Overlord II
Available for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC
Game Developer: Triumph Studios
Game Publisher: Codemasters
Official website: codemasters.com

Game summary from Codemasters:
"Overlord II is the sequel to the hit warped fantasy action adventure that had players being delightfully despotic. In Overlord II, a new Overlord and a more powerful army of Minions take on the Glorious Empire, an advanced Romanesque nation, in a truly epic, yet familiarly warped, adventure. As the Glorious Empire conquers kingdoms and destroys any sign of magic it finds, it’s time to go Minion Maximus with a rousing cry of "Veni, Vidi, Vici" and send in the horde."

Review Summary:
Rarely do games let you have fun being evil like Overlord II allows you to. It's too bad you feel such a formula to the evil with tasks that can sometimes feel repetitive. One of the more frustrating parts of Overlord II is the save system, which will cause even more repetitive gameplay and a glitch in at least one point of the game. The controls felt convoluted, and I never felt I fully grasped it, even by the end of the game. Overlord II does have some good points with the various upgrades you can perform on your Overlord, rich environments, new Minion mounts, and a great soundtrack.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Read the full review below.

Overlord II Review

Overlord II once again thrusts you into a fantasy landscape in need of a balance with your great evil. The introduction of Overlord II has you crashing a Midwinter's Festival as a young overling. You get to experience what it's like to be evil and immoral first-hand, from plundering villages, slaughtering innocent animals, having multiple women, and sometimes feeling not so guilty for bashing some annoying elves. Overlord II combines elements from action, role-playing games and real-time strategy in a mix that makes it uniquely its own. As an up-and-coming Overlord, you are out to overthrow The Glorious Empire and bring balance to all the good forces along the way.

Throughout most of the game, you have your minions at your side. Your pointy-eared minions come in 4 distinct varieties. You'll begin with Browns and then eventually search for Reds (fire minions), Greens (stealthy), and Blues (swimmers). Each one helps you to gain new abilities and pass previous barriers. You can control a bunch of eager minions, more than 20 depending on how many upgrades you find. You'll also get unique mounts for each class of minion. These include wolves (Browns), spiders (Greens) and salamanders (Reds). Sorry, Blues. Just like with the minions, you'll have to figure out when you'll have to use a mount to pass an obstacle. Sometimes, you may even need to possess (or dress) a minion to get to those hard to reach places.

There are a variety of creatures, big and small, that you'll encounter. Besides the corruptible human species, there are a wide variety of fantasy-land types. Gnomes, elves, fairies, dryads and more. The environments are varied as well. Winter snowscapes, dense woods, and island resorts, all are rich with detail and life waiting to be extinguished at your hand. The human and some of the fairy creatures had a plastic shine to their skin, which felt very out of place from the rest of the graphic treatments.

Some gameplay mechanics that were included to bring some variety and customization had potential, but just get lost in the game. No need for a good or evil meter in this game, since you are 100% evil, but there is a unique Destruction and Domination meter. The meter doesn't feel too prominent in the game, however. Maybe if a meter appeared at times showing just what kind of evil you were would have helped. I didn't find much reason to go either way. There is also an option to resurrect your favorite minions. I went through the whole game without bringing any back. Too evil? Another element of variety is decorating your tower and upgrading your weapons or armor from Forge Stones found during your adventures. One thing that hampered that was the distance and loading times in between accessing each customization option. Hopefully the Overlord's next command center will have more centralized options. There are also a few online 2-player modes, but there weren't enough online sessions to fully try it out. It doesn't look like multiplayer has caught on for the Overlord series yet.

The save system in Overlord II can be one of the most frustrating parts of the game. There are checkpoints, but some can be in unforgiving spots. It's important to note I did encounter one area of gameplay which felt like an impassible glitch. Instead of continuing from an autosave or selecting from a mission on your Throne Interface, you have to manually select an area during the Salamander King level (if you save or quit at that point). Only after researching it a bit online was I able to discover others had encountered the problem as well. See more on it here on the Codemasters forum. No word if Codemasters or Triumph Studios will be patching that.

Commanding your minions and your overlord together is an impressive feat pulled off by Triumph Studios. But it's not at the cost of some tricky, and sometimes confusing, gameplay controls. For the most part, you will be sending your minions off to a herd of soldiers or treasure. Controls get slippery and require some un-intuitive button combinations when you try to control a specific minion type or want a minion to stay somewhere. Combine that with targeting a specific enemy and you'll be fighting the camera controls as well. The camera was an area I found myself struggling with too, sometimes not having enough space to see something on the screen, even with two zoom view options.

Overall, Overlord II is a good escape to evil, hampered by some challenging controls and a disobedient camera and targeting system. The save system can be very painful and cause you lost time because of the replays. The humor can be good at times, or sometimes average and annoying. The soundtrack fits in great and is one of the game's highlights, along with the rich graphic environments. Overlord II is a light-hearted take on evil and will give you a decent escape and balance to your well-natured real life.

Overlord II - Ten Reasons to Be Evil trailer: