Once upon a time, there was a world of fantasy and magic, where great heroes strode amongst the peaceful townsfolk, ridding the land of evil. Yet in this land, there was a fearsome tower, soaring into the skies, where these heroes challenge its dark master, cloaked in ominous shadow.
You are not one of those heroes.
You’re the guy in the tower.
Overlord was first released in 2007, on the XBox 360 and PC. An expansion, Raising Hell, was released in 2008, albeit only in Europe for the PC version, and bundled together with the original for the PS3 release. The original Overlord should not be confused by its prequel on the Wii Overlord: Dark Legend, or the spinoff on the Nintendo DS Overlord: Minions, or even its sequel, Overlord II, all released in 2009.
As the titular Overlord, you are rudely awakened to discover that not only has your evil tower been ransacked and emptied and generally made a mess of, but you also seem to have no clue who you are, or why these little imps are all swearing allegiance to you and your dark works. Still, when life hands you lemons, you use it to make acid to squirt in your enemies’ eyes just before cleaving them in twain with your mighty axe. And so you set out, ready to conquer the world, one hapless victim at a time.
You see peaceful pastoral scenery. I see minion fodder.
Written by Rhianna Pratchett, daughter of fantasy author Terry Pratchett, the game script deliciously subverts the usual Good Versus Evil fantasy plotline: here, your karma meter measures whether you are evil, or very evil. While leaving subjugated peasants alive grants the occasional monetary or supply benefit, slaughtering one and all gives you really cool armour, so it’s a toss-up.
However, given the Teen rating of the game, you won’t be doing anything truly depraved, so keep your expectations at the level of mere cartoony parody. You won’t be able to rule over a blasted wasteland on a throne built from the skulls of your enemies, but at least you’ll be able to explode obese hobbits and laugh at emo elves.
As the Overlord, you are (mostly) above doing any actual work, and so the majority of tasks fall to your horde of minions, be it pulling levers, poking sheep, or incinerating ogres. As a mix of third-person action and real-time strategy, you will find that much of the game’s challenge lies in using the right combination of minions for every occasion, which are not always obvious. The minions themselves are enthusiastic in their work, and are more than willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater evil. This is amply illustrated with your equipment upgrades, which rely on minions being imbued into your armour and weapons in bulk. There is nothing like watching a hundred gremlins gleefully swan-dive into molten metal just for some extra health regeneration or damage to pound in the fact that you probably shouldn’t get attached to your underlings.
You, you, and you, go left. No, your other left.
The controls are relatively simple on the PC, which can cause problems in itself: as you gain more varieties of minions, each with different powers and roles, controlling all of them with the twitch reflexes necessary for many of the puzzles becomes distressingly irritating. One particularly annoying necessity is “sweeping” minions, which would be much easier with a gamepad controller joystick, but turns tedious with the mouse. Lose some minions, and you may have to backtrack to the nearest spawning ground to get more. Lose them all, and you’ll have to start grinding for more life energy to build your army back up to its former glory. This makes brute forcing puzzles distinctly unappealing.
One incessant complaint that is apparently addressed in the expansion pack and later games is the lack of a minimap. Combined with the uncooperative camera angles, this is one of those niggling things in the original game that you will begin to truly miss some of the more labyrinthine maps.
The plot itself is fairly linear, with a few surprises along the way. Most of the sidequests are not actually optional, since you will invariably have to finish them in order to progress through the main plotline.
Overall, Overlord is a little rough around the edges, and will likely require some patience to get around its flaws, but the mischievous humour and charmingly chattersome mass of minions make up for it. At about US$20 on Steam, it’s well worth the price.
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