[ominous horn] “Overlord” is a game about… well… being the Overlord. The premise was that, rather than playing the hero, instead, you would be playing the villain. So you would be conquering the world and defeating heroes, much like “Dungeon Keeper”. You’d also be controlling an army of minions, like “Dungeon Keeper”, and also… “Pikmin”? Yeah, this is a strange combination… You’re playing as Kmart Sauron and control a bunch of colored gremlins. That seems simple enough, but there was also talk about having a morality system, kind of like “Fable”. I thought that was odd, since I thought you were supposed to be playing as Evil Incarnate. Not exactly… “Overlord” had, both, more and a lot less than I expected, so today I’ll be covering both – the main game and its expansion. Let’s fire up a new game and see what it’s all about. MINION: “Here! This one!” [grinding of stone and sounds of minions exerting effort] GNARL: “It’s him! Rub some ashes in his eyes, that’ll freshen him up!” GNARL: “Master, evil must truly suit you!” GNARL: “Let us go forth! There’s nefarious deeds to be done!” GNARL: “I feel the land quaking with fear already!” Alright, now you’re all caught up. You’ve been awoken by creatures called “minions” to replace the previous Overlord. The minions are only happy when they have a new evil leader to follow. Yes, I know. So you’re off to restore your evil tower and rule once more. And that’s it. So let’s look at the visuals. As far as technical graphics go, this game has really bad Bloom. Sometimes, it looks alright, but it usually looks like the surface of Venus. I usually don’t mind when games have a bit of Bloom, since it can look nice, but they way, WAY overdid it in “Overlord”. Save your eyeballs and turn that off. A lot of the lighting and particle effects still look great, which is really impressive, considering it’s an early 7th gen title. Once I got the Bloom off, everything was a lot sharper and clearer than I was expecting. It does have some quirks: like the draw distance can be very low in some areas. A few are hazy to try and disguise it, but it doesn’t work that well. This is the only thing that really stuck out to me, as far as showing its age goes. Seeing as how it’s nearly 12 now, that’s pretty impressive. I wasn’t expecting this to hold up as well as it does. Regardless, the art direction of the world is very lush and detailed. From dark woods, to castles, to graveyards, to mines – it’s all filled out very nicely. Even simple pathways usually had enough adornments to keep them interesting. Unfortunately, while you can do that a bit in the desert, it’s still going to be a desert. I don’t know, I’m not feeling very captivated by this. The setting is a parody of fantasy, so don’t expect very inspired enemies. In fact, from a visual standpoint, there’s very little original about “Overlord” (which I get is the point). What does stick out is your horde of minions. Rather than being simple recolors, they look like distinct sub-species. For example, Brown minions are your regular goblin/gremlin things, so they’re just long-eared little goblins. Then you have your Blue minions, who are aquatic. So, Blues are covered in scales, and have webbed hands and feet. Instead of just being a blue goblin, they look more appropriate for their environment. The minions are all like this, and they have a lot of character. It never got old for me watching them smash everything up and have little celebrations when they find stuff. Sending them to dogpile some Mensa troll who thought he could just walk around in the elven forest. They’re so well animated and have so much energy. You really get the sense of having a ball of chaos follow you wherever you go. You just point and they go crazy. Most of the sound in “Overlord” is serviceable. There are no low-quality or poor sound effects, but nothing really standout either. I mean, I like the little minion sounds… [muffled murmurs and mischievous giggling] [guileful whispering] [panting, high-pitched battle cries and startled whimpers] I have similar feelings about the music. It’s similar to the visual design in that it’s what you’d expect. [kinda-mysterious, kinda-magical forest theme] [fairly unoriginal-sounding desert theme] [barely noticeable oppressive tune] MINION: "M'haha, burn, bu-urn!" [subdued, foreboding tune] Most of it is very generic. The important thing is that it’s not grating. And I don’t think they’re ALL like this, as the game does have a few standout tracks. The main theme is great! [triumphant tune with ominous undercurrent] [a dark, insidious theme fitting for misdeeds] [a ghastly, echoey tune filled with dark mystery] The composers are definitely capable of making very standout music, so I can only speculate that they were told to tone it down for the other areas. In comparison, the voice acting is a complete coin flip. You have characters like Gnarl the Head Minion, whose delivery completely knocks it out of the park. [delivery is very natural and fitting, oozing character]
GNARL: “…amid leafy canopies and sun-dappled pools. P’hah! Now it is dank, dark, corrupted… Ooh, I like what they’ve done with the place.” GNARL: “Ohh, I’m dancing! I’m actually dancing! Quick, do something, Sire!” Then you have Jewel… [instead of making Jewel sound entitled and petulant, the actress sounds so herself, and her intonations fall flat]
