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Overlord II - Review
Written by Chad Grischow Wednesday, 01 July 2009 20:31
Who doesn't want to pillage and enslave the world for their own purposes? Want to not even get your own hands dirty in the process? Overlord II has your back.
The game begins with you controlling a pint-sized overlord in a snowy village. With the assistance of a little villager girl, you gain access to the town intending on wrecking havoc with a handful of brown minions at your side. After destroying a house or two, a Roman-esque empire shows up at the gates demanding the village's 'magic users'. The quick thinking guards grab your diminutive character and throw him over the wall to the empire soldiers. You eventually make your way through the forest and wind up in a cube of ice at the bottom of a frozen lake. Years later, you find yourself fully grown and thawed out by the minions, as their last hope for evil. It sets up nicely to give you plenty of reason to exact revenge on the snowy village that tossed you to the wolves, and the empire itself. The story feels much better thought out this time around, which helps keep you engaged a bit more than in the first game. The morality choices involved in the story do add a little replay value to the single-player campaign.
The tone tilts a bit more toward parody this time around, with some entertaining takes on political issues including an elf clan protecting the 'fluffy ones'; clearly molded after PETA. The start of the game has hints of Fable 2, with the cutesy snow village, but the rest of the game does a nice job of taking you through jungles, beaches, and your own hellish dark tower. The general gameplay mechanics of controlling groups of minions with your right stick remains the same, but there are some nice additions that make this worth a look for fans of the first one. The four main minion times return, but now can ride mounts, like wolves and spiders, and take you around the world via a minion-powered pirate ship. There are also larger additions, like the giant yeti you control by attacking to push toward the set pieces you want destroyed. For all the little additions the game makes, playing it feels unfortunately familiar with some of the same nagging issues as the original.
The minions and camera are both controlled with the right stick, and both handle sketchily. The camera angle is a fixed forty-five degree overhead angle that makes it difficult to see off in the distance. You can easily spin the camera around the overlord, but the fixed angle and becomes a serious issue when controlling your minions to attack something you cannot reach yourself. Sweeping a large group of minions over wide-open spaces works great, but when traversing through narrow bridges the controls seem to get a bit wonky. Similarly, they seem to get minds of their own when you attempt to command them to work a lever or crank in the distance. It makes the otherwise nice environmental puzzles a bit more frustrating than they need to be.
Controlling the minions in battle is a bit more enjoyable. Learning the difference between sweeping and targeting with the minions is key. Brown minions are your fighters and charge headlong at enemies regardless of whether you ask them to sweep at the enemies or target them, but the red minions treat the two much differently. The red minions' ability to throw fire is their biggest asset, which makes them ranged attack masters. It also makes them sissies at hand-to-hand battle; meaning if you sweep them at enemies, they will fall quickly. If you, instead, target enemies for them to attack they wisely keep their distance and rain fire. Much in the same way, sweeping brown or green minions toward a flaming obstacle means fast death, while red minions will quickly extinguish the flames so all can clear. The varied abilities of the four minions makes even battles a bit of a puzzle, which, in addition to the joy of watching swarms of minions destroy a house, is the true joy of the game.
Battle gives life as well as takes it, with fallen enemies leaving orbs; which you or your minions can pick up and convert to available minions at the minion pits. You begin the game with only brown minions at your disposal, and must play through the story to find the wayward red, blue, and green minions. Battles also provide your minions with a chance to level up, increasing their worthiness in battle. You can bring fallen minions back to life, at the expense of a certain number of living level-one minions; with the exact cost based on what level the revived minion is. You can also upgrade your minion units, along with the overlord's own equipment and magic, using gold plundered throughout the landscape and in battle. The gold can also be used to furnish your dark tower with items that might please your mistresses. Between the artifacts you find in the world, transported to the tower by your minions, and your purchased items, you can add a lot of individuality to your tower.
The game is uneven graphically. The in-game action looks adequate, with some decently varied animations for the minions when plundering or in battle. The locations themselves and the enemies also look fine, but things fall apart badly in the cut-rate cut scenes. The art style of the story-driven cut scenes is a slightly better looking version of the clunky cartoon-style and glossy, greased faces found in the latest Leisure Suit Larry title. The polished look of the throne interface, for warping to towns to complete missions, makes you wish the rest of the game's looks received the same care. The voice work is solid, though the creakily squeaky voices of the minions wear out its welcome after an hour or so.
It plays best as a single-player experience, but there is some multiplayer fun to be had through Live or on the same console with split-screen play. There are four modes, with two tied to competitive play and another two to co-op. Pirate Plunder and Dominate make up the versus offerings, with mixed results. Pirate Plunder is a gold grab where you travel through the map trying to collect a bunch of gold, with the player having the most at the end of the round winning. You can attack your opponent or raid their vault to gain gold, but the mode falls on the wrong side of boring since you never really see the other player very often. The co-op modes are Arena, an arena survival mode against swarms of enemies, and Invasion, where you and a partner attempt to conquer a town.
Overlord II is a half-step up from the original, but not quite enough to warrant another look if you were already tired of the first game. There are some decent gameplay additions, but the game fails to address the camera and control issues that plagued the original.
7/10
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