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Overlord is a unique game that has alot of character and provides a fair amount of enjoyment.
July 1, 2007 | 10:24 PM PSTby: Adam Beck
In a world of laws and social expectations, flouting the rules is always fun. That is until one’s made to face the consequences – those aren’t always as fun. Thankfully, we live in the 21st century and videogames provide virtual playgrounds in which gamers are able do the kind of things that people only dream of in the real world, without any lasting or serious consequences. Triumph Studios, best known for their… well only series, Age of Wonders, is offering players another chance to give in to those nasty urges with their first console offering, Overlord. Part RPG, part RTS, Overlord feels like a cross between Pikmin and Fable and provides some delightfully evil fun despite a host of small flaws.
Overlord doesn’t have a story, so much as a context. You, the player awaken as the latest in a line of Overlords worshipped by a race of evil gremlin-esque creatures called minions. As Overlord, it’s your job to recoup lost territory, regain control of the various minion tribes, and deal with any heroes that might get in their way. Missions are unlocked through talking to NPCs and give way to new abilities and objects to decorate the gothic tower that serves as the game’s HUB. The world, while large, is fairly limited because most locations are not connected, so you will have to retreat to your castle in order to travel to a new major destination. There’s also no in-game map system and only a simple quest list, which makes naigating around the twisting areas and figuring out just what your have to do next a big pain in the ass. There is a printed map, but it would have been much better if there was something that indicated where you were in the world while you were playing the game, and the absence of such a feature makes exploration into more of a chore than it otherwise would have been.
The missions range from fetch quests to search and destroy, but most of them also offer some ‘moral’ choices to make things more interesting. The moral spectrum is somewhat limited from ‘evil’ to ‘really evil’ since there aren’t any particularly good or truly barbaric options. The effects of the choices aren’t huge – they wont affect what abilities you unlock or the progression of the story in any major way - but they do have an impact on how the world reacts to you, feeding back into the sense of being a really mean SOB. For example if you were to go on a rampage, raid a village and kill all the villagers, your corruption level will rise and members of other villages and castles will be less inclined to cooperate with you, or they’ll just attack you outright. As such, players can tweak the game experience to their liking by balancing the fear and hate the world has for the Overlord with the necessary amount of respect to keep them from making life difficult. The corruption level also helps replayability, since players can replay missions under different circumstances for a slightly different experience, or go after achievements for being as ‘good’ or as evil as possible. It would have been nice if there was even more variety and freedom for the choices players have, just as it would have been nice if being more or less evil had a larger impact on the gameplay itself, but Overlord still does a decent job of making the world feel malleable.
Wreaking havoc with these minions is the main attraction of Overlord. Players gain control of four different types of minions, each of which has their own strengths, weaknesses and special abilities. This is where elements of the real-time strategy genre kick in, as you order them around and combine their skills to take down hordes of enemies like halflings, elves, dwarves, the undead and other rivals to your evil empire. The artificial intelligence and pathfinding for the minions is fairly well done, and they’ll generally follow instructions promptly and effectively. You can task five minions to take an artifact back to a portal several ‘rooms’ away, continue on without them, and they’ll eventually catch up and join the rest of their crew when they’re done their job. As minions ravage the environment they’ll find equipment that they can use to bolster their strength. The only problem is, if they die… the armor goes with them and you cannot choose which specific minion you wish to sacrifice towards your good well being, so you can lose a stronger character from your party. The minions are in virtually unlimited supply, but players need life essence – collected by killing living creatures – to summon them. Unfortunately, you need specific types of essence to summon specific types of minions, an unnecessary annoyance that forces you to find and kill specific enemies for a specific type of essence. As the game wears on you’ll be able to control a greater and greater number of minions, and watching them tear apart enemies and ransack villages never gets old.
Your minions aren’t the only ones to do damage, you also have the ability to fight, but it isn’t as satisfying as watching your minions rip through everything in their way. As Overlord, you only have a few attacks, all of which are performed by pressing the same button. As such, combat with the Overlord character requires little more than button mashing. Disappointing, but understandable given the fact that players will often be attacking with the Overlord character and controlling their minions at the same time. Like most role playing titles, you will be able to upgrade the Overlord’s equipment and attributes, as well as learn a few magic spells. There are no experience points in the game, so players have to either purchase upgrades or find the artifacts that increase the Overlord’s power and unlock new abilities. The RPG elements may be light, but they do help add some spice to the proceedings and once again help build the feeling that you slowly becoming an unstoppable force of evil.
