Empire of Sin
Image: Paradox Interactive

Empire of Sin sure promised a lot. The premise was fantastic, and the pedigree of the team behind it – led by none other than Brenda and John Romero – gave plenty of reason to be optimistic about this "gangsters meets XCOM" turn-based offering.

Sadly, as you'll know if you consulted our review, Empire of Sin didn't quite live up to its tantalising potential. Some of this is down to basic game design – its management and combat systems don't work as well as they should – but it's also riddled with technical issues which drag the experience down even further.

We said in our review that we hoped future updates can solve some of these problems, and one such update – the seductively-named 1.02.38645M – certainly appears to be having a good bash at it.

Here are the patch notes, which should be digested with a hot beverage whilst sitting in a comfortable chair:

UI

– Fixed issues around UI notifications overlapping other game UI
– Fixed icon issues
– General UI polish
– Radial menu unclickable icon fixed
– Implemented additional tooltips

Tutorial

– Fixed issues around skipping tutorial
– Tutorial polish
– Fixed tutorial disabled buttons that should be active
– Additional tutorial text

Combat

– Fixed camera issues
– Improved combat AI
– Polished combat abilities
– Fixed issue with characters spawning off the nav mesh so not engaging
– Combat balance polish
– Throat slit execution fixed
– Fixed pooling blood issue

Art

– Updated character flags
– Adjusted lighting in sitdowns
– Safehouse interior variants
– Animation polish
– Lip syncing polish
– Improved particles and lighting
– General fixes and polish

Miscellaneous

– Fixed various VO bugs
– Updated localisation
– Implemented Paradox SDK for telemetry
– Fixed issue with sitdowns timing out
– Fixed issues with selling buildings
– Mission fixes
– Sound effects polish
– General audio polish
– Fixed issue with game saves delaying loading
– Softlocks fixed
– Faction AI polish
– Optimisations implemented
– Gameplay balance
– General bug fixing

[source gonintendo.com]