Dungeons 2 let players move at their own pace and finish maps at their leisure while enjoying an entertaining game that in many ways felt like an actual spiritual successor to Dungeon Keeper 2.
While Dungeons 3 addresses some of the complains people had about Dungeons 2, it also rushed players along during Campaign Missions and the Skirmish Mode isn't nearly as fun. This game takes a step forward and two backwards. The potential for a true successor to Dungeon Keeper is here, but it isn't met.
Having played both Dungeon Keeper 2 and Dungeons 2, I have to say this game is a lot of fun. One of the things I enjoy most about this game is the Skirmish mode "Playground" which is a lot like the My Pet Dungeon of Dungeon Keeper 2, where you can take your time and relax while building your dungeon, spawning bad guys (They call themselves "Heroes"...) at-will when you choose to, instead of them wandering into your realm at random times while you're in the middle of doing something else.
The ability to fill in spaces and create new dungeon walls is likewise a Devil-send that was sorely missing in Dungeon Keeper 2, whereas having a roster of Horde, Demons, and Undead all in your same team is an improvement over Dungeons 2. There's a research tree with three branches, each branch specialising in the type and skillset of the aforementioned three types of minion, so while it's possible to have (for example) an undead-only dungeon, you miss out on room abilities that are part of another tree, such as spells and traps which require a minion type of the appropriate tree to utilize.
The meta-type humor and 4th-wall breaking may not be to everyone's liking, but then again this is a game where you play as the evil side, yet still manages to be bright and colourful.
This game is a lot of fun. If you liked Dungeon Keeper 2, you'll love this game. It's also a definite improvement over Dungeons 2, as well.
I've logged in over 200 hours on Dungeons 2, and came here for the sequel. First and foremost, whoever designed the interface should be shot. It has the three absolute worst things you can do when modifying over the previous interface: It wastes more screen real estate with dead space panels, it removes a lot of shortcuts (or hides them so that they are not intuitive and can't even be configured), and instead of a flat menu system, we have multiple types of menu locations and shapes that block the whole screen, hide information, and require massive amount of clicking. The problems are only beginning for this game. For such a simple 2D game, it uses a massive amount of CPU. It bogs down an 8-core, 4 GHz CPU, just when idling in the background, causing everything else on the system to lag. Not even WoW causes this much resource consumption. When moving around, the screen lags. There is a little triangular mouse pointer icon that moves around when I move my mouse, but then there is the silly "hand of evil" which sluggishly lags behind and wobbles around. The triangular mouse pointer is responsive to movement, but the click events are processed through the hand of doom. This makes it difficult or impossible to quickly select items (like books), or troops, or drop them on precise locations in a timely manner. Dungeons 2 did not suffer this problem. There was an option in Dungeons 2 which allowed you to enable or disable the hand of doom, but you weren't forced to interact with two disparate interface pointers. When selecting a bunch of squares, i.e. to dig out a large area, or to build a large area (i.e. test building a treasury across a whole dungeon), the entire game crawls to a halt for several painful seconds. Dungeons 2 suffered a bit of this, but not nearly as severe. Hey developers, read a book about code optimization. Maybe learn C programming, or assembly. The game humor is good but flaws are killing ALL the fun. Game saves are much faster.
I never even heard of this series until I saw it show up on youtube. I was chamed and had to try it. I am still in the earlier stages of the game, but I just find it really charming and fun. I have been playing a mission after I get off my night shift job as a way to unwind before bed. The game controls well and its pretty easy to get into. I really think anyone who wants a game they can just hope into for a couple hours and enjoy a fun story with should play this.
Excellent game, it's very funny, and it refers to Dragon ball and many memes, I like this game, but the only the only annoying thing is that hand that follows you, instead of the mouse being the hand. I also miss the spell to get inside a creature of the games dungeon keeper
