you're a moonshiner, with zero customers anywhere near your zone buying moonshine, and zero people buying stoneware. Stoneware. Stoneware. Your entire empire hampered, ham-stringed, and destroyed by lack of stoneware containers. Reroll again, this time, you start in a building which creates malt syrup and stoneware containers like crazy, with 30 buyers of home-brew in a row ... and the same goes for the teching and research ... allowable only if you follow the same exact path, missions, etc. each time. With that said ... I have 72 hours in. I am a micromanagement junkie and I love the time period. But alas, an overzealous catalog of booze options and clunky interface/tech tree, does a good game make. Where are my brothels? Where are my opium dens? Where are my fixing elections, buying politicians, bombing non-compliant police and enemies? So, somewhere in here is a structure for a GREAT game ... but instead we are presented with this final hollow product. I can only hope this gets an amazingly polished sequel or a huge DLC upgrade. Oh and P.S. ... The devs didn't even have the decency to have any type of "ending" when prohibition ends. Not even a mention. Its just keeps going and going ... like it's not even a finished product ...
• gamedeal user

  Apr 13, 2022

  I wanted to hate this game. I really did. I put off buying it at launch because I found one review that said it was bad, and dismissed it. At the start of the year, I Started comparing it to other games like it and still came up with reasons to dislike this, "It's to orgainizey." I told myself. "you will hate it." Finally after looking at the steam page for the ump-teenth time. I said, "Download it and find out you hate it, the return it and write a bad review." So, I got it and started playing the tutorial... And HATED IT!! It made me feel stupid, like I didn't have any idea how to play this type of game. I got lost and spent the first 2 years in game looking for a location. "Endlessly frustrating" I thought to myself. I started to google "where I could find the orange cone in city of gangsters", with no info anywhere to be found. I was pissed at how impossible this game was and wanted to give up... "Try one more time and then return it", I said... I took a break, came back and with fresh eyes found the the place I was looking for after searching over have of Chicago, it was right next to the starting location... The same block. I finished the tutorial and started my first real game. Point being, This game isn't friendly or easy to figure out. It's simple but not as you would expect. I didn't return the game. Instead I've been addicted to it ever since. It forces you to play it way, which is confusing at first. It's easy to make mistakes and think you are right and it's the games fault. 200+ hours into this game and a modded map created, I really think this is the best gangster game there is out right now. The Devs are always working and dealing with the rubes on discord trying to help us without breaking their own game. The biggest thing you have to remember going into this game, is that it is a social networking game, not a crime game. It's much more realistic in this regard. You have to uplift the people around you if you want to get anywhere. Unlike other crime games where you are more like a "Joker" type rampaging through a city. In this, you should be aiming to make friends with the citizens of the city. It's a grinder of a game. Slow. Thought is needed before doing something. Choices matter. The people matter. The relationships you build will determine if you are successful or not. I saw someone say it's like a social based board game, and this is a great way to explain it. If you play it in a action based style, you are going to have a bad time. "Should I buy the game?!" The answer is... If you have an ability to play slower games, then yes, this game isn't for everyone though. It's a through back to the games of the 90's. You are building a story. if that's the type of game you want, the yes 100% you should. TL;DR Story based game frustrates most Zoomers. But the game is 8/10 good, once you understand what it is, instead of trying to impose your selfish thoughts on it. Thank you for reading, have a nice day.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 15, 2022

