It contains a dash of evil, a dash of humor, and a lot of minions: enough fun to cover minor problems.
The minions definitely set this game apart as a humorous and handy tool for your overlord. Playing with the minions alone is worth renting the game for a few days, just to watch them leap upon a sheep's back while they club it over the head, if nothing else. While they are killable at an alarmingly high rate at points, they rarely felt in the way or a burden. By the end of the game, your character can be almost overwhelmingly powerful, and you might spend a fair amount of time fighting off beetles in order to receive extra minions in your arsenal, but they certainly remain key to your victory throughout the entire game. Your growth in power compared to early game is a nice feeling, giving a little more of that epic feeling to the power you have, once you're able to hack through opponents that once would have easily overwhelmed you.
At times the game feels repetitive, but this was a feeling mostly derived from trying to bolster enough forces in order to upgrade various skills. There are other minor problems as well: the lack of a mini-map was one of the major ones. There were several points throughout the game where I felt slightly lost, or would follow a path only to discover I came back to where I started. While experienced game players will probably not have much of a problem due to the overly linear action in the game, it can become a bit disorienting in lands where your ability to see is limited. Camera angles were at times awkward, but there were only a few instances where this caused much trouble. Resources seemed to run a little low at points, but it was easy enough to collect a few thousand here and there by late game.
Overall, it is a very enjoyable game, and at least worth a rental, if not buying it. Once the price goes down, it would be a great basic RPG that finds the space between Fable's extreme linear story and Oblivion's vastness, and sets to some smiting.