MsLedd on 29/6/2009 at 19:01

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I'm with malf on the spells issue... I would really love some of the old ones back (especially the last mega-flame one you get), and I too can't seem to get any but the target spell to work properly. Plus, dominated peasants so far have just sort of followed me around for short distances, occasionally serving themselves up as fodder for enemies that attack where they happen to be standing. But that's about it. I feel like I'm missing something there with that aspect (like getting them to do something, or go somewhere, so mostly I just kill/smash everything in sight (so satisfying).

There is also a misprint in the manual about which button to use to gain "full speed" in a ship (from what I read on the Codemasters forum this is also an issue with some command in the xbox manual). I smashed my ship and drowned several times before accidentally discovering it was the "send minions" button rather than the "callback" button as stated in the manual. It was quite obvious from the yellow bar at the top when I was hitting the correct button (it goes dark, then increases as you speed up).

I also agree that unlike the first game, you need to send minions once to smash a crate/jar/chest or kill something, and they'd come back with whatever "treasure" was found/left (or at least one item, if there were multiples). Now, you have to send them once to smash/kill and send them back again yelling "go pick up the goodies, you idiot!". Things like gold, crystals and life essence, you can pick up yourself by just walking over it, but weapons, and various "parts" left by dead victims (which increase your minion horde's collective strength, plus make them look hilarious) those have to be picked up by the minions themselves.

[CENTER]http://www.msledd.com/sealhead-minion.jpg http://www.msledd.com/peacock-minion.jpg http://www.msledd.com/spider-minion.jpg http://www.msledd.com/slughead-minion.jpg
These guys know how to dress ;)[/CENTER]

Also, blues seem to be rather inconsistent about resurrecting fallen minions, often you need to directly sweep (rather than just send) them to a dead minion, or use a guard marker to get them to do Lazarus-duty. And quite often by that time, it's too late. Although the blues actually swim now, rather than just walking through water, which is kinda cool.

The graphics are amazing (on the PC at least) and the tower (netherworld) is a work of art that they obviously put a lot of work into. Though it's (IMO) unnecessarily huge, and trips to the various parts take more running around and cutscene time than I care for (especially the "walking to, and sitting my evil ass on the throne" cutscene every time I want to teleport to an area).
You can hit the spacebar to skip cutscenes (as you could in the previous game) but on the shorter ones (like the throne, and the hover-stones to the minion and forge areas) it really doesn't help much. I wish they'd have set those to play the first time you did it (because they really are works of art), but then after that, make the action an insta-jump.

And where the fuck is the dungeon? That was the best essence-gathering utility in the first game. Though I guess they have compensated for this by
1) Having all creatures you kill dispense life essence in all the various colors (in the first game, most creatures/humans each only gave you a certain color ie: sheep=brown, magma beetles=red, puff beetles=green, dazzler beetles=blue etc.
2) Making the "helmet of double essence" available early on in the game (this item was only available in the Raising Hell expansion, as a bonus forging mold) and
3) Having upgrades requiring minion "ingredients" far less costly.

On that note, the ability to completely restore your health/mana simply by approaching a gateway is very handy indeed (previously, you had to actually teleport back to the tower to do this, or incrementally restore one or the other using mana/health vials or sacrificing minions into one of the pits)

I LOVE the minion possession thing... The section where you are after the green minion hive was a BLAST! Minions riding wolves, spiders, soon to be salamanders and then I assume something for blues (I hope it's frogs, because those things drive me NUTS as enemies) is so much fun!