JEWEL: “Statue’s gone! I told you lot to hurry up! Fools!” [instead of making Jewel sound entitled and petulant, the actress sounds so herself, and her intonations fall flat]
JEWEL: “WE’re meant to be the thieves! And look: those rock-huggers have got here first!” JEWEL: “Let’s get out of here…You, call the overseer!” [for an angry guy, Kahn sounds rather uncomfortable with speaking too loudly]
KAHN: “YOU! I know you! You took her away from me! You make Kahn angry!” JEWEL: “You two, stay here! Why fight when you can pay others to do it for you? Everyone has a price.” You might be thinking the same thing I was: “Is this another joke from the game?” Have all the enemies of the Overlord read their lines really awkwardly. It’s a funny idea, but I don’t think that’s the case, because they’re not all like that. [William sounds fittingly cartoonishly arrogant]
WILLIAM: “Didn’t we leave you for dead in that God-forsaken tower?” [William sounds fittingly cartoonishly arrogant]
WILLIAM: “You certainly should not be turning up at MY party uninvited and flouting the dress-code!” [Jewel sounds more whiny than annoyed or infuriated]
JEWEL: “Let me go! Do you know who I am?! Do you know who I work for?!” I was actually so curious about this that I looked it up. A lot of the voice cast in “Overlord” ONLY appeared in “Overlord”, and maybe one or a few other things. So you have a range of, both, professional voice actors and some people, whose LITERALLY first major project is this game. So, yeah, that definitely explains it. Let’s talk about the gameplay. To control the land, you must master your slaves. You start out small – only being able to control 5 Browns. By the end, you could be controlling 50. Along with the fact that you have 4 types of minions now. As I mentioned before, the Browns are your big biting fist. You point, and they try to make the bad thing go away. Minions sometimes find stuff when you point. It could be health and mana potions to recharge you. It could be the life force of slain victims (you need that for more minions). It could be a lot of gold. You need a good amount of that for upgrading stuff. Or get a lot of it and do nothing with it. Now you’re learning… Sometimes, minions find stuff for themselves. It could be armor, weapons, just trash… No matter what, it makes them better fighters, and can also give them a sense of style. ANGRY MOB MEMBER: “AK47’s for everyone!” [cheering] All of your minions, regardless of color or character, can do all these things. Browns can just equip more stuff and last longer in a fight. Your Red minions throw fireballs. If you rally them on a point, they’ll zap anyone who walks by. Of course, being immune to fire themselves, also means they can move it out of the way. Greens are your little dickish rogues. They’re good for getting rid of poison. The Green goblins also cloak when rallied, because they like ambushing their prey. They also like ruining Peter Parker’s Thanksgiving. Finally, you have the Blues, who are terrible fighters, but can cross water. They’re also your medics – being able to revive dead minions. IF you have a body. That doesn’t always happen. So, with all these little followers, there’s a lot of room for strategy and different approaches, right? Figuring out where to position everybody, deciding which minions to bring for a job – all that good stuff. Well, in most cases, the effective solution is “point at the thing and watch it die”. KAHN: “Je-ewe-el!” There are probably a few reasons for this. First, the controls. I’ve played this game, both, with the controller, and with the keyboard and mouse. With the controller, you can directly move your followers with the left stick. You control Kmart Sauron with the right one. This lets the player move, both, the horde and the big boy completely independently from each other, if need be. This also means relying on the game’s fixed camera more, since there’s no stick for it. The camera control comes from using the left bumper to snap it behind the Overlord. This can make some turns awkward. It’s something that never stops feeling clumsy. Alternatively, you can tap a stick to give an overhead view. This could work, except the camera will collide into things a lot. You’ll just be walking, and… surprise closeup! In a lot of indoor areas, it will barely angle up a bit, then gets pushed down. When that angle is working though, it almost seems more natural. “Pikmin” also works more like this. So, if you’re using mouse and keyboard, can you control the game more like an RTS or an ARPG? Well, no… With a mouse, you now have full control of the camera. After playing with the controller, it actually takes some getting used to. The issue now is that a lot of your minion controls will now lock the camera. When that happened before, it was all I knew. Now it feels like control is being ripped away, especially when you’re moving your horde. You need to hold both your mouse buttons, and then drag your mouse around where you want them to go. It’s incredibly awkward to do. These guys have to go far sometimes. There are puzzles that are