"is trying hard, but fails sometimes"
I think the creatores were really listening to the feedback they got from the community after they released the first Overlord two years ago .. and they released a sequel, that does stand up to the original, sometimes gets ahead of it, but sometimes falls back miserably.
If you played the first Overlord and its expansion the Raising Hell, you pritty much know, what to expect from an Overlord game - an Overlord you will controll, your minions that will do what they see on your eyes and beyond, mistress or two, a tower in the middle of a cartoonish, fascinating rich world you will spread mayhem on and a big load of provoking, unexpected, well-timed punch lines.
You will get that in Overlord 2.. at least most of it. I think the goal here was to create a better overall immersion, so that it would really feel like your actually in controll of the towns you conquer, that you actually have some profit from being an overlord and that you are trully the one, thats forming the shape of the game world. While it has some flaws, its certainly an improvement over the first one.
I think the best part of this is your tower. In Overlord 1, your tower was almost an empty place, where you could only try to imagine how things work out, but in Overlord 2 your tower, although its upside down, actually feels like a living, believable center of your power, where everything has its place and has that "living" status. Beeing it the saluting guards at the tower gate, the jesters small orchestra, minion servants, minons hunting rats, its not much, but just creates the right immersion, so your actually looking forward returning to your tower. Again, good step forward.
The towns are also bigger and more populated then before and it is upto you, whether youll be evil and enslave the peasants.. or really evil and kill them. Both has its +/- but both mean, that you have to run up to each villager, trap him/her with your minions and them drain all his energy from him, or - subdue him.
If you take slaves the villagers will actually start working for you, making weapons, armor for your minions, digging gold and harversting seals for life force + each conquered town now gets minion guards. Nice way to go, althought the part, where you must hand pick each single peasant .. considering theres 100 of them per town, its just.. boring. And the game is really unforgivable.. you must pick one of the two options and stick to it to the end.. otherwise youll never really complete the quests. Sometimes you find out, that those you just killed during revolution count to the complete town population and you can go ahead and start again.. here I would say, that the whole world/town idea is good, but wasnt executed well.
The game levels are much bigger and better looking - the graphics of this game are really good. Also I would say they look less cartoonish, compared with the first game, which isnt bad.. just that the game feels like it has left the ferry tale feel a bit and mixed it with a bit more realism. Which may response to the game story, as this time you are figthing against the glorious empire, which is making a joke out of the Roman Empire.
Sadly, this also means that the variety of your enemys, the ammount of living creatures you can come across, is greatly reduced.. In overlord 1 you had.. 50 ? at least different enemys.. here, leaving the magical, ferry world - you are sentenced to fight one square formation of empire troops over and over.. yep, theres elfs and hunters.. but thats about it. Which is sad, because it makes the game feel repetitive at times.
You didnt have to create all new 50 bad guys for us guys, you could have used some of the good old ones - and put them agaisnt the empire, I mean mostly they were magical creatures, so imagine the endless scenarios you could have done with that idea.
Overlord 2 level design is more like the levels from Raising Hell, where you get the feeling of a linear playthrought, because as you get your minions, you almost dont have any more paths to open in previous levels. Hard to describe, but in Overlord 1 although the lvl/game progress was linear, it semed like a circle, that had several crossroads, that led to different areas, where you had some goodies hidden - it made you look after them, remeber them and explore them later. Raising hell wasnt actually as bad as Overlord 2 in this, as here you just go on and on on a line, make few stops to see few dead ends - and go on. This could have been done better.
Also, I would like to make a very personal note here, that whoever came up with the idea to make almost every boss battle in this game and some elevator lift parts (looking at you, spidey..) use the minion sweep owns me a lot of my nerves. Im sure you think its a good function to base puzzles on, but could you please come up with something new next time? Damm, make our minds work.. dont make us throw the mouse(pad) out of the window, becuase of bad controlls.
When it comes to game levels, it also comes to the thing, that will stick all this together - and that is the story. I think this goes hand to hand with the design of the enemys and the levels.. It simply feels it lacks the creativity of the first one.. thats just it, its undoubtedly game made, written, desgined by the original guys.. and the first part of Overlord 2 shows they had a good idea at the start, but then it seems to me that they could only base the game on what the community asked for (like I mentioned above, they did - succesfully), but the creativity then dropped down a bit..lot.
Whats a cool improvement - your minions now get to ride wolfs, spiders, dragons and most of all - can be resurrected, at the minions graveyard. Finally! Although.. next time I would welcome, if you would make the "stats" a bit more.. organized, maybe i dont want to list over all the lost new borns, when I just want to reach the Reds.
I would say everything is bigger in Overlord 2, but it isnt, there are several things that are missing.. or been changed.. and changed not very well from the first Overlord.
I already said, that the tower is lively place, but sadly, besides the short sequences, where you fly on the magical rock to a) the forge b) minion barracks/graveyard you cant have a look at your tower, nor can you buy upgrades for it.. you can only upgrade the insights, based on who is your first mistress, which isnt a biggie..but sad news for all of us, who wanned to view our tower.. mabye next time.
What bugs me much more then that is that I basiclly didnt use spells throught the entire game at all! Simply because the way they made it in Overlord 2 sucks big time ! Wish they sticked to the original concept and made us hunt them down, oh well..
Follow up is the forging.. as in the first game + expansion you had a good compromise. You could make the weapons to you liking, giving them stats by your desire + you got moulds for special weapons, in Overlord 2 you only get "pre-made" weapons, which descricptions are.. well, not very informative.. so, yeah, why did you remove this in first place? Feells kinda lacking compared to the first game..
and yeah, there are slightly more bugs, but i hope this will be adressed in a patch.
Overall, its a good game, its sometimes better then the original, sometimes it gets worse, if your new to the Overlord stuff - go play the first game and get the expansion, if you already did played the first one and liked it.. i guess your reading this(if your reading) just to verify your thoughts.