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Funny BUT Flawed

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: August 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

As my title states the game can be pretty funny, but also pretty flawed. Comedy comes from everywhere in the game. Your minions can use just about anything in the environment including pumpkins from plundered fields as helmets. The game also pokes fun at fantasy epics such as lord of the rings, and other stories where heroes are, well heroes. One of the games main objectives is that as the overlord you are to get revenge on the 7 heroes who killed you before. As you find the heroes throughout the game you discover that they have become corrupt and now seem more from the mind of Tim Burton or the American McGee's Alice. The company deserves credit for coming up with a fairly new concept, something that isn't seen enough these days. Also the graphics are pretty good on a regular TV unlikes some games (dead rising, I'm looking at you). The way you come about upgrades is also an interesting feature. Remember above where I mentioned the pumpkins? Well as you destroy barrels and other items, your minions keep some of the items they find and it increases them. As far as your character, you find new health bars, mana bars, and new spells in cauldrons that you need your minions to carry off for you. Your tower can even be upgraded. When you start out in the game, your tower is a mess from the onslaught. As you go through the game, and get your mistress, options become available to improve the tower in many ways from banners, to marble floor leading to your thrown, to water fountains.

The game has its share of problems though. First off the tutorial could have been better, I ended up figuring most things out on my own. Another big problem for me is there isn't really support for custom soundtracks. Sure you can play the music from your computer or harddrive, but it doesn't lower or stop for the voices that cut in from time to time. Luckily there are subtitles though, so you don't miss anything. The lack of an in-game map on your HUD, or as far as I know all together, gets frustrating. I found myself exploring areas I already cleared, and completely missing whole other areas. Another feature I would have liked to see is controlling two or three groups of minions at a time. You can only control them all, or just one group. The minions themselves are alright, but sometimes they were hard to control, and this lead to frustration. One part in these mines, blockades were set up off to the left and right, and dwarves were spread out in the room. Well I tried directing my minions to the dwarves, but they kept stopping to destroy the blockades that they could have just gone around. In the end I lost more minions here then I should have. I haven't tried the on-line part of the game yet.

In the end though, the game is worth a rental, at least with the current asking price of $60, which I think is steep for most games. At the same time though I understand that a lot of work has to go into games these days. Anyway, The game has its flaws yes but none of them so far are frustrating enough to make me stop playing it for good. There is also the option for downloaded content on the main menu, but nothing is available on the marketplace as of yet. there could be a lot of potential there though.

Overlord is the first game I have ever purchased for the 360 (outside Live Arcade) and that is saying something

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: September 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is extremely entertaining. Which, above all else, is exactly what a video game is supposed to be. The other reviewers are correct, the game is flawed, as most games with a production budget, a shipping deadline, and a market department are. It was not shipped before it was READY, but it was shipped before it was POLISHED.

First, the PROS:

1.) The game is funny
2.) The minions are adorable (love the random hats!)
3.) The graphics are great
4.) The puzzles are fairly balanced (although those freaking sea serpent battles I could have done without!)
5.) You do not have to be truly evil! I was worried about this. But, a'la KOTOR, and Fable, and Jade Empire, etc. there is a path of "lesser evil" available in this game, which is basically like the character alignment of "chaotic good" in Dungeons and Dragons. In other words, you can play as a "Hero" who doesn't follow the rules. (You can also play as a right evil bastard, if you so choose)
6.) The game has a good story, and moves at a good pace, and even has a surprise twist near the end which I wasn't expecting.
7.) Production values are very nice: very good voice acting, very good music, sound effects, graphics, etc.

Now the CONS:

