I'd really like to recommend this game, however, even with the current sale price of 12 USD, it's just not worth the money.

It's a pretty shallow game and reminds me a lot of a mobile clicker game, in that you'll be doing a lot of clicking, advancing time, upgrading something to give you more money, advancing time, upgrade, rinse and repeat. I've finished three play through's so far, first one on normal and the last one on the second to last difficulty, didn't change my strategy once, just kept clicking and upgrading. There's a lot of potential here but as it stands right now it's kind of boring. I'd wait for it go on sale for 5 USD or less.

To give this little gem a thumbs up was kind of a margin call. I do love Mafia games and grand strategy games and this one made it into my heart but there are a number of things that could and should be improved.

But let´s go with the PRO´s first:

PROs:
-) Easy to understand the game mechanics and therefore you can play right away and have fun
-) nice graphics and funny nicknames of the mobsters
-) Many different traits that can give you benefits for your rackets and therefore allow different approaches to grow your family operations (such as mobsters with specialisation or neighbourhoods that prefer a certain racket like gambling or upgrades after you have a number of the same rackets running etc...)
-) fun to play around with different strategies of expanding your organization, like doing a booze-organization that only operates in low to medium sized neighborhoods or going for the fancy gentlemen´s club in an all luxury high-end welathy neighborhood racketeering scheme - many roads lead to Rome
-) fast paced with no waiting times inbetween moves - you do something and next round you have the effect
-) the cost/value ratio is OK.

Now I have listed quite a few ♥♥♥´s below but none of them made me want my money back.
I felt I needed to emphasize that :)

♥♥♥♥:
-) the game promises a bit more than it delivers:
e.g. you have 4 different VIPs who you can bribe to get certain benefits. The mayor, the police commissioner, a judge and an attorney. The mayor for example can be used to improve percentages of your rackets for certain neighborhood types, the attorney can give you intel on your enemies so you can improve your chances to assasinate them and the judge can make a prison sentence go away in a flick of a switch. All nice and easy.
But apart from the Police Commissioner who can take down the heat in your neighbourhood (because if the heat is too high, your rackets go into suspension mode until the hood calmes down again and until then you don´t earn nothing ;)) - the other three VIPs are more or less without any use. In 10hrs on one game I never had one of my mobsters arrested and I hardly ever needed an attorney to buy some intel on an opponent that I needed to assassinate). You can make it all the way to the top without any of the other three VIPs.

-) Then there are 4 families that oppose you but none of them go at you aggressively (OK I played on normal mode which might be the reason that I was never ever attacked)
The AI practically did nothing to interfere with my organisation or my expansion until the end.

-) You can assassinate mobsters from other hoods but even with chances as high as 80% I failed more than once to kill my enemy. Might be bad RNG luck but it seemed not quite OK.

-) The game also becomes quite repetitive after around 2 hours and that is the biggest issue.
You practically assign a caporegime to a borough, add a soldier into a neighborhood of that borough, assign a number of associates to the soldier, establish a racket and push the button to move into the next turn. The racket then generates money which you use to either establish additional rackets or upgrade existing ones and the whole thing starts all over again.

Sure, you can upgrade your rackets or optimize your net profits by sending your soldier with the special trait to get a maximum benefit from a certain neighborhood, but that´s about it.

Then you have small text-inserts like "a gang operates in your hood" and you can either bribe or attack them. If you bribe them, they always will start working for you as additional associates. There never was a special event that caught my attention or required my move.

Finally, once you have 3-4 caporegimes working for you, each with 4-5 soldados and each soldado with 3-5 rackets which are themselves dispersed over 15 neighborhoods, you lose the overview of what is going on very fast. For example, you need to click into the neighborhood to see the heat-level in that hood and that becomes annoying if you have to do it almost every turn. The interface becomes quite a challenge when you grow too big.

Last but not least: the soundtrack is very monotone. I don´t really mind but its really just a tune in an infinite loop.

CONCLUSION:

I feel like this is a half baked cake. Sweet and good looking but not yet fully done. The whole game progresses absolutely linear. There are no surprises. You hardly ever need to adjust what you do.
The immersion does not want to come. When I think of a mafia strategy game, I also imagine assassinations of big bosses who tumble between carts of oranges and negotiations with other mafia clans that have gone south. I imagine car bombs, disguised assassins or an enemy gang that drive-by shoots my gentlemen´s club or so. But there are zero graphic additions to show something like that. Not a single picture-insert of a mobster breaking down after a bloodbath at the butcher store or so. Its all small text blocks floating in and out and even those only say "XYZ was assassinated" or something in the way and then they are gone. The level of immersion is really not the best. A few smal animations would already be a great gain!

So, should you buy the game? I really can´t tell. As I said, its a margin call.
If you do love the genre of mafia and grand strategy you will probably be OK with the money spent.