I love the designs of all the new NPCs! They're all beautifully (even though many are hideous/repulsive and or hilarious in their design) detailed and well done. Those fat, gluttonous, oil-slicked, toga-wearing empire denizens made me laugh my ass off and want to throw up at the same time (they also just beg to be killed). :ebil:

I don't know about the xbox version, but the camera/mouse-look was exactly as it should be in the first game (except sometimes when sweeping minions - hard to control) on the PC, and it is still. Thank god, because that's one thing I cannot handle in games that are cross-platform or that have been ported from a console (can be a deal-breaker for me... for example, I could never have played Resident Evil 4 if it weren't for the mouse-look patch made by some wonderful soul out there)

A tip about the save system: (and this goes for the original and the new game) it is an autosave/checkpoint thing, and you can get yourself royally screwed if you encounter a bug or want to go back to an earlier save - there won't be any. UNLESS you periodically do a manual save by going to Options > Change Autosave Slot. Then, what you need to do is to select the 1st slot below the last autosave for it to "stick". Even though it may appear in the list as the same name and time as the autosave, that autosave will be overwritten with the next one. I also found it's handy to do this when you are somewhere other than the tower, so the saves have location names rather than a whole list of saves named "tower". Kinda wonky, but it does help. Note: even when you load from a manual save, you start back at the tower/netherworld basically at the point where the autosave was (often repeating some tasks you had done prior to saving), however by doing the manual save you have the option to get back much closer to the area/section of the game you want than the game would otherwise allow (like all the way back to the start). :wot:

Something else I've noted about this one that seemed to be missing at the beginning of the first... is the story, although if you haven't played the Raising Hell expansion, the continuity is a bit broken since this one uses the ending from the expansion Where you are trapped in the infernal abyss and your mistress (whichever one you chose) is pregnant, as a basis. But, at least you understand that the little guy is the son of the last overlord, and grows up to take his place.

In the first, Gnarl & crew find you and nurse you to health to begin your path to domination. But later in the game (at the end) you suddenly get what seems like the conclusion of a story that you missed the first part of. And it only vaguely indicates what transpired before the minions found you, and the relationship between you & the various "bosses" from each section, as well as the (original) end boss The Wizard. It's always bugged me that backstory was missing from the beginning, or revealed throughout the game... you never really get the full story, you kind of have to piece it together yourself and use your imagination to fill in the gaps.

"Bad is good, but evil is better" ~Gnarl

gunsmoke on 29/6/2009 at 20:36

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I'm no Malf, but maybe I can help here. I played about 30 minutes of the PS3 version (1st time playing the system ever), and it was a bit choppy. Never played the demo, but the frame rate sure dipped quite a bit. Not unplayable, but certainly choppier than I am used to.

Sulphur on 30/6/2009 at 17:43

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Thanks, gunny/Malf. Pretty much the same as the demo, then. Overlord's not the kind of game where a rock-solid frame rate is extremely critical, anyhow, so I guess it doesn't matter. Much. :D

Malf on 1/7/2009 at 09:13

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I don't get that, as I have no problem with the save system at all. It's not quicksave, sure, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Other than that I can't think of any problems with it.

I completed it last night. Loved the game overall, but I felt that there were maybe a few too many sections towards the end where it was more effective to attack solely with the Overlord and pin the minions back somewhere where they wouldn't get hurt. This kind of undermines the game as a whole, and again is a result of the increased attachment they've created to your favourite minions.

I also got incredibly frustrated with bomber type enemies, mainly because there seems to be a fatal flaw in blue minion behaviour around bombs.
When a blue picks up a fallen minion, you can't direct where they'll go to resurrect them, and I watched in horror last night as blue minions repeatedly gravitated towards active bombs while doing their stuff.
What should have been a successful save resulted in the deaths of 5 minions as I tried to recover each fallen minion.
I kept trying purely because I was curious to see whether what I suspected was indeed true, and yes, when a blue picked up a fallen minion, they actively ran towards an active bomb, no matter how far away or in what direction. I think there may be some dodgy AI decision weighting code in there somewhere :|

But still, at least I finally got to kill that annoying twat Florian.
I get the feeling Triumph really don't like elves, a sentiment I fully support :D

Oh, and as I suspected, I got the "Balanced" ending, a balance between destruction and domination.

Malf on 1/7/2009 at 14:35

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Doesn't really apply. My core "Favourites" were all level 8, 9 or 10, with 10 being the maximum. The minion upgrade option sets the base level for your minions (those that you haven't used before), and the maximum is 4. So my minion team was pretty powerful, but still under-utilised.