1.) No in-game map is INEXCUSABLE. I have a very good memory, and even I got turned around/lost occasionally. Without an in-game map, exploration, and finding things takes way more time than it should, and you can never be truly sure you have found everything. An in-game map in a game with exploration is kind of like a check list for exploring. You can pull it up and instantly see where you have been, and which directions have things yet to be uncovered. The game comes with a fold out map of the major game areas (top side, not dungeons), with most of the major stuff on it, but that isn't good enough.
2.) The minion path finding isn't that bright at all. If your minions get out of your sight, and go around too many corners, then in order to get them back, you will have to go fetch them. This is annoying, because A.) your minions are CONSTANTLY carrying random things back to portal gates, which means you either need to escort them each time they do this (time consuming) or accept their loss until you are ready to visit a gate yourself (dangerous -- they are your main weapons early on in the game) B.) this led the game designers to introduce the minion "sweeping" idea, which is basically that the default behavior of the right analog stick is to move your minion horde around, much like the left one moves you around -- the problem with THAT though, is that it takes away the camera control which is normally mapped to the right analog stick. In order to get it back, you have to hold down the left bumper, then it controls the camera per usual. The default follow camera works fine up to a point, but there are PLENTY of times in the game where you need to be swinging the camera around (such as COMBAT! and PUZZLES!) and at such times, this whole contrivance is extremely obnoxious
3.) The game is short. If you just do the main story line, and you don't dilly-dally, I think you could finish the game in around 20 hours or so. There aren't much other things to do besides the main storyline though, except for dungeon fighting in your tower to get achievements and minions and equipment upgrades, etc.
4.) The game is very linear. VERY linear. You have a narrator for the entire game, and there is basically no freedom to choose how the story will unfold. Much like KOTOR and Fable and Jade Empire before it. That isn't of itself a BAD thing, but at the very least they could have given us more options than simply "kill everyone and everything in sight" or, you know ... don't.
5.) They should have gone for an 'M' Mature rating, and made the story a bit more interesting. The mistress tower "love scene" was disappointingly vague and tongue-in-cheek, it will sail over the heads of most pre/early-teens, and frustrate everyone else. They didn't need to go full bore God of War sex mini-game, but maybe a half way point would have been nice.
6.) The game is fairly misogynistic (that means: having a hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women for no good reason, for those of you still in K-12). You don't get any say in whether your main character is a male or a female, you are a male, period. The game doesn't let you decide to take a mistress or not, you must. The game also allows you (if you are playing the truly evil way) to capture and keep female slaves as your tower servants. I fully understand what the game is trying to do and that this is all tongue-in-cheek, and supposed to be humorous, and I am sure the game creators are not actually (all) misogynists, but the facts remain and are pretty damning. Of course, an evil Overlord cares not for these things, and in a world of games like Manhunt (which I will not speak of), G.T.A. (where you abuse female prostitutes as a game mechanic for regaining health, amongst other horrors), and even God of War with its sex mini-games, this is all tame by comparison. Still, it is fairly discomforting, especially to females who might want to play the game. I imagine, that after centuries of this, that the female population is getting pretty darn tired of being depicted as helpless sexual objects in all forms of entertainment. But that's just my opinion.
7.) There are bugs in the game, game breaking ones -- which other reviewers have already mentioned. This isn't unforgivable in and of itself, but it is disappointing. However, like has already been mentioned, the truly serious ones are hardly ever encountered, unless you are deliberately trying to do the game as out of order as you can possibly get away with, to which I say kudos to you. ^_-
8.) There isn't much else to DO in the game, other than follow the linear story line. Revisit an old area, and the peasants will either sing your praises or cower in fear from you (and that is it, no shops, no dialog, not even random battle opportunities), or you will visit an empty and cleared dungeon with some token critters running around which you can kill for life force. Other than the main story, and your dungeon arena to harvest more life force by battling previously defeated creatures to get achievements, and your equipment forging/upgrading, that is about it as far as what you can do in the game. You can't even talk to your mistress or other tower inhabitants, except at pre-determined intervals. That was especially disappointing -- maybe for the sequel they'll expand on that?

Overall: good game. The minion aspect of it makes it unique enough to try, even if you are not a huge RPG fan. I am told it plays a lot like "evil Pikmin" from Nintendo (I wouldn't know, I never played that game). The game STRONGLY reminds me of Fable for the XBOX. The linear storyline, the cut scenes, and especially the constant narrator telling you what it going on, where to go, etc. are all strongly reminiscent of Fable. The Good Vs. Evil stuff is strongly linked to KOTOR in my mind (not that they were the first to do it, but they were to the first to do it WELL). The one-button combat stuff is strongly linked to Jade Empire in my mind as well (yes, I know there were more button options than that -- but who REALLY used them?). Overall, it is a good game, and the first real (non Live Arcade) game I have purchased for my 360 (which is saying something) -- but it could have been better. Hopefully for the sequel (and you know there will be a sequel with the number of units it has sold) it will be.

One of the best so far for the 360.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: August 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I don't have much time to write this, so this will be short...

I heard about this game some months ago and was immmediately put off when it was compared to Pikmin. While Overlord does have a Pikmin influence in that you have minions you can control to do various tasks, the similarities pretty much stop there.

First off, this game isn't "cutesy" like Pikmin is. This game is a full-on dark fantasy game full of demons, dark magic and a medieval setting. It definitely borrows a bit from The Lord Of The Rings when it comes to style, right down to "halflings" that live in little holes in the side of hills.

