Games I Love: War for the Overworld

To anyone whom has read my blog up to this point likely will not be the least bit surprised to see War for the Overworld pop up on it. My love of games like Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius make it an almost foregone conclusion I had my eye on the game since I heard about it but didn't get it until last year. In general I usually wait before purchasing a game for several reasons, usually price related but also I like to get 'complete' editions with all DLC's. That said it was worth the wait by far and certainly stands up as a very good spiritual successor to the venerable Dungeon Keeper series.

The beginnings of any Underlords domain.

Much like the Dungeon Keeper games you start off with your dungeon heart, a handful of loyal worker imps and enough gold to get you started. From there you dig out tiles to make space for rooms, those rooms not only serve functions like feeding your minions or letting them rest but also each room generally attracts certain kinds of minions. So far so Dungeon Keeper however this to me feels like it is dialed up to eleven as there are a lot of new features and additions which make it just as good as it's older inspiration if not better in some cases.

The veins of evil, the talents of dungeon management!

From there you expand your reach to find gold and artifacts, research new spells, items and traps thanks to the new talent tree style veins of evil all to bring your nefarious objectives to fruition. The veins of evil deserves a special mention I think, as you spend your sins to unlock everything from new rooms to traps, summons and more.

Usually the objective is defeating an enemy in some way for the most part but the missions have a lot of variety and some of them can be particularly challenging to pull off on your first attempt. Some missions have you commanding a limited number of minions with no dungeon or reinforcements to support you. Others see you facing off against multiple opponents keeping you constantly on your toes as you attempt to defeat multiple attacks from different directions.

You also cast spells and use constructs and rally flags to give you more control over your minions and any battles that will eventually erupt. The battles can also get quite crazy in their scale at times which is both a good and a bad point but I'll get to that later.

Battles are fun to watch but can be a little chaotic when trying to target specific units with spells at times.

The sheer variety of creatures, spells and traps on offer took me a little by surprise to begin with. As they even opted to include the more beast like minions of the original Dungeon Keeper

Also props to the developers for calling on the vocal talents of Richard Ridings to voice Mendechaus (who acts as mentor and tormentor in equal part!) Which only makes any former Dungeon Keepers feel right at home in this game or at least it did for me.

A dungeon in all it's gold filled monster guarded glory!

Some tips for anyone starting out as a fledgling underlord would be these:

• Do not rush to expand as you may make it harder to defend yourself or starve yourself of gold before you find more.
• Use the prophecy spell early and often to help you plan out your dungeon as well as find any useful shrines, secrets, neutral rooms and creatures etc.
• Don't splash out on big rooms too early (by big I mean 5x5 or bigger.)
• Some rooms don't need to be perfectly square or rectangular to function such as the lair and beast den.
• Space is a key resource, only at certain sizes do you get more usable objects in a room such as training dummies, some rooms benefit from having fortified walls as well so keep that in mind when planning.
• Try to keep your workers alive, high level workers are massively useful.
• Need to get rid of some annoying enemy trap that your minions can't seem to reach no matter where you place the rally flag. Use possession on a ranged or flying minion and take matters into your own hands (or claws/tentacles.)

The game isn't without it's flaws but in the grand scheme of things they are relatively minor:

• Large battles can be frustratingly chaotic, if you are trying to cast spells into the fray or possess that one minion it can be hard to even find them in a pile of explosions and flailing limbs.
• Some maps can feel very cramped, more of a gripe than an actual flaw but I feel some bigger maps and time to build up in certain missions would have made them less frustrating without affecting the challenge.
• Campaign pacing feels a little off at the start at least compared to Dungeon Keeper 2, just my opinion as I do love the campaign all the same the start just feels a bit 'fast' to me.

Overall this is a worthy modern version of Dungeon Keeper and has more than enough shiny new things to be a damned good game in it's own right. It has quite a selection of additional game modes if you invest in any of the DLC, everything from the return of 'My Pet Dungeon' to skirmishes and campaigns meaning you won't run out of things to do all that quickly. So this game gets a solid recommendation from me especially if you like myself loved Dungeon Keeper.

Now if you don't mind, I have an empire to conquer!