Now the Patch 8 is finally dropped, it's a good time to revisit the game
Great enemy/environment variety, very evil level design (which I like) OK-ish boss fights, good sound tracks, some tracks are superb. My favourite part is the level/trap design, those evil contraptions remind me of doom. I think what keeps most people from this game is the thing with limited lives. You can play it in easy so you have unlimited lives. Or you can start it on normal/hard, and choose to play single stage and farm lives (recommend on boss stage) That way you can play it as hard as you like and not to worry about lives.
I was a fan for Bullfrog and I've played Dungeon Keeper 2 for many many hours in my childhood. In the past few years, I've always keep an eye for its (likely) predecessors, tried a few but none of them met my expectations. So far I've had a couple of hours in this game and I think this might be the most enjoyable predecessor I've played. There are a few things I think worth mentioning about his game: 1. This game has improved a few things from DK2, such as room building and minion managing. The difficulty is fairly good, the normal difficulty is not too hard but still takes patience to beat. Each level doesn't feel too repetitive for there are many ways to play it. 2. I think the narrator is from "The Stanley Parable" and he's doing a very great job this time too. The narrative was cleverly written with a bunch of humorous dialogs and funny "not references", making it very enjoyable for the campign (tutorial included). 3. Three complete different systems of minions and the overworld(the Good's) part offers more possibilities on game strategies, more tactics to try out. I think this is particular better than DK2 where I would always just horde a lot of black knights, mistress and warlocks and throw them to the enemies. I'm from chinese so my English might not be very good. In short I think it's good and a worthy predecessor to DK2. Still I haven't got to the end of the game, I'll update my review if I think there's anything differnt.