The gameplay takes the Pikmin style of gameplay and builds on it. You can control numerous types of minions, and they themselves can be upgraded with sworda and armor they find themselves when you send them out to smash crates, treasure chests, pots and other things. They auto-equip them too, so you don't have to waste time maintaining each minion. I'm still early in the game, but if you use a bit of strategy, at least early on you can let your minions do almost all of the fighting. I'm sure that'll change as I get farther and the game gets harder. Where the game really starts to stray from Pikmin is that Overlord is just as much a true RPG and dungeon crawler as it is a "god game". You'll traverse lush forests, meet many characters, and battle your way through dungeons as you become more powerful and your minions become more numerous.

The game also takes into account how evil your deeds are. If you kill innocents and bust up their houses and towns, they will act differently towards you. I have heard the mroe evil you play the better the game is, but I cannot confirm that.

The game has a humor element too, and if you're into the dry British humor, you'll love the storyline and voice acting in this game. If you've played through the newer version of The Bard's Tale on PS2 or X Box, you'll sort of know the style of humor you'll find in Overlord.

I have heard complaints in TV and magazine reviews that people wish the developers would have put a map in the game. You know what? I do too, but the graphics are so gorgeous that I don't mind wandering around,s laying sheep for the souls trying to find out where to go next. So far I've not had a single problem knwing where I should go next because another aspect of the game is that you, as an overlord, must build a destroyed castle that you are now calling your own. While out finding, you uncover waypoints that warp you to and from the castle. With this feature, it's hard to get too lost as you can always warp to the different waypoints from the castle.

The castle is a whole other portion of the game too. As you build it up, other rooms become unlocked. In the beginning of the game you unlock a dungeon where you and your minions can practive fighting against all of the creatures you have fought so far. You get to keep the items and "souls" you find in there as well.

I'm a bit shocked that this game ranks number 500 something on Amazon's top selling video game list. This game is THE funnest game I've played on the 360 so far. There's something inheritantly fun about sending off ultra-loyal creatures to loot, pillage, plunder and even kill themselves for you!

Overlord

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: August 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Good game, my son liked it a lot, but he could finish it in few days. :(

Simple and Addictive Gameplay

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: August 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

First of all, people looking for deep gameplay, lots of customizable options, or involved multiplayer options would be better served to look elsewhere. That being said, Overlord promises fun gameplay and a hilarious take on your traditional fantasy tropes and, shockingly, actually delivers. Rather than trying to weigh you down with moral decisions, Overlord gives you the choice of being mostly evil or just really, really evil.

The single-player campaign mode is really the only reason to play this game. I've played it through twice. Once as the best (least corrupt) you can be and once as pure evil (completely corrupt). The minions are hilarious and I particularly enjoyed the interplay between their various abilities. For example, there's a case where you need to summon some your brown (fighter) minions, but the summoning portal is in the middle of a lake, so you have to summon some of your blue (swiming and healing) minions and another portal and send them out into the lake as you summon the browns to rescue them and bring them back to shore. In another case, your facing Dwarves with flame throwers that can toast any of your minions except the reds (fire proof and they throw fireballs). Unfortunately, the reds fireballs can't hurt the Dwarves, but if you send the reds behind them, the Dwarves will be distracted and you can take them out with your browns or greens (sneak attackers) without any casualties.

The control scheme is simple and intuitive with at least three different ways to control your minions movements, so you don't have to depend on the game AI to do it for you. One of the drawbacks that I noticed was that since there are only a limited number of spawning points throughout the levels, you occasionally find yourself back-tracking to a previous point to regenerate your army if you approached a battle badly. Fortunately, the graphics look quite nice, so trecking through the countryside isn't very painful

Summary: I give the game five stars for being fun. The game is loaded with classic Tolkienesque fanatasy, but with a warped twist - The Halflings look like they came straight out of The Fellowship of the Ring, but they're evil - and I challenge you not to chuckle at your minions throughout the game, especially when your actions start to earn you different titles from your court jester - I laughed partciularly hard at The Appreciator of Volumptuous Assets. That being said, there are certainly some very suggestive themes in the game, so keep the kiddies away from it. I knocked one star off of my overall review score because of the lousy multiplayer, the occasional backtracking, and a lack of an in-game waypoint system for finding your way through the levels and various overlapping quests. Other than that, its a great game that I've had a lot of fun playing.

Fun and addictive

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: September 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have to admit that I found myself spending too many hours playing this game. It would have received 5 stars, but I believe that the navigation (less) point of view is way too tough to get lost, literally. No compass, no larger map overview. Fun game besides that...

Overlords Terrific

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: September 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I bought this at my grandsons request because he tried the preview. I don't normally do that, so I was surprised that the game is as good as the demo. Its fast paced, graphics are terrific and the action keeps the kids glued to the system.

Probably boring for the hardcore gamer; good fun for the rest of us

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: August 09, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is perfectly fine if you are just looking to sit back, relax, and have a few hours of casual gaming. If you are looking for a game that will change your life, naturally this is not for you.

