Dungeons II Review

Dungeons 2 begins by showing the fall of the great evil that storms the land. You control the unstoppable evil that tanks through his enemies with a swing of his mace, conveniently dealing 666 damage to anything that stands in your way. You end up meeting your demise when a group of heroes team up and defeat you. You are then chained to the underworld for eternity, or so the heroes think.

You start the first level off with nothing but your hand, as your body has been destroyed by those damned heroes and their do-goodery. Your hand acts as the reigning force that will give orders to minions, move them about the dungeon, and if your minions aren’t working fast enough, you can smack them around a bit. While you pursue your quest for revenge you will have your progression narrated by an amusing British voice that makes witty cracks at both your success and follies.

The main idea behind this dungeon game is one similar to a real-time dungeon management system that crosses Starcraft with Dungeon Keeper to make a surprisingly fun combination. You start out by commanding small goblins called Little Snots who are subject to your will. Unlike many other games where gathering resources and building structures requires you to delegate specific tasks for each minion, Dungeon 2’s AI will decide which Little Snots to mine, build, or whatever other task you want done. If you need gold mined from a spot all you do is highlight it and the AI will delegate a Snot to mine it for you.

The game has a unique feature in which you enter an RTS style mode in which you send your minions to cause havoc in the world above and to take down the villagers and heroes. Unfortunately this is where Dungeon 2 feels as if they just threw in a feature to make itself different from Dungeon Keeper, as no matter what the situation, all you do is send in a massive amount of trolls, naga, and goblins to attack without using any kind of strategy, and you will still succeed.

I definitely ran into some issues that need to be ironed out when it came to both the RTS mode and the early part of the game where you start out with your dungeon. At times I would come across an item that my minions had dug up and no matter how hard I tried, I could not manage to use my Hand cursor to pick the item up, which was extremely frustrating. Another issue I had was when it came to doing things in the underworld with my minions. You are unable to directly control individual minions and therefore have to be very aware of what all your Little Snots and Orcs are doing at all times, as they will sit idle if you don’t keep careful watch. The overworld does allow for individual control of units however it can be a pain to pick out specific units from a group.

The graphics for the game are nothing spectacular; however they are still very pleasant to look at. The units are easy enough to tell apart because of the character design and because of the continuous work your minions perform, the world of Dungeons 2 is always lively. My favorite part of the graphics in the game is how the world transforms based on what areas you have destroyed and captured. The pretty land filled with beautiful trees and playful rabbits is quickly overtaken by creepy looking vines and terrified animals fleeing for their lives.

While these problems are a slight pain they are easily made up for with the great story that follows your rise back to power and the brilliant comedic narration. At one point I had decided to make myself a cup of coffee and came back to a message from the narrator saying, “There was still no gold being mined, although the narrator had talked about it SEVERAL times. Apparently SOMEONE was no longer interested in the creation of a thriving dungeon, capable of extracting a terrible revenge on heroes and the Alliance of Good. Instead, this SOMEONE was obviously considering devoting themselves to their Zen garden to control their desire for revenge”. The narration is honestly what makes this game so much fun and makes the game unique.

While Dungeons 2 is no hidden gem or game of the year candidate it certainly does have its quirks and fun gameplay to make it a worthy addition to one’s game library. Being an evil overlord and managing your evil minions can be a lot of fun and Dungeons 2 presents you with many opportunities to destroy the forces of good. Starting from an underground base to working your way up to creating an army of snaga, orcs, and goblins and letting them loose on a group of helpless unicorns and rabbits has never been more satisfying. If you are looking for a unique combination of Starcraft and Dungeon Keeper then this may be the game you’ve been looking for.