Introduction
I haven’t played the first Overlord so I can’t speak to the similarities between the two games at all. Sequels tend to improve so far as gameplay goes and to get worse so far as story goes, rehashing or destroying what made a game good in the first place. I can’t know with this game so I’m going to examine it as though it stands alone.

It’s always a fun change up to play the bad guy for once, not even an antihero but an actual villain. Overlord II places you in control of The Dark One, a much more hands-on, Sauron-type lord with command over a legion of demonic imps and animals and the ambition to dominate the world by displacing the Romanesque empire that now dominates, along with its fierce hatred of all things magical.

Story
The training level, interestingly, starts out with you as a child, which is a nice conceit for explaining how you learn and grow into your powers by – initially – taking revenge on your childhood tormentors. Things develop rapidly from this point onwards with your character growing up and coming into posession of his more full power, inhereting an inverted tower beneath the earth and full control of your demonic minions. With all that power under your control you can then set about ‘liberating’ the land, starting with your old ‘home’ in the frozen North.

Your expansion brings you into conflict with The Empire, which currently controls these places, their native populations and the supernatural beings of ‘light’, that are hidden – largely – in the sanctuaries, places of hiding protected by the elves and by powerful creatures of light.

You must go out into the world, retake the lands that ancestrally belonged to The Dark One, invade the sanctuaries and build up your power and expertise until you’re ready to march on the seat of Empire… and destroy it.

Gameplay
Primary control is over The Dark One, you run and move and fight, casting spells directly from this main character. In addition to The Dark One you have control over an unruly mob of gremlin-like imps, made up of four types. Browns are combat troops, strong and armed with whatever weapons (and hats) that you can scavenge. They’re the toughest, but have no special abilities. Reds can hurl fireballs, absorb fire and are immune to it. Greens are stealthy ‘ninjas’ who can creep through the shadows and strike from ambush. Blues can turn semi-immaterial and pass through enemies as well as resurrecting deceased minions and absorbing pure magic.

You upgrade your abilities by finding and returning artefacts to your tower, collecting gold and ‘spirit orbs’ that give access to more minions, mind controlling and dominating the locals and collecting mistresses that enable you to redecorate your tower in a number of different ways and grant access to different mounts for the final battle.

Controls
You directly control The Dark One and this is fairly standard third-person control without too much finesse. Casting different spells is a little fiddly though, requiring a variety of button combinations in various contexts to the point where I found myself not using them, any of them, other than the ability to dominate people. Controls over the minions are also quite imprecise. You can sweep them around with one thumbstick but it’s not that accurate and swapping between groups of different coloured minions and controlling them all is difficult and frustrating, leading to many unnecessary deaths. The system either needed to be more robust and RTS like, or more simple with greater autonomy for the minions to actually make themselves useful.

Atmosphere
This is a comedy game and, as such, plays up to the fantasy stereotypes very nicely as well as contrasting with them interestingly in making the slender elves revere fatness and treating gnomes like rats. The different areas have a nice look to them from frozen hills to jungle ruins, islands and towns but there’s no truly distinctive part or area that makes the game its own and the atmosphere and the story isn’t really enough to overcome the play difficulties.

Graphics
The graphics are cartoonish, but crude, they get the job done but a bit more refinement and less reliance on making people fat as a means of inducing comedy would have done wonders for the overall look and feel of the game.

Conclusion
A good game that suffers from crude controls and too much repetetive action, to the point where I just couldn’t face finishing it even though I got to the final stage. If it can hold your interest longer then it might be rewarding but I largely found it to be an average game. If you want to really have fun playing evil, find an old copy of Dungeon Keeper.

Score
Style: 4
Substance: 3
Overall: 3.5