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Lots of fun so far

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: June 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I'm not terribly far into the game.. I've unlocked three classes of minions so far and a few spells, but I can say that the game is fun. I've heard that people think the game is like Fable... and I have no idea where they're getting that from.

The controls for moving your character are a bit wonky, but you have to play the game to understand why that is. The thing that keeps the game moving is the comedy. Lots of great stuff like having your minions kill halflings (with homes that look exactly like Hobbot holes) and then wearing their hair and faces around... ok, it's sick humor, but still good.

The game is a bit simplistic, but I'm not so sure that's bad.

It's Good to Be the Overlord

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 33 / 36
Date: September 19, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I didn't start out planning to be an evil overlord.

When I found out that Overlord was a cross between Dungeon Keeper (where you get to play the bad guy in a fantasy world) and Pikmin (where you get to control different colored carrot people in quests), I was sold.

My first impressions of Overlord was that I was playing Sauron, back when he was still a horse-headed giant-type, before all that all-seeing angry red eye on top of a tower business. As Overlord you are in charge of goblins, who come in four flavors: brown, red, blue, and green. Fans of Pikmin (or any video game on the planet) know how this works: blues are immune to water, greens are immune to poison, etc. These diabolical minions accompany your Overlord everywhere as you rampage around the countryside reclaiming your evil inheritance. You know, cleaning up the tower, reclaiming all your minions, and finding a naughty girl to settle down with.

Being an Overlord is rather domestic, apparently.

-----+= EVIL OVERLORD RULE #24: I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.) =+-----

I started out feeling very charitable to the peasants of Spree, returning their food from the evil halflings. I discovered that Overlord is basically a cynical view of Lord of the Rings, with all the heroes being horrible hypocrites, and thus truly the villains. Compared to Melvin Underbelly the gluttonous halfling, the Oberon the slothful elf, Sir William the lecherous lord, Goldo the greedy dwarf, Jewel the envious and Kahn the wrathful. The seven deadly sins, wrapped up in fantasy stereotypes, all waiting to be defeated.

There are two paths you can pursue in Overlord. Be nice to people and do good deeds (or at least, not particularly evil deeds) and you can pursue the path of Lawful Evil, for those of you who know D&D. Be mean and it's a downward spiral into Chaotic Evil. These choices reflect how the various characters interact with you, from the lowliest peasant to your mistress of choice. I started out trying to be relatively nice, if only because all the walkthroughs I consulted whenever I got stuck took me down that path.

Then I was on a quest to save some stupid sacred Tree of Life in a stupid sacred elf forest and in an attempt to stop two bloody unicorns (no, really, they're unicorns covered with blood) from killing me, I used a fire spell...and set the Tree of Life on fire. This in turn set the whole forest ablaze, bloody unicorns, elves, and all, who went up in a screaming conflagration.

Well that pretty much dashed any hopes of my redemption right there and I started considering an evil path. I felt bad about the whole thing and was actually considering making it up to the elves, maybe by planting some trees or something...

Until I met Velvet.

-----+= EVIL OVERLORD RULE #49: If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper. =+-----

About halfway through the game you have the opportunity to take a mistress. Rose, Velvet's older and more straitlaced sister, calls your little goblins "pixies" and generally sets an imperious tone about your tower--MY tower, which I didn't invite her to. So when I had the opportunity to switch to the sleek little minx named Velvet, reclining in laced up stockings on her bed and promising Teen-rated services...I suddenly had a change of perspective.

Velvet's evil and she's not subtle about it. She constantly threatens, cajoles, and pouts throughout the game to get you to do more evil things. It worked. Oh how it worked! And when you give Velvet what she wants, she...reciprocates.

I'm not proud of this, but Xbox Live is. Because it has Mistress Master as a title. This has to be a new low. Or a new high, depending on your perspective.

Thus I became not just an evil overlord, but a really sadistic jerk. I went back to Spree and slaughtered every inhabitant, burned every building to the ground, and took all their stuff. Then I went back and enslaved their best-looking women as servants. I mean...somebody knows what 12-year-old boys want. I am not a 12-year-old boy, but I hope to be when I grow up.