  I've played this game for almost 200 hours now so I kind of have to give it a thumbs up for $30. But this is one of those games that the more you play it, the more you see what's wrong with it. First of all, this is not a successor to Gangsters: Organized Crime. This is a turn-based 4x game, like Civilization or Stellaris. You start with the most basic of resources and one unit, and have to explore, choose what to build and how to expand, and how to deal with enemies. Your goal is to make money. You do this by combining the necessary ingredients to make a particular type of alcohol, then go around selling it. The challenge is in finding a steady supply of ingredients, buyers to buy the finished product, and dealing with the cops and enemies that are trying to stop you. Dialogue and relationships with various NPCs are a big part of the game and understanding how that system works gives you a big advantage. A large portion of the time, this is a really fun and rewarding gameplay loop. Once you've gotten a few dozen turns into the game, it really opens up and you start having a lot of options on each turn. You will have several viable advancement paths but you can only afford to develop one at a time, so you have to think and strategize and decide how to spend your limited resources. Basically, the whole reason you enjoy strategy games, right? The problem, at least for me, is that maybe one out of ten starts is actually playable to get to that point. The other nine, you have no buyers for your alcohol, or you have no raw materials, or the procgen put all the "nearby" buyers topologically 100 squares away. Instead of a tech tree, there is a highly randomized series of quests/missions, with semi-random rewards. The only way to progress to higher grades of alcohol, better production facilities, and better vehicles, is through these missions. Understanding this system and knowing the rewards ahead of time is essential to progress and development, which does not feel good. It feels highly artificial and gimmicky, for example, to know that if I accept a specific mission on a corner I control instead of one outside my territory, I have a good chance of getting a free building as a reward (and zero chance if it's outside my territory). Or to know that I really need a pickup truck, so I better not accept any more missions until I see the pickup truck mission because I can only have 6 missions at a time and I already have 5. In other words, you don't succeed because you made smart decisions, you succeed because you know what is coming and how to game the system (and because you got good RNG). I'm a multi-thousand hour player of Civ, Stellaris, and Crusader Kings so I am well, well accustomed to dealing with RNG, and yes, it's part of the genre. It's part of what makes these games fun. You get a good start and you're like "hell yea, this is awesome, I have to not screw this up now" and you're deeply invested in that playthrough. But what would be a god-tier start in Civ or Stellaris, in CoG is just the minimum viable starting position to actually have a decent game. Most starts I spend the first 20-30 turns exploring in frustration, not finding what I need, before I just give up and restart. Bottom line though, I had a blast getting to this point, and those starting positions that were solid led to some very enjoyable games. This game is crazy addictive. These 195 hours happened in one month and I'll definitely be dumping more time into this game. I really, really hope these devs will continue to refine their game, because games like this must be developed iteratively to reach their potential. I would happily regularly buy DLC if they contain QoL improvements and refinements to the game rules (like Paradox DLCs). Also, full mod support would be amazing.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 21, 2022

