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Escape from Paradise City

Controlling your mob

The general game mechanics are quite simple. Each map is an area of the city with several neighbourhoods, that are each owned by a rival gang. The player has to conquer these districts by duking it out with each neighbourhood's boss, until he or she admits defeat and “convinces” everyone running some sort of a business in the area that you are the new boss now. This also means that rival gangs can come onto your area and beat the living hell out of the neighbourhood boss that is now on your side, thereby taking your area away from you again. Keeping a neighbourhood gives the player a lot of advantages, by being a steady income of money (depending on the number of businesses), by offering stores selling weapons, armour or other useful accessories, or by allowing the player to train his/her avatar in various skills that can be useful in conquering even more territories.

When following the action closely from the 3rd person view, the game does look a bit like GTA3...

...when zoomed out though, the game really does shine.

While this may seem straight forward enough for a hack and slash style RPG game with some slight RTS flavour, Escape from Paradise City goes further than that. The player can utilise henchmen, purchased at bars in some of the neighbourhoods, or use the so-called power skills to summon some extra fighters, healers or entire squads, but they can also be skills that aren't related to combat directly, such as calling a vehicle that can transport you somewhere further away, without having to walk all the way there. These skills can play a vital role in both offensive and defensive situations. At one point I was far away from my own neighbourhoods when an enemy hero tried to attack one of my neighbourhood bosses. Normally, this would almost surely lead to the loss of the neighbourhood, but by summoning some healers and a few fighters, my neighbourhood boss was able to fend off the enemy hero.

He doesn't look like a rocket scientist, but he will surely come in handy when a few heads need to be bashed in.

The skill tree is different for each character and advancing in it can give great advantages to the player.

Character development is one of the most important elements in an RPG, and this game certainly doesn't have anything to be ashamed of in this department. An elaborate skill tree allows you to specialise in all kinds of traits, allowing you to be a more powerful fighter, someone that can execute more sneaky attacks, or someone that can have a larger horde of minions helping to fight off the rival gangs. Each of these traits allow for different skills to be mastered at the various skill trainers scattered around in some neighbourhoods, which can, for instance, allow the player to execute some new special attacks. Besides this, the primary attributes that govern stats, such as the maximum hit points of the hero, can also be enhanced every time the player gathers enough XP to reach the next level.

Certain items in the game such as higher end weapons or armour can also require a minimum level to be usable. The amount of skills and equipment should warrant quite a bit of replay value, as some of the decisions made when leveling up really do seem to affect the gameplay quite a bit, so trying out different builds, and with that different ways to play through the maps, could be interesting. If these customisations aren't convincing enough, then it should also be mentioned that all the henchmen gain XP too, and they can be trained to learn all kinds of different skills that vary from henchman to henchman.

Unfortunately, some of the items, and especially their names, can be a bit silly. Whilst using a rusty knife in your favourite Diablo clone doesn't seem too strange, having a rusty UZI just doesn't translate all that well. This is only a minor issue though, that will most likely just make players chuckle a bit.

The fighting mechanics themselves are very intuitive, all the player has to do is select a target, which will receive a constant stream of blows from the hero, unless instructed otherwise (by triggering a special attack for instance, or using an item). This allows the player to concentrate on using the special abilities, power skills or to order the minions to attack a given target. The UI is also very easy to use, and everything is self explanatory, or well explained when hovering over something that we don't understand. Generally, the UI felt very polished.

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: GameplayPage 3: Graphics & HardwarePage 4: Summary & Scores

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