Games that give you the choice of being good or evil have been around for a while now. From Baldur’s Gate to inFAMOUS, this category seems to be slowly evolving. One thing that is not found very often is the choice to be “evil or more evil”, something the developers at Triumph Studios have brought about in the form of the Overlord series. While Overlord II is the first game in the series I have had the chance to play, I cannot say that the time spent with it is much encouragement to try out the first one.

Overlord II once again places you in the boots of an evil being brought into power by his gremlin-like minions. You are tasked with either enslaving or destroying a couple of towns on the way to dispose of the magic-hating empire that is attempting to take over your domain and capture your minions. Though this storyline sounds pretty generic, the “be evil or more evil” premise of the game makes it a bit more interesting.

The best part of Overlord II just happens to be the maniacal minions that are sent to wreak havoc on those who oppose you. Eventually you will be able to control four different colored types of up to 50 minions at a time. Each play a distinct role in your army, either being a healer of sorts or one of three types of attackers (melee, ranged or stealth). Simple strategy can sometimes be employed; browns can be used to lure enemies toward hiding greens, who pounce on them as they pass by, while reds rain fire down on them on a nearby hill and blues take care of any wounded. Most of the time, however, you can do just fine selecting all of your minions and throwing them all at a target. One of the funnier things is just setting them loose on a town. They’ll break things, drink alcohol, vomit and urinate everywhere, all while grabbing anything they can and either wearing it as a hat or giving it to you as an offering. Not only do they appear similar to the gremlins found in a couple of my favorite childhood movies, but Triumph managed to mimic the sound of them as well.

Speaking of sound, that brings me to the first of many gripes about this game. Normally, sound is not an issue for me. Default settings have almost always managed to suit me just fine. However, the way sound effects overpower voice work in the game is ridiculous. After alleviating the sound imbalance issues, though, I kind of wished that I hadn’t. Just about everything an NPC says in the game is repeated constantly and often times they would talk over each other.

The graphics are not very impressive either. There’s really not too much to say in this department other than I’ve come to expect a little bit more from Playstation 3/Xbox 360 titles than what Triumph has done with Overlord II.

Where the charmingly crazy minions pulled me into Overlord II, the graphics failed to impress and the sound just annoyed me, the controls and camera were probably what pushed me to dislike this game. The camera constantly got on my nerves, needing to be adjusted quite a bit. Having the camera and minion control mapped to the same stick seemed like a bad idea to me. Times when I needed to control both the overlord and a single group of minions made this apparent, since you cannot adjust the camera to see what’s coming up ahead if the right stick is in minion mode. Targeting in the game is handled poorly as well. Sometimes trying to pick whatever is in front of you just does not work, instead seeming to randomly pick something else to target. If the game feels like it, you can sometimes switch objects by using the right stick. However, if one of the targets you are toggling between happens to be a marker your minions are gathered on, it’s time to start the process over again, as any more right stick movement suddenly controls the group associated with the highlighted flag. Everything mentioned here just felt very inconsistent and made things very frustrating. My worst memory of this involves the Arena level midway through the game, where there are opportunities for each one of these gripes to pluck your nerves enough to eject the game and toss it across the room.

After suffering through the single player experience, I went to check out the online multiplayer aspects of the game. Considering that no one is playing this game online at all, the resources that went into making these seemingly useless modes could have went to fixing the issues that plague this game.

I had heard a lot of positive things about the first Overlord game back when it was released.  The only complaint I can really remember is the lack of a mini-map. Since I had also heard quite a bit of praise for Overlord II from other outlets, I was quite surprised at how much I disliked it. The entire game felt like a great idea that was just executed poorly. If it wasn’t for the combination of my love for playing as evil characters in games and fond childhood memories of the Gremlins movies, this game would have definitely scored even lower.