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Upon starting a new game you’ll have the option to choose your Family, Trait, Opponents, Boroughs and Difficulty. There are Five families to choose from, they are The Bogiana, The Calessi, The Junio, The Donano and The Rocca Families. There is some information about each of the families to help you decide which of them to play as. Each family has the choice to pick one of two traits, these traits are different for each of the families but all will give some sort of bonus for your family. Opponents, after deciding which family to play as, you can choose the remaining families to play against (One to Four opponents).

Each family has their own Boroughs where they ply their rackets and scams, you can decide to play in another borough if you wish. There are Five Boroughs, these are Dreyer Square, East Cushman, Fordham, Rochester and West Cushman. As with the families there is some information about each of the boroughs, the types of folk which live and work there, types of work and scams which you could take advantage of. Once you’ve decided all of the above the final thing to choose is the games difficulty. There are Five difficulty levels, Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard and just like my ex ... Insane.

It’s Week One of January 1920, you have Fifty Thousand dollars in your piggy bank to get your crime family up and going. Every crime family has a Don the head of the family, under him is the Caporegime, he’ll oversee to day-to-day operations in your selected borough. As the Caporegime you’ll need to assign Soldatos to one of the neighbourhoods in your borough. Once you have assigned your Soldatos you can then start to run your Rackets. The rackets range from Muggings and Money Laundering to Speakeasies and Casino’s.

Each racket requires an initial investment which starts at Three Thousand for Muggings to One Hundred and Eighty Thousand dollars for Casino’s. Each racket you run will bring in a Weekly Profit (hopefully), you can upgrade your investment for each racket, this will increase your profit and maintenance costs. Invest enough in one of your rackets and you’ll be able to Upgrade a Perk. These perks will give you a bonus such as Designer Knockoffs (Counterfeit racket) will Increase Profit by Fifty Percent or Mass Production will reduce Price by Thirty Three Percent.

One of the first rackets to invest in which will bring in some pennies is a Gambling Den. These are discreet backrooms where folks can mingle and place bets. They like all rackets they’re illegal and depending on the racket they can bring varying amount of Heat on your organisation, which you don’t really want happening. Should the Heat grow too much then you’ll have to reduce your activity, otherwise you’ll have some nice police folks banging your door down.

As you progress your Don, Caporegimes and Soldatos all gain Reputation and Loyalty. You will also have some Associates who’ll work under your Soldatos running the rackets. You will gain Associates through running of some rackets and from your Don each turn. When your Don has enough reputation then you can promote a Soldato to become a Caporegime and Associates to become Soldatos. You can then assign them to another borough along with your Soldatos and Associates and spread your families reach over New Shore.

Intel will be gathered by opposing families if they occupy the same boroughs and neighbourhoods at the end of each turn. You can also gain Intel from the Paper Trail political favour, gain enough Intel points on a family and you can use them to Sabotage Legal Cases, Political Influence and Intel.

Every few months your family along with the other families in the Commission will have a vote. This is to determine a code of conduct, there will be a few policies to vote on such as Debt Collection, Scheming Recruits and Rum-Running. Each of the Fourteen families will vote for one of the policies with the winning policy taking immediate effect. Your family will also be ranked against the other families which will determine the relative power of each of them.

You can stick your hand into the Politics, City officials (Mayor, Police Chief, District Attorney and Judge) can aid your family if you grease their palms with some pennies. Bribing a City official can reward you with Influence each turn which can be used for various favours.

At times one of your associates may find a promising opportunity. It could bring in some added benefits but it could also bring you trouble if the venture is going against the Commissions wishes. So, you’ll have to decide if it’s worth the trouble or not.

In the options there’s Sound Effects and Music Volume Sliders, Window Mode and Window Resolution.

I found the game a little bit slow to begin with as I couldn’t really fathom what I was supposed to do. I was wanting to create more Soldatos and expand my family and it seemed like I couldn’t do anything other than hit the Next Turn button. However, after a while my Don, Caporegime and Soldatos levelled up which then let me promote and added new members to my family. I was then able to spread my wings and expand the family business across the city of New Shore.

Positives
+ Easy to learn
+ Nice graphics
+ Good music
+ Has achievements

Negatives
- A little slow to begin with
- No cards currently


As Don, lead your family through the prohibition era, running rackets, bribe officials and expand out from your borough to take control of New Shore and head the Commission.

7/10

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As a fan of Mafia themed media, I was excited to try this as soon as I saw it. The concept is good, but the execution not so much. In the current state of the game, I can not recommend this game due to the bugs, the half finished systems, and a seemingly unwinnable end game. Not to mention I can't wrap my head around the title/description of this game and some in game names. The Commission wasn't established until the early 30s and things like the French Connection also wasn't until later. It just seems like they grabbed cool events throughout the history of the mafia and just slapped it in here. Normally I wouldn't have a problem with it, but the description does say "simulation of 1920's organized crime".