The only two gripes I have are the same as every reviewer's: no map and very limited camera control. However, if you can get past those two problems (which I have done) then this game provides some decent fun. If you didn't like Pikmin, you probably shouldn't play this game.

Also it's worth noting what others have remarked on, that this game is more of a light-hearted, humorous spoof on fantasy than a truly "dark" game. You can kind of choose how evil you are but even if you are 100% "corrupt" the game always remains on the cartoon-y side. But that is consistent with the overall atmosphere of the game. As far as the Xbox 360's current line-up goes, I would say Overlord is on a par with games such as Viva Pinata.

This game is great

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: August 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I heard a lot of bad things about this game because I think that everyone is anticipating "Two Worlds" so they were negative about this games release. Anyways, I thought that it was so much fun. It's a very unique style of game play where you don't actually have to do a majority of the work. You just send your minions out to terrorize the town. I played it for about a week before I got bored, but I think I almost beat it. Even though it got boring to me, I still think it's a really sweet game and it was worth the money. I'll probably start to play it again after a few weeks so it will be fresher to me. I think the reason it got boring is that the upgrades are really limited and the gameplay gets really repetitive. And, a lot of times you have to use a particular type of minion to beat a level, but they're not avaliable on that level, so you have to go back to a previous level and kill enemies until you get enough minions built up. It's really annoying and repetitive. I constantly found myself shortchanged with my minions and they weren't avaliable enough throughout the game. Still really fun though, so I recommend at least renting it.
FYI: There's three types of armor you can get get throughout the game; there isn't that much game play in between the upgrades, so I'd recommend just saving your minions for the final armor upgrades. If you use them to upgrade the other armor/weapons, they're lost forever and you'll find yourself short on minions later on in the game.

Is that ALL??

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: November 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Not quite what I was hoping for. This game has the look and feel of an original xbox game. I'd imagine the main reason it's on the 360 is because of processing power. Controlling umpteen minions onscreen at a time would probably meet slow-down issues on a last-generation system.

My main gripe with this is of course that the other aspects of the game should be lifted to meet at least SOME of the system's abilities. Your main character - the Overlord - really takes a backseat to the minions throughout the game. Obviously, the minions are the stars. But does that mean I have to be limited to swinging my melee weapon in ONE preset combo? I get a handful of generic spells, too, but their effectiveness and fun has yet to be seen.

The minions are awesome. They're my reasoning in giving this game a 3 and not a 1. They grab whatever they can find and wear it, equip it, or God-forbid, drink it. The first time I saw them wandering around with "dead rat hats" on, I just about ______.

But... there's no action/rpg aspect to this game. It's just the action. My gripe is that some rpg elements could have been EASILY afforded and they wouldn't have detracted from the whole of the game. I want to see what all my minions are wearing, or swinging, but I can't. I want to at LEAST know if I have one or two minions who are stronger than the rest, and be able to set them aside during battles that would kill them. What good is it to have minions who pick up better and better weapons, yet I can't "store" them and bring in some newbies so that I don't have to keep on starting over everytime a few minions die. I want to find out where the hell I am, but there's no map. Even the "objective" list is so vague, I can't tell where I'm supposed to go to do whatever the game is demanding of me next. I need a mistress for my castle, right? Well there are ladies in every village. But I have to find that ONE in Bum____ Egypt. Without a map, no less.

I think my biggest complaint with this game is the tone. I really like the minions and the things they yell when they find something or attack an enemy. Even the Minion Master has that dark humor, and it's great.

But when I say "tone," I'm talking about the premise that I bought this game for, and have yet to see. I'm evil. I'm going to kill hobbits and heroes, and conquer the land. Now, I had little problem swallowing the idea that I "should" let the villagers live so that there's someone left to worship me once I'm in charge. But every "Hero" in this story is evil - not heroic - and you're praised as a savior by every town you come to.

I loved Jade Empire, and I'm just starting to crack open Fable. These two games let you reeeally be evil if you wanted to. But not Overlord, which says from the get go that you're the bad guy and that's how it's going to be. You and your minions talk the talk, but you don't walk the walk. Hobbits loot, pillage and oppress townsfolk. And you run around freeing slaves, returning stolen food, and basically anything you can do to be a great big hero.

Baa humbug.

This game gets a 3 for a spattering of dark humour and the endless enjoyment I get from killing sheep. Gameplay is so-so. Innovation is null - even controlling the minions could have been a lot more interesting. Graphically, this game looks like a first-entry on the original xbox console. It's not terrible, but there have been hundreds of last-gen games that look the same, even better, without trying that hard.

Warner Bros. needs to actually PLAY some other games every now and then if they want to make them. This game had a lot of unused potential.

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