Overlord 2 - PC

I haven't finished this game yet. But so far it has been enjoyable. I only regret that my video card isn't well supported. When I first started the game at low settings, it ran sluggishly, and eventually crashed. I had to turn off everything that I could, and still it crawled. I finally had to reduce the resolution to about half of what my computer can normally handle, and even then it drops in frame-rate noticeably when I try to cover large areas of land or when I'm looking at a particularly detailed environment. And it starts to crawl again anytime there are more than a dozen or so enemies on the screen.So far as the gameplay is concerned, it can be a bit clumsy at times, but it's still playable. I would like it if my minions had better AI routing. When I try to send them at a target that's around a corner, or behind a barrier that they have to go around, they have the tendency to just run up to the obstacle, and then turn around stupidly. They don't automatically trash everything around them when you send them to attack crates and stuff, which I suppose is a good thing and a bad thing, depending on what you're trying to accomplish. I like that the upgrade system is a bit more detailed than in the first one, but Life Force collection can be a pain without the Arena. I love subjugating local populations to do my bidding, but it's kind of tedious to get them all. I also think it's nice that you can resurrect fallen minions. This is useful if you don't feel like going through the process of leveling up fresh minions every time you lose a few. And the Browns seem a bit more resilient than in the first game, always a plus. I think I've only lost a couple dozen, but I haven't gotten very far.Overall, there are some things I like about it more than the original, and there are other things that I dislike. The First Overlord was less demanding on my graphics card, which was one strike against Overlord 2, but I honestly expected that much. In case you're wondering, I'm currently using an Nvidia 7300GT, it has 512MB of RAM which I thought would be plenty, but I guess there's a lot more to accommodating this game than just the Video Memory. The rest of my system meets or exceeds the recommended specifications. If you're going to buy this game, I would highly recommend getting a supported video card and making sure you meet all the recommended requirements, because it's kind of a resource hog.EDIT: I recently upgraded my system, using a Nvidia 9600 GSO on windows 7. No more lag or framerate problems on the lowest settings. I raised them a little, and still no noticeable lag. I may crank it up to full and see what it does. Keep in mind the 9600 does recommend that you keep shadows turned off, as they apparently don't render properly.

I forgot to mention that this review is only for the PC version of the game.I am a HUGE fan of the original Overlord, especially with the Raising Hell DLC. I must've played the game all the way through at least three or four times, and greatly enjoyed every journey. I knew there was a sequel that had garnered mostly non-negative reviews but no real raves. I decided to give it a try and ordered the game. Install was easy and the game ran beautifully. I enjoyed starting the game playing as a weird little child character instead of the Overlord. The first time I got my minions on wolf mounts and ran them around put a really big grin on my face. I also loved steering the ship and the naval battle that ensues.However, there are fewer joys than frustrations in this sequel. Most importantly, the superb feeling of control in moving the Overlord, that sense of immediate pinpoint control has been severely muddled. It's not just the sweeping. It feels like there's an invisible ocean of syrup that you can't see, that slows down your movements just to the point where it's not really inconvenient but still noticeable and irritating. There's also just too much extraneous animation which slows the pace of battle and makes clearing all the destructible objects in the environment feel like a tedious chore rather than a lively battle or treasure hunt.Because of this, many of the physics puzzles, most of which are quite clever, come off as really irritating. Not because you don't know what to do, but because you can't get yourself or your minions to execute the action properly because of the reduced degree of fine control using a keyboard/mouse setup.I was particularly displeased that I was no longer able to set the distance of the camera behind the Overlord. This made it very difficult to watch a Boss life circle during battle, something you NEED to see in order to choose the appropriate strategy at the appropriate time. There's a LOT of timing issues in Overlord.Finally, I noticed a significant glitch when facing the soldiers and captain on the way to bringing the two stones to open the Spider Temple. My minions were not damaging the captain at all. I had to fight my way through the soldiers and even then the captain would still not take damage, even from my axe! I lured him off the stairs and that seemed to reset his collision somehow and I finally brought him down.It's not a bad game, but it doesn't do much to improve on the original. Kinda like what "Ghostbusters II" was to "Ghostbusters!"If they had just taken the movement and control options from Overlord and combine that with the Overlord II visual design then it would have been fantastic. As it is, the beauty of the game cannot outweigh the janky, unreliable controls.