Dungeon Keeper™ 2

I was a huge fan of the first Dungeon Keeper, which oozed personality from every pore: the sandbox experience, the fun variety of levels (and secrets!), the atmospheric soundtrack, the enjoyable sound effects, the easy to comprehend interface, the vast selection of creatures and the difficutly in managing your dungeon in order to maintain your creature (and avoid making them stray to the enemy keeper's side). There were barely any cutscenes and the overall atmosphere was sinister without going overboard. My only gripe was that you couldn't play custom maps against the AI back in the day (unlike Starcraft), making the fun restricted to either replaying the amazing campaign all over again or battling on multiplayer (which I couldn't at the time). When DK2 was first released I remember wanting to play it but preferring games such as Half Life and Unreal Tournament instead... ... to be honest? Thank goodness I made that choice, otherwise I would've gotten pretty pissed off if I had bought this game full price. Let me briefly explain the good aspects of DK2: + it is in 3D + you can pick up more than 8 units at a time + it has new room types + it has a working skirmish system and a "my pet dungeon", which lets you grow your dungeon as much as you want. Unfortunately the bad aspects are so many that I'd be afraid to list them all. Here's just a taste: -------------------- - the cutscenes are embarrassingly stupid Adding (repetitive) slap-stick comedy to a formerly sinister game. I suspect that this tactic was used to lower the gamer age-group. ------------------- - the game is almost entirely a fan service to all the "Horny" fans (the horned reaper in the box art) You're constantly reminded that if you succeed in getting a certain number of gemstones throughout the campain you then gain the power to summon horny once during a game. At the end of almost each level, you see him walk over the gem of the fallen Lords doing the same animation over-and-over again. It gets boring really quickly and, quite frankly, I don't care about using him during the game at all. In the original game, he was a unit like all the rest and only helped to add variety (and difficulty) to dungeon management... no more. What is all this fuss about making him the star of the game? --------------- - The levels are relatively brief, unoriginal and the bonus stages feel ripped off of the original's For anyone familiar with the first Dungeon Keeper, you'll get a long series of pseudo-tutorial levels where they teach you about lairs, treasure chambers, hatcheries and whatnot. In the first game that was ok, because the concept was fresh and the player needed to get accustomed with it, but now you get more of the same and feel that it gets dragged on for too long. The developers then decided to make you choose where to go, making you miss out on some stages and forcing you to replay all those boring tutorial stages over again just to see the levels you missed the first time around (... you know what? No thanks). Furthermore, the secret missions I saw were an watered-down copy of the original. As far as I know, if you win a bonus stage you don't receive any rewards for the next mission you'll play (unlike the original's). --------------- - The sound effects and soundtrack fall short in comparison to the original. The soundtrack of the first game was genuinely chilling at times. There were moments where all you'd heard was the atmospheric music and the echoes of water droplets in the underground lakes and footsteps in the pitch-black sections of the map. The slap sound effects felt meaty and it felt good (in a very sadistic way) to slap your imps back to work: not only were they entertaining, but useful in making your workforce more efficient. What about now? Nope. The music is definitely less appealing and, more often than not, obfuscated by the constant messages you get from your advisor. The slap sound effect is flimsy and even the advantages you get from it have been toned down... again, perhaps an attempt to lower the PEGI rating? Who knows. The other sounds are ok, I guess, but I can't help but feel that the atmosphere's been lost. ------------------- - The new rooms don't add much They're more of an added fluff. They add no true functional purpose to the plate. Besides, some old rooms have been nerfed to submission. Just to name few examples, the training room can only train units up to level 4 and the prison needs to have 9 or more tiles for it to actually hold in enemies and (for some unexplicable reason) the torture chamber doesn't generate ghosts any more. ---------------------- - There are less units to command and some have been nerfed for bad measure There used to be 16 units which you could attract to your dungeon; one of which was the demon spawn which could evolve into a dragon. What about now? 12. The demon spawn, tentacle, ghost, dragon, orc, spider, beetle and hellhound vanished but the development team just couldn't help but keep the firefly in the ranks; the most useless unit of all. The scheleton became an expendable unit, which doesn't gain the experience of the hero that dies in your prison but rather starts from level 1. He doesn't require food nor money as a plus, but seems much weaker as a fighter this time around. ------------------------- - The interface is a step backwards and boring I won't deny that the original's interface was a tad complex, but once you got used to it (and read the manual) it was great. You'd even get many interesting stats from it such as the creature stats, which would tell you the creature's name, skills, luck and even age and blood type! What about now? Streamlined. For some this is a good thing, but for me this means that all the appealing side stats got lost and each and every unit is just an identical faceless pawn. The 'skill' and 'dexterity' stats are nowhere to be seen, and you'll never be able to get scenarios where you can place a firefly to study in the library, for example, with little progress to be made because it lacks a sufficient level of skill... nope. Now the few faceless units you have at your disposal either have a specific purpose in the dungeon or none at all! Isn't that fantastic? *sigh*... ...and don't get me started on the creature moods. In the original they were depicted as a very-easy-to-spot black-picture-on-white thought bubble... but what about now? They're stuffed at the center of their flower-shaped health bar with a black icon on a red background, making it difficult to understand what's going on. The only thing "helping" you out is the advisor, who constantly speaks, immediately warning you of how many farts a unit made even when you couldn't care less. Besides, sometimes the AI is so stupid that, for example, it becomes unhappy the moment it gets hungry... even if the hatchery is FULL OF FOOD. ========= Enough. I've rambled way too much. These are just the countless examples of what you'll get: an average game that feeds off of the success of the original. I'm reaching the end of the campaign with no difficulties whatsoever (unlike the original as well) and am unfortunately disappointed. If you can look beyond the sprite-like graphics I strongly urge anyone to buy the first Dungeon Keeper instead of this shoddy imitation. That's the *true* classic that should be remembered, back when Peter Molyneux was in charge at Bullfrog and shipping out great games.

