Begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism!
This game teaches some important lessons about being an evil genius. Firstly that patience is key. Being a third rate despot building towards that fanatical dream of world domination takes unparalleled patience and understanding. It isn't like how it is in the movies. That death ray didn't come with the base, it was painstakingly researched by carefully monitored evil scientists before the first evil valet began to purchase it with your ill gotten gains collected by evil extortionist guards. It's like a more satisfying version of mousetrap. Takes forever to put together, but watching everything slowly come together like clockwork is a rewarding feeling. Bold and rash evil genius don't get far.
An almost equally important attribute of the megalomaniac on the move is some rudimentary understanding of interior decorating. Where does one place the miniaturized eiffel tower to compliment your quasi-futuristic retro motif? If there is only so much space does one spring for a nerve gas chamber or laughing gas chamber?
Last, but not least, an evil genius needs to know a little something about plumbing. Bizarre, but since the enemy sort of just wanders around looking for junk to follow, steal, blow up, the layout of one's base becomes more and more important to protect. The S bend helps a bit by zig zagging them around a little and keeping them from crawling up your corridors to your inner base.
There's a lot of micromanaging if the base isn't properly designed. Henchmen help. The henchmen are fantastic, very colorful characters. All the stereotypes from the genre and then some.
There are some bugs. Some real big and bad ones... there are patches and mods out there that help... but yeah... the game isn't perfect. It can get down right frustrating at times. Certain missions require indirect action from enemy AI.
Over the last few years we've uninstalled and reinstalled this game countless times. And countless times we slip into our nehru suit for another rousing game of conquest. It's a fun game, but it can be tedious... oh it can be tedious... and frustrating. When it comes down to it, this game did something right though... no idea what it was... but it did.