It was good, but could have been better.
I was pleasantly surprised with this game, however I was not blown away. In the beginning, its incredibly addicting. Getting your little minions, harvesting lifeforce, killing sheep, and pounding on those little halflings. I had heard that there were side quests in the game, but they almost feel as if they are 'mandatory' side quests. If you don't complete them, you miss out on various upgrades for your tower.
So far I've played it through once already, and I guess I got what was the 'good-evil' ending. (Since I ended with 0% corruption... I know, I'm a goody-two-shoes at heart.) The story wasn't too bad. I definitely didn't see what was coming near the end though. It was a nice change of pace. However, the ending seemed to have approached rather abruptly. It takes quite a while and many side-quests to take down the first 4 heroes. At least 20 or so gameplay hours worth. Then in the last 5 hours, you get the last 3 heroes almost all at once, which saddened me a bit. I thought I still had quite a ways to go.
I'd classify this game as a limited RPG with definite puzzle elements. While most puzzles you have to solve are quite obvious, there are a few in the game that had me stumped for several minutes. At least all important items that you need to get have arrows over top of them, which means you need to interact. If they don't have an arrow, it should be obviously placed so you know you need to do something with it.
I wouldn't really classify it too much as a strategy game at all. The only real strategy needed is during large 'boss' fights, of which there are a handful in the game other than just the heroes you have to slay. Thats the only time I really had to think about how to kill something. Otherwise, the rest of the fodder in the game was just 'send in the minion horde and watch them have fun'. Which, most of the time, it was fun. Especially the greens hopping on enemies backs.
On the good side, the graphics were great, the story was good (I have to play it again now to see the evil-evil ending), and the minions are hilarious. I'll never forget on the desert level, where there are black sheep. "OOhhhhh! NEW sheepies!" As for the controls, I'm one gamer that can easily adjust to new controls, and things like the 'sweep' function was no problem for me.
For the cons: Unless I'm missing it, I have no idea how to get tribute from the subjects I've saved. If you even can. Its hinted at, but I have no idea if you can.
I get no sense of fear from any of the people. At all. Again, I haven't played the evil-evil yet, but I don't know if its any different. Most of the time, they were thanking me, asking about my minions, or just ignoring me and talking about something to do with a quest I was on. I felt too much like a hero.
Life force. For needing it for minions, it sure was scarce. Some pieces of the highest level armor use a few thousand minions. I never got more than 2500 life force during the course of the game (at least, I estimated when I added up my stats at the end). Maybe being truly evil gets you more. I wasn't about to go farming for life force, the rate at which you get it during the game is just incredibly slow as it is. On top of that, some of the bigger monsters and bosses should have dropped more than they did. Some enemies didn't drop any at all.
The tower. I have no idea where to begin with it. I thought that I would get to gradually see it take shape, not just suddenly come back and have it all fixed up. I was hoping to get to plan the design, even just a little bit. Or even have that option open to me. You can buy things for the outside of your tower, why I have no idea - you never get to see the outside of your tower except for momentary glimpses as you travel within it. The dungeon was more of an arena, I thought I'd have actual jail cells with enemies I've defeated, maybe my own kind of menagerie. The forge was rather straightforward, and I can see lots of combinations that can be made for armaments. But I don't see how you can make more than 5-7 different items - let alone upgrade them - during the course of the game. Its just too short. I couldn't find some of the items that I got from side quests in my tower. Don't see how I could have missed them, though I might have. As for decorating the tower... it was interesting. A nice small thing to do, just like I said before, I wish I had more control of the overall look of the tower. Guess you can't have everything though.
All in all, its a pretty good game. Its nice that the PC version was only 40 bucks, most games seem to start at 50 nowadays. I haven't tried multi yet, so I can't comment on that, but the bread and butter of the game is the single player. It will definitely entertain, and has some enjoyable snarky humor. But when the end hit, I was left with a small sense of lack, I guess hoping there was more.