  I gave this game a serious try because I enjoy strategy games in the gangster prohibition period. I've played: -Gangsters: Organized Crime (my favorite) -Gangsters 2 -Empire of Sin -Omerta: City of Gangsters City of Gangsters (CoG) is what I'd call a 1920's networking & logistics simulator (with booze). I purchased the game and all of its DLC when they had a Steam sale. I've also restarted my game about five times as I learned something new about the game mechanics which was too late to incorporate in the late game. I feel this game has quite a lot of depth. The main problem I have with this game is that it's really hard to find a fact sheet on how this game works (the Wiki is terrible). So I've had to start writing down building and booze recipes to help me plan my empire. Depending on the DLC and map you choose, you can do the following: -Expand your gang territory -Build relationships and use favors to find other buyers, suppliers, and business opportunities -Create fronts to collect protection money from other businesses in your territory -Call in or forgive gambling debts (great way to get new buildings for cheap or hard to find vehicles and booze) -Acquire new buildings by buying or receiving them as payment for debt -Build casinos with multiple upgrades for new games, casino boosting features, and casino space -Buy new vehicle types (2-door, 4-door, sports car, armored car, pickup, small deliver truck, large cargo truck) -Produce a crazy variety of booze (homemade, bottled, fancy bottled, imported) with many different sub-types -Bribe cops in different precincts to leave you alone or sic the feds on your enemies -Work with or fight local hoodlums (can send them out to fight your enemies too) -Sponsor and get a local person elected to gain influence (to change local laws) and have political backing -Fight other rival gangs to attack their buildings and fronts (make truces and alliances too) -Create delivery/protection routes that handle purchasing, selling, drop-offs, etc. -Hire new goons with their own traits (for fighting, booze production, casino management, etc.) -Promote captains with special missions (bank robbery, building acquisition, get a cop or politician in your pocket, etc.) You start each game by choosing the map, gang name, character ethnicity, and a couple of traits. Each game is random but you can replay an old map using the seed #. Each turn of the game is a week of game time. Eventually, prohibition ends, and although I've never played until the legalization of alcohol in game, I assume the game ends then. Your character(s) can move only so far and have so many actions during one turn. Each new turn resets the move/action counters. Here are a few tips I think are helpful to new players: -Scout the limits of the start position to find local businesses and hoodlums (hoodlums can act as a buffer to other rival gangs, but can also attack you) -Figure out if your starter building makes something you'll need in booze production (malt, neutral alcohol, bottles, etc.) -Sell the homemade booze in your starter building to get money to build your first booze production and make local business connections (other businesses wont buy from you if you don't have somebody to vouch for you first) -Selling, buying, or doing special missions for other businesses will gain you reputation and favors -Favors can be used to get a business to vouch for you to another business (through family members and acquaintances), get new weapons, buy buildings, get free booze, etc. -Expand your territory in a way that includes other businesses for protection money but try not to overlap corners (each new corner will cost you in maintenance money) -New fronts will cost you money to setup, and each new front goes up in cost to establish from the last -When you extort protection money from businesses in your territory, try to make sure they like you (+20 relationship) or they wont buy or sell to you if they get mad (someone with the friendly trait will halve the extortion relationship cost) -Lookout for new recruits (which cost favors) that will help with specific tasks like hardworking/organized (booze production, speakeasies, casinos), strong/sharp-eyed (for enforcers), and nervous/friendly/agile (delivery/protection drivers) -More territory = larger gang, better weapons, casino construction ability, new missions, more expenses -Casino debt can be used to get you a free building or large vehicle (if they don't run away) -Killing hoodlums or rival gangsters can cost you in reputation if they have a family member angry at you (may cost you a business opportunity) I'll keep going if I don't stop right now. Basically, great game, pretty significant learning curve.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 10, 2022