already janky enough using a stick. You might not have enough desk for mouse controls. Remember: you still get full camera control in tradeoff. I guess, it could have been a lot worse, like tapping Num keys or something… At the end of the day, I believe a controller is the way to go. Which means moving yourself and your minions on the same two sticks with very limited camera control. Playing more strategically is cumbersome. You select your guys, manually wrangle them over, place a rally point, do the same with the next, and then you have to s… A-AH! This isn’t “Men of War 2” – this game is for dicking around. [minions' sighs of relief] The game is in a weird area, where it seems like you can do a lot more than you actually can. Most of the time the game is just reveling in all the chaos it can cause. At the same time, there will be a lot of environmental obstacles, so you want a balanced group, in case some of them die off. The world has upgrades, treasure and spells, but you need minions to carry them. This usually means you will have to escort them to a safe place, since, if they get too far away, they might not find their way back. Plus, certain objects can only be reached by certain minions, which, once again, encourages having a balanced party. It’s kind of incredible just how much time you spend watching stuff being carried in this game. Especially if you do optional missions or look for upgrades. I was never thinking “What will be a fun team to have?” It was “What kind of minions might I need to carry something? Or remove an obstacle that has something I need to carry?” For all the mischief an army of goblins could be causing, the game rarely has anything fun as an obstacle. Make sure you have Blue minions to move that rock. You have a chaotic army of goblins, and most of their world interactivity is being a U-Haul employee… They just keep moving boulders. The more creative ideas suffer from a lack of mechanic variety. You send one minion to snatch a thing and then move it over. There’s a breath of fresh air later, when you use exploding bugs to play “Tremors” with these giant sand worms. That would be cool, but you have to do it twice for each one. And, apparently, the desert is on Arrakis, because there’s so many of these worms that it’s now repetitive again. There’s so much that feels like unnecessary padding. It wasn’t for story reasons either. I’m gonna step back from the minions and talk more about the Overlord and being evil. VAN DARKLORD: “FUCKING SLA-AVES!” The Overlord’s combat is very simple. His melee attacks are a single button. Pull off three in a row, and the last one is a power strike. This marks the end of his melee abilities. You can spend gold and minions to forge a sword or a mace, but that doesn’t change. It affects the speed and damage of your button. Though, you can also upgrade those for different effects. Same goes for armor, though it doesn’t upgrade into each other, so the second tier is completely worthless. The biggest change comes from getting a bigger horde, so the other upgrades don’t matter as much. The most powerful weapon you have are the spells. You have four of them, and each one has three different levels. For example, you start with a Fireball. That can be upgraded into a flamethrower, and finally, the third level depends on your alignment. (gravely) We should talk about that, huh? Like the previously mentioned “Fable”, there’s a morality system. You get Corruption Points when you’re naughty. A key part of increasing it involves massacring innocents. You will need to kill hundreds to reach the max level. The points are given in milestones. You can ransack every house in the city but one, and you’re fine. But if you ransack EVERY house, then you’re a bad man. An Evil playthrough requires a lot of going out of your way to do stuff. Very mundane stuff. You send the boys to kill people, and sometimes they fight back – sometimes, they just stand there and die. The townspeople respawn, too, so it’s just farming them. Most of the narrative actions are default Good anyways, so, it’s like freeing prisoners to murder them. When you’re Evil, you first get little spikes, then you become GRISHNAKH URAKHA. But that requires a significant amount of mindless farming to get there. Occasionally, you will come to a moral decision, which is based off of a deadly sin. Will I be a glutton and take all this food for the minions, or give it back to the town? Will I save the elven women, or the big pile of money? Most of these boil down into what lever to pull, or what to carry. The biggest choice is deciding who will stay in your tower. It’s either the Lady Rose, or her sister – Nvidia PhysX demo. They will give an exclusive upgrade to two of your minion types. They also determine how you can customize your tower. “Customize” is a strong word, since you have one choice per room, and the only thing you can really choose is a banner. This is all cosmetic – there’s no gameplay-altering element to it. I guess that’s not entirely true, since, if you buy enough stuff, you unlock the sex scene… VELVET: “Sire, I think the time has come to tell you about the finer points of running an evil domain.” MINION: “Let me see!” MINION: “What? Stop