Controls are a bit of a mixed bag. Controlling your minions is as one large group is quite easy, getting hordes of different minions into proper attack positions in the heat of battle can be pretty difficult. Simply charging in with one huge group of minions can work on certain enemies if you have enough of them, but generally each of the minions works better when used properly. Charge in with brown minions to tie up foes, have red minions attack from the distance with fire balls, maneuver stealthed green minions past the action to open a gate, and have the blues on the sidelines reviving the dead. Maneuvering them isn’t the problem, its switching between them quickly enough to keep them alive and keep them working that’s a pain in the ass. Oh, and you’re doing all this while attacking and casting magic with the Overlord too. The fact that the Overlord’s targeting is inconsistent at best only makes matters a little more difficult to manage – you’ll swing and swing at an enemy right in front of you before you hit the optional target button and finally manage to hit him. Sometimes you need the button, sometimes you don’t, it seemingly changes at random. Its an easy enough problem to get around – always use the target-lock, but in areas clustered with baddies, it would be so easy if we could just eyeball the bastards. Camera control can also be annoying since you have to hold down a button and relinquish direct control of your minions to adjust the camera angle with the right stick. A second, more elevated camera angle is less pretty but less problematic as well.
The game has a multiplayer component, but it feels completely tacked on. The Co-op mode actually feels more like a survival mode, as players work together to survive and onslaught of enemies. There are only two maps but they are both quite a challenge - even experienced gamers might have trouble. Versus is a basic deathmatch setup where gamers go head to head against other overlords online. Both modes can be entertaining, but your time could be better spent by replaying the single-player campaign (unless you want all the achievements, that is).
The game’s visuals use a similar ‘dark fairytale’ motif to Fable, with similar use of colors and character design to create a bight and colorful world that is somehow subtly perverse. From a technical standpoint the graphics are impressive with plenty of detail in the bump-mapped textures, soft bloom-lighting, and a steady framerate throughout the single-player mode despite the legions of characters on-screen at once. Animations of the main character could be better, but the minions and enemies all animate wonderfully and are full of character. That character also comes through in the voice-work which is stellar. Overlord is a very funny game with great dialogue and voice samples sprinkled throughout. The music suits the fantasy setting and changes with the action on-screen, but there’s not too much of it.
Overlord is far from perfect, but it does contain a very interesting mixture of fantasy role playing and real-time strategy. It’s unique enough that even gamers that don’t enjoy either genre might have some fun with it. With beautiful presentation, unique gameplay and a great sense of humor, Overlord could be a sleeper hit this summer.
Overlord doesn’t have a story, so much as a context. You, the player awaken as the latest in a line of Overlords worshipped by a race of evil gremlin-esque creatures called minions. As Overlord, it’s your job to recoup lost territory, regain control of the various minion tribes, and deal with any heroes that might get in their way. Missions are unlocked through talking to NPCs and give way to new abilities and objects to decorate the gothic tower that serves as the game’s HUB. The world, while large, is fairly limited because most locations are not connected, so you will have to retreat to your castle in order to travel to a new major destination. There’s also no in-game map system and only a simple quest list, which makes naigating around the twisting areas and figuring out just what your have to do next a big pain in the ass. There is a printed map, but it would have been much better if there was something that indicated where you were in the world while you were playing the game, and the absence of such a feature makes exploration into more of a chore than it otherwise would have been.
The missions range from fetch quests to search and destroy, but most of them also offer some ‘moral’ choices to make things more interesting. The moral spectrum is somewhat limited from ‘evil’ to ‘really evil’ since there aren’t any particularly good or truly barbaric options. The effects of the choices aren’t huge – they wont affect what abilities you unlock or the progression of the story in any major way - but they do have an impact on how the world reacts to you, feeding back into the sense of being a really mean SOB. For example if you were to go on a rampage, raid a village and kill all the villagers, your corruption level will rise and members of other villages and castles will be less inclined to cooperate with you, or they’ll just attack you outright. As such, players can tweak the game experience to their liking by balancing the fear and hate the world has for the Overlord with the necessary amount of respect to keep them from making life difficult. The corruption level also helps replayability, since players can replay missions under different circumstances for a slightly different experience, or go after achievements for being as ‘good’ or as evil as possible. It would have been nice if there was even more variety and freedom for the choices players have, just as it would have been nice if being more or less evil had a larger impact on the gameplay itself, but Overlord still does a decent job of making the world feel malleable.
