Empire of Sin is a title with very good ideas from the 1920s. However, its technical issues and bugs, some of them quite annoying, can be detected by players despite being a really attractive proposal on Nintendo Switch.

There are a lot of good things in Empire of Sin. The combat has a lot of room for variable play styles. The diplomacy systems make every play through unique. I love the neighborhoods they crafted. This is a game built around the idea that emergent gameplay is fun, and it is. That’s why the technical problems are such a bummer. Empire of Sin is a good game, but the Nintendo Switch is the worst place to play it.

I honestly don’t think Empire of Sin knows what it wants to be. It seems like it wants to be something like Mafia or even Grand Theft Auto, but assumed a game about micromanaging criminal enterprises needed to play like X-Com. It shouldn’t have been this hard to make a mafia game this uninteresting but Romero Games sure found a way. Do yourself a favor and just skip this one.

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 ambitious and features a blending of genres and ideas that can be described as very interesting. Unfortunately the way they come together and work as a game is an utter disappointment at best, and frustrating at worst. The poor visual performance could still be acceptable if the other components displayed more qualities, but a mediocre AI, some unsolved technical issues - even after several updates - and the redundancy of one of its major dimensions make Empire of Sin a passable and uninteresting effort.

Empire of Sin is a weird mixture of half-baked ideas and poorly executed concepts. At times, you can notice glimpses of potential, but in its current state the game is so broken that you can have more enjoyment with any other title in the genre.

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.