Once you get used to the controls and camera, you'll greatly enjoy watching your minions destroy.
Once you get the tutorial over with you'll be tasked finding all the pieces to your tower and killing the aforementioned seven heroes.The story is told with a mix of in game speech and cut-scenes that are very well done.This is one game that will guarantee a smile or two.The only problem you may have is hearing the NPC's repeat themselves to nauseum, but you can always kill them so it's usually not too bad.Speaking of killing innocents, the game also has a corruption meter that increases with the more evil things you do.This is where the fun begins, watching your minions kill, pillage, and destroy is so enjoyable it almost completely hides any small qualms you may have with the way the game is executed.These little buggers have a very gremlin-esque look and sound to them and are some of the funniest characters in gaming.On top of all this, the entire game is very easy on the eyes and at times beautiful.It does have it's hiccups here and there, but overall it is a nice looking game.
Throughout the story you'll gain access to more minion types and more options.You'll get the reds who act as archers, the greens(assassins), and the blues who can resurrect fallen minions and inflict damage on magical creatures.This is where the game mixes in the RTS element with third person RPG, and also where most people will get a little frustrated.As before you sweep your minions with the right thumb stick, but this would send all minions void of what type in at the same time and get anything other than browns killed.The game tries to help this by giving guard markers activated by the Y button and a minion type selector, and it works most of the time.Then again that's only the times when you have a few seconds to think, but at other times during the game when you end up fumbling with the controls trying to use certain minion types as quickly as possible, the controls become more complicated than helpful.Sometime through your 10-15 hour journey though this too will grow on you and you will become more adept to thinking on the fly while using these controls.
After the solo campaign is done Overlord also features three multiplayer modes, all of which are fun in short bursts but not the next big step in online gaming.There is one co-op mode called survival where you simply get online with a partner, pick one of two maps, and fight off enemies to see how long you can stay alive.This mode was probably the funnest out of the three, but also the most frustrating since you can die so quickly later in the mode if you aren't extremely cautious.Enemies become more varied and increase in numbers as the time increases, so before you know it you'll be fighting bombers, flamethrowers, knights, archers, unicorns, rock giants, and more all at the same time.This is where you'll be focused on one group of enemies and die from a flamethrower behind you.There are also two versus modes, pillage and slaughter.In pillage both players fight to get as much gold as possible by using their minions to carry gold to the bases on the maps and by killing everything including each other.In slaughter the goal is simple, kill everything you can as fast as you can for points.Killing the other player gives you the most points in this mode also.Overall the online modes are a good distraction, but don't expect the next big thing.
Overlord is a game that may have it's little problems, but ends up being humorously fun to play and very unique at the same time.If you can get used to the controls you'll have a great time with Overlord.