As others have said: this game isn't as good as the first game, but by no means does that mean this game isn't enjoyable. If you don't know anything about Dungeon Keeper games then you should really play the first one before even looking at this. What's new to DK2 is mostly a set of refinements and tweaks to the existing game mechanics, as well as beautiful new graphics that don't look like vomit a decade later on your giant TVs (see: Dungeon Keeper). The controls have also been vastly improved for the first person possession, and you can assign your creatures to group up with you whilst in first person which makes the game a lot less painful. The biggest change to the series is that it's now possible to mine through enemy walls. No longer can you just mine out your base, fortify and build up in relative safety. Not only does it mean the base aesthetics can be destroyed in an instant, but also you can't hole up every mission and max out your creatures levels - especially as you can only reach the mid-top levels via actual combat now. You can pit your creatures to gladiatorial combat to train them up now, which makes training actually require some seriously healing and micromanagement unless you want your army to be dead in a few minutes. Traps have also now been greatly modified: new inclusions being wooden barricades (to finally shore up those pesky holes in your walls!) sentry cannons and skeletal fear traps, among others. Whilst they look really cool it's quickly apparently that even the weakest of creatures can take out almost any trap (except maybe the fearsome lightning traps) in posession mode in a few seconds, without even being hit. All of this (except maybe traps) does lead to a more enjoyable experience in general, so it may raise the question why I would rate this game worse than the original. It all comes down to the campaign missions really: for the most part.. they aren't very good in comparison to the original. The biggest fun and challenges were taking on enemy keepers, not heroes, in the first one. In the second one there's only a handful of levels that have enemy keepers in them, and only one level in the whole game that has a free-for-all keeper fight (although that level is very, very good indeed which begs the question why there isn't more). Sure there are some fantastic hero levels too - such as having to build your entire dungeon in the ruins of an enemy castle without them noticing you are there, utilising secret doors and stealthily killing patrols - but ultimately most of the hero missions fall flat. There's also a sandbox mini-campaign where you are given perfect (or sometimes.. slightly less than perfect) conditions to build up a dungeon in total safety and meet some arbitrary requirements. It's what every fan dreams of but the lack of any challenge kind of ruins the fun of it - the hero waves are all player designed and triggered, so unless you're a sadist you don't have any reason to come close to losing ever. tl;dr version: Vastly improved engine and graphics, generally less enjoyable missions. Worth getting if you loved the first game but couldn't say the same if you wanted something better.
