Overlord + Raising Hell

Bought it because I loved the Dungeon Keeper games. This has the same look to it but no charm, no smarts, no real humor. It's competent but I felt like I was just "babysitting myself" playing it. There's nothing of value in there, just a way to pass time.

I beat this game and wanted to like it, but I just can't. The gameplay is just so incredibly shallow and lacking any sort of thought, Dynasty Warriors is more engaging and allows more thought and freedom than this game.

Frustratingly linear, boring, sleep-inducing tird. Completely overrated. It's like Fable meets Dungeon Keeper. The game is brutally linear and hugely lacking in choices (obviously). The controls are laughable as your minions only obey your orders correctly half the time. The other half, they are getting killed because the game design to control the minions is terribly flawed, and they are unresponsive or to the complete opposite of what you just told them. Given all the time wasted in the lousy quasi-"tutorial" making everything seem so simple...how could anything go wrong? Well, it goes wrong about half the time. Is that enough? Instead of being a "dark overlord free to ravage the realm' you're more like an elected puppet of special intereste "minion" groups, who force you to do their linear missions on linear maps. I've heard people compare this to World of Warcraft, or claim it's like a single-player MMORPG....these are probably people who think Duke Nukem Forever or Daikatana were open-world FPS. It's like Fable in graphical look/style/charm/dorky music. Fable was good, so it works. However, just like Fable, the gaming world is basically a linear map. Only one way to progress. Once you wipe it out, what else to do except retread the same-ol' same'ol? Unlike Fable, you have far less freedom. You can't go off and do whatever. The game world isn't even designed that way. Dungeon Keeper games did far more for the "be the bad guy dark dungeon lord" genre than this sleep-inducer. Yes. It's sooooo boring. It's also frustrating in that you are given minimal resources possible to make the game seem "challengin and difficulty". In reality, if this was a true "build your base, be evil, conquer the lands" game, then even a dunce would be fairly effective. The flaw is in the game design itself. Doing chores for minions makes this game a chore. You will get bored extremely fast and probably fall asleep, it's so damn boring. Make sense that console sheeple loved it so much.

No Linux support, which is officially available on Steam.

Overlord feels very much like MMO, not to say - casual, akin to World of Warcraft. Like in many mainstream MMOs your (anti-)hero has a semi-open area to explore and discover. Quests are taking place in various subareas, aka dungeons, which are mostly linear and have a boss fight at the end. Perhaps it is just my impression, but I couldn't shake off this feeling of playing an MMO, only in some kind of solo mode. That the whole design screams MMO and casuality makes the game less enjoyable that it could have been. Quests have seemingly different goals and purposes, but in the end they're all consist of fairly unimpressive chain of repetitive fighting. Game mechanics is so streamlined (another MMO-like "feature") that after practicing several simple rules, there are no real challenges ahead. Puzzles are no-brainer and really solve by themselve - and I am a person who really dislikes hard guesses & pretty much all of point&click adventure genre. When I say that puzzles in this game are too simplistic even for my taste, I'm pretty sure they are an insult to anyone's wits. All in all, Overlord is an interesting concept with solid production values in visual department, but the overall MMO-inspired design kept me far from enjoying it.