Wreaking havoc with these minions is the main attraction of Overlord. Players gain control of four different types of minions, each of which has their own strengths, weaknesses and special abilities. This is where elements of the real-time strategy genre kick in, as you order them around and combine their skills to take down hordes of enemies like halflings, elves, dwarves, the undead and other rivals to your evil empire. The artificial intelligence and pathfinding for the minions is fairly well done, and they’ll generally follow instructions promptly and effectively. You can task five minions to take an artifact back to a portal several ‘rooms’ away, continue on without them, and they’ll eventually catch up and join the rest of their crew when they’re done their job. As minions ravage the environment they’ll find equipment that they can use to bolster their strength. The only problem is, if they die… the armor goes with them and you cannot choose which specific minion you wish to sacrifice towards your good well being, so you can lose a stronger character from your party. The minions are in virtually unlimited supply, but players need life essence – collected by killing living creatures – to summon them. Unfortunately, you need specific types of essence to summon specific types of minions, an unnecessary annoyance that forces you to find and kill specific enemies for a specific type of essence. As the game wears on you’ll be able to control a greater and greater number of minions, and watching them tear apart enemies and ransack villages never gets old.
Your minions aren’t the only ones to do damage, you also have the ability to fight, but it isn’t as satisfying as watching your minions rip through everything in their way. As Overlord, you only have a few attacks, all of which are performed by pressing the same button. As such, combat with the Overlord character requires little more than button mashing. Disappointing, but understandable given the fact that players will often be attacking with the Overlord character and controlling their minions at the same time. Like most role playing titles, you will be able to upgrade the Overlord’s equipment and attributes, as well as learn a few magic spells. There are no experience points in the game, so players have to either purchase upgrades or find the artifacts that increase the Overlord’s power and unlock new abilities. The RPG elements may be light, but they do help add some spice to the proceedings and once again help build the feeling that you slowly becoming an unstoppable force of evil.
Controls are a bit of a mixed bag. Controlling your minions is as one large group is quite easy, getting hordes of different minions into proper attack positions in the heat of battle can be pretty difficult. Simply charging in with one huge group of minions can work on certain enemies if you have enough of them, but generally each of the minions works better when used properly. Charge in with brown minions to tie up foes, have red minions attack from the distance with fire balls, maneuver stealthed green minions past the action to open a gate, and have the blues on the sidelines reviving the dead. Maneuvering them isn’t the problem, its switching between them quickly enough to keep them alive and keep them working that’s a pain in the ass. Oh, and you’re doing all this while attacking and casting magic with the Overlord too. The fact that the Overlord’s targeting is inconsistent at best only makes matters a little more difficult to manage – you’ll swing and swing at an enemy right in front of you before you hit the optional target button and finally manage to hit him. Sometimes you need the button, sometimes you don’t, it seemingly changes at random. Its an easy enough problem to get around – always use the target-lock, but in areas clustered with baddies, it would be so easy if we could just eyeball the bastards. Camera control can also be annoying since you have to hold down a button and relinquish direct control of your minions to adjust the camera angle with the right stick. A second, more elevated camera angle is less pretty but less problematic as well.
The game has a multiplayer component, but it feels completely tacked on. The Co-op mode actually feels more like a survival mode, as players work together to survive and onslaught of enemies. There are only two maps but they are both quite a challenge - even experienced gamers might have trouble. Versus is a basic deathmatch setup where gamers go head to head against other overlords online. Both modes can be entertaining, but your time could be better spent by replaying the single-player campaign (unless you want all the achievements, that is).
The game’s visuals use a similar ‘dark fairytale’ motif to Fable, with similar use of colors and character design to create a bight and colorful world that is somehow subtly perverse. From a technical standpoint the graphics are impressive with plenty of detail in the bump-mapped textures, soft bloom-lighting, and a steady framerate throughout the single-player mode despite the legions of characters on-screen at once. Animations of the main character could be better, but the minions and enemies all animate wonderfully and are full of character. That character also comes through in the voice-work which is stellar. Overlord is a very funny game with great dialogue and voice samples sprinkled throughout. The music suits the fantasy setting and changes with the action on-screen, but there’s not too much of it.
Overlord is far from perfect, but it does contain a very interesting mixture of fantasy role playing and real-time strategy. It’s unique enough that even gamers that don’t enjoy either genre might have some fun with it. With beautiful presentation, unique gameplay and a great sense of humor, Overlord could be a sleeper hit this summer.
February 8, 2010
