Omerta: City of Gangsters

Not as tough or as deep as it could be, Omerta is still a destination well worth a visit.

For all the great amount of detail put into the experience, the lack of real, permanent consequences and a fully simulated opponent is a huge letdown. Scripted missions just aren't enticing enough to warrant repeated plays.

Nice gangster-setting and easy to learn gameplay-mechanics. The game mixes tactical combat like in Jagged Alliance with a strategical management of your gangster-business. Unfortunately the gameplay itself isn’t that challenging or going in depth as it could be.

Strategic part is about as exiting as Excel, but that's what you get when you have no enemies and no fear of losing. The idea on turn-based combat is to create a system of many variables, not a turn based version of simplistic real time battle. The new XCOM got it wrong, too, so please copy the old masters, don't please the simpletons. [March 2013]

Omertà is a good gangster game that mixes well the economic management with tactical turn based combat system. If only it could be more challenging and technically better.

The game bravely follows in the steps of XCOM and quite successfully mixes economic management with tactical turn based combat in a well-made mobster setting. Although without any real problems, Omerta: City of Gangsters still manages to come off a bit bland due to its excess in variation and lack of depth.

A charming retro experience that captures the swing and swagger of the 1920s and the nostalgia of turn-based titles from the ’90s, but without incorporating anything that truly evolves the genre or that is even executed to the standards of similar games out presently.

Omerta: City of Gangsters isn’t the fantastic game we hoped it’d be. But it still has a well worked-out combat and management system and really brings home that 20’s vibe during combat. That alone justifies giving Omerta: City of Gangsters a go.

A game with some good ideas. Unfortunately, the game does not live up to its potential. An overall a feeling of crudeness remains and the repetitive gameplay can't captivate.

Omerta is the sort of game where if you want to play it at all, you should wait for it to drop well below the $40 price where it is now.

Despite its promising premise, City of Gangsters fails to deliver. The shallow game play and clunky turn-based combat don't engage the player for the long haul.

The idea of blending management and turn based strategy is good and Kalypso did well on graphics and sound. Unfortunately the overall experience is compromised by lack of depth and challenge.

Despite its elaborate nature, Omerta does not offer a great deal of variety, while giving the impression of a 10-hour-long tutorial, constantly guiding the player. Such a repetitive game will not take long to get tiresome. [March 2013]

Omertà: City of Gangsters is far from becoming the crime simulator we all expected. It's a game depleted by notable absences in many aspects and a great idea overshadowed by a really poor execution. The product can entertain, but is unable to attract fans of mafia theme enough because a continuous lack of options throughout the whole game. Fortunately, it is fully distributed and localized with a lower price in Spain, and this is one of the few reasons to buy it.

On the whole, Omerta offers an engrossing(if not deep) strategy experience with a mediocre-yet-sufficient combat system thrown in. It's a shame that Omerta was released so soon after XCOM: Enemy Unknown, as the comparisons are unavoidable and Omerta simple doesn't offer the same quality. Omerta can still be a lot of fun, but the price is not right for most gamers.

Despite a considerable amount of setbacks, Omerta: City of Gangsters isn't a game doomed to fail. It's obvious that Haemimont Games first and foremost makes really good economic strategy games, but perhaps someone thought that this area in Omerta won't be appealing enough to make it a key feature. The game in its economical aspect is simplified, but at the same time is light and pleasant and didn't need anything else implemented "just because". Unfortunately, all in all Omerta is an experiment that could have gone better.

Omerta fails to close the loop that XCOM managed so adroitly by having a strategic layer so simple as to be a pointless afterthought, with no simulation depth to make up for a game world that turns the other cheek to the most egregious of criminal offenses and a combat system that doesn't rise above basic adequacy.

Omerta is not a title I have plans to revisit, but the single player campaign had a definite spark to it that kept my attention. My advice: keep an ear to your digital download platform of choice and wait for it to make you an offer you … well, you know.

The game mechanics are fundamentally broken.

A blend of XCOM and Tropico that boils down to shallow strategy in a Goodfellas skin. [Apr 2013, p.78]

It suffers from an almost total absence of risk or failure even on the hardest difficulty. There's charm and a good soundtrack in store here, but it quickly loses its appeal amid gameplay that never stops feeling as though you're working your way through a tutorial.

A botched blend of XCOM and Tropico, which ultimately boils down to shallow strategy in a Goodfellas skin.

Best avoided by anyone seeking a real challenge or keen to get their teeth into some serious multiplayer gaming!

A functional but forgettable budget title featuring clarinet solos and wiseguys. Wait for Steam sale. [Apr 2013, p.78]

Tidy, but styleless visuals are the final insult. This game looks just as bland as it plays. It is neither good or bad, it just exists. It is hard to believe that this was made by the people who brought us Tropico 3 and 4.

Omerta's a deeply flawed blend of real time strategy and tactical turn-based battles that doesn't live up to the expectations of its premise.

If you're really into mafia movies and other cosa nostra flavored dealings, you might get some pure novelty enjoyment out of it on a Steam sale, provided you can put up with the repetitive nature of the game.

During each mission, there's a chance for some turn-based squad combat to occur. These fights, I'm sorry to say, are a poor man's XCOM.

It could have been a modern version of Hothouse Creations’ Gangsters 2 mixed with XCOM. But what you get is rather superficial in every aspect. The turn based battles suffer from an inconsequent and sometimes broken cover system, while the business aspects don’t offer any challenge at all.

A promising concept of managerial and turn-based strategy from the Prohibition in the United States era. However, its realisation is unfortunate. From the managerial point of view the game is too long, reminding Waiting for Godot. Entertaining fights are subsequently killed by repeating locations and unpolished cover system.

A flop in every aspect – should do time. [CD-Action 04/2013, p.74]

Omerta's 1920s mobster charm quickly wears away to show its shallowness, and any hope of mob-boss stardom dies with it. [Apr 2013, p.94]

Bland, boring, and turgid to the last - look to Tropico 4 for a fine example of micromanagement, or instead XCOM Enemy Unknown for turn-based kicks: Omerta: City of Gangsters deserves to be thrown in a trunk and taken "someplace up state."

A very good idea wasted on a poor layered structure is in a few words the essence of Omerta. An offer you can definitely turn down.

Aside from the campaign mode, there is a lackluster sandbox involving the building of a criminal empire without objectives or opposition. Go online and you can take the terrible combat system and enjoy it with friends, or against them, if you wish. But you won’t feel like a gangster, but rather an accountant with a penchant for real estate.

Omerta feels like nothing but work, and dull, repetitive work at that. It's certainly not a success, but a soulless, bland, incoherent experience that frequently frustrates with its inability to capitalise on a handful of good ideas.

Outside of its fights, Omerta is some sort of mind-numbing occupational therapy for the slowest of days, inside of them, it's often an incompetent carbon copy of much older and much better titles. It's not even that it's so bad that it's good. It's just boring and its plain existence is free of any relevance whatsoever.

The blend of management and tactical combat in a prohibition historical context was a nice promise. The atmosphere, the jazzy musics, the deep gameplay elements, everything is theoretically there, except for one major thing: challenge. There is no tough choice, no difficulty in getting wealth and shaking the authorities, no trouble in the combat. Whatsoever.

Omerta will certainly keep you occupied for long periods of time, but only if you’re punishing your attention span. The world itself is quick to drop you into the 1920’s experience, but never amounts to anything more than a lifeless shell. Factor in some embarrassing voice acting, painful writing and a reluctance for Omerta to ever truly let itself go wild with its concepts, and all you’ll left with is a hollow time consuming experience.