Xenowars | Defense, Dungeon, And Dung
First Impressions Of City Of Gangsters
Running and crafting booze as a gangster during prohibition in Chicago and other iconic cities sounds like it should be an amazing time. For some reason, however, this game just feels like it misses the mark. Instead of it being fun I was indebted to micromanaging and police raids leaving me disappointed.
This game coughs my eyes for nostalgic reasons. There was a gangster game I played growing up. I don’t recall the name or even most about that game in particulate. I just saw the images from this game and it reminded of me that unknown title from back in the day.
Sadly however this game appeaser to be nothing like it. While City Of Gangsters is a single-player strategy turn-based simulation it just felt like it was trying to do too much. I quickly become overloaded and even lost on the massive map that you are supposed to be working on uncovering as you play.
To make matters even worse they have a season and effects system in place. By the time I worked out how to find my stash house and a few other important buildings in the area without getting too lost as I slowly expanded uncovering further of the map. The time of the year changed.
With that season change my screen was almost white out during the winter. During the spring or some other time, the city was engulfed in a fog layer. This just made it dreadful to work out my current surroundings.
While sure they give you the ability on the right upper part of the screen to click on and be brought to locations of different main important things to your organization. That more or less ensured I’d just be dazed and confused where ever I was in the city instead of trying to learn it.
They also give you maps with different information that gets displayed. You can even have it highlight which buildings you have discovered that have an item you are looking to buy or sell.
The map is however quite massive. While you are spending your limited amount of moves per character you have per turn. Along with the action points each character has such as investigating a building within range to see what they are offering.
This can all get quite a micromanagement intensive. Even more so when you start running into one-corner gangs that are quite aggressive. Along with trying to avoid ending up next to the cops when you run out of movement turns for that turn.
This is one of those games that feels like it needs a solid tutorial to get the player up to speed. A lot is going on in this game which can make it rather hard to keep track of what is going on or what you are even doing at times.
I would say the tutorial was average. There were many points in the tutorial where I wanted to pause to work on things further and you didn't have that option. There were also moments where it felt like I got ahead of the tutorial where it was rewarding me for doing things I’ve already done.
This is what made it rather average. Without a tutorial at the very least, I feel I would have been entirely lost. With it while it appears to not have been implemented without flaws. It was at least better than nothing.
At the base roots of the game however it is all about in most cases production and offloading it. You can own buildings and need to ensure they keep running. The more of an operation they have the higher the chance the police will show up.
Police in this game will wreck you every time. They always seem to show up when all my guys have run out of movement for a turn and are sitting right next to my stash house. They then show up, take all cash, items, and yes even weapons on my guys. It can be quite a devastating loss when it happens.
The only real counter to this is bribing and having a high reputation standing with the police. Reputation is another important element of this game. As time progresses along you get favors with different businesses and one large thing you can spend them on is introductions.
It seems however trying to branch out too quickly will bring you down. At one point I became loaded down with missions that I could not finish. Some of them with deadlines where I’d have half the stuff be delivered before time ran out and then I’d be out whatever I invested in with zero return on my end.
Thankfully you don’t have to micromanage everything yourself. You can set up auto tasks on your different gang members. The issue however is they are just not that bright. They will have a truckload full of cash and booze and end the turn on a title with a cop. Talk about an expensive mistake that you are paying the price for.
After so many turns in endlessly getting raided by the police when I no longer had the cash to pay them off. I got on the radar of not the big rival gangs out there but of the smaller ones that will only hold a single corner in the game.
Despite my endless assault on them over and over again beating the daylights out of them. They would not die. They would just show up a turn or two later after my guys got busted with weapons and cause lots of trouble.
After so much time in this game. Issues would just compound till the point there is no path forward. You are just stuck in an endless loop of not having enough money. Barley had enough to go out and buy supplies to keep producing booze just to get busted a few turns later with a car full of it halfway to a shop to offload it.
Final Thoughts
As far as if I’ll be playing this one any further. The short answer is no. It was kind of a busy mess with annoyances that keep you feeling like you are stuck moving sideways once you get to a certain point. I’m sure if I invested a lot more time and energy into this game I could get around the roadblocks I had run into. It just is not worth it for me to do so.
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Information
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about City Of Gangsters.
Disclosure: Game received for free.