PROS

- Mafia Theme
- Great concept
- Price is low enough to justify trying it.
- Has lots of potential.
- Catchy music


♥♥♥♥

- Choices seem arbitrary. The game will prompt with random events, but I just completely always ignored them because it had 0 effect on my game.
- Quite a bit of bugs.
- Lots of clicking. Seems about 1/4 ish into the game, all I was doing is next next next click click next click next click just rushing trying to snowball instead of taking my time and truly come up with a proper strategy. By the second half I was so much bigger then any other families that I just was able to ignore most of the systems in the game and just spam next and take over territory.
- Too many systems that are not fully implemented. I think this game has the right amount of systems but they need to be more fleshed out in order to make this game truly good.

ISSUES

- All my capos without fail no matter what I tried to do would have 0 loyalty yet that never seemed to affect me in anyway. I never lost any members or anything so not quite sure what that is intended for.
- I think the game needs to allow more soldiers/capos because I seemed to not be able to completely fill the board and that allows the other families every turn to pop into a territory not occupied. Then I had to move to that territory and by the time I started fighting there, they popped in the one I moved from. Causing a loop that didn't allow me to win.
- In the same frame, It seems like even with no territory for an hour almost, all families seemed to have unlimited intel because they would never allow me to fully discover everyone in order to try to get to the boss before resetting my progress. Again causing a problem where I could not win?

SUGGESTIONS

- Hitting Escape brings pause menu, but you can't hit escape to get out of that menu.
- Hitting Escape should close opened menus before pausing.
- Should allow to zoom out more before switching out of neighbourhood view so that we can see more of the neighbourhoods
- Maybe show the title assigned to the capos in the family views. I kept having to click title again to see who was assigned where.
- Allow for more capos/soldiers
- Make events more needed to encourage us to use them. All game I ignored them all because I didn't want to risk it, and honestly I didn't see the need to use them.

Game keeps bugging out after turn 300, and wont go to next turn

I don't want to give it a thumb down, but I still can't love it as much as I'd like to. Like other ppl said, its pretty shallow and there's still a lot to improve. Let me say I'm actually playing games like those by paradox or sports manager games like OOTP or FM21 so I'm used to complex games and I'm praying for a bunch of updates that give it much more in-depth. At least I'm hoping that the devs keep working hard on it because that game has potential and it's the one and only in this setting so far. Keep going guys.
So I'd say give it a shot, get the game and support the devs, it's fun though.

My previous review still applies...times 1000

I don't care if this game takes forever to win!

I am the boss of a crime family!

What I say goes!

DO NOT come into my territory!

I AM "Scarface" Al Capone, Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti, Bumpy Johnson, Dutch Schultz, Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, James Cagney & Humphrey Bogart in "The Roaring Twenties", Edward G Robinson in "Little Caesar", Vito Corleone, Sonny Corleone, Michael Corleone, the guy who cut off the horses head and somehow got it up the stairs and under the sheets without waking anyone or leaving a blood trail and everyone else rolled into one!

You get to run rackets, make money, bribe, kill and do all the things that make life worthwhile!

Every week (turn) I have a meeting with guys like Mickey “The Hedgehog”, “Cigs” Andelini, Lorenzo “Charms” Evola, Marco “The Ear”, Sebastian “Smalls” Amuso and talk business.

IT'S AN RPG!

Wear a pinstripe suit, fedora and shoulder holster while sitting at your computer!

Pick Your Favorite Movie, Be That Guy and Never Rat on Your Friends, yes it's even better than Goodfellas and I love that freaking movie.

Like I Said, I Don't Care If This Game Never Ends, Actually I Hope It Doesn't.

Because when Murder Incorporated bumped off Dutch Schultz did his bootlegging operations and numbers rackets disappear?

When they got Al Capone on tax evasion did the Chicago outfit leave town?

When Lucky Luciano was deported did that criminal Empire crumble?

When John Gotti lost the Teflon did the Gambino crime family cease to exist?

NO! That's not how it works!

Michael Corleone said “Today I settle all family business...” and in Godfather 2 there were still these other bosses with criminal organizations and a Godfather 3!?!

The criminal empires continue on, you continue to fight, you continue to gain power, territory, political influence and you continue to conduct business.

Can you kill off all of the other soldatos and caporegimes, use your political influence to shut down their operations, continue to gain more power and money until you control every section of the city?

Just killing off the bosses won’t do it.

What’s your idea?

OK, let’s try dat, but right now I gotta go, da boys in da back are waitin...

