An amazing game, just a bit shy of perfection.
Overlord 2 sets you up as a supreme leader of all that's evil. You gain control of little minions who will follow you in life and in death. There are four minions you can control and each type performs a specific function resembling a group in a MMO: browns are tanks, greens are your DPS class, reds are your casters and blues are your healers.
You start the game with access to only the brown minions, and as you progress, you unlock the other ones.
The game is an action/adventure game, but has a whole lot of RPG elements involved. For instance, you can customize your overlord's equipment; not like a REAL RPG, with a character screen, but with a series of menus that can be accessed in your Tower.
The Overlord Tower is another great feature in this game. It serves as your base of operations. There are two sides to this story though, good and bad. The good thing about this tower is how it acts as a good ingredient in this game, immersing you even more into the story. The bad is that it takes a little too long to do what you would like to do in your tower. Why? Well, it is BIG. There are many rooms, and depending on your PC (mine is pretty powerful so I don't suffer with this), it will take you a little while to load the different areas. Why do you need to access these areas? Because there's no integrated menu system. In other words, in order to purchase and forge equipment, you must go to the forge room, in order to view your Mistresses, you must go to your private quarters, and so on. The most frequently used "menu" screen, however, will be your "throne", which is where you spawn after loading games and whatnot. This screen has all your quests and some additional info. The bad thing here is that it takes a little long to open this menu screen, because the game animates your character taking a seat, etc (read: gives way too much attention to detail, which you can't "skip"). I see more good than bad in the tower system, however, and think that most people will too.
The other three problems with Overlord 2 are the lack of a decent save function (that I know of), the badly designed map system, and the loot dropping system.
The game has an autosave function that you will feel doesnt kick in nearly as much as you'd want it to. The only other way of saving your game (that I know of) is through the Throne menu screen. That implies you must leave your current area, go to your tower, save, then come back. A simple save option in the main menu, letting you save whenever/wherever you want would have been nice.
Another terrible thing is the map system, and you won't notice this until you've reached a further part of the game. The map system works for really simple areas, but for complex areas with more than one floor, it is a nightmare. There aren't enough icons in the minimap to tell you where the important things are, and the BIG map (the map screen map) isnt really moveable, zoomable, etc. There is also no map key, so the icons that do appear on the map will need to look familiar to you based on your experience with the game only.
On a more minor note, the drops system isn't that great. The NPCs here tend to drop things where you can't loot them. Your Overlord can't jump in this game, which means that if a NPC drops something over your head somewhere, you won't be able to loot it. The same goes for things on water. You can't swim, ergo, you can't loot. Important drops such as lifeforce (for making minions), treasure, and gems (for armour and upgrades) tend to disappear with the game's "unclog" system (read: reduce the crap on the floor to clean the game up), which is unfortunate and you'd wish these things would just stay there so you could loot them after the longer fights.
The bad things about this game are the reasons it didn't score a 9.5 on my book. It has way too many good things to offer.
As you play, you will eventually fall in love with your little creepy minions, who this time, will equip themselves even more with the loot of everything you kill or break, mount different kinds of animals and insects, piss on the floor and puke after drinking a lot of moonshine, etc.
The minions are intelligent and will do a lot on their own. The game works as a strategy game, in which you control your minions, setting them up strategicly for the bigger fights. I can't say much about the control system on the PC, but I can say that using a gamepad is fairly easy here.
Anyway, I have written too much and you've read too much if you've reached this point in my review, so go ahead and take my word for it, stop reading and buy this game. If you like adventure games with RPG elements and RTS functions, including some great humour, then this is the game for you.
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Graphics:
B - Not revolutionary. Your PC will probably run this game.
Story:
B - Decent. Keeps you playing, but it is not the main focus here.
Gameplay:
A - Tutorial nicely sets up the gameplay for you, but it takes some time getting used to, when you do though, the game will keep you up past your bed time.
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System:
CPU: C2D Quad 2.83
GPU: nVidia GeForce 8800 Ultra OC
Ram: 4gb 1300mhz
OS: WinVista Ultimate x64
Running game at 1900x1200, max settings, with great FPS rates.
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===Rest In Peace King Michael===