Omerta: City of Gangsters (4 DLCs included)

To the developers credit, the game has gotten much better. The combat has been completely overhauled, making it much more fluid and more fun. The sandbox mode finally has a rival mob to play against. Now while it has gotten better, its still not worth full price. I was able to get it at 5 bucks and it was a steal, but I think I would pay 20 in its current state, especially since you get all DLC's included, if you bought it on steam, you get one free and the rest are an additional 4.99.

The game design is good, but the lack of depth ruins this game. After but one hour of gameplay, you have seen everything the game has to offer. Quite unfortunate because the idea is good. Another botched game like most post year 2000 games.

I've heard this game be called a mishmash of a Facebook game and XCOM combat. I haven't played XCOM yet, but I can believe it. I didn't give Omerta a stellar rating because it's still in need of some work. I don't know how the Steam version fared, but I needed a patch from GOG to advance beyond the first mission, and even then there were some problems (no cars and no trees but shadows remained on some maps, some buildings apparently did nothing or had broken features). Worse was how almost everything you did in one map had so little effect on the next. Did you grind up a bunch of both currencies, max out your resources, max Liked/Hated? Good! Only half of your Liked/Hated stats carry over and that's it. Not to mention sim stats have so little impact on the combat phase. If you assault the police precinct at zero or five stars, you still face the same opposition. Conversely, the only time combat affects the sim side is if your allies get incapacitated or jailed, or the heat boost you get for fighting at all. Whoo. And honestly, Omerta isn't really what I'd call fun. The sim side is really boring and while you can eventually work yourself into a state where your henchmen are constantly in motion doing stuff around town or if you control every building in the map, it's meaningless. Once you have a stable source of money, the police are zero threat and you can perpetually hold off most scripted events by intentionally not completing the current objective. Nobody comes around to challenge you, but I don't know if this changes in sandbox mode. Combat is all right, just the difficulty is random at times. I know several people went through no problem, but I had to slog through the game for a few months due to disinterest, so that was enough for me. I'm glad I gave it a chance, but I'm not sure how my opinion would change if I actually paid for it. You might be interested in this for the setting, but the gameplay didn't carry it for me.

The Roaring 20's are an underused decade for video games, where cars, machine guns and crime were rampant. Outside of flavor added to other games, there are a few who bother with 100 year old history and Omerta's one of the few who do. It's half business management/half turnbased combat and it all boils into a cacciatore stew of good, bad and misplaced. Story doesn't matter for this, so let's get to the meat. The gameplay is an "open world" RPG game but that's a bit of a lie. You're stuck with your HQ, a certain mix of buildings to expand into and a list of 3 things you can buy and sell, beer, liquor and guns and a vague approximation of enemy gangs. Nothing special, just add businesses, rob places and play your cards right and you'll have illegal money printers in minutes. Turn based combat is fairly similar to other games and it's compitent enough for you to have fun with. That's Omerta's biggest issue, it's so normal that there's nothing that makes it feel special. The gunfights are usually only for missions or to get the cops off of you, the map doesn't let you buy and create joints and premises, you only find them. I could theoretically see a sequel refining the issues I discussed but given Kalypso's gone away from "recreate every old game we like" to "PRINT TROPICO MONEY", I doubt Omerta will get a sequel that'll flesh it out. If you can get it for pennies and expect nothing but a few basics, Omerta's a fine game. Besides that? Eh. There are better out there.

Ok, but not great. The setup and the ideea are fantastic, but since it's about 12 years old, you can imagine that it has some agengig problems. And I don't mean graphic wise. Yes, graphics are simple but digestable. It has some other minor setbacks, like once you set a guy on a mission you can't cancel, or one you are about to enter a fight that you initiated you can't undo, etc.