The characters also have access to powers geared to show how you're becoming a crime kingpin with friends in high (and low) places. As you take over neighborhoods and businesses, you earn the points needed to call up these handy abilities, most of which let you alter the city in some fundamental way or call up assistance.
You can use neighborhood lockdown to clear streets, street medicine to summon a medic who heals all allied units, and even airstrike to radio for a bombardment of the selected area. They generally require hefty investments in power and cash, though, and can only be used sparingly.

The setup in Escape From Paradise City is a little more original than the character design. Operating under the orders of Kovacs, you lead the three protagonists into different maps with the singular goal of beating the heck out of all of the thugs that control the streets in various neighborhoods. You gradually work your way up to a district boss ensconced in a hideout denoted with a castle icon on the map of each neighborhood, and then smack him around until he says "uncle" and agrees to let you be the new boss. Neighborhoods vary quite a bit in terms of resources, so there is a bit of strategy in your decisions about which area to attack and when. Some are pretty much barren of anything but scum hanging around the streets, whereas others are loaded with flophouse hotels that generate cash, stores where you can buy guns and armor, and bars that sell stat-enhancing booze and attract goons you can hire as henchmen.