Overlord and Overlord 2

Since I can't sleep, let's talk about more video games. This time, Overlord and Overlord 2. They might have called it Overlooked, really. But no, it actually did do fairly well if not great.

The premise is this: in some fantasy world somewhere, you're the evil Overlord. Your mission is to defeat the heroes and dominate the world. In case you're a nice guy like me and you hate doing evil for evils sake, don't worry. The heroes are all corrupt bastards who let power get to their heads and deserve to be taken down anyway. In the sequel, your job is to defeat the competition, a Romanesque Empire. The actual games are more comedic than serious, though. Part of the fun is just hearing the comments your minions make.

For the most part, the games are pretty similar. Gameplay revolves around controlling your minion horde, a collection of miniature goblin-like creatures that come in four flavors: browns, reds, greens and blues. Browns have the strongest defense and direct attack; reds throw fire from a distance and are immune to fire and explosions; greens have a powerful backstab attack and are immune to poison; and blues are weak all around but can revive other minions, hurt magic creatures, and are the only ones who don't drown when they walk into water. In Overlord 2 the minions get different mounts that further enhance their abilities.

Of course, the Overlord himself can also fight and does a lot more damage than his minions. He has a powerful 3 hit combo (the third hit is a slow but extra strong hit), and a spinning attack in the second game. He also uses magic, but it's a bit disappointing. In the first game you get a fire spell, which is basically a ranged attack, buff spells, debuff spells, and a barrier spell. Fire's probably all you'll ever use, the others mainly aren't worth it (though the third barrier spell does alright at times). The second game gives you different spells, but somehow they're even crappier.

But getting back to the minions, these guys are faster than the Overlord, more numerous (obviously) and are smaller, meaning they can go places the Overlord can't get to. Plus you also need them to push and carry stuff for you.

You can select minions by group or all at once. Order them to charge and they'll attack/break/pick up whatever enemy/object/resource they run into. You can also "sweep" them, basically manually controlling them. Then there's markers that you can use to get them to stay in a specific location, which allows you to set things up strategically, putting your reds on a hill to rain fire and putting your greens (the stealthy backstabbers) in a place they can attack from behind.

Minions upgrade their equipment by picking up whatever random crap they find. Only the browns actually use the things, though. Other types have pre-defined pieces of equipment they get regardless of whatever "upgrade" they pick up. In the second game, they also gain levels, and there's a graveyard where you can revive your high level troops if you really want to.

Forging items for your Overlord is kind of cool. In the first game, you build a weapon, armor or a helmet using gold, then you imbue it with different stats by sacrificing your minions. The type of minions sacrificed determines where the bonus goes. There's three weapons: Sword, axe, mace. Sword's fast and weaker, mace is slow and stronger, axe is in between.

The only downside is you start with steel gear, and one of the forging metals you find is steel. So in actuality, there's only two real upgrades you can make. The expansion adds unique, non-customizable weapons with special properties. The second game eschews customizable weapons entirely in favor of making each weapon unique, but with no stats, it's hard to tell what's better than what else, or if certain weapons have unique properties or whatnot.

The bosses are pretty fun to fight, at least in the first game. They're enemies you can't just brute force your way through (most of the time), so you've got to come up with a plan for fighting them. There's a neat touch where after you beat a boss, your minions stand around cheering and the game refuses to let you progress until you deal the final blow to your enemy. I kind of like that. Sadly, in the second game bosses are rarer and much more disappointing.

On a final note, believe it or not, these games have a moral choice system. srsly. You have to decide between being a very nice evil Overlord or a cruel, tyrannical evil Overlord. I don't believe it has an effect on the endings (though I can't say for sure), but in the second game at least, it affects your spells. Still, it's very odd that a game where you're expected to be evil would have a system like this.

Although sometimes the gameplay can start to feel tedious, overall it's an enjoyable experience, and I wouldn't mind it if they brought out an Overlord 3. If you can get it for cheap, check it out. You can certainly do a lot worse.