Another game from the Steam backlog has come forward. Not a new game at the time, I picked up this and it’s sequel up for under $5 on one of Steam’s sales back in the day, but it would then sit collecting digital dust for years. When the dice picked this game during this year’s 100 Days of Gaming, I couldn’t be more pleased. And even if we had a rocky start, I am so glad to have taken the time to play this one.
Story: You are dead. How you wound up in this situation, you do not know, but you are dead. And that is about to change. You see, evil finds a way, and the minions of evil have found you. Digging you up, they claim you as their new evil Overlord and suit you up with the traditional armor of the position.
But all is not great for the evil-creatures of the world just yet. You see, they need you for a reason. Their previous master had been defeated by the heroes of the world, and they’ve been looking for a new one to bring them back to their former glory. And you have a lot of work cut out for you to do that. Even the tower which served as headquarters, home, and symbol of evil power, has been completely destroyed by the heroes on their way out, leaving you with your first task: rebuild this unholy structure so you can begin to take over the world in the name of evil once more.
From this starting point, the game will take you on a journey as you slowly take back your lands and face off with heroes who once defended the world but have now fallen to their vices and become shadows of themselves. The resulting experience is fairly direct, but flips the classic fantasy party formula on it’s head with a light heart and dark humor. There are a couple twists and turns a long the way and you will likely see at least one coming before the end of the game, but you likely won’t mind a little predictability as it plays out so well.
8/10
Graphics: Overlord is a game that came out back in 2007 when the Xbox 360 and PS3 were the standards in console and hardware power everyone was writing for. As a result, you might expect the game’s visuals to have aged badly by now, but you are in for a pleasant surprise. While playing the game looks simply amazing with bright colorful worlds to explore, well detailed minions to command around, and even some great looking monsters to fight. The chaos around you just looks awesome. But I do need to focus especially on the minions for this one, for they not only carry their own odd (and endearing somehow) look, but they also will take up arms and armor from the world around you which, as long as that specific minion survives, is permanent (until they find something better). The result is a varied but always entertaining look on your mob with them wielding and wearing anything from pumpkins to warhammers and even things outside that slider (I once found one of mine had ripped the beard and mustache off of a dwarf and wore it proudly front-and-center in the pack… I cracked up.)
But not everything hold up quite as well. In fact moments that go wrong appear to go horribly wrong just due to how well the game itself held up for now over a decade. Specifically, whenever dealing with human faces (usually in cutscenes) it can get really ridiculous. In fact you will likely be reminded of puppets like Jim Henson might have used in 80s movies… and yes, that does include the charm. For how goofy these moments are, you wont help but smile at the stupidity of your peasants who are supposed to be under your domain fitting with this limitation brilliantly.
8/10
Sound: And by some miracle, the audio of this game keeps up with the visuals as well! Don’t get me wrong, the silence outside of babbles from minions running across a black screen when you first turn the game may bring a smile, but it isn’t exactly impressive. The music from the main menu screen, on the other hand, will bring things much more up to speed once you select a user. Then the rather generic but pleasing orchestra begins, and will accompany you for the most part through the rest of the game to complete the fantasy feel of it all.
But voice acting stands out far more. Gnarl, the leader of the minions will do most of the talking, filling his role of guide perfectly. Between his sarcastic sense of humor, age-old wisdom of the ways of evil, and sense of duty to serve it beyond all else, he is absolutely perfect for his role.
His fellow cast is no slouch here either, even if most of them don’t get half the time he does. From the minions babbling about “sheepies” to the peasants begging you for help (or saying their buddy will burn better then they will) to your mistress, everyone is pulling their “A” game for this title, and the results is one of the most fun games to listen to I’ve played in a long time!
9/10
Gameplay: And playing that game was for the most part an absolute joy. You will take the role of the new Overlord freshly brought back from the dead as mentioned for the plot in a 3rd person perspective. In doing so, you will find yourself running around the various landscapes the action will take place in as you spread your evil influence across these lands to become the true master of all.