  tl;dr- Game has promise, but has so many failings in mechanical side to make it unenjoyable. I have long been itching to try a proper gangster management sim, as for me, there really haven't been any worthwhile attempts in the genre since Gangsters: Organized Crime. Sadly, City of Gangsters falls short of that mark. Albeit it has a somewhat solid economical and social element to your empire building, the organized crime aspect seems like an afterthought, at best. The game's AI is not challenging in any way, and you can decidedly eliminate the threat of police intervention by bribing your neighbourhood policemen where you run your illicit operations. The GOOD: - Solid economy sim, with varied resources and products you can use to expand your operations and further your goals of becoming the beer baron of your neighbourhood. - Varied factors that make expanding early game a challenge, but once you get into the learning curve, you quickly begin to assimilate neighbourhoods and automate the cumbersome resource management. The BAD: - The Hoodlums are a nuisance at best, but become virtually a non-factor once you establish yourself, as they will all instantly back off if you threaten them. Once this is done, you can actually benefit from their random resource drops, supposing you have an extra gopher going around checking in on them. - The arbitary cost increase in buying new real estate; admittedly a lazy workaround to making late game expansion a bit more tricky. But paying a 30k deposit on a new dive bar location is idiotic after only buying a property for a few thousand dollars several in-game years ago. - Same goes for the DLC schemes you can get from sending out one of your top captains out into the big world. RNG is strongly evident, as you have no way of knowing how one of the multi-choice options plays out. Your man might end up in jail, fail, or succeed. You'll never know. The time these take is also considerable, so they might end up losing a lot of money for nothing. - Gambling does not work. The DLC provides very little information on the core mechanic of running a profitable establishment, but after arduous testing and pouring thousands of dollars into a high-end gambling establishment, one can see that they are decidedly unprofitable. And worse yet, you cannot close down an established front, even if it is literally hemorrhaging money. Hard pass. - The law enforcement agency in the game seems non-reactionary. One can literally go on a tommygun-fueled killing spree to eliminate all opposition, just as long as you keep relevant cops on the take, and back out from the murder scenes on following turns so as not to be caught red-handed in the act itself. Police do not have any means of conducting investigations into the murders or violent shakedowns your gangsters perform around town. If you get away from the scene, that's it. The cops are unkillable, but each one is corruptible, with the lone exception of the Feds, who are more of a tool to send at your enemies rather than a proper threat to your enterprise. - Weapons and the apparent 'heat' mechanic is irrelevant by most parts- there are a few missions which require melee weapons for them, but as far as combat goes, there is really no sense in going in with small blades when you can one-hit kill an enemy and get away free the next turn, whereas going for a melee kill will decidedly get your man either sent to the hospital or the morgue. - Other outfits will not recognize the player as a proper threat and react accordingly. I had my mooks go around literally murdering every outfit in town, and trying to negotiate a ceasefire seemed pointless, as every gangster replied that there's good profit to be had in my territory- despite the fact that they were struggling to keep theirs, and had the audacity to demand money to 'leave me alone'. I opted to type them a stern letter with my Chicago typewriter each time. End of negotiation. - Late game lacks any sort of difficulty. As you grow your operation, you can field anywhere round 20 people on the map at any given time, and arm all your goons with tommyguns, while the AI is struggling to field three to five operatives on the field. Police can easily be bribed, and sending hit squads of three people at each and every enemy outfit will soon see them wiped out. The only apparent means the devs thought of imposing some late game difficulty was the bizarre increase in real estate values, with prices jumping from a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars per lot. I had almost utter control of the tutorial campaign by 1927, and couldn't be bothered to wipe the remains off the map and wait till the end of the Prohibition, the game just got boring. If there had been an increase in police forces, maybe some uncorruptible cops on the beat, or active federal investigations into your outfit, it might have proved more challenging- but you can literally buy your way out of all trouble by talking to your neighbourhood cop on the take and wipe the slate clean, despite the person being responsible for killing dozens. - The music tracks seem extremely limited. I think there's only about two tracks in total in game, the main menu theme and the overworld theme. They get old fast. - The means of transportation around map is a bit bizarre, as each car can only hold one person, despite being able to get four door sedans and such later in game. And each gangster *must* have wheels to operate on the world map, unless they're stuck managing one of your gin joints. - Ice is an unlockable recipe for production. I mean, c'mon. I can understand that some distillation methods and such might need research and capital investment, but some of the research tree options make absolutely no sense. - No way of getting any goods to be actually delivered by the people selling them. Your grunts do all the legwork. Nobody in town apparently own a pickup and brings goods to your warehouses, no matter how exclusive deals you set up with them. Even if they're next door to your bottling operation. - No way to transfer cash or items between your goons on the map, without using a established operation to store and then retrieve said items. Overall, the game had some decent ideas, but the overall issues cropping up during gameplay make it a flop. I had hoped some of the DLC might actually provide useful fixes or quality content, but I was sadly mistaken.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 8, 2023

  Another heartbreaker. Running a gangster empire should be thrilling, but this game makes it a tedious chore. There are lots of clever bits, including a very impressive automation system where you can program your goons to do their routines, but then all that you're left with is pretty silly and repetitive. Want to give us 20 barrels and 5 bricks for some scheme? No? OK....how about giving us 20 barrels and 5 bricks for some scheme? Lot of promise, and good UI. But I just don't want to play any more after 4 hours.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 31, 2023

  There are some nice elements to this game and it has glimmers of hope. But it's a slog. An utter slog of a game. I like micro-management, but this is more just tedious running around management. How much money do they need? Go to them to find out. Then go to your warehouse for cash. Then get caught by the police and lose your money. Then go earn some more money. Then take that. Take over a corner. Have a bad guy take your corner with no way to stop them. Repeat ad infinitum. It also keeps losing my saves for some reason, so I keep having to retread a lot which makes it even worse. Your game ends if you die, but you can kill all an enemy outfit's people and somehow it remains. Why? Just o many questions like this. It's click heavy and labour intensive just to feel like you're standing still.