When I first played it with my boxed copy back in 1999, I was pretty intimidated by the game's complexity, but I played on and was rewarded with a pretty deep strategy game in the unique mobster setting. You start off with your own HQ, some territory and some of your goons and via the weekly orders interface you plan your course of action: buying new territory, extorting businesses, recruiting new mobsters and even lawyers, ordering your men around to explore the city, defend your territory or engage the other gangs. Your hoods have skill levels and different stats attached to them, so you need to observe who you recruit to your gang and what jobs you assign them. You can setup illegal businesses behind legal "Fronts" which are a great source of money. See an enemy gang property, send your mob to bomb them skyhigh. Eventually, like any successful gang, you get rich and powerful, and then you start buying cars and vehicles for your thugs so they don't have to travel on foot, you buy new, better guns like the Tommy Gun for them so they can mow down enemy gangsters better and that's also when you bribe and employ corrupt police although the FBI will still be on your tail if you're not careful. Apparently there are 3 ways to win the game (go straight, become the mayor or wipe the other gangs off), but I've only tried the one that's the most fun: wipe the enemy gangs off. I had a lengthy war of attrition with the gangs before I even got close to the enemy HQs, and I had to get rich, real rich, have a huge gang, equip all of them with great guns and vehicles and then storm the enemy HQ with most of my thugs. Casualities will still run high storming an enemy HQ so do be careful. This game became one of my most memorable games ever because of its gameplay, allowing me to roleplay as the "Godfather" and general satisfaction of successfully becoming powerful and hence I can easily recommend this to anyone who loves strategy games and are patient enough to get past the steep learning curve at the start.
