PC Critic Reviews

I’m really enjoying Crime Boss Rockay City and highly recommend it! If you have a soft spot for the cast then that’s a good draw card… but if you have a big ol’ spot of nostalgia for music of the 90’s… it will be hard to suppress the smile as you enter a shopping mall only to hear Freestyler playing. If you want a great heist game that involves a bit more thinking and planning than GTA or even Payday… grab a copy!

Crime Boss: Rockay City is a pleasant surprise considering all of the aspects that make its foundations usually crumble from the weight. Just get ready to die, try and die again until you take the throne.

Crime Boss: Rockay City is a heist game clearly inspired by Payday, but with a strategic twist that adds a pinch of depth to the experience, also due to the thrill of the roguelite approach and permadeath. The game features a surprising cast of Hollywood stars from the 80s and the 90s, but when it comes to gameplay the experience feels simplistic and repetitive.

If the developers keep their promise to publish new free content and solve some problems, the first work of the Brno-based studio could carve out a small space in the gaming landscape, also thanks to its affordable cost.

If you're looking for something similar to Payday 2 as a shooting experience to be played in a GTA-style metropolitan setting with some micro-management elements, Crime Boss: Rockay City might give you some satisfaction.

If you like rogue-like games and 90s crime movies and don’t mind repetitiveness, Crime Boss: Rockay City might be up your alley. But those thinking this may be a Payday or GTA clone, it’s not either of those completely.

Crime Boss: Rockay City doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, but I would have expected the content to be a bit more varied. Just about every piece of dialog is cringe, but so are many of the 80s and 90s B-movies these actors are known for, so I guess it fits them perfectly. The mix of resource management and first-person shooter mechanics is interesting but doesn’t save the game from mediocrity. Everything about Crime Boss: Rockay City screams “obsolete,” but the co-op mode might offer players some fun, even if it’s just for a limited time. This isn’t a bad game, just one that feels like it traveled forward in time from the 90s.

Being a gangster in the 90s was not easy, but this "simulator" makes it clear to me that a group of good actors does not look good when the narrative is not well done. Crime Boss: Rockay City is an ambitious but uncreative game in some ways. You can have a good time alone or in coop mode, although the theme isn't bad at all.

Crime Boss: Rockay City has done something that few other games have accomplished since the advent of patching. The team has taken what was a very bad game at launch and made it good enough to be enjoyable. The missions may be short, but the lack of lag and the presence of better-than-expected AI companions makes each encounter fun. The presence of the player XP system makes the tweaked campaign and online modes worth grinding through. Coming in at a cheaper base price than its Epic Games Store launch price, Rockay City is a decent purchase for those who were disappointed with Payday 3 and exhausted with Payday 2.

Despite its many flaws, Crime Boss Rockay City is often fun and will make you wonder what would have happened if you decided to approach things differently. Unfortunately, the game feels not-so-polished and, apart from some technical issues on PC, its structure doesn't give enough credit to some of its good design idea.