All image sources can be found at the end of the post.
Maaaybe it's not so easy to be the bad guy. Evil Genius 2: World Domination
Any gamer from the 90s 00s who doesn't remember Dungeon Keeper developed by the legendary and now extinct BullFrog team? It was a classic game of the genre of strategy and management that was based on building a dungeon, develop it as much as we can and go defending ourselves from the attack of the heroes and knights with the help of the monsters that we were hiring, something innovative that made this game back in 1997 was to put us in the skin of the antagonist, We were the lord of the lowlands looking to conquer the land and it was refreshing for its time, today that Dungeon Keeper sees a relay in Evil Genius developed by Rebellion does something similar but instead of bringing knights, dungeons and monsters takes us into the world of spies, secret bases and complicated gadgets, but in its sequel deepens all these aspects and enhances them to absurd limits.
First we go with the base, the game is an exercise in strategy and very simple management, we started to be supervillains and just bought our first lair, something simple to the purest of spy titles in the 60s, we must build and improve little by little to integrate secret laboratories, torture chambers and weapons of mass destruction that serve our purposes of world domination while we are repelling the attacks of super spies and performing blows to get more gold bars to repeat the process.
It has a lighthearted way of presenting things that makes it very fun, both to extend our cave as when setting traps has a black humor and a freedom with respect to what you can put and how you can put it to make it more ingenious, makes it very smooth and simple to the point that I want to come back again and again to continue improving my base, also the game is very clever in not letting you stagnate at any time, there is always something to do even when you think you have already completed everything, it has very simple mechanics that make me want to keep innovating the cave and keep torturing the heroes I catch.
Something that has really complicated me to discover and play this game was its terrible help system that does not help to indicate the objectives or how things work in this world, sometimes I was in a real problem when mercenaries entered my lair or when a laboratory was about to be destroyed and I found what to do to stop them, many times it is a trial and error that takes too long and makes the game too tedious in the early stages.
Everything at the beginning always goes the same way, simplicity is what keeps the game and also what is killing it little by little if we fail to advance to unlock the most spectacular gadgets but from there everything is fun, the game is very well maintained with its campaign that we can play while at the same time we are building, hiring researchers and making new weapons, at this point of the game does not need to try too hard to entertain us and it also achieves it with the originality of its moments and its black humor.
Our mission in the campaign is to grow our crime emporium by establishing more bases around the world, at the beginning we can choose one of 4 criminal bosses we want to control to grow our lair, grow our furniture to hire soldiers that we can send on missions to conquer the world map with just one action, although the game makes sure you think very well every move you make because we have few resources to attack, defend and continue to grow our lair. It is the gold that we will steal in the missions that will give us a little more air and financial strength to continue expanding and building new gadgets, one more spectacular than the previous one. But we must be cautious because attracting a lot of attention will only make us attacked in our lair more often, in this case the game does a great job making us more cautious and more meditative with our strategies, often rewarding patience when it comes to which territories to attack and when to do it.
I really liked some of the traps that we can put to our enemies, my favorite is definitely the casino that serves as a cover for our activities and at the same time we can delay our opponents with roulette games, many of the ideas that the game has with very fun to watch and develop, I would have liked a little more if they had deepened the mechanics of the casino to put more "legal" business throughout the world, but I can not complain with how much fun it can be sometimes.
The setting of the game is directly taken from spy movies like James Bond but Evil Genius tweaks the formula of his first installment and deepens many mechanics making them much more spectacular to see or fun to develop, it is a simple game that can give many hours of fun thanks to its progress system, although the fighting at times are slow I can say that this game has kept me hooked for hours and is a good successor to its previous installment.
Thank you very much for reading my post, I had missed it a few days ago because of work but every now and then I'm starting to play new titles and bringing them to review, maybe next week I can have a formed opinion of Cyberpunk (so far it's an incomplete game for me) but I think the next post will be about a contest that started a while ago in this community! if you liked this post I invite you to follow me to see more of my content ;D
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