pushing!” LADY ROSE: “Now you take that…” MINION: “NI-ICE!” LADY ROSE: “…and you scream.” LADY ROSE: “Total annihilation!” LADY ROSE: “Get something sharp… Right in there…!” LADY ROSE: “Pincer maneuver!” I do wish there was an option to take no mistress and just sit in the tower, getting… really frustrated. There would be no decorations and no scene, but… you get a melee damage bonus or something… The third level spells don’t have much difference. It’s mainly just one version will cause collateral damage, and the other one won’t. I wouldn’t call this game highly replayable, but it does add flavor to whatever playstyle you do go with. More than anything, I’m surprised that this game has an aversion to you actually being an evil character. You fight hobbits, but they’re evil hobbits. You fight a unicorn, but it’s an evil unicorn. MELVIN: "R'ARGH!" The boss characters are heroes, who turned to a deadly sin and become evil. If you’re playing as an Evil character, you get a single new side mission, where you kidnap women. By that I mean you CARRY women. They’re all stripped down to tower, and it’s like: “Man, GRISHNAKH URAKHA sure is a sleazbag…” But then you walk up to them and they go: WOMAN: “They wouldn’t let us dress like this in Spree.” Oh, it’s empowering… You look like Sauron, but it’s hard to oppress anybody. How does that even happen? It’s time to swindle those dirty elves… DIRTY ELF: “He-elp us!” DIRTY ELF: “The gold is yours! We don’t want it!” Oh, they… They don’t want the gold. DIRTY ELF: “Slay those beasts and free us!” UGH-H… It doesn’t help that the main story is barely there at all. The final boss is revealed about a level before you fight him, and he’s just called the Wizard. Reveal your enemy right at the end… Except, there is one scene where you do see the Wizard. There’s a cutscene showing an optional dwarf area, if you explore around, and there he is – he’s just walking across. Is that the wrong model? Like, was that supposed to be a dwarf model? It’s like: there he… What?! It’s not mentioned at all, he’s just there. The ending reveals that the Overlord used to be a hero, like the bosses you defeated, but he has been made evil by the… by the Wizard. The heroes had abandoned him, so that would have given him a revenge angle, and actually some more motivation for the story. Before you beat a boss, all of your minions cheer, and then you just run up and whack them. It makes me think that, maybe, early in development, they wanted to have it so you could forgive the hero, or cleanse them of evil in some other way. There’s so little to draw from that it’s hard to put in a phrase, but I’ve settled on “missing punchline”. There are setups for jokes and setups for characters, but there’s just no payoff. There’s one part where you go into a town of stereotypical British peasantry, and then their mayor walks out, and it’s a black American guy. He says who he is, gives us all backstory – it seems like he’ll be a character, but this is the last you ever see of him. The villains show up, and then they’re gone as quickly as they came. The game feels padded out, but at the same time, the story feels unfinished. You do get some different endings, based on what you do, but at the end, the game just felt like an anomaly. The game looks like it should have a lot more character than it actually does. When I first beat this, I wasn’t gonna recommend it. Or at least say that, if you do play it, you probably won’t wanna finish it. Then I went ahead and played the expansion content. [demonic wails accompanied by abyss-metal] Yeah, this was different. The expansion takes place in mirror dimension hell worlds of the main campaign. The levels are much more fantastical, and there’s a lot of room for creativity. Even though all the levels needed to look like hell, they still felt distinct from each other. They ended up being better parodies of the main game’s levels. The bosses are back, but, rather than fighting them, they’re involved with puzzles to complete the level. Oh, yeah, the expansion has actual puzzles now – there’s variety! The puzzles also feel more fun and meaningful than before. They’re related to the theme or the plot of the level, instead of just moving a rock over. There’s one where you have to do chores for nightmare women, and they ride men around, like steeds. You organize a massive raid to bring them back to the surface, and then it turns out that they were there because all the men in town were following a succubus. Which ties directly into the main game. You can play this whole thing alongside the main campaign, so, if you beat an area, you unlock the Abyss area, and you could beat that right after. My favorite area is the giant stage that tortures elves forever. Naturally, they’re just being forced to watch a play making fun of them. The entire stage is segregated, so the elves can’t go on one side, the lighting changes for different acts while the play is going on in the background. You hear the Abyss God getting mad when you disrupt his play. ABYSS GOD: “The dwarves attack Evernight Forest.” ABYSS GOD: “DWA-ARVES!!” Even the carry puzzles have been adjusted so that usually the carried object will follow you, instead of going to a point. It