While you can cast spells and swing a melee weapon at anything you see fit, the definitive function of this game is using your minions, which will be also be the main way you progress in this game. You will summon up to a defined maximum number (which you will increase as the game progresses) of minions from a mixture of 4 clans, each of which has a special talent or two that will make all of them absolutely necessary at various points in the game. In addition, you will also gain a working knowledge of how to mix and match them, a must to proceed. Admittedly you will likely have a favorite to lean on in generic situations, but ignore the others at your peril.
The control for this is actually very well thought out, allowing you to divide up your forces as you will need to do on occasion as well as take direct control of the mob’s movement when necessary. However, this function is actually designed around a modern controller and single-handedly is the reason I have to recommend playing this game with one over a keyboard and mouse. It works well enough on a mouse as you nudge it in the direction you wish, but your instinct to drag them where you want may prove a more jagged experience, where as that same nudge is how you naturally push a stick around, making this same control second nature when using your thumb with one.
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t perfect as you will have to rely on the camera to be “smart enough” with only being able to reset it to behind your Overlord vs the total control a mouse offers you, but the responsive bonus you get commanding your minions more then makes up for this, making for a great feeling game with only a few real sticking points, basically coming from later parts added by the “Raising Hell” expansion. And even those are mostly because those moments are more confusing in what they expect you to do then not playing well.
8/10
Bugs: While I can’t say I ran into many problems, I did run into a few bugs on the way, one of which almost ended this game before it began.
- Minions wouldn’t summon: When I played my first session of this game, it ran perfectly and I was just floored, considering I was playing with my media center that doesn’t even use a graphic card! But my second game hit a bug as when I loaded my game to continue, I was not allowed to summon my minions! I could see how many I had, but they wouldn’t spawn from their portal! For what ever reason, I was unable to fix this with the game on it’s own, but once I added the expansion “Raising Hell” to the game, this went away. I suspect the issue is with how the game is setup in the Steam release, which is why my source is the gog version instead of the one I played. My solution requires you to use both the game and the expansion, but the gog version bundles them both together by default, and for less then steam does no less.
- Puzzles glitching: In particular, this seemed to be an issue later in the parts of the game added by the “Raising Hell” expansion. In these parts, I found places where the solution didn’t always work, glitching out instead. In particular, there was a set of switches which late in the game pumps beer to the dwarves being tormented in Hell so they could cause trouble for the fiends and open a path to get the object I needed to move forward. Since the switches didn’t work, I wound up getting killed exploring to find a solution that did not exist before only for it to work perfectly when I got back to that part. Similar happened at the very end with a cutscene that refused to start, but in that case it was not death, but a trip back to the tower to restart the dungeon.
- Monster Mechanics: In addition to the two puzzles effected above were a couple monster issues when they were used themselves for puzzles. This was basically around one specific monster who’s actions were to swing spikes at you and your minions if you were close enough. If not, they would roar, point the spikes like a battering ram, and run through the mob (or you, whoever’s closer) with DEVESTATING results. The issue is that there are a couple places where you need to guide these monsters to hit a wall… which would be fine if they didn't slow down and stop as part of their animation. As a result, it can take MANY tries to make this work through no fault of your own. Hope you don't mind needlessly sacrificing troops for a little bit.
Overall: This game hits so right on so many levels. It is a game for those who like a dark sense of humor and lives off the dream of unleashing the hoards on your enemies with just the right amount of puzzle solving involving those same hoards. In short, this is an awesome game that all who dream of unleashing evil (admittedly in darkly adorable form of goblins who love “sheepies”) at their command should take some time with.
Score:
8/10
System Requirements:
- 2.4 Ghz processor
- 1 GB RAM
- Just about any graphic card that can run DirectX 9.0c or better. (No support for Intel integrated graphics)
- Windows XP or later
- 5GB of hand drive space
System Specs:
- AMD A8-9600 Radeon R7 APU (3.1 Ghz)
- 16 GB RAM
- Windows 10
Source: gog.com
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