PROS:
- Very easy to navigate through all the tabs and features.
- Can see how in every turn your caporegimes, soldato's, and even the Don grow in reputation and thus makes your family stronger and allows for more growth. (More Capo's, Soldato's % Associates)
- A lot of different rackets which are influenced by a key number of things such as the particular neighborhood's wealth, whether or not they tolerate certain crimes such as theft or those violent by nature.
- Well balanced system that allows perks when bribing certain important figures in the city i.e. reducing your heat levels by bribing the Police Chief.
- The options to initiate made men, and ability to choose who you want to be your Caporegimes.
- Intel system which allows you to keep track of your enemies, and once your intel reaches a certain level you can have members of your enemy family be assassinated.
-I have discovered all this in 1.3 Hours, surely there are more features.

♥♥♥♥:
- ONLY ALLOWS YOU TO CHOOSE OUT OF 5 FAMILIES, THE GAME SHOULD ALLOW YOU TO CREATE YOUR OWN FAMILY WITH TRAITS THAT ARE SELECTED OUT OF A MARGIN OF THEM.
- NO CHARACTER CREATION
- WHEN THE COMMISSION RANKS YOUR FAMILY IT SHOWS THAT 14 FAMILIES ARE RANKED HOWEVER YOU CAN ONLY FIGHT OR INTERACT WITH 4 OF THE 5 FAMILIES. KINDA MEANINGLESS TO HAVE 14 RANKINGS IF THEY ARE NOT IN THE GAME ITSELF.
- THESE ARE THE ONLY ♥♥♥♥ I HAVE FOUND IN 1.3 HOURS OF GAMEPLAY. OVERALL IT IS A 80/100 FOR ME. SHOULD BE WORTH $10.00

Wanted to leave a fair review because of how much this game has improved with 1.4 patch.

Going over the positives, The Commission is a mafia-themed turn-based 4X business management grand strategy game. The game gets its name from the rumored real-life governing body of the American mafia, which is also called 'the commission.' You play campaigns as one of 5 different Mafia families in the fictional city of North Shore in a quest to make it to the top. With the new patch, the devs added the long requested custom campaigns where you can design your own family to take over the city as well! Dons, capos and soldiers all have unique perks which give buffs and debuffs to your organization (you can also choose perks and traits in custom campaign.)

You assign your capos to boroughs of the city, while commanding your soldiers to run different rackets that you invest in around the city. Rackets have a ton of variety, ranging from mugging rings to drugs to kidnapping. The politics element of the game involves 2 factors: public figures and the commission itself. You have a commission ranking, which is essentially acts as your place on the scoreboard. (So if youre ranked number #1 in the commission, you are in 1st place and so on.) The commission will also hold meetings for different policies that the families are taking which give buffs and debuffs for your organization.

Onto the other side of the politics element, you bribe public political figures in order to get aid from them. Aid comes in a bunch of ways, like bribing the police chief to reduce heat in a certain neighborhood so your capos don't get arrested or getting the district attorney to get intel on another family. Or just bribe a judge to get one of your capos out of jail! Also the soundtrack is awesome! Overall, these are the aspects of the game that truly shine.

However, that is not to say that this game doesn't have its flaws. If you are looking for a 4X game with a ton of in depth systems like Crusader Kings or Civ, then look elsewhere. For example, the game has an intrigue system that is less than great. The intrigue system requires you to collect intel on the family in question, then infiltrate an individual's inner circle and then collect MORE intel in order to kill them or lure them to your side. Which would be fine if there wasn't all of two ways to collect intel on families! The first is by moving capos into different turfs, which gives you a pittance of intel on the family who the turf belongs to. The other way is to bribe the district attorney to get 200 intel. Also, your options when you collect intel are super limited: you either kill them or lure them to your side. THAT'S IT. There's also no unit dedicated to collecting intel, or any rackets that you can dedicate to it, making getting intel an absolute chore. All these factors considered made the intrigue system my least favorite aspect of this game, when it is often my favorite element in 4X games which is a huge letdown.

Random events occur in the game, but they are so few and far in between that you almost forget they exist. I don't need a ton of random events, but more than 1 in a 3 year in-game span would be nice. It keeps the game from feeling boring and keeps the player engaged.

Another glaring flaw is the game only has one map. This wouldn't be a problem, except if the commission rankings didn't involve families from other cities!!!! So during each campaign, you're playing against NPCs that you can't fight back against or sabotage. Overall, having more than one map would give the game a lot more variety. The tutorial is also completely useless as it doesn't teach a ton of vital elements to the game. (I didn't know how to get more capos until turn 89) In addition to minor bugs, these are the aspects of the game that hold it back from being a better experience.

In conclusion, this game will satisfy an itch if you're a gamer that enjoys 4X/business tycoon games with a penchant for mafia movies Just don't come looking for a super in-depth experience.

3.5/5

Cool little strategy game with a fairly unique theme, 1920's organized crime in the US. Fans of this and fans of strategy games with board game like concepts could really dig this a lot. I've been enjoying this so far.