Overlord is a glorious form of stress relief. You travel from area to area via your tower, slowly accumulating more minions and gold. You can upgrade your weapons, learn new spells, and of course evil-fy your tower. Because Velvet wants you to. And you should really do what Velvet tells you to do if you know what's good for you.

-----+= EVIL OVERLORD RULE #53: If the beautiful princess that I capture says, "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!" I will say "Oh well" and kill her. =+-----

Overlord can be repetitive at times, especially when you run out of minions and have to resort to "farming" lesser creatures to get the magical energy up to create new ones. Death has no penalties other than a loss of minions and starting over on a level, so there comes a tipping point where you are either clearly outmatched and thus have to spend more time mindlessly killing wimpy critters, or you are so powerful that you roll over everything in the game.

By the end of the game, I had a huge pile of gold in my coffers--you can visit your coffers and watch as the gold accumulates. I bought Velvet everything her wicked little heart desired and then some, from flaming demon-shaped fixtures to skull banners. And I had a shiny new set of armor and weapons. At one point I had ten female servants, Velvet lounging around, and Jewel in a cage in front of my throne. This is not a game that caters to females...unless your name happens to be Velvet.

It's good to be the Overlord.

(Rules courtesy of Peter Anspach's The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord: http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html)

Evil Pikman

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: August 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Its pikmin but only with an evil twist. Its a lot of fun easy to play, and hard to put down. The only real issue I have with the game, aside from a few bugs here and there but nothing major, is the lack of an in game map. That would have helped a lot but you can make it through without it.

GREAT GAME!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: August 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The only thing bad is that this game doesnt have any download content but its a great game anyways tho!

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!

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.

Dungeon Keeper Meets Pikmin

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 34 / 37
Date: July 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

While the commercials make Overlord seem like a Dungeon Keeper game - a series I *adored* - in actual gameplay, this is pretty much Pikmin with an attitude. This can be great or annoying depending on your point of view.

You are playing a dark lord who looks very suspiciously like Sauron from the Lord of the Rings series. Your advisor and minions are straight from Gremlins, with perhaps a bit of Yoda thrown in for good measure. When you head out on your first world to conquer, you run into hobbits, who live in little holes with round doors, in a village named ... "Spree". Yes, the game goes out of its way to be cute and poke fun at all fantasy stories.

Just like in Dungeon Keeper, you are in control of a swarm of mindless but generally loyal lackeys. You start with just the basic grunts, but as you progress you can unlock a healthy variety of creature types.

Most of your tasks are typical - get 10 minions to push aside a blockade, send your minions in to raze a village, and so on. While you are praised for being "evil", you're also warned to allow at least some innocents to survive so they provide workers for your empire. Meanwhile, back at the Evil Castle, your progress means that they fix up the place so it is worthy of being your home.

I do have to admit the little minions are quite cute. If you raid a pumpkin patch, a few of them will grab pumpkins and stick them on their heads. As they find weapons and armor, they'll equip them, so each minion becomes unique. If you need health, you have to sacrifice a few minions at an altar - and sometimes it's hard to do it, because you've become fond of the little critters. Still, that's the price of being evil. You can generate more, but they start out in their raw state.

The dialogue is appropriately dark and wry, although not nearly as great as some of the lines from Dungeon Keeper. Some of your quests also seem not to make any sense. You have to *save* people from slavery?? You have to get food for people? These don't sound like very evil acts to me. Then, when you run rampant in their town, they whine about the mess. They should be quaking in fear!

I found the Pikmin micromanaging a little annoying - an evil overlord shouldn't have to be telling his minions to clear the way to the next point of attack. I also found the camera to be quite more annoying at times.

