It's easy to see the direction Overlord 2 wanted to take, and its a shame that it fell down just before the goal.
- Truely unique gameplay experience.
- Dark Tower and its visual upgrades
- Artistic design
Hated :
- Half of the missions leave to be desired.
- Missed opportunity in terms of '' dominion ''.
- Greco-Roman setting doesnt fit the dark fairy tale of the universe, at all, wich is a bad design choice.
- Graphical inconsistencies.
Overlord, first of the name, was a very good game. It had some clever laughs and a very unique setting that allowed you to be evil, or really evil. Despite its shortcomings, the game was an overall success.
With Overlord 2 now in our hands, it's just saddening to see that they really wanted to make it bigger, but it looked better on paper than on screen.
The graphics are a mixed bag. When it's artistic design is present, like the dark tower, or the snowy village, everything looks literaly amazing and jaw-dropping. From the shoes of your Overlord to the snow-covered trees. But then, the game will present you some bland environements, way too often, like the lame Greco-Roman levels and underground fairy caves.
Unlike the first game, Overlord2 will try to diversify its gameplay by bringing down some new stuff. Mounts, wich are completely useless, catapults, wich are lame, and boat sequences, wich are well crafted, yet absent from the whole game once you've beaten level two.
Speaking of mounts, these are quite good looking and fun to watch, the main problem is that they're not frequent enough. You'll use them once for very specific goals, like, mount your reds to do some puzzling, and thats it. The game will only allow you to bring those mounts for '' normal gameplay '' in the very last level, wich is lowball. I just dont get the point to craft such cool looking mounts, and make them one-use only.
The dominion aspect of the game is the opposite of destruction. See, destroying stuff isnt original enough, so the game will offer you to dominate your foe. For instance, instead of killing an overweight mayor, you can dominate him. Now now, we'll all think of a good load of tortures. But no, he wont be caged in your tower or anything, he'll just suck his thumb in front of the town hall. What. The. Hell. Where you thinking, Triumph?
Something that bothered me a bit is the bestiary. See, in Overlord 1, you'd face a grotesque and ridicule version of dongeons and dragons. Now, it's all gone. You'll just face an overweight version of humans, fairies, mermaids and soldiers. And some critters there and there. No more trolls, giants, hobbits, or dwavres.
It's clear that Triumph wanted you to wander off the beaten path and have you create your own fun, but unfortantly, the open-endness of the game falls short. You'll have three side-quests, wich are completely useless. Two fo them consists of dominating town by enslaving, one by one, townsfolks, will only give you some weapons and gold whenever you stick around the town. The other is just to squash gnomes. A thousand of them, and in the end, you recieve literaly nothing.
While Triumph built a solid and lenghty single player experience, they should have let you stick around the game, because it's a blast to wander in your tower. If only you had some side quests, or just stuff to do in your evil lair, it would have made things a lot better. Because once you beat the game, you'll have no reason to come back.
Note : I have tested the game on both PC and 360 version. The xbox version suffers from some control and framerate issues, wich are absent from the PC version. Also, no achievements on PC cuts the gameplay time in two. No need to hunt for achievements, wich means that the side-quests are literaly useless. They won't give you any in-game reward.
Overall, Overlord 2 is a good experience, but it's a shame to realize that it was far from being at the top of its potential. Now if Triumph ever brings us Overlord 3, they should tinker its problems. But i'd be lying if I said that the game didnt brought me a good load of fun, because it did. Really.
Verdict : Try it.