gives you more feeling of control, compared to feeling like an escort mission. Even the escort missions now have attacks on them. It’s a proper fight, instead of busywork. There’s more thinking required, but at the same time, it understands that combat is mainly you throwing your minions at the problem. So now you fight tons of enemies, or dangerous enemies. There’s no morality system, but there are jokes, which is probably how it should have been from the start. There are unique weapons that can’t be upgraded, so you don’t need to farm. The main plot is still light, but now it has buildup and foreshadowing – there’s something going on. Instead of just running into the final boss, you have to fight your way towards him. It’s not a great boss fight, but it’s the best in the game, by far. He even gets some low-budget “Metal Gear Rising” music. ABYSS GOD: “Do you know what it’s like to be forgotten, sub-creature?” ABYSS GOD: “Once my name was spoken in whispers! It put dread to this land!” ABYSS GOD: “Now that petulant goddess wishes my name lost in the mists of time!” ABYSS GOD: “No more! I will awaken their nightmares! Their darkest memories!” ABYSS GOD: “They will remember me, and they will remember what they feared!” It’s a tremendous difference. I can only wish that the main game had been more like this. The main game had a ton of problems, and here they were starting to figure them out. I still can’t recommend the main game standalone, but, if you get it with the expansion, it might be worth your time. The new levels make the entire experience much more digestible. You can get it on GOG or Steam, though, this is one of those times where I’ll recommend GOG over Steam. For whatever reason, the expansion isn’t bundled. That means, if you buy “Raising Hell” on Steam, you also have to buy and install the original “Overlord” game separately, which is a waste of money, and pointless. With “Overlord” behind me, I’ll see you in the next video. Thanks to everyone helping me out! This came out later than planned, since I did a segment for Raycevick’s “Metro 2033” video, so I’ve got some question catching up to do. Bob: “Have you thought of casually streaming stuff you’re playing or recording for?” I’ve thought about it, but I lately fell behind on stuff, so I’m trying to catch up before I do something like that. If I’m making a video on something, it’s highly unlikely I would stream it if it’s new to me. Streaming a game, especially when it’s story-heavy, is kind of like texting during a movie. Might do a “Total War” campaign sometime though. FG: “Have you looked at other video distribution methods?” Well, I have, but nothing is really viable right now. I do keep everything backed up now, and people are free to download whatever. Matteo.YB: “Droods review when?” Hopefully, never. It can just stare at me. BraviorSturm: “You’ve been doing videos on mixed games. Are you willing to do one about a complete flop again?” I’m pretty positive I will. They are easy targets, so I find that making a video for them usually isn’t as engaging. I like it more when they’re weird-bad, compared to just non-functional or terrible. Huh… Maybe, there will be a “Druids” video… LOWRY: “Halligan! Where are my scissors?!” HALLIGAN: “I’ve no idea! I thought they were on your desk just a minute ago.” LOWRY: “Don’t lie to me, Halligan! I know you’ve got them! And what was that business with the chief all about?” HALLIGAN: “I really don’t know what you’re talking about…” Look forward to that nightmare… I’ll see you next time. ABYSS GOD: “DWA-ARVES!”
I always thought the minions were so endearing. Like they were so excited to do evil shit for their master and I thought it was cute the way they said "the overlord!"
Still watching it, but if someone had told me Overlord was "evil path in Fable crossed with Pikmin" I would've played it a long time ago.
I loved both Overlord and its sequel, Overlord II. Both did some things really, really well. II built on a lot of the first game's systems while losing the open world, non-linear approach, and more strategic battles, while one really just did well with what it had.
I really wish we'd gotten a third game that had combined the best of both games and gone further.
I had lots of fond memories of this game as a kid, but I didn't even speak English back then so the jokes kinda all flew over my head
That said, he was way more critical of the game than I would have been, though I do have a serious case of nostalgia with it
I was just thinking about this game last night, I don't think I ever managed to get through the raising hell expansion. Hilarious game though.
This game was the reason I love Codemasters, shame they only interested in with racing games for a long time. I would gladly pay for an Overlord 3
Ah, my favorite easy-listening game reviewer. Equal parts nostalgia and deadpan snark make him an underrated YouTube gem.
Does anyone know of any other youtubers that do similar reviews like Mandalore? I prefer well spoken and somewhat humorous reviews but waiting a couple of weeks to see 10 minute reviews by Sseth and Mandalore gets cumbersome as I need my fix sooner
what year is it?!
I love this game gonna have to dust it off and give it a replay.