Role-playing games, in my opinion, bring out a side of us that we all aspire to be depending on what you choose to play as. It’s these types of games that give us the escape from reality for a little while, and focus on how we actually want to shape ourselves. Some put us in near fantastical worlds with the world as your oyster, others like Crime Boss: Rockay City serves an empire on a silver platter.

Admittedly, being a crime boss is a sweet gig. Especially as you command your own crew and enable yourself to be the only head honcho in town. As The Boss in Rockay City, your main goal is a hostile takeover of the entire city. And there’s nothing the law nor your contemporaries can do about it. Packaged with a series of test runs and simulations to boot, Crime Boss: Rockay City is all that it’s hyped up to be.

Let the chaos ensue, ladies and gentlemen, and may the best boss win!

Get your feet wet, or dive right in

At the start, the game treats you to multiple game modes at your disposal. It helps you get a grip of what’s to come. Of course, you have the Main Campaign that takes you straight into the action. We’ll talk more about it in detail later. For now, the focus here is on the other modes, especially for online multiplayer.

I spent a lot of my time going through the Crime Time mode. It’s basically your free play to understand the core mechanics. This game mode basically throws you into the action. It’s complete with a crew and weapons of your choice to accomplish certain objectives. Now, each objective is different and requires a decent amount of planning, but you get cash rewards to buy better weapons.

Urban Legends has a similar approach to Crime Time, except this is the dedicated Co-Op mode for the game. I like that they added this in for people who want to do the missions with their friends because some of them are honestly difficult on your own. Also, Urban Legends gives you the same rewards and helps you unlock more weapons down the line, so it’s still a good time.

A bit of a learning curve with the mechanics

I mentioned earlier that these game modes still require a bit of planning to get used to. If you’re not confident with how the mechanics work, there’s also a dedicated Tutorial mode that’s basically just a heist mission on repeat. However, it does its job of getting you accustomed to the fundamentals of the game when you’re going solo.

For starters, movement in this game allows you to do your missions in a variety of ways. Whether you wanna take it easy and be stealthy or go out guns blazing, your character moves fine. Apart from this, you can approach any non-cooperative civilians by simply restraining them without so much as wasting a bullet and also break security cameras. Honestly, these took a while to get used to.

With a crew by your side, you can also switch to their point of view to help you set up your strategy. This is a great mechanic and integrates a co-op style gameplay even when you’re playing all by your lonesome – basically, you can be anybody. Although, it’s only one at a time so don’t push yourself too much. Overall, the tutorial does help you get through the basics. It comes in handy when you take on the full campaign mode. Speaking of which:

Be your own boss over and over again

Most of my time playing this game was spent within the Main Campaign mode, as expected. It starts off with you, The Boss, battling for your life on a rooftop surrounded by all your enemies and Chuck Norris as the Sheriff. Whether you win it out or not doesn’t really matter since that’s just a taste of what being a crime boss will be like.

After that entire sequence, it’s Day 0 and you begin your quest to overtake the entirety of Rockay City and establish it as your domain. Along the way, you’ll end up recruiting some old friends and handle the takeover like a business. Throughout the entire campaign, the goals are simple: takeover and stay alive – literally.

Start from scratch when you get too dirty

The thing that bothered me about this set-up was the fact that it’s a hard reset when you, The Boss, die in any mission you go on. Obviously you can just send your henchmen to do the dirty work, but sometimes you have to do some dirty work too. This means that you run the risk of doing a hard reset every time, and that’s too big in my opinion.

Also, just to circle back on the mechanics a little bit, this game does not come with any ammunition crosshair as your reference when shooting. It’s something that threw me off a bunch of times, especially when in gun fights for turf wars. I ended up doing multiple resets, with each more tedious than the previous.

If anything, what made every reset sort of worth it was the fact that you still keep your XP and even improve your boss level and some skills. Think of it like New Game+ in other games. You keep skills, items, and levels you gain with every redo after finishing the game. It’s still a good mechanic to inject in the Main Campaign, but it’s still tedious to trudge through.

A city of crime awaits

Crime Boss: Rockay City is a piece of work that requires a ton of time and energy to fully enjoy yourself. Overall mechanics are easy to follow but a bit difficult to maneuver. That’s becaus some features are not present (like a crosshair). Also, you have a Main Campaign mode that is basically “try and try until you un-alive.” It can take you hours to crack and code and succeed.

Even with a slog of a Main Campaign, everything else is exciting enough to get through, especially with friends. Having both a solo and co-op game mode to mess around with salvages this game for me. Honestly, I can just do most of the Crime Time tasks over and over with much enjoyment. And I get rewarded for it every step of the way.

It’s an interesting take on how most crime/mafia-related games go in terms of having to survive through hell for a massive takeover. It rewards you for giving it your best. And lets you have a go at it over and over again until you get it right. Again, if you had the time and energy to go through it, be my guest!

Crime Boss: Rockay City is available on PC now. It will be available on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X digitally on June 15th. Physical copies will come on September 5th.