This is one of my favorite games of all-time, so it took roughly 4 seconds for me to add it to my collection. I've tried running DK2 before and the experience has been somewhat lacking. Buggy, audio disappearing, crashes. GOGs port is somewhat more stable, but still not quite good. Admittedly DK2 in it's original state is also somewhat tempestuous but still... For me, it will not run with hardware accelerated graphics. Which is fine, because the software mode looks quite good and runs fine. But it randomly crashes when I press escape, which is frustrating to say the least.

I love Dungeon Keeper 1 and have always regretted that I no longer could play it's sequal. Though not as great as it's predecessor it was fun to play. So when GOG put it into their catalogue I almost immediately bought it. It installed just fine, it's fun to play... Yet it crashes at random on Vista. Clicking on the tab for mission info, a cutscene loading, soundclips loading or just zooming in/out can trigger these crashes it seems. So I have mixed feelings about this GOG release: it's an awesome game to be sure, but the random crashing drops the score like nobody's business.

Dungeon Keeper was without a doubt, one of my favorite games, and despite its showing its teeth a bit, it's still a fantastically fun title that has aged more gracefully than I thought it would, especially with KeeperFX pulling it up. So naturally I was excited for Dungeon Keeper 2, there was a lot of things I was expecting to be improved, a lot of features that were being added that excited me, even though the graphics were a tad too goofy, bright, and characterless for me to really get into from the sparse previews I saw. Then it was released, and from the outset, Dungeon Keeper 2 disappointed me. For one thing, these levels are much more restrained than DK1's, they tend to be smaller, have less interesting architecture to them, and give you less freedom to layout your dungeon as you please. The game was profoundly buggy, poorly optimized, and went too heavy on the cartoonishness and excised much of the atmosphere that made the original DK1 such an immersive and unique experience. Even now, trying to give it a second chance (immediately after a reply of DK1) there's so much about its design that's just weak, the over emphasis on approaching missions just the right way, making the levels more about seemingly figuring out their "puzzle" rather than more conventionally battling an opponent using the game's mechanics to your best knowledge, and a number of other things, like the unappealing block 3D graphics, which, while professionally done, are utterly mediocre when it comes to the quality of their design aesthetic. Possessing your creatures is a constant necessity to destroy simple traps and move through the levels, and it's annoying, there's not enough Keeper vs. Keeper missions (easily the most fun part of DK1) and for the most part, the pathfinding is incredibly poor and the game is still very buggy. It works, it's decently fun, it's okay, it still does right a lot of what DK1 did right, but not a fraction as well. A decidedly lukewarm product.

I absolutely loved this game back in the day and spent hours crafting the perfect dungeon. It may be a little dated now, but still fun. Hopefully the bugs can be worked out.