Interesting concept, but gameplay tends to get stale after the first 12 - 15 hrs
But when I saw 'Overlord' was getting some good reviews, and it was available for just $20, I decided to pick it up.
Most of the other reviews go over the game in detail, so I'll just add my two cents about what Overlord does well, and where it might be frustrating.
The good:
-Decent graphics, with no slowdown despite having a lot of onscreen action. Some popup and draw-in, but never so bad as to take you out of the game world. Good spell and environmental effects. Visually appealing artwork and character design.
-A sarcastic, humor-driven approach that will appeal to those players getting a bit tired of the standard-issue heroic fantasy storyline. If you like the idea of butchering Ewoks, then the chance to set fire to a wheat field full of Halflings, and listening to their screams of agony as the fire sweeps over them, is a hoot and a joy.
-Varied level design, with interior and outdoor environments.
-At least for the first 80% of the game, the Boss battles – while sometimes tedious- are winnable with two or three tries. With a bit of strategic thinking, you may triumph the very first time.
-provided you do all the side quests, plus regular forays to recharge the Soul Depot mediating your quantities of summoned Minions, there is a good 30 hr of gameplay to be had.
The bad:
-A checkpoint save system that can be frustrating at times, like when I had a Minion stuck behind an obstacle and my screen froze, forcing a reboot and a replay of a large chunk of a mission. It's also no fun to be forced to find a checkpoint save station sequestered somewhere in the level in order to save progress mid-mission. C'mon developers ! If the Bethesda 'Oblivion' dev team could provide save-anywhere capacity (even on 360's without a hard drive attachment), surely you can do as much with a game with less content.
- Camera issues. The main POV is over the shoulder of your Overlord (the only other POV is a quasi-isometric zoom-out focused on the Overlord). The left joystick controls both the camera and the movement of your Overlord, so as a consequence, you have to move the Overlord to move the camera (the right joystick is reserved exclusively for moving Minions). As a consequence, there is a large blind spot directly behind the Overlord. Too many times I had to send my Overlord off on 360 – degree runarounds in order to see who or what was chewing up my hapless Minions from my 'blind spot'.
-Control issues. Selecting and ordering flavors of Minion in the heat of combat can be tricky, involving manipulation of several buttons in close sequence. Too often you can wind up with lots of dead Minions in a shockingly short time simply because you're otherwise preoccupied with pressing buttons. There is a need for better AI, and less baby-sitting, on the part of the Minions.
-Poor placement of Minion spawn pits and mana / health recharge altars, forcing the player to do too much backtracking and level – wandering.
-gameplay becomes more than a little repetitive after the first 10 – 12 hr. The dev team tries to introduce some novelty by requiring the player to use minions to deliver bombs, bird or insect eggs, or requiring the player to selectively use different types of minions in sequence in order to reach otherwise unobtainable objectives. But these actions really don't free up the gameplay. The absence of a save-anywhere function tends to deter the player from experimenting too much; replaying big chunks of a level, with enemies respawned, is a drag……
-The final two Boss Battles (Khan and the Wizard) are an exercise in frustration due to the presence of too many (constantly spawning) enemies and the lack of any mid-mission save function. All the camera and control defects come into particular prominence here and cripple your ability to respond effectively to being attacked by multiple enemies at once. The missions quickly devolve into joyless repetition, where you fumble through the levels multiple times, with increasingly lengthy restarts, until you figure out the exact sequence of maneuvers you are required to employ in order to defeat the Bosses. Even more so than in the earlier segments of the game, improvisation on the part of the player is doomed by restrictive level design.