Still, since there's no new Dungeon Keeper game on the horizon, this fills the spot admirably and does have a lot of fun in it. Well recommended, and for people who enjoy this type of gameplay who haven't played the Dungeon Keeper games yet - go buy them! See where this genre came from :)

Good Game, but it has it's flaws

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: July 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I purchased this game because I wanted to try something new. I love RPGs and this game seemed to have those qualities with a sick twist. This game is a lot of fun and has some good graphics. The quests are not incredibly hard to do and you do have an Advisor who helps you somewhat in the game. You start out with 10 minions (brown - melee type) and as you progress through the game you are able to acquire more (red - fireball ranged attack, green - sneak attackers, blue - healers and resurrecters of dead minions). The red minions have the ability to clear fire obstacles, green minions have the ability to clear poison obstacles and the blu minions are able to cross water. You can summon minions by killing animals or people and taking their lifeforce. But, just running around and having them cause mayhem and destruction is loads of fun. Even their little comments as they find treasure like "for the Overlord", "mine!", or "for you!" are just riotous. Their thirst for blood and destruction is immsense. As I through a fireball into a wheat field where some pesky halflings were and set it on fire they all jumped up and down cheering me on shouting "Burn, burn!!". They will even take the faces of their dead victims and wear them, as well as take any weapons they find. Your minions are fairly easy to direct with the RT button and you can have them stand their ground by posting a flag with the Y button. The minions will follow you everywhere, even to their own death. As the Overlord you have the ability to forge better weapons and armor and can improve the stats by sacrificing minions. Getting around from place to place is fairly simple as well. Everytime you find a new area a transporter pad appears so whenever you are in your tower, you can port right to that zone. The only thing I hated about this was that if I left a zone even for one minute via the port pad just to go to the tower and returned, all the mobs respawned and I had to kill them all again.

My three major gripes about this game are the lack of any map system at all, the inability to view quest details in depth and the inability to change the camera. Not having a map makes things very difficult. I was in the Elven Forest and kept walking around in one big circle for about 30 minutes because I could not figure out for the life of me where I needed to go or where I had not gone yet. This "no map" frustration only becomes more frustrating as you accumulate quests. You will see a list of active quests in the quest log but then you have no idea exactly where you picked it up or where you need to go. For example, my quest log said I needed to get a wench for my tower. All I knew is that I got that quest in Mellow Hills. It's not as though I got it from a specific person and even if I did, guess what, we cannot interact directly with NPCs. Now, that in and of itself is not bad but I guess I just got spoiled with other RPGs that helped you better track what you were doing or needed to do. Lastly, the camera sytle is pretty much "third person, chase cam". Which just means it follows you around so as you turn, it turns. However,not being able to change the camera angle at all really inhibited some attack tactics because I could not always readily see where enemies were and strategically place my minions. However while struggling for optimal placement, I at times found msyelf in full view of enemies and would get attacked. But thankfully my minions are always willing to die for me, so no worries. :)

I can still give the game a 4 star rating because it is strategic and will keep you occupied for many hours. Heck it took me about 8 hours just to get all of the minions. It's just a matter of getting over not having a map and not being able to change your camera style.

fun or boring? you make the call

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: July 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Saying this is a mix of Dungeon Keeper and Pikmon(sp??) was right on the money. You can be a good little Overlord and get a dark mistress to be your bride or have a real challenge and be a good savior and have a nice good woman at your side.

Yes, I as well as everyone else that has played this did not fight against their nature and became an evil Overlord with all of the killing and just unruly behavior it implies. Which is fun, just letting your minions out on their own doing what they will with whatever they find.

You can try to be a good overlord helping the peasants, rescuing them, and helping out with various quests. Then after several good deeds you make a mistake and burn down the sacred elf forest by bringing a bunch of fireball slinging minions without thinking one of them may catch everything on fire.

Now the gloves come off as everywhere you go someone calls you names which is barely a spark next to the open barrel of gasoline to which you respond with a 'lesson' to him. And his house, his neighbor's house and the whole town since you are on a roll. The auto-save kicks in and now you are a mass murdering evil overlord.

In this game, being evil is fun.

One of the more entertaining games of recent times

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: July 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

So don't go out and get Overlord if you are a serious gamer who dedicates their life to gaming. This game is fun and entertaining to play. The camera angles, altho they can be controlled, are a little frustrating, but they can be manipulated to work better for you. The minions are hysterical with there playful banter and i'm enjoying the dark but playful atmosphere of this game so far. Overall I am enjoying this game and would definitely recommend it!

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