Quick Look: Evil Genius 2: World Domination

This is like a more complicated version of Dungeon Keeper (not the shitty mobile version)

I really wanted to like the game since I was a huge fan of the original (and dungeon keeper) but I just can't get on board. 25 hours in and it's just busy work. So much of it. Between the constant grind for more space, more money and more minions to send on schemes and not get back it just feels like a time sink with not enough pay off.

The first game was a lot better with that stuff. Still all there but less in your face.

Map is 5 times as big but everything takes 5 times as much space so what's the point? My elite soldiers get wiped out by agents faster than I can train more. Mostly because they refuse to equip weapons that I lay out for them. And traps don't trigger enough and even if they do it seems half the enemy agents can either disguise and sneak in or literally teleport....

A damn shame

This just makes me want a Dungeon Keeper 3.

This game should have been, at worst, pretty okay. It is amazing to me how they whiskey dick'd every part of it. It's just a tedious, boring cluster-fuck. How do you manage to have so many things going on yet have nothing ever happen????

What a bummer. I'm not even mad, just confused.

Well I for one am enjoying my time with EG2. Could do with a few gameplay/balance tweaks but I'm enjoying the style. The art and animation are on point and some great (and some terrible) VO performances as well.

I can definately see why some people have a dissenting opinion and I think a few gameplay patches would definately help. If they'd just let you do more than one side mission at a time the pacing would be a great deal better.

@noblenerf: Dungeons 3 and war for the overworld are actually pretty good. Scratch the same itch. In fact WFTO was even a kickstarter specifically to be a spiritual successor (even got the same voice actor)

It does seem like a lot of the peer reviews are : "this game has an excellent foundation that needs more structure". The amount of padding, busy work and half-implemented features kind of makes this game feel like the devs had a lot of ambitions, but were rushing to get this game out the door.

I'll definitely keep an eye of this one after a few patches, since it seems to hit a lot of what I liked about EG1 .

Also, this soundtrack is top!

Brad's Spy-Fy joke... so good!

Was hoping that this was basically the Two Point Hospital to Evil Genius, but this doesn't seem to stick the landing all that well. It looks fairly charming and i like the idea of a worldmap, but it basically amounting to a bunch of buttons that up your heat and that lower your heat is dissapointing.

And then that sandbox mode.. What the hell happened there? I play sandbox modes in games to build a cool place, recruit special agents and contend with AI enemies instead of having to follow a specific campaign trail that limits what i can do per mission and prevents me from building the ultimate late-game lair. I don't want to get rid of gold & techtree mechanics wholesale. I don't want to get rid of the special agents that might actually make every sandbox save feel different. Like i remember playing Zeus: Master of Olympus sandbox mode, and the nr 1 thing that really makes each save feel different is which gods, heroes and monsters decide to show up.

Sure, give the option to have unlimited money to the people that want that, but to make that the sole option and disable certain mechanics of the game is real dissapointing.

And then those cutscenes. Seems like the project just needed an extra helping of funds and time to get in 6,5/10 territory for me.

We've lost a lot of experience we had at making these types of games over the last 15-20 years. The nicest thing I can say about Two Point is that it's such a true successor to Theme Hospital is that it made no effort to fix the originals flaws.

For anyone who isn't aware the the original EG was made by Elixir Studios - who also put out Republic the Revolution - before it closed down. The founder of Elixir went onto a new project called "Deep Mind" you may have heard of it. Now he runs the AI division at Google.

For another disappointing return to late 90s Management Games, maybe look at Starbase Startopia, with the original Startopia being another game put out by former Bullfrog devs - with EG coming from Bullfrog via Lionhead.

Super agents show up when you start a mission in a territory they are located in. If you do so, they will stay in that territory, and will be "investigating" you. If you still finish the mission there, it will generate a "resolve" mission, to stop them from attacking your base. But it's a pretty expensive mission, and it only exists for a few minutes. So it is very easy to miss. But the game does not tell you ANY of this. I had the same problem with those super agents showing up constantly, until I stumbled on a reddit post explaining the system. So just make sure no agent is in the territory you start a mission in, and they will never attack you (finishing a mission in a territory they arrived in later, is still fine).

But this knowledge makes the game even more boring, since it means you just get the boring investigators....

This game is my disappointment of the year. Could have been really fun, and I even bought the season cause it gets an extra genius, and I expected to play the game once with every character anyway. But seeing as it takes about 80 hours to finish it once; and most of the game is just waiting and busywork; I don't see myself playing again (or even finishing my first playthrough.

This is making me want to replay the older games (Theme Hospital, Evil Genius, Dungeon Keeper) more than actually play this. Maybe eventually when it goes on sale!

To be fair, I think the funding/heat stuff was always a chore. In the original, I'd always cheat and give myself a ton of money so I didn't have to worry about managing that stuff. Let me focus on managing the base and not the overworld.

I am so into that soundtrack

I really enjoyed the first one, although I used the money cheat to skip most of the world map busywork. I also preferred using minions to start mission. Still, I'm interested in this new one. Wonder if it also has a money cheat.

(low key hope, Vinny visiting the 1st game with the money cheat....)

Didn't the first Evil Genius come out like 15 years ago?

@goldgreg:Pretty close guess except it was 17 years ago.

@emphulio:I get that the money cheat smooths things over but I have to recommend this for fans or anyone interested in Evil Genius 1.

I played it with this GREAT Evil Genius Overhaul mod which rebalanced and made me love the first game when I played it with the mod. It sanded off the rough edges and really felt like essential improvements.

Generally though it makes the game easier and makes it less hostile. That sounds like a lot to make it boring but it actually lets the game breathe and shine in all ways as a sim. It also kills the downtime of waiting for things to happen.

He also totally rebalanced all the progression and rewards on the map in a great way. It's a must play mod for me that I hope people try and see what they think because again it made the game what it should have been for me.

I actually also think the original games graphics still look pretty cool in a stylized way. People should check it out, Evil Genius is dirt cheap I'm sure too.

Also I get the Dungeon Keeper and Dungeons comparisons, but for me the flavor and world of Evil Genius is so much more compelling and interesting. The high fantasy tossed off stuff is just so boring.

The game files already have names for a bunch of the planed dlc, or maybe it is just planted to fool data miners.
I found that they have at least two planed lairs, if you want to know here is what they are according to the game files: one is a moon base and the second is an underwater base.

@toughshed: Thanks! I'm going to check the mod.

@vinny's island in sandbox mode looks like it could be Gough Island, in the south Atlantic. Home of the world's largest mice. Fun fact, they eat baby albatross chicks! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gough_Island