Omerta - City of Gangsters Demo

America was home to quite the curious crowds back at the beginning of the 20th century, including many foreign people who came to the continent in order to get away from their countries. The Italian-American community was large and prosperous, yet a handful of them decided that a life of crime was more suitable, which in turn lead to infamous characters like Lucky Luciano and Al Capone.

Omerta - City of Gangsters is a turn-based strategy game with role-playing elements in which you get to pretend that you are one of the founding fathers of the Italian-American mob and you must build an empire from scratch. By taking out your enemies, continuously expanding your territory, and fighting the cops with every occasion you get, the end goal is to get enough money and power to rule over the city.

Speaking of which, the campaign takes place in the iconic Atlantic City, which is famous for being the breeding ground for a lot of criminal organizations back when the prohibition on alcohol was declared. Your purpose is to start building various types of constructions that aid your business, as well as defense structures to protect yourself against the inevitable enemy attacks. It is also possible to rent locations if you cannot afford them, but the game is simple enough not to pose too many difficulties on the long run.

The RPG elements are mostly visible in the beginning of the game, when you get to create a character from scratch and choose his abilities. They affect the gameplay from time to time, but they are nowhere near as important as they are in a genuine role-playing game. On the other hand, the turn-based combat is quite intuitive and straightforward, in the sense that you have to decide your character’s action at every turn and wait for the enemy to make his move.

The designers seem to have put a lot of effort into the artwork, the music and the voice acting that can be seen or heard throughout the game. This gives the atmosphere more authenticity and makes the experience a tad more memorable, which is a good thing, considering the fact that the gameplay is not able to keep players interested for too long, unfortunately.

All things considered, Omerta - City of Gangsters has all the makings of a good game, but the repetitive missions and the oversimplified mechanics work against it every step of the way. Thus, the monotonous quests and lack of real diversity are liable to ruin the experience quite quickly